Australian Mothering

Petra Bueskens is an Honorary Fellow in Sociology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, a psychotherapist in private practice, and a freelance columnist at New Matilda.Carla Pascoe Leahy is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia and an Honorary Associate at Museums Victoria.

“This volume offers a kaleidoscope of case studies and debates that speak to the heart of mothering in Australia’s past and present. Taken together, the essays in Australian Mothering simultaneously describe a rich field of research dating to the 1960s and illustrate how much remains to be done. … Australian Mothering’s essays are beautifully – often creatively – expressed. The volume is testament to the quality of both Maternal Studies scholarship and its editors’ curation.” (Charlotte Greenhalgh, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 53, June, 2022)

• 1. Defining maternal studies in Australia: Historical and contemporary perspectives on mothers, mothering and motherhood; Petra Bueskens and Carla Pascoe Leahy.- Part I: Constructing mothers as citizens, workers and wives.- 2. State socialism for Australian mothers: Andrew Fisher’s radical maternalism in its international and local contexts [reprint]; Marilyn Lake.- 3. Mothering reshaped: fertility decline, “the selfishness of women” and the smaller family; Alison MacKinnon.- 4. Imagined, intended, forsaken: the status of the mother in a century of Australian adoption advertisements; Shurlee Swain.- 5. What Mary Bennett knew – the whispering in her heart; Anne Manne.- Part II: Remembering families: mothers, fathers and children.- 6. Mothers-in-waiting: maternographies of pregnancy in Australia since 1945; Carla Pascoe Leahy.- 7. "The most radical, most exciting and most challenging role of my life”: Lesbian motherhood in Australia 1945-1990; Rebecca Jennings.- 8. Historicising domestic violence in the family: Pearlie McNeill and Jimmy Barnes remember their mothers; Catherine Kevin.- 9. New wave father? Oral histories with Australian fathers from the 1970s and 1980s; Alistair Thomson,- Part IV: The history and politics of childbirth and breastfeeding.- 10. Violence and trauma in Australian birth; Paula A. Michaels,Elizabeth Sutton and Nicole Highet.- 11. Maternalism to consumerism? Mothers and the politics of care in childbirth; Kerreen Reiger and Monica Campo.- 12. Breastfeeding bodies and choice in late capitalism’ [reprint]; Alison Bartlett.- Part V: Becoming a mother: identity, emotion and time use.- 13. Reflecting on the past: The role of biographical, familial and social memory in new mothers’ interpretations of emotional experiences in early parenthood; Kate Johnston-Ataata.- 14. Australian mothering in cross-national perspective: time allocation, gender gaps, scheduling, and subjective time pressure; Lyn Craig, Judith Brown and Theun Pieter van Tienoven.- Part Vl: Childcare, welfare and wages: financial survival in a gendered economy.- 15. The good mother in Australian child care policy; Deb Brennan.- 16. Mothers and waged work following equal opportunity legislation in Australia, 1986 – 2006; Patricia Grimshaw.- 17. The devaluing and disciplining of single mothers in Australian child support policy; Kay Cook.- 18. Re-imagining social citizenship for single mothers: Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip, then and now’; Kristin Natalier .- Part VII:Maternal citizens and maternalist politics.- 19. Gillard’s dilemma”: The Sexual Contract and maternal citizenship’; Petra Bueskens.- 20. Reframing ‘success’: mothering and migration; Karen Lane.- 21. Who’s afraid of maternalism? Political motherhood in postmaster nal times’; Julie Stephens.