In (M)other Words

Writings on Mothering and Motherhood, 2009-2024

Andrea O'Reilly

• Publisher: Demeter Press
• Year: 2024
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781772585285
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Dr. Andrea O' Reilly is internationally recognized as the founder of Motherhood Studies (2006) and its subfield Maternal Theory (2007), and creator of the concept of Matricentric Feminism, a feminism for and about mothers (2016) and Matricritics, a literary theory and practice for a reading of mother-focused texts (2021). With this collection O' Reilly continues the conversation on the meaning and nature of motherhood initiated by Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born close to fifty years ago. In In (M)other Words, O' Reilly shares 25 of her chapters and articles published between 2009-2024 to examine the oppressive and empowering dimensions of mothering and to explore motherhood as institution, experience, subjectivity, and empowerment. The collection considers the central themes and theories of motherhood studies including normative motherhood, feminist mothering, maternal regret, matricentric pedagogy, young mothers, academic motherhood, matricentric feminism, matricritics, motherhood and feminism, the motherhood memoir, the twenty-first-century motherhood movement, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, pandemic mothering, and the motherline.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Reviews
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Thinking Through Matricentric Feminism
• 2. Dr. Andrea O’Reilly and the Motherhood Perspective
• 3. Matricentric Feminism
• 4. Normative Motherhood
• 5. Coming into Being
• 6. The Twenty-First-Century Motherhood Movement
• 7. Empowered and Feminist Mothering
• 8. Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater
• 9. Towards a Literary Theory and Criticism of Matricritics
• 10. Maternal Regret
• 11. Pandemic Mothering
• 12. “Certainly Not an Equal-Opportunity Pandemic”
• 13. Feminist Perspectives on Young Mothers and Young Mothering
• 14. In Search of the Goddess
• 15. “Have Your Cake and Eat It Too”
• 16. Across the Divide
• 17. In Black and White
• 18. African American Mothering
• 19. “It Saved My Life”
• 20. Academic Motherhood in a Post-Second Wave Context
• 21. “I Should Have Married Another Man”; “I Couldn’t Do What I Do Without Him”
• 22. Maternal Literatures in Text and Tradition
• 23. The Motherhood Memoir and the “New Momism”
• 24. Feminist Mothering as Maternal Practice
• 25. A Conversation About Maternal Thinking
• Deepest appreciation to Demeter’s monthly Donors