Angeles de la Concha y Raquel Osborne 2004: Las mujeres y los ninos primero: discursos de la maternidad.(Book Review)

Publication: Atlantis, revista de la Asociación Espanola de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

Publication Date: 01-DEC-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN)

Ángeles de la Concha y Raquel Osborne 2004: Las mujeres y los niños primero: discursos de la maternidad. Barcelona: Icaria. 287 pp.

Since the 90s, most theorists have focused their attention on the different aspects which make up a new way of approaching a wider notion of mothering and its political relationship with a different--and necessary--perception of the notions of family and citizenship (Greenfield and Barash 1999; Hannisberg and Ruddick 1999; O'Reilly and Abbey 2000; Stanworth 1987; Umanski 1996; Wallbank 2001). (1) Feminist research in the field of Motherhood Theory and the different practices of mothering have gone a long way since the early 60s both in North America and Europe. From sociology or psychoanalysis to literary studies, the crucial theoretical insights of writers and intellectuals such as Juliet Mitchell, Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Patricia Hill-Collins, Mary O'Brien, Gena Corea, Julia Kristeva or Hélène Cixous have demonstrated at the same time the richness of this field of study and the difficulty of carrying out an homogenous and straightforward analysis. As Elaine Tuttle points out, "the story of feminist thinking about motherhood since the early 1960s is told as a drama in three acts: repudiation, recuperation, and, in the latest and most difficult stage to conceptualize, an emerging critique of recuperation that coexists with ongoing efforts to deploy recuperative strategies" (1997: 5). She also stresses how feminism has been able to draw attention to the public side of mothering and the ontology of the maternal self, but has not been able to find a consensus on how to collectively re/think the notion (1997: 6). In this sense, Hannisberg and Ruddick insist on the need to investigate more disturbing cases of motherhood such as drug using by pregnant women or pregnant teens, and to question in a more daring way preconceived ideas of what "normal" mothering is, in what social circumstances it occurs and what a "normal" child is. The darker side of mothering is finally brought to light not to judge or control, but to demonstrate, for example, that in the case of mothers who fail to protect their children from violence: "not only courts ignore the context of family violence, but they judge mothers in relation to based expectations" (Roberts 1999: 41; my emphasis). Here, we go far beyond the controlled and agreeable realm of "the good enough mother" and step into what...

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