“Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Empowered Mothering.”

Edited by Andrea O’ Reilley
Publisher: Women’s press CA
Review by: Davina Rhine

Mother Outlaws is a collection of theories, practices, emotions and experiences
of mothers in general who have made it central to their parenting role to challenge the patriarchal role of motherhood and to be successful in spite of the oppressive treatment of mothers in our society.

Mother Outlaws carries on a conversation that was started academically by Adrienne Rich in 1986, almost twenty years ago. In 1986 Rich wrote on the subject of motherhood in her historic book Of Woman Born, a critical distinction between the two meanings of motherhood which was, the personal role (mothering) and the sanctioned institutional role (motherhood), one superimposed on the other: “The potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children, and the “instuition”, which aims at ensuring that that potential and all women –shall remain under male control.”

Of Woman Born defined what patricharacal motherhood was and how it functioned, “powerless responsibility” in a patriarchal ideology of motherhood which makes the mother all self-sacrificing, ignoring our own needs personally and society ignoring them as well, including financially, and not having a voice in the body of society. (Which also effected and still effects women with or without children-though there has been some progress for women in democracy that generally speaking, don’t have children.) The popular fifties house mom was a pictorial badge of that deadly silence and an unrealistic cultural stereotype that mothers felt burdened to achieve, and ashamed if they had not or could not. Today the badge is a well-intentioned means of making our boys super men, and our girls independent but still dependent o approval and acceptance. There was little room for empowerment in which from, to mother, which isn’t necessarily untrue today. Mother Outlaws introduces us to a diverse model for empowered mothering.

Mother Outlaws moves us beyond “powerless responsibility” to a means of taking and making motherhood our own source of power and empowerment. Instead of mothers not making the rules, just obeying and enforcing them, we are now rewriting them, and effectively changing the face and attitude of society one mother and child at a time. Which is the objective of empowered mothering and the discourse in Mother Outlaws.

There are five chapters to this book of which is, Feminist Mothering, Lesbian Mothering,
African-American Mothering, Mothers and Daughters, Mothers and Sons.

The essays are broad and have many viewpoints. The authorship of mothers of various ethnicities, classes and professions, which is very inclusive, and for a U.S. academic feminist text may be one of the first of it’s types.

In Feminist Mothering, we visit stories of mothers negotiating the tensions between motherhood as institution and experience, motherhood as a site of resistance and self-empowerment. The book also focuses on the importance of “other-mothering” which essentially involves us all lending a hand in raising all of our kids. Mother Outlaws did pay attention to the positives of other mothering that prevailed in the African communities of the mothers interviewed which evolved from ancient customs and were necessary for survival in light of the effects of colonization, slavery, and apartheid. However it did fall short on engaging us in a discussion on how to build a cooperative other mothering culture in communities were there aren’t any.

The conflict of culture produced roles and stereotypes for females, males, children, and roles of mothers were made painfully clear in this book, particularly in the section on Lesbian Mothering. The troubles the children had had at school for being bullied because they had two moms, and were ridiculed as sissies or “gay.” This ridicule stemmed from their relationship to their parents whom were gay, not that their parents were gay independently. The obvious thing that stood out was that it is our cultures mentality and our kids are getting the impression from mass society at large that there is something “wrong” with a kid who has gay parents, they must not be overtly masculine and “tuff” for boys, and must be “queer” for girls, and that the children lack a masculine parent in general, and they are something to fear and to be a target of playground abuse. As subtle as it is empowered mothering enables a parent to be aware of the dangers of just ‘accepting” society blindly and all of it’s belief systems and accepting them at home. This type of blind acceptance was manifest in the acceptance of large culture of the United States Jim Crow Laws and separate but equal rationalization, and this “indifferent acceptance” at large resulted in a lot of violence and today still has left subtle ripples of racism in all of the West’s institutions. Empowered mothering is a roundtable of discussion and sifting thru beliefs, and ideals sand having your child involved in the process. Empowered mothering will produce a different type of society for the next generation.

Mother Outlaws is well documented thru its broad collection of essay’s and results from women all over the world. It leaves no stone unturned and encourages us to turn the next one.

It is an intense steeping stone into a better world for parents, and children, and a great academic 1st of its sorts. It too will open doors just as Adrienne Rich’s, “Of Woman Born” did.