A Woman's Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering

by Elinor Cleghorn

Synopsis:

Mothers make history. For centuries, motherhood has sparked social and political change. Yet the acts of growing, birthing and nurturing children - and the power they hold - have been pushed to the margins, overlooked in our narratives of the past.

In A Woman's Work, Elinor Cleghorn reveals the mothers, othermothers, midwives, activists, and community leaders who have shaped this extraordinary history. They include Hildegard of Bingen, the medieval nun and mystic with pioneering views about the maternal body; Mary Wollstonecraft, who laid the intellectual groundwork to release motherhood from male control; and Sojourner Truth, who drew attention to the abhorrent treatment of mothers under chattel slavery.

Beginning in the ancient world, we learn how in each era, the patriarchy constructed its own idealised notion of motherhood - from the misogynistic dogma of the early church and the stigmatisation of single mothers in 17th century England all the way through to the post-war myth of the perfectly contented housewife. But we also learn how mothers of all classes and circumstances fought back, and lobbied to be valued, respected and supported - not as reproductive vessels, but as people.

A Woman's Work is a radical and inspiring new history of mothering, and a timely reminder that the fight for reproductive freedom is far from over.

Elinor Cleghorn’s A Woman’s Work feels like an obvious thematic follow-up to her previous book, Unwell Women, which I liked a lot. From delving into why women have been sidelined medically and distrusted about their own experiences, it isn’t much of a step to discussing how motherhood has been devalued, the way it’s been constructed by men instead of people who actually give birth, the limits that have been placed on women (and people perceived as being women)… and the problems that has caused for them.

It would be easy to be really gender essentialist in this book, but Cleghorn does use terms like “birthing people” at times, focusing on people who’ve been treated as mothers in general — which does usually mean women, and does mean that in many cases in this book because that’s the nature of a lot of the historical evidence we have about mothering.

It’s not as directly my interest as her previous book was, but I did enjoy it and find her discussions of mothering in different societies, and where those ideas came from, what they were influenced by, etc. At times it’s a little depressing, when you think about how recently some of those attitudes were widespread, and how easy it would be to slip-slide back into them (and how we are already doing so, or never did as much better as we’d hope).

Overall, it’s hard to say it’s “enjoyable” given the topic, but it’s interesting, and worthwhile.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)