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.

What does mothering mean in different cultures and societies? This book extensively applies biographical and narrative research methods to mothering from international perspectives. This edited collection engages with changing attitudes and approaches to mothering from women’s individual biographical experiences, illuminating how socially anticipated tasks of mothering shaped through interlinking state, media, religious beliefs and broader society are reflected in their identities and individual life choices. Considering trust, rapport, reflexivity and self-care, this collection advances methodological practice in the study of mothers, carers and childless women’s lives.

There has been little public discussion on the devastating impact of Covid-19 on mothers, or a public acknowledgement that mothering is frontline work in this pandemic. This collection of 45 chapters and with 70 contributors is the first to explore the impact of the pandemic on mothers' care and wage labour in the context of employment, schooling, communities, families, and the relationships of parents and children. With a global perspective and from the standpoint of single, partnered, queer, racialized, Indigenous, economically disadvantaged, disabled, and birthing mothers, the volume examines the increasing complexity and demands of childcare, domestic labour, elder care, and home schooling under the pandemic protocols; the intricacies and difficulties of performing wage labour at home; the impact of the pandemic on mothers' employment; and the strategies mothers have used to manage the competing demands of care and wage labour under COVID-19. By way of creative art, poetry, photography, and creative writing along with scholarly research, the collection seeks to make visible what has been invisibilized and render audible what has been silenced: the care and crisis of motherwork through and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Becoming a mother charts the diverse and complex history of Australian mothering for the first time, exposing the ways it has been both connected to and distinct from parallel developments in other industrialised societies. In many respects, the historical context in which Australian women come to motherhood has changed dramatically since 1945. And yet examination of the memories of multiple maternal generations reveals surprising continuities in the emotions and experiences of first-time motherhood. Drawing upon interdisciplinary insights from anthropology, history, psychology and sociology, Carla Pascoe Leahy unpacks this multifaceted rite of passage through more than 60 oral history interviews, demonstrating how maternal memories continue to influence motherhood today. Despite radical shifts in understandings of gender, care and subjectivity, becoming a mother remains one of the most personally and culturally significant moments in a woman’s life.

Neoliberal policies and austerity measures have unequivocally altered the landscape of women’s lives globally. The most detrimental effect has been on mothers as they are faced with increasing responsibility and decreasing resources. Despite mothers being the primary producers, consumers, and repro- ducers of the neoliberal world, their centrality has been largely silenced within economic discourse. Thus, Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism calls for a new economic framework to counter the individualized neoliberal model, one in which the needs of mothers and children are prioritized. This volume provides a crucial starting point. By identifying the sources of neoliberal failure toward mothers, we can begin to collectively formulate an alternative paradigm in which mothers’ voices are no longer rendered invisible, but rather predominate in the global landscape.

This book presents new interdisciplinary and intersectional research about women as mothers, highlighting that alternative accounts of mothering can challenge normative societal assumptions and broaden understandings of women as mothers, mothering and motherhoods. Mothering occurs within unequal power relations associated with the disadvantages and privileges of an unjust and patriarchal society. Social inequalities associated with gender, race, class, age, ability, sexuality, violence and nationalism intersect in the lives of women as mothers, to shape their lived experiences and perspectives on mothering. Showcasing the breadth and depth of feminist research on mothering, this book gives attention to the diversity of ways in which mothering is constructed and responded to as well as how mothering is experienced. Drawing on intersectional feminist thought, the book challenges normative visions of ‘good mothering’ and interrogates constructs of ‘bad mothering’. It brings together insights from multidisciplinary scholars who use feminist approaches in their research on mothering, to inform policy development and practice when working with women as mothers in diverse circumstances. Intersections of Mothering highlights the complexities of mothering in a contemporary world, show the benefits of considering mothering through an intersectional feminist lens, make visible lived experiences of mothers and provides challenges to dominant imaginings of and service responses to women as mothers. Intersections of Mothering will be essential reading for interdisciplinary scholars and students in criminology, gender and women’s studies, motherhood studies, social welfare, social work, social policy and public health policy, in addition to practitioners and policy workers that respond to women as mothers.

Museum Representations of Motherhood and the Maternal is the first book to address the underrepresentation of motherhood in museums. Questioning how mothering and maternal experiences should be represented in museums, Louise-Clarke argues that such institutions wield the power to influence what we think about families, mothers and the labour of care. Using the term ‘mothering’ to encompass lived experiences of mothering or caring that are not exclusively tied to sex, gender, or the maternal body, Louise-Clarke explores the ways that experiences of mothering can be represented in museums. The book begins this exploration with Australia’s Museums Victoria (MV), then expands to look at international cases. Offering a blueprint for what Louise-Clarke calls a ‘museology of mothering’, the book imagines what a museum that articulates maternal subjectivities might look and sound like. Museum Representations of Motherhood and the Maternal initiates a dialogue between museum studies and maternal studies, making it essential reading for scholars and students working in both disciplines. Questioning conventional museum practices and the values that underpin them, the book will also be of interest to museum and heritage practitioners around the world.