In the early twentieth-century United States, to speak of "mother love" was to invoke an idea of motherhood that served as an all-encompassing identity, rooted in notions of self-sacrifice and infused with powerful social and political meanings. Sixty years later, mainstream views of motherhood had been transformed, and Mother found herself blamed for a wide array of social and psychological ills. In "Mom", Rebecca Jo Plant traces this important shift through several key moments in American history and popular culture.
Exploring such topics as maternal caregiving, childbirth, and women's political roles, "Mom" vividly brings to life the varied groups that challenged older ideals of motherhood, including male critics who railed against female moral authority, psychological experts who hoped to expand their influence, and women who wished to be defined as more than wives and mothers. In her careful analysis of how motherhood came to be viewed as a more private and partial component of modern female identity, Plant ultimately shows how women's maternal role has shaped their place in American civic, social, and familial life.
About the Author
Rebecca Jo Plant is associate professor of history at the University of California, San Diego.
Reviews
"In her highly readable book, Plant brilliantly illuminates some of the most vexing paradoxes of twentieth-century gender and feminism. Her account of how Mother was demoted from moral and civic paragon to Mom, hub of personal and emotional fulfillment, suggests that American women paid a high price for the privilege of making motherhood an individual choice. The decline of maternalism and the new age of Mom ushered in the cultural environment we still inhabit today, along with its unending work and family conflicts. Plant offers a wonderfully original analysis of why it has become more difficult than ever for women to live simultaneously as mothers and human beings" – Ellen Herman, University of Oregon
"'Mom' takes the reader back to the stunning changes that took place from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century in shifts from maternalism to attacks on 'momism' and then to mothers' self-fulfillment. Using articulate women's statements, Rebecca Jo Plant revises the historical narratives of feminism, the therapeutic culture of the United States, and, above all, motherhood" – John Burnham, Ohio State University
"In this compelling meditation on the absence of 'mother love' in contemporary U. S. discourse, Rebecca Plant shows how a multi-sided shift in views of motherhood occurred over the course of the twentieth century, one of such proportions that the cultural context could no longer support maternalist politics. Ranging from Gold Star Mothers through natural childbirth, 'Mom' offers fresh interpretations of major figures such as Philip Wylie and Betty Friedan and makes the case for treating the decades from the 1920s through the early 1960s as one period of sweeping change. This is essential reading for all historians who are interested in the gender politics of modern America" – Sonya Michel, co-editor of "Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States", Director of United States Studies, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
"American historians have long struggled to understand the confluence of factors contributing to the erosion of nineteenth-century conceptions of Moral Motherhood: those assumptions about female selflessness, purity, and self-sacrifice that authorized white, middle-class women to participate in shaping twentieth-century civic culture. Explanations of the transition from maternalism to contemporary perceptions of mothering as a private experience – simply one choice among many that a woman may elect in the course of a lifetime – have, until now, been unsatisfying and partial. At last, Rebecca Jo Plant has identified social, political, cultural, and biomedical factors that ordained this change by the mid-twentieth century. Offering new and complex ways of thinking about this monumental transition, her book will inform work on modern American politics, culture, and society for years to come" – Regina Morantz-Sanchez, University of Michigan
"Filling a void in the scholarship, historian Plant (Univ. of California, San Diego) offers an intriguing examination of the death of the 'moral mother', a concept that, as many historians have argued, grew out of Republican motherhood and solidified in the US during the Victorian era. By the start of the 20th century, motherhood was seen as a woman's highest calling, a role marked by a mother's self-sacrifice and devotion to her children above all else. According to Plant, however, this notion of moral motherhood would be yet another casualty of the impact of modernity on US society, the assault beginning in the interwar years and accelerating after WW II. Using a vast array of primary sources, she argues that the critics of exalted motherhood were many, from Philip Wylie, who emphasized the negative impact on men, to Betty Friedan, who focused on the stultifying effects for women. In this way, Plant posits that 'the demise of moral motherhood' led to the rise of the white middle-class women's movement in the 1960s. Well written and thoroughly researched, the book provides an engaging examination of the cultural reconstruction of motherhood in the modern US. Summing Up: Recommended. Most levels/libraries" – K. B. Nutter, SUNY Stony Brook
