A WOMAN'S WORK

The power of mothers.

British feminist cultural historian Cleghorn takes a sweeping view of motherhood from the 9th century B.C.E. to the present, examining women’s experiences of birthing, nurturing, and raising children. Her research into archival and scholarly sources emerges in portraits of individual women, revealing the physical risks, emotional impact, social constrictions, and “misogynistic mythmaking” that shape the reality of mothering. In antiquity, pregnant women sought supernatural aid through clay votives offered to Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth; but other goddesses could be vengeful. “Greek mythology,” Cleghorn writes, “was replete with justifications for placing women, and their reproductive capacities, under the control of men.” Christianity added another layer of misogyny, with Eve serving as “a straw woman for patriarchal reproductive ambitions,” and the Virgin Mary representing “a model of piety, sacrifice, and purity that couldn’t be further removed” from women’s lives. Their experiences often included postpartum psychosis, which, Cleghorn speculates, probably afflicted 14th-century visionary Margery Kempe. From the early 17th century, the murderous mother emerged as a focus of witch trials and criminal trials; unmarried mothers were especially vulnerable to accusations of infanticide. Cleghorn’s populous narrative includes some well-known figures, such as Sojourner Truth, activist for women’s and civil rights, and Mary Wollstonecraft, who died soon after giving birth to her daughter, Mary. Other women who enliven this history include Louise Bourgeois, whose Diverse Observations, published in 1609, was the first book on “childbirth, reproductive health, and gynecology authored by a female midwife,” and Elizabeth Jocelin, whose Mothers Legacie was “one of a handful of maternal conduct books, written by women, which were published in England during the seventeenth century.” Although acknowledging ongoing challenges for women to control their reproduction, Cleghorn celebrates the changes in care and attitudes that made it possible for her own mother to become a single parent.

Impressive research informs a vibrantly detailed history.