Barbara Katz Rothman is a professor of Sociology at the City University of New York, whose work on motherhood crosses the boundaries between several disciplines such as autobiography, memoir, medical sociology, bioethics, gender studies, race relations and adoption, childbirth and midwifery studies, and the sociology of knowledge. Rothman has been one of the advocates of the term mothering in opposition to parenting to describe the “nurturing work of childrearing.” She applies the term to both women and men to represent the kind of work they do and relationship they have with their children. The word denotes work and relationships that are not suitably expressed by the term fathering a child.

Rothman (or Katz Rothman) was awarded her undergraduate and master's degrees by Brooklyn College and her ...