Conceiving of and representing mothers without their children seems so paradoxical as to be almost impossible. How can we define a mother in the absence of her child? This compelling volume explores these and other questions from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, examining experiences, representations, creative manifestations, and embodiments of mothers without their children. In her 1997 book, entitled Mother Without Child: Contemporary Fiction and the Crisis of Motherhood, the critic Elaine Tuttle Hansen urged for critical and feminist engagement with what she described as 'the bord.

Revealing the maternal as not a core identity but a site of profound psychic and social division, Hansen illuminates recent decades of feminist thought and explores novels by Jane Rule, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, and Fay Weldon. Unlike traditional stories of abandoned children and bad mothers, these narratives refuse to sentimentalize motherhood's losses and impasses. Hansen embraces the larger cultural story of what it means to be a mother and illuminates how motherhood is being reimagined today. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.

A collection of feminist essays steeped in “Solnit’s unapologetically observant and truth-speaking voice on toxic, violent masculinity” (The Los Angeles Review). In a timely and incisive follow-up to her national bestseller Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit offers sharp commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, “Solnit draw[s] anecdotes of female indignity or male aggression from history, social media, literature, popular culture, and the news . . . The main essay in the book is about the various ways that women are silenced, and Solnit focuses upon the power of storytelling—the way that who gets to speak, and about what, shapes how a society understands itself and what it expects from its members. The Mother of All Questions poses the thesis that telling women’s stories to the world will change the way that the world treats women, and it sets out to tell as many of those stories as possible” (The New Yorker). “There’s a new feminist revolution—open to people of all genders—brewing right now and Rebecca Solnit is one of its most powerful, not to mention beguiling, voices.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times–bestselling author of Natural Causes “Short, incisive essays that pack a powerful punch.” —Publishers Weekly “A keen and timely commentary on gender and feminism. Solnit’s voice is calm, clear, and unapologetic; each essay balances a warm wit with confident, thoughtful analysis, resulting in a collection that is as enjoyable and accessible as it is incisive.” —Booklist

The author argues that mothers should work outside the home and men must take half the responsibility for child care, in order to create a richer parenting experience, stronger marriages, and happier children.

Updated and revised with seven new chapters, a new introduction, and a new resources section, this landmark book is invaluable for women facing a custody battle. It was the first to break the myth that mothers receive preferential treatment over fathers in custody disputes. Although mothers generally retain custody when fathers choose not to fight for it, fathers who seek custody often win—not because the mother is unfit or the father has been the primary caregiver but because, as Phyllis Chesler argues, women are held to a much higher standard of parenting. Incorporating findings from years of research, hundreds of interviews, and international surveys about child-custody arrangements, Chesler argues for new guidelines to resolve custody disputes and to prevent the continued oppression of mothers in custody situations. This book provides a philosophical and psychological perspective as well as practical advice from one of the country’s leading matrimonial lawyers. Both an indictment of a discriminatory system and a call to action over motherhood under siege, Mothers on Trial is essential reading for anyone concerned either personally or professionally with custody rights and the well-being of the children involved.

Raise Them to Value God’s Design Starting at a young age, kids are being fed damaging misinformation about sexuality, gender identity, and human biology. As a parent, it’s up to you to help your children understand God’s truth about these integral concepts in the face of the candy-coated lies that saturate today’s world. In the footsteps of the bestselling Mama Bear Apologetics comes this invaluable guide to training your kids to know and respect God’s design in a world that has rejected it. This book will equip you to… understand God’s design for gender, sex, marriage, and family as a beautiful portrait that reveals the nature of God Himself identify the tactics being used to trick children into adopting an unbiblical view of sexuality under the guise of Christian-sounding words like love, identity, tolerance, and justice teach your kids to treat those who hold different beliefs with gentle, Christlike compassion without compromising biblical values As society continues to blur the lines of what is good, true, and acceptable, God’s standards remain clear and unchanging. This book will give you the wisdom to confidently raise your children to understand sex and gender through a biblical lens.

Parentless Parents is the first book to show how the absence of grandparents impacts everything about the way mothers and fathers raise their children--from everyday parenting decisions to the relationships they have with their spouses and in-laws. For the first time in U.S. history, as the average age of women giving birth has increased significantly, millions of children are at risk of having fewer years with their grandparents than ever before. How has this substantial shift affected parents and kids? Journalist, award-winning television producer, and parentless parent Allison Gilbert has polled and studied more than 1,300 parentless parents from across the United States and a dozen other countries to find out. Through her pioneering research, Gilbert not only shares her own story and the significant and poignant effect that this trend has had on her and hundreds of other families, but also the myriad ways these mothers and fathers have learned to keep the memory of their parents alive for their children, and to find the support and understanding they need.