A01=Rebecca Jo Plant
affect
Author_Rebecca Jo Plant
betty friedan
blame
Category=JBSF1
Category=JHBK
Category=NHTB
childbirth
children
culture
depression
domesticity
emotion
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
family
femininity
gender
history
idealization
identity
influence
maternal
maternalist politics
maternity
mental health
mom shaming
moral authority
mother-child bond
motherhood
mothers
nonfiction
pain
parenting
philip wylie
postpartum
pressure
psychology
self-sacrifice
sentimentalism
suffering
wives
women
Product details
- ISBN 9780226670225
- Weight: 369g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 21 May 2012
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In the early twentieth century, Americans often waxed lyrical about "Mother Love", signaling a conception of motherhood as an all-encompassing identity, rooted in self-sacrifice and infused with social and political meaning. By the 1940s, the idealization of motherhood had waned, and the nation's mothers found themselves blamed for a host of societal and psychological ills. In "Mom", Rebecca Jo Plant traces this important shift by exploring the evolution of maternalist politics, changing perceptions of the mother-child bond, and the rise of new approaches to childbirth pain and suffering. Plant argues that the assault on sentimental motherhood came from numerous quarters. Male critics who railed against female moral authority, psychological experts who hoped to expand their influence, and women who strived to be more than wives and mothers - all for their own distinct reasons - sought to discredit the longstanding maternal ideal. By showing how motherhood ultimately came to be redefined as a more private and partial component of female identity, Plant illuminates a major reorientation in American civic, social, and familial life that still reverberates today.
Rebecca Jo Plant is associate professor of history at the University of California, San Diego.
