New Maternalisms”: Tales of Motherwork (Dislodging the Unthinkable) explores the perceptions of those who engage in and/or research motherwork or the labour of caregiving, and how mothers view themselves in comparison to broader normative understandings of motherwork. Here, the anthology serves to deconstruct motherwork by highlighting and dislodging it from maternal ideology, the socially constructed “good mom” (read as “sacrificial mom”) and feminized hegemonic discourse. The objective of the edited volume, then, is to critically explore how we experience motherwork, what motherwork might mean, and how motherwork impacts and is impacted by the communities in which we live. Such an examination involves contesting dominant ways of thinking about motherwork.

This volume investigates race, ethnicity and gender as factors in health and health care.

Theory on mothers, mothering and motherhood has emerged as a distinct body of knowledge within Motherhood Studies and Feminist Theory more generally. This collection, The Second Edition of Maternal Theory: Essential Readings introduces readers to this rich and diverse tradition of maternal theory. Composed of 60 chapters the 2nd edition includes two sections: the first with the classic texts by Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Sara Ruddick, Alice Walker, Barbara Katz Rothman, bell hooks, Sharon Hays, Patricia Hill-Collins, Audre Lorde, Daphne de Marneffe, Judith Warner, Patrice diQinizio, Susan Maushart, and many more. The second section includes thirty new chapters on vital and new topics including Trans Parenting, Non-Binary Parenting, Queer Mothering, Matricentric Feminism, Normative Motherhood, Maternal Subjectivity, Maternal Narratology, Maternal Ambivalence, Maternal Regret, Monstrous Mothers, The Migrant Maternal, Reproductive Justice, Feminist Mothering, Feminist Fathering, Indigenous Mothering, The Digital Maternal, The Opt-Out Revolution, Black Motherhoods, Motherlines, The Motherhood Memoir, Pandemic Mothering, and many more. Maternal Theory is essential reading for anyone interested in motherhood as experience, ideology, and identity.

Who is the juggling mother, the woman who quietly flicks dried cereal off her blazer while running a corporate empire? The Juggling Mother explores this figure of contemporary mothering in media representations: a typically white, middle-class woman on the verge of coming undone because of her unwieldy slate of labours. Mothers who frantically juggle paid and unpaid work demands do not threaten the way labour is organized. In fact, as Amanda Watson demonstrates, they are model neoliberal workers who uphold white privilege – along with ableist notions of mastery, capacity, and productivity – because of a desire for political visibility and social inclusion. The Juggling Mother makes the controversial case that unfair labour distributions are publicly celebrated, intentionally performed, and intimately felt. Mothers with the most power are thus complicit in the exclusion of less privileged ones – and in their own undoing.

This collection defines the field of maternal studies in Australia for the first time. Leading motherhood researchers explore how mothering has evolved across Australian history as well as the joys and challenges of being a mother today. The contributors cover pregnancy, birth, relationships, childcare, domestic violence, time use, work, welfare, policy and psychology, from a diverse range of maternal perspectives. Utilising a matricentric feminist framework, Australian Mothering foregrounds the experiences, emotions and perspectives of mothers to better understand how Australian motherhood has developed historically and contemporaneously. Drawing upon their combined sociological and historical expertise, Bueskens and Pascoe Leahy have carefully curated a collection that presents compelling research on past and present perspectives on maternity in Australia, which will be relevant to researchers, advocates and policy makers interested in the changing role of mothers in Australian society.

This book traces the assemblage that comes into being in the spaces and experiences of childbirth. Charting the contributions of the multiple human and non-human actors that contribute to the birth experience, it offers a new perspective on childbirth that cuts across the often emotional debates about natural versus medicalised birth. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with mothers, midwives and obstetricians, it provides an insight into the collective endeavours that shape birth. In doing so, it also explores who does the work of childbirth, expanding the boundaries for who (and what) is responsible for this collective labour and highlighting the interdependencies that characterise it. Structured around eight chapters that each focus on a different actor in the birth space, the volume argues that pregnancy and childbearing brings us into new relationships: with ourselves, with the child to be born, our partners and families, those who care for us, and with more-than-human others.