Traditional histories of war have typically explored masculine narratives of military and political action, leaving private, domestic life relatively unstudied. This volume expands our understanding by looking at the relationships between mothers and children, and the varied roles both have assumed during periods of armed conflict.

Our Mothers' War is a stunning and unprecedented portrait of women during World War II, a war that forever transformed the way women participate in American society. Never before has the vast range of women's experiences during this pivotal era been brought together in one book. Now, Our Mothers' War re-creates what American women from all walks of life were doing and thinking, on the home front and abroad. These heartwarming and sometimes heartbreaking accounts of the women we have known as mothers, aunts, and grandmothers reveal facets of their lives that have usually remained unmentioned and unappreciated. Our Mothers' War gives center stage to one of WWII's most essential fighting forces: the women of America, whose extraordinary bravery, strength, and humanity shine through on every page.

An unspeakable illness: Cancer. A mother who wants to explain to her children what is happening, the fascinating adventure of a queen. Guided Reading Level: S, Lexile Level: 880L

As warriors, freedom fighters and victims, as mothers, wives and prostitutes, and as creators and members of peace movements, women are inevitably caught up in the net of war. Yet women's participation in warfare and peace campaigns has often been underestimated or ignored. Images of Women in Peace and War explores women's relationships to war, peace, and revolution, from the Amazons, Inka and Boadicea, to women soldiers in South Africa, Mau Mau freedom fighters and the protestors at Greenham Common. The contributors consider not only the reality of women's participation but also look at how their actions have been perceived and represented across cultures and through history. They examine how sexual imagery is constructed, how it is used to delineate women's relation to warfare and how these images have sometimes been subverted in order to challenge the status quo. The book raises important questions about whether women have a special prerogative to promote peace and considers whether the experience of motherhood leads to a distinctive women's position on war. The authors find that their analyses lead them to deal with arguments on the basic nature of the sexes and to reevaluate our concepts of "peace," "war," and "gender."

Traditional histories of war have typically explored masculine narratives of military and political action, leaving private, domestic life relatively unstudied. This volume expands our understanding by looking at the relationships between mothers and children, and the varied roles both have assumed during periods of armed conflict.

Because her father was involved in the July Plot against Hitler, Fey von Hassell became a special prisoner of the SS and her children were taken from her. As the war neared its end, these prisoners were taken by cattle truck from one concentration camp to another. They were to be killed if the war was lost. In fact, in scenes of amazing drama, they were rescued. Then the children had to be found in the ruins of post-war Germany.

There are few moments in history when the division between the sexes seems as "natural" as during wartime: men go off to the "war front," while women stay behind on the "home front." But the very notion of the home front was an invention of the First World War, when, for the first time, "home" and "domestic" became adjectives that modified the military term "front." Such an innovation acknowledged the significant and presumably new contributions of civilians, especially women, to the war effort. Yet, as Susan Grayzel argues, throughout the war, traditional notions of masculinity and femininity survived, primarily through the maintenance of--and indeed reemphasis on--soldiering and mothering as the core of gender and national identities. Drawing on sources that range from popular fiction and war memorials to newspapers and legislative debates, Grayzel analyzes the effects of World War I on ideas about civic participation, national service, morality, sexuality, and identity in wartime Britain and France. Despite the appearance of enormous challenges to gender roles due to the upheavals of war, the forces of stability prevailed, she says, demonstrating the Western European gender system's remarkable resilience.