Motherhood Studies

In the past 30 years the subject of motherhood has emerged, most notably in North America, as a significant topic of scholarly inquiry across a wide range of academic disciplines, including the field of Women Studies. Partly initiated by the 1976 publication of Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, motherhood research has blossomed from a narrow investigation of the oppressive and empowering dimensions of motherhood to a wider, international field of feminist scholarship that, in that past 10 years, has studied how mothering and motherhood intersect with class, race, ethnicity, ability, sexuality, the law, social policy, and personal agency.