Abstract

Motherlandscapes

This article presents information on two books, "The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood," by Sharon Hays and "Motherhood Reconceived: Feminism and the Legacies of the Sixties," by Lauri Umansky. Modern motherhood, says sociologist Sharon Hays, constitutes an ideological bind. Tangled up in the tenets of "intensive mothering," many mothers believe that their personal care of the child is of paramount importance and that the correct way to raise a child involves child-centered, emotionally demanding, labor-intensive and financially draining methods. As Hays recounts in "The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood," children have been alternately ignored and despised, the Puritans, for example, feared their infants as little demons and did not begin to relax until their offspring were old enough to be put to work. While Hays deconstructs motherhood, Lauri Umansky reconstructs it. In "Motherhood Reconceived," Umansky seeks to "ferret out the sources of positive feminist discourses of motherhood."