A lucid, probing examination of our culture's contradictory and troubled relationship to motherhood—and how it affects mothers. Hays (Sociology and Women's Studies/Univ. of Virginia) interviewed 38 mothers from various class backgrounds. Some stayed at home, some worked; all had young children. She found that all, despite their differences, subscribed to what Hays calls the ``ideology of intensive mothering''—the belief that mothers (not fathers) should spend an enormous amount of time, physical and emotional energy, and money raising children. She critically examines the advice of three best-selling authors of books on child-rearing—T. Berry Brazelton, Benjamin Spock, and Penelope Leach—and finds that they have adopted the ideology as well. Hays provides some helpful social context, convincingly demonstrating that no one idea about mothers and children is inherently ``natural.'' In the past, she points out, children have been expendable or even demonized as bearers of original sin, not worthy of much time or emotional energy, while even today, in many cultures, raising children is the responsibility of several women and older children, not just the birth mother. Hays points out that the ideology is problematic because it perpetuates a ``double shift'' life for working women, as well as the assumption that men are incompetent at parenting and superior in the professional world—which encourages the subordination of women. It also places mothers in constant conflict with the rest of society's ostensible priorities—wealth and individual fulfillment. But she also argues perceptively that part of the reason the ideology is successful and necessary is that in placing a high value on love and self- sacrifice, it offers an alternative to selfish, materialistic market values. A thoughtful analysis of the paradoxes that surround mothering. Hays is sensitive to the emotional issues involved—and equally astute in perceiving their sociopolitical context.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-300-06682-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
In traditional Jewish ritual, men are usually the primary subjects or objects: They are circumcised, they take a woman in marriage, they say kaddish over the death of a loved one. Recently, Jewish women have been plumbing the tradition in an attempt to become the subjects of their own ritual lives. Bat mitzvahs were only the beginning: In recent years, Jewish women have created new, or revised, ceremonies to mark all the joyous, and sad, transitions in their lives, from birth to becoming a parent to aging. Here, Rabbi Orenstein, who teaches at the Univ. of Judaism, provides a compendium of these rituals. Rabbi Einat Ramon explains how she and her husband, also a rabbi, wrote an egalitarian ketubbah, or marriage contract. Rabbi Amy Eilberg adapts traditional mourning ceremonies to mark the grief of a miscarriage. Barbara D. Holender offers a ceremony on turning 65. A useful resource for the paradoxically ever-evolving tradition of Judaism.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-879045-14-1
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Jewish Lights
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
Still, American moms of the post-Kennedy era will recognize—and even admire—themselves here.
A memoir of a woman in progress, this volume describes the 20 years spent raising two sons to be sensitive, responsible, independent—and, hopefully, to pick up their socks.
"Do you mistake me for June Cleaver?'' says Blakely (Wake Me When It's Over, 1989) with heavy irony to a member of the adolescent male pack that moved in and out of her house chomping on Oreos as her sons were growing up. Not a chance. In these reflections, Blakely often mirrors the experiences of middle-class women who were reinventing themselves and their roles during the feminist wave of the 1970s and '80s. Married, working first simply to bring in money and then to build a career (as a writer and lecturer), divorced, strategizing as a single mother (never kite checks on the grocer, advised a more experienced friend), Blakely early on refuses to accept the burden that mothers are solely responsible for the behavior of their children. "Even if I had managed to prevent my sons' exposure to sexist or violent images at home, I could not have prevented encounters [in]...locker rooms...movies...newsstands that displayed women as cheesecake every day,'' she says. Among the best chapters is the dramatic recounting of Blakely's own mother's metaphorical shock treatments at the hands of the psychiatric establishment as she sought help for her manic-depressive son, Blakely's brother. Also thought-provoking are telling discussions of the economic and societal obstacles facing single (or would-be-single) mothers and surprisingly empathetic observations about the surge of physical power in the adolescent male. Yet Blakely frequently refers to her sons as "jocks,'' to many, a term as derogatory as "airheads'' would be for daughters. Parallel to that, she seems to regard sports as a male prerogative—a serious lapse of the feminist consciousness she eloquently espouses.
Still, American moms of the post-Kennedy era will recognize—and even admire—themselves here.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-56512-052-3
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
