Of Woman Born, Motherhood as Experience and Institution Adrienne Rich W.W. Norton & Company New York, NY USA

Now a feminist classic, this book is a powerful, in-depth consideration of the institution of motherhood, interwoven with the author's personal experience. Highly recommended.

The Mother Knot Jane Lazarre Dell Publishers New York USA

Explores the myth of the "good" (all sacrificing) mother through her own personal experience. Recommended.

Ourselves and our Children Boston Women's Health Book Collective Random House New York, USA. 1978.

Like their earlier best-seller Our Bodies Ourselves, this book by the Boston Women is based on extensive personal experience — quotations make up a good 50 percent of the text. The direct contact we feel as readers, with parents in many different kinds of situations, gives us not only encouragement but a whole new perspective on what parenting is and can be. Nine chapters cover all stages of parenthood and many of the different life styles and situations in which people have and care for their
children. Much emphasis is given to women, who are most often primary parents, but there are important sections on sharing parenthood, gay parents, different kinds of families, and societ/s Impact on them. A final section — helping ourselves and finding help — gives important practical advice. A wonderful book. Price US$ 6.95.

Why Children ? S. Dowrick and S. Grundberg, eds. Women's Press 124 Shoreditch High Street London E l 6JE England

In this book 18 women speak out about the deep personal significance of the most important and irrevocable decision that most women face during their lifetime : to have — or not to have — children. The voices heard here are of mothers in "nuclear" families, single mothers, women bringing up children to whom they did not give birth, heterosexual, bisexual and lesbian women; mothers of teenagers, mothers of infants; women who have made the decision not to have children with reluctance and pain, others conscious of the benefits for them of a childless life; women who hope to exercise a choice for children in the future. Each woman expresses part of a vast of
feelings towards motherhood, inspiring and validating our efforts to understand — and make — choices of our own. Highly recommended.

L'Amour en plus histoire de I'amour maternel, XVIIfeme-XXeme sifecle Elisabeth Badinter Flammarion, Paris (1980) France

also available in English :

Mother Love : Myth and Reality MacMillan USA

In this well documented if somewhat dry book, E. Badinter traces the history of maternal love during 4 centuries in France, in order to prove that, far from being an universal instinct common to all females, it is only "a human sentiment", varying in intensity from much to less, from some to none.

External factors, (economic and social contingencies, dominant moral values, the mother's social status and even what one could call "fashion") determine the ways this mythical love expresses itself — or doesn't.

Even such a "natural" attitude such as breastfeeding has been submitted to these influences: in 1780 over 21,000 babies were born in Paris, but only 1000 were breastfed by the natural mother, and another 1000 were sent to a wetnurse. Which, by the way, meant an infant mortality rate of 26.5%.

But — warns Badinter — another not less important element emerges from the study of maternal behaviour: "the silent battle between the sexes, resulting for so long in one's dominance over the other.

"... As long as the child was submitted to paternal authority, the mother was compelled to accept lower status in the home (...) and, according to times and social classes, woman either suffered, or tried to free herself from conjugal oppression by escaping her maternal duties."

Women as Mothers Sheila Kitzinger Fontana/Collins Glasgow, Scotland £1.50

In this wide-ranging study of motherhood, the author shows that maternal behaviour, far from being inborn and unchanging, is a direct response to the society the mother lives in. It compares, as one example, an American maternity ward and a birth in the African bush. Interesting and well written cross-cultural analysis. Recommended.

Right to Choose ? Facing Infertility Spare Rib 27 Clerkenwell Close London EC1 England

Nowadays women struggling to define their lives are often understandably ambivalent about motherhood. Why children is a question many women have contemplated. But what happens when a woman decides to have a child and then finds that choice denied ?

Jo Pollentine describes her personal experience of infertility and the long painful process of coming to terms with it.

... "The only 'choices' I've had are what to do about my infertility and part of my pride now is to do with the fact that 1 broke away from the clinic and eventually chose to accept it; what to do with my pain and part of my pride now is that I chose to face it and to look to women for the help I needed. I chose feminist therapy, women helping each other to face our pain and find our strength, helping each other to re-define ourselves. This is what feminism is all about for me — building our strength on a
recognition, not a denial, of pain and ambivalence."

"When Women and Men Mother" Socialist Review No. 49 (Jan./Feb. 1980) Agenda Publishing Company 4228 Telegraph Avenue Oakland CA 94609 USA

Although stating that "sharing parenting must also be seen as only one aspect of the larger demand for new forms of personal life" and that there is a "need to restructure social responsibility for children so that not just mothers and fathers but also nonfamily- members have access to and responsibility for the care of children", this article focuses on shared parenting between biological mothers and fathers, describing the power dynamic of men gaining authority in a heretofore female domain and perhaps winning, at least among the middle classes, praise for his fathering, while women give up power and control in what may well be her only arena of authority; psychic division of labour in parenting; and the effects of shared parenting on children. An interesting and thought-provoking article on shared parenting part of an effort to relieve women from the dual oppression of paid worker and primary parent, to allow the development of relationships between men and children, and to promote a breakdown in gender-differentiated role models.

Children and Feminism LAFMPAG c/o Octopus Books 1146 Commercial Street Vancouver, BC Canada

Contains four papers of discussion and analysis on the lack of support for mothers within the feminist movement, the interdependence of women's and children's oppression, and the problems of lesbian mothers and their children caused by homophobia. Suggests ways in which community support   system for children could evolve.

Mothers The Women's Gallery Box 9600 Wellington, New Zealand — 1981

"Mothers is a touring exhibition of work by New Zealand women artists, put together by the Women's Gallery as a part of its continuing exhibition programme. The catalogue is designed to place the work in Mothers in its context in the visual arts and in current feminist thinking; as well as details of work included in the exhibition and statements by the artists involved, it contains articles, poems and a detailed list of resources available to those who wish to explore the theme of Mothers in more depth."
Useful and beautiful! Motherhood and Art, Motherhood in the Art, Motherhood as an Art...

L'Architetto fuori dl se' (The architect at variance with herself) Spring 1982 Marta Lonzi Prototipi, Scritti di Rivolta Femminile Piazza Baracca 8, Milano Italy

"This is a text by an architect who dissociates herself with the analyses and proposals that architectural culture — ever more deeply in crisis — is formulating. Behind each and every project there is always something more to be found. Consequently every project reveals a soul. But what kind of soul? The architect seems to disregard it: the crisis is within the person and not in architecture."

And here how this architect, in the first part of the book, describes the beginning of her personal crisis : "Once a friend told me : — I see in you always a bit more of the mother, a bit less of the architect... — . I hated him for this : he had put his finger on the problem, bared my inner fear. The change represented by motherhood in the inner process of evolving as an individual is unknown to men. To the father the child is something external, like every object. Relating to it is an act of will, not an act of
necessity, as for the mother.

I started out as architect Marta Lonzi, and was ending up Marta Mlbelli, mother."

Tea and Tranquillisers : the Diary of a Happy Housewife by Diane Harpwood Virago Press, London — 1981

A fictional diary which sounds almost too true. The small things, mostly boring and annoying, which make up a mother-andhousewife's daily life are described with humour and feeling.

Motherhood is obviously a rather appealing subject for womenfilmakers. We had prepared a short international filmography on the subject but for lack of space we cannot publish it in this bulletin. However it is available at ISIS at an introductory rate of US$ 1.50 (including postage). We also would like to ask all feminist film-groups to please send us their catalogues or whatever information on their production they have for publication in further bulletins and/or to be kept on our files, available.
to public and researchers. Thanks !