Table Of ContentWhite Feminists and
Contemporary Maternity
White Feminists and
Contemporary Maternity
Purging Matrophobia
D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein
WHITEFEMINISTSANDCONTEMPORARYMATERNITY
Copyright©D.LynnO’BrienHallstein,2010.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-60863-4
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ISBN 978-1-349-37556-1 ISBN 978-0-230-10619-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230106192
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Hallstein,D.LynnO’Brien.
Whitefeministsandcontemporarymaternity:purgingmatrophobia/
D.LynnO’BrienHallstein.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1. Women,White. 2. Feminism. 3. Motherhood I. Title.
HQ1161.H352010
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Firstedition:March2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of my mother, Nancy May O’Brien, who had the foresight
to raise me as a pass-the-ERA-now-envelope-licking-NOW-child within
white second wave feminism. For my father and cover artist, Richard
Hallstein, who was the only feminist father on the Girl Scout camping
trips and who continues to be an active feminist thinker, organizer, and
painter. To Michel, Jean-Philipp, and Joshua Bruehwiler who helped me
throughout the labor of writing this book and also provided encourage-
ment and tips throughout. As Jean-Philipp said, “Mom, make sure the
bookisinterestingornoonewillwanttoreadit.”MyhopeisthatIhave
methissageadvice.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 WhiteSecondWaveFeminismsandRich:Historic
FeministMatrophobia 25
2 FromOngoingSilencetoPopularWriters’
Matrophobia 47
3 Sisters,Daughters,andFeministMaternalScholars:
ContemporaryMatrophobia 75
4 What’sWrongwithaLittleLingeringMatrophobia?:
RhetoricalConsequencesinContemporaryAnalyses 107
5 PurgingMatrophobia:Theorizinga
Matrophobic-FreeFeministSubjectPositionon
ContemporaryMaternity 131
Notes 161
WorksCited 177
Index 187
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the support I have received throughout the pro-
cess of writing this book. In particular, I would like to thank the
members of the Boston Feminist Writing Group—Lisa Cuklanz,
Marlene Fine, and Anne Litwin—for reading and commenting on
various iterations of my work on matrophobia during the last four
years and for their insightful feedback on chapter drafts. Their
astute reading of my work, good humor, and friendship has been
invaluable.
The impetus for the book began five years ago on a beach
in Italy. I was living abroad, and feminist friends told me about
the recent publication of both The Mommy Myth and Maternal
Desire. I took both books on that Italian vacation to read. I was
stunned by how much I agreed with both books, even though
I knew immediately that the books had such different under-
standings of contemporary maternity. It has been my delight and
passion to figure out that initial reading. As a result, I am grate-
ful to Susan J. Douglas and Meredith Michaels and Daphne de
Marneffe for inspiring this project. I am also grateful to Andrea
O’Reilly for being such a powerful role model and leader in the
field of feminist maternal scholarship and for also providing such
important insights in From Motherhood to Mothering and Mother
Outlaws.
Because my interest in matrophobia has been an ongoing
project, some of the ideas included in this book have been
published previously. Some of the arguments in Chapter 1 will
be published in “The Intriguing History and Silences of Of
Woman Born: Rereading Rich Rhetorically to Better Understand
the Contemporary Context,” National Women’s Studies Associ-
ation Journal 22.1 (2010): at press, while Chapter 3 includes
previously published ideas from “Conceiving Intensive Moth-
ering,” Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering
x Acknowledgments
8.1,2 (summer/winter 2006): 96–108, and “Matrophobic Sisters
and Daughters: The Rhetorical Consequences of Matropho-
bia in Contemporary White Feminist Analyses of Maternity,”
Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 36.4 (June 2007):
269–296.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Revision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh
eyes, of entering an old text from a critical direction—is
for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is
an act of survival. Untilwe can understandthe assump-
tionsinwhichwearedrenchedwecannotknowourselves.
(AdrienneRich,“WhenWeDeadAwaken”540)
Onemotivationfortherecentsurgeofscholarshiponthe
second wave is the renewed importance of understand-
ing its [feminism’s] problems and possibilities during a
period when many of its gains are simultaneously taken
forgrantedandunderattack.(BonnieDow91)
In 2005, Newsweek devoted its cover story to exploring how
contemporarywomenaremanagingtheirlivesassecondwaveben-
eficiariesoncetheybecomemothers.Thefeaturearticleopenswith
the following question: “What happened when the girls who had
it all became mothers?” (Newsweek). At the heart of this query
is a fundamentally important feminist question: How have the
changes brought about by white second wave feminism impacted
(or not) women’s experiences once they become mothers? While
the Newsweek story does not address the subject as a specifically
feminist topic, contemporary feminists are beginning to grapple
withthisquestion.
Even though contemporary feminist writing has begun to offer
importantanswerstothisquestion,theanswersareincompletepri-
marily because the work is riddled with matrophobia. Adrienne
2 White Feminists and Contemporary Maternity
Richdefinesmatrophobiainherlandmarkbook, OfWomanBorn:
Motherhood as Experience and Institution, as the “the fear not of
one’s mother or of motherhood but of becoming one’s mother”
(italics in original 235). The primary consequence of matropho-
bia is it leads to partial but also problematic analyses of, and
answers to, the feminist question specifically and contemporary
maternity—both the institution of motherhood and mothering—
more generally. Indeed, I will argue throughout this book that
past and present matrophobia have problematic consequences in
termsoffeminism’sabilitytoaddress,understand,andrespondto
thecontemporaryfeministrhetoricalandmaternalcontexts.These
consequences, ultimately, result in incomplete analyses of mater-
nity and discouragefeminist scholars from understanding fully the
contemporaryrelationshipbetweenfeminismandmaternity.Thus,
it is clear to me that, if we want to understand fully present-
day maternity, then, we must finally purge matrophobia from our
analyses.
Purging matrophobia to more fully understand maternity in
light of feminism, however, requires looking back in order to
move forward. In other words, to purge matrophobia, first, I
need to trace both the history of matrophobia and its role in
past and present white feminism. Doing so also means the pro-
longed and complex relationship between feminism and maternity
must be understood. This is the case because the relationship
between academic feminisms and maternity—both the institution
of motherhood and mothering—has long been and continues to
becomplicated,misunderstood,andpermeatedbysilence.
FeminismandMaternity:Silenceand
Anti-MotherhoodDemonization
Feminist scholars (Henry Matrophobia and Generations, Not My;
Hirsch “Feminism,” Mother/Daughter; O’Reilly Mother Outlaws;
Siegel;Snitow;Umansky)havealreadyestablishedthatfeminism’s
relationship to maternity is complex. Ann Snitow, writing in 1992
aboutthesecondwave,1 however,wasthefirsttoarguethatasig-
nificant factor complicating the relationship is the fact that white
second wave feminism was misunderstood as “anti-motherhood”
or “mothering-hating” both inside and outside feminism. In her
1992 retrospective essay, which explores the relationship between
