This was a great overview of how motherhood has evolved, naturally and forcibly, over the course of U.S. history while interweaving feminist history. Yes, this book deals with how feminist are mother movements? How receptive have feminists been to mothering issues? I could totally teach a class based on this book. Hmm...

An excellent discussion of the ways in which feminism has related to women’s roles as mothers over the past two centuries and how feminists and mothers need to rethink issues relating to motherhood today.

A couple of month ago I read and reviewed Conflict Elisabeth Badinter. At the time I said that she raised important issues but her discussion of them was badly flawed. Since then I have been looking for a book that covered some of the same material in a more accurate and balanced manner. I found that book in Motherhood and Feminism.

Much of Kinser's book describs how motherhood was a central theme for the women who worked in the early women’s rights movement which led to the granting of voting rights to women in the US in 1920. Their message was that women needed the vote in order to care for their homes and children adequately. If given the vote, they could “clean up” politics just as they cleaned up their homes. Kinser goes on to describe the ways in which increasing numbers of women combined child-rearing and wage-earning by choice or necessity in the twentieth century. When feminism emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, motherhood was again a concern for women.

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