As Mother’s Day approaches, join us in exploring the complex experiences of mothers around the world. Browse the eBooks below to find personal accounts, studies, and analyses on motherhood, pregnancy, reproductive justice, and more. You can get each eBook for just $1.99 through the end of May!
Offer good through May 31, 2021, only available through US retailers
Pregnancy and Power, Revised Edition
A History of Reproductive Politics in the United States
“This succinct, highly readable political and cultural history of a wide range of reproductive issues is a near-perfect primer on the topic.”—Publishers Weekly
“Readers will find within this book a deeply researched and fine analysis of reproductive politics spanning 250 years. It definitely should be of interest to legal scholars and law students and also to political and social historians.”—The American Journal of Legal History
Motherhood across Borders
Immigrants and Their Children in Mexico and New York
“In five well-written, well-researched chapters, Oliveira focuses on the tensions and expectations immigrant mothers face, on the participation of these mothers in the education of their children in both Mexico and in the US, and on the ways children maintain bonds with mothers and siblings across two nations and cultures. She also notes the distinctive gender differences and educational achievements among these children. This book will be useful to anyone interested in the contours of transnational parenting in the 21st century.”—CHOICE
Blaming Mothers
American Law and the Risks to Children’s Health
by Linda C. Fentiman
“Blaming Mothers is gripping and powerful. It is also chilling as Linda Fentiman unmasks society’s penchant for shaming and punishing mostly young, poor women. She reveals subtle but profound gender and racial biases that pervade public discourse and drive prosecutors and judges to unfairly punish pregnant women and mothers. I strongly recommend this captivating book. It is beautifully written, weaving together vivid stories of women’s lives and impeccable scholarship. Anyone concerned about gender, children, and poverty will have to read Blaming Mothers.”—Lawrence O. Gostin, Founding O’Neill Chair in Global Health Law, Georgetown University
Brown Bodies, White Babies
The Politics of Cross-Racial Surrogacy
by Laura Harrison
“An indispensable contribution, this book historicizes the ideologies of race and racial transmission that cut through the heart of reproductive labor right from wet nursing in the emergent American colonies to present-day cross-racial surrogacy. A must-read for any student of reproductive justice.”—Sharmila Rudrappa, author of Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India
“Brown Bodies, White Babies reveals fresh insights on the politics of reproduction in the United States and globally by investigating the racialized and gendered meanings of kinship in the context of cross-racial gestational surrogacy when a surrogate is not the same race as the intended parents.”—Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and The Meaning of Liberty
Giving Up Baby
Safe Haven Laws, Motherhood, and Reproductive Justice
“A thoughtful and much-needed reproductive justice analysis of ‘safe haven’ laws and how they are used and misused, in whose interests, and at whose cost.”—Barbara Katz Rothman, City University of New York
“[Oaks] demonstrates quite clearly and powerfully that American safe haven policies represent a tangle of cultural, political, legal, and religious ideas and forces about class, age, gender, motherhood, and race.”—Anthropology Review Quarterly
Cut It Out
The C-Section Epidemic in America
“Cut It Out serves as an important resource to understand the complex birthing paradox currently at the root of the increasing C-section rate in the United States.”—Sex Roles
“It is thoroughly researched, cogently argued, and elegantly expressed given the level of detail it provides medical professionals, decision makers in the health sector, and of course actual and potential mothers and fathers who could all benefit from the information it provides.”—New York Journal of Books
Is Breast Best?
Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood
by Joan B. Wolf
“Wolf offers a powerful and important cultural critique…this is an insightful and eye-opening book that will be of interest to sociologists of gender, medical sociologists, and science studies scholars.”—Abigail C. Saguy, American Journal of Sociology
“Beautifully written, powerfully argued. . . . Challenges the science prescription that all infants must be breastfed.”—Linda Blum, author of At the Breast
When Mothers Kill
Interviews from Prison
“Oberman and Meyer’s investigation of the convicted women’s traumatic personal histories offers readers an opportunity to separate the women who command our pity from their crimes.”—The Chronicle of Higher Education
“This is the first book that analyzes the subjective perceptions of incarcerated mothers convicted of killing their children. It provides an extraordinarily insightful humanizing view of how these pariahs adapt to prison and make sense of their crimes.”—Phillip J. Resnick, M.D.,Case Western Reserve University
Single Mother
The Emergence of the Domestic Intellectual
“Illuminating cultural study of single motherhood. . . . [Juffer] explores the experiences of single mothers across various social and economic conditions, taking a critical look at current social policy.”—Library Journal
“Juffer points to a new formation—the domestic intellectual—and in that gesture opens up the concept of the intellectual to a more complicated theoretical engagement. With it, she re-imagines marriage, mothering, and the spatial dynamics of private life, and returns them to a possibly radical and liberatory space. This powerful and transformative work adds to our understanding of the value of learning from ordinary life.”—Wahneema Lubiano, Duke University
They’re All My Children
Foster Mothering in America
“A foster mother herself, Wozniak brings particular poignancy and insight to this fascinating look at motherhood and social policy. Her interviews with foster mothers are coupled with research on who foster mothers are and why they foster….Wozniak also looks at the larger issues of women’s roles in society and how we handle the needs of displaced children. . . an important but little-researched topic.”—Booklist
“Wozniak presents a very readable analysis of the broad challenges facing foster families…This book is important for anyone in the social work or family services field.”—Choice
