Mothering, Past and Present

Knott’s descriptions of reading while walking with a sleeping baby, or of trying to find small increments of time for writing, may be very familiar to anyone who has engaged in caregiving while in academia. Bodily aspects of mothering—pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, sleep deprivation—have qualities...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Reviews in American history 2020-06, Vol.48 (2), p.197-203
Main Author: McMahon, Lucia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
20th century
Archives & records
Babies
Births
Breastfeeding & lactation
Childbirth & labor
Culture
Language
Midwifery
Mothers
Nursing care
Pregnancy
Victorian period
Womens health
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Summary:Knott’s descriptions of reading while walking with a sleeping baby, or of trying to find small increments of time for writing, may be very familiar to anyone who has engaged in caregiving while in academia. Bodily aspects of mothering—pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, sleep deprivation—have qualities and characteristics that move well beyond seemingly “natural” understandings of sexual and biological “difference.” Works such as Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s classic A Midwife’s Tale (1990) describe how home births attended by midwives and neighboring women were standard practice in early national America, like other parts of the world. In both historical accounts and the cultural imagination, the idealized act of selfless, maternal love is often represented by “the white middle-class Victorian mother”—that is, by the emotional standards and cultural prescriptions that Jan Lewis explored in “Mother’s Love.”
ISSN:0048-7511
1080-6628
1080-6628
DOI:10.1353/rah.2020.0036