Essential Breakthroughs: Conversations about Men, Mothers and Mothering

Fionna Joy Green

• Publisher: Demeter Press
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781772580303
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Essential Breakthroughs: Conversations About Men, Mothers, and Mothering thinks from the nexus of gender, essentialism, and care. The authors creatively blend the philosophical and the personal to collectively argue that while gender is essential to our social and theoretical definitions of care, it is dangerously co-opted into naturalized discourses, which limit particular identities and negate certain forms of care. The perspectives curated in Essential Breakthroughs illuminate how care, as a respected and productive cultural ethic, is neither inherent nor instinctual for any human, but is learned and fostered. The chapters are informed by feminist, queer, and trans politics, wielding post-structuralist methodologies of unlearning and deconstruction, while maintaining the maternal lens as a credible feminist analytical tool and not as a gender-essentialist practice.

Table of contents

• ESSENTIAL BREAKTHROUGHS
• Copyright Notice
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword ANDREA DOUCET
• Introduction GARY LEE PELLETIER AND FIONA JOY GREEN
• 1. Parental Thinking What Does Gender Have to Do With It? JOANNE S. FRYE
• 2. Does the Manny Mother? GARY LEE PELLETIER
• 3. “Is He the Son of No One?” A Son’s Relational Narrative on His Mother NICK J. MULÉ
• 4. Why Isn’t Everyone Celebrating Me? My Mom, Bankruptcy and My Ego JUSTIN BUTLER
• 5. Lesbian Families, Sons and Mothering Parenting Outside the Boundaries ALYS EINION
• 6. Changing the Gender Script Ecuadorian Sons’ Increased Domesticity and Emotive Response to Transnational Mothering RUTH TRINIDAD GALVÁN
• 7. TV’s New Dads Sensitive Fatherhood and the Return of Hegemonic Masculinity DWAYNE AVERY
• 8. What’s So Funny About Childbirth? The Projection of Patriarchal Masculinity in Popular Comedic Childbirth Guides JEFFREY NALL
• 9. Just Along for the Ride? A Father-to-be Searching for His Role C. WESLEY BUERKLE
• 10. Mommie Dearest Undoing a Gay Identity Through Pregnancy JACK HIXSON-VULPE
• 11. The Ties that Bind Are Broken Trans* Breastfeeding Practices, Ungendering Body Parts, and Unsexing Parenting Roles A.J. LOWIK
• 12. Becoming Mother’s Nature A Queer Son’s Perspective on Mothering in an Era of Ecological Decline MICHAEL YOUNG
• Contributor Biographies