The removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families gained national attention in Australia following the Bringing Them Home Report in 1997. However, the voices of Indigenous parents were largely missing from the Report. The Inquiry attributed their lack of testimony to the impact of trauma and the silencing impact of parents’ overwhelming sense of guilt and despair; a submission by Link-Up NSW commented on Aboriginal mothers being “unwilling and unable to speak about the immense pain, grief and anguish that losing their children had caused them.” This book explores what happened to Aboriginal mothers who had children removed and why they have overwhelmingly remained silent about their experiences. Identifying the structural barriers to Aboriginal mothering in the Stolen Generations era, the author examines how contemporary laws, policies and practices increased the likelihood of Aboriginal child removal and argues that negative perceptions of Aboriginal mothering underpinned removal processes, with tragic consequences. This book makes an important contribution to understanding the history of the Stolen Generations and highlights the importance of designing inclusive truth-telling processes that enable a diversity of perspectives to be shared.

Nearly 20% of all pregnancies in the U.S. end in miscarriage or stillbirth. Yet pregnancy loss is seldom acknowledged and rarely discussed. Opening the topic to a thoughtful and informed discussion, Linda Layne takes a historical look at pregnancy loss in America, reproductive technologies and the cultural responses surrounding miscarriage. Examining both support groups and the rituals they create to help couples through loss, her analysis offers valuable insight on how material culture contributes to conceptions of personhood. A fascinating examination, Motherhood Lost is also a provocative challenge to feminists and other activists to increase awareness and provide necessary support for this often hidden but critically important topic.

Brings together research from the Global North and the Global South to illuminate how contemporary motherhood is changed by the processes of globalization.

Kristina Olsson's mother lost her infant son, Peter, when he was snatched from her arms as she boarded a train in the hot summer of 1950. Young and frightened and trying to escape a brutal marriage, she was not prepared for this final blow, this breathtaking punishment. She would not see her son again for nearly forty years. Kristina was the first child of her mother's second, much gentler marriage and, like her siblings, grew up unaware of the reasons behind her mother's sorrow, though Peter's absence resounded through the family. Yvonne dreamt day and night of her son, while Peter grew up a thousand miles and a lifetime away, dreaming of his missing mother. Thirty-six years later he arrived at her front door. Boy, Lost tells an unforgettable story of the legacy of grief and loss across generations, and is a tribute to the power of memory and faith.

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.

The history of the British working class has until recently been written with a focus on the workplace or on such male organizations as clubs, unions or national political parties. This study of mothers in London before World War I stresses the distinctiveness of their experiences from those of other classes, and of the post World War I period, and demonstrates the ways in which mothers and their domestic choices were essential to the survival and cultural perpetuation of the working classes.