Modern Motherhood and Womens Dual Identities

In Modern Motherhood and Women's Dual Identities, Petra Bueskens argues that western modernisation consigned women to the home and released them from it in historically unprecedented, yet interconnected, ways.

Zusatztext Petra Bueskens has been in the forefront of the new, and very welcome field of motherhood studies. In Modern Motherhood and Women's Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract, she takes on the difficult challenge of thinking politically and ethically, and conducting extensive research, about mattersmotherhood, maternal identity and maternal feelingsthat do not fit easily into our universalized conceptions of equality. An astonishing breadth and depth of knowledge about classical and contemporary social and political theory, and of research across several disciplines on gender and the family from then to now, set the context for her work. Through investigating an imaginative solution to creating equality in the domestic spherewomen's traveling away from the homeBueskens finds that in these matters of maternality, second wave feminism's conceptualization of equality in terms of shared parenting does not sufficiently address the emotions and identities that can accompany mothering. Confirming her pathbreaking edited volume, Mothering and Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives, Bueskens finds that women want to mother, to be with their children and watch them grow. Happily, she shares with readers the contradictions and political-social theorizing that her findings entail: she does not try to smooth them over. Modern Motherhood and Women's Dual Identities cannot solve the psychic, social, cultural and political challenges posed by the dual identities of mother and citizen, but it elegantly and capaciously ranges across 400 years of theory, up to the present, that address them, as well as providing psychologically-attuned interview documentation of how women feel and think, daily and throughout their maternal lives. Nancy J Chodorow, author ofThe Reproduction of Mothering, The Power of Feelings, Individualizing Gender and Sexuality, and other works; Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley; Lecturer on Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance; Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and SocietyThis creative and theoretically rich book re-examines the social contradictions and penalties faced by women who want to be both caring mothers and autonomous public individuals. Taking us beyond the logic of the "sexual contract," Bueskens introduces us to the "revolving mothers" who offer a glimpse of the social revolution required to undo the gendered separation of spheres. A fascinating and compelling study.Dr Sharon Hays, author of the The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood In this lucid, timely and important new book, Petra Bueskens takes up the formidable task of investigating the 'new sexual contract' in late modernity that leaves women strung out between the promise of autonomy in the public sphere, and the demands of motherhood that isolate and intensify mothering work in the home, both freeing and constraining women at once. Bueskens brings into view this impossible contradictory duality by producing both a new social theory of dualism, and the empirical evidence to show that it is possible to force changes in the sexual contract at the level of individual family organization. Through tracking a small group of women who both choose to mother and also spend protracted periods of time away from the family, she shows how these women produce radical shifts in the gendered dynamics of the household. Her bold and vital claim is that we can rewrite the sexual contract only if we understand the historical and contemporary double-bind that produces women's liberty as it undermines it, making motherhood still the unfinished business of feminism.Dr Lisa Baraitser, Reader in Psychosocial Studies, Birckbeck University, author of Maternal Encounters In this engaging and timely book, Petra Bueskens tackles a central challenge of modern lifehow to reconcile the contradictory roles of women as citizens,...

Autorentext

Petra Bueskens is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Klappentext

Why do women in contemporary western societies experience contradiction between their autonomous and maternal selves? What are the origins of this contradiction and the associated 'double shift' that result in widespread calls to either 'lean in' or 'opt out'? How are some mothers subverting these contradictions and finding meaningful ways of reconciling their autonomous and maternal selves? In Modern Motherhood and Women's Dual Identities, Petra Bueskens argues that western modernisation consigned women to the home and released them from it in historically unprecedented, yet interconnected, ways. Her ground-breaking formulation is that western women are free as 'individuals' and constrained as mothers, with the twist that it is the former that produces the latter. Bueskens' theoretical contribution consists of the identification and analysis of modern women's duality, drawing on political philosophy, feminist theory and sociology tracking the changing nature of discourses of women, freedom and motherhood across three centuries. While the current literature points to the pervasiveness of contradiction and double-shifts for mothers, very little attention has been paid to how (some) women are subverting contradiction and 'rewriting the sexual contract'. Bridging this gap, Bueskens' interviews ten 'revolving mothers' to reveal how periodic absence, exceeding the standard work-day, disrupts the default position assigned to mothers in the home, and in turn disrupts the gendered dynamics of household work. A provocative and original work, Modern Motherhood and Women's Dual Identities will appeal to graduate students and researchers interested in fields such as Women and Gender Studies, Sociology of Motherhood and Social and Political Theory.

Zusammenfassung
In Modern Motherhood and Women's Dual Identities, Petra Bueskens argues that western modernisation consigned women to the home and released them from it in historically unprecedented, yet interconnected, ways.

Inhalt

PART ONE: SETTING THE SCENE

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 On mothers and modernity

1.2 Key questions

1.3 Definitions and theoretical framework

1.4 Situating the study and defining the theoretical argument

1.5 Situating the study and defining the empirical research

1.6 Scratching the empirical itch

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Establishing the parametres: structure and agency

2.3 Classical sociology: Durkheim, Weber and Marx

2.4 Feminist methodology and epistemology

1. Postmodernism and its discontents

2. Research methodology: structure and agency revisited

3. Theoretical research

   1. Situating the self
   2. Theory as research
   3. Interdisciplinarity

2.8 Empirical research

2.9 Recruitment and interviews

2.10 Interpreting the data

2.11 Conclusions

PART TWO: PHILOSOPHICAL, HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL CONTEXT

CHAPTER 3: The social and sexual contracts

3.1 Introduction

3.2 The social contract and the birth of 'the individual'

1. The philosophers: Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau (deleted)

2. Summarising the social contract

3.5 The 'sexual contract' or why women cannot be 'individuals'

1. Women's position in 'the state of nature'

2. The emergence of 'fraternal patriarchy'

3. Women's contradictory status in civil society

4. Problems with the category of 'the individual'

3.6 Duality theory or on the emergence of sovereign women

3.7 Conclusion

CHAPTER 4: The invention of motherhood and the 'new woman': 1750-1920

4.1 Introduction

4.2 The traditional family: women's work …