All revolutions, remarked the novelist Milan Kundera, involve a process of radical forgetting. It is the politics surrounding the cultural forgetting of ideals of the nurturing mother which are at the centre of Julie Stephens's book. Confronting Postmaternal Thinking shows the deeper sources of a new market-driven personal ethos reshaping motherhood via the lens of cultural memory. It offers a ... Read moreperceptive and revealing way of putting our current debates over mothering and feminism into perspective.
Anne Manne, author of Motherhood: How Should We Care for Our Children? Stephens's challenging analysis of the contemporary context and ideologies repudiating the work of mothering today is exemplary. She is a fine writer and rigorous researcher, skillfully navigating the rising tensions between care and paid work, autonomy and connectedness, to produce a compelling case against the 'postmaternal thinking' undermining any social commitment to the ethics of care intrinsic to creating healthy societies. This book provides a fascinating reframing of one of the most critical issues of the moment.
Lynne Segal, author of Making Trouble: Life and Politics Show Less