Gustafson, Diana. L. (Ed.). UNBECOMING MOTHERS: THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF MATERNAL ABSENCE

Abstract

Gustafson, Diana. L. (Ed.). UNBECOMING MOTHERS: THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF MATERNAL ABSENCE. The Haworth Clinical Practice Press, 2005. $39.95 (hardcover).Nearly 7 million U.S. children, about a third of all children with a nonresident parent, live apart from a biological mother, and the number of children with a nonresident mother has increased steadily over the last two decades (U.S. Census, 2006). Gustafson has drawn together a diverse collection of qualitative research studies and other writings about nonresident motherhood or absence. This book provides a truly heart wrenching account of nonresident motherhood and various and sometimes tragic circumstances that prevent women from raising their children. The research is effectively framed throughout the book in terms of harsh dichotomies of motherhood: versus bad mothers, becoming versus mothers, mad versus bad mothers, and natural versus unnatural mothers. The profiled in this book are living apart from their children for a variety of reasons. Readers' sympathies will likely be aroused by profiles of hardworking who became unable to support their children financially as a result of widowhood or husband abandonment. Readers may be similarly moved by descriptive accounts of young, unmarried girls who were forced to give up their babies for adoption, sometimes without ever glimpsing their child. Less sympathetic cases include drug abusing whose children were taken away by the state, who chose to leave their children in order to focus on their careers and to self-actualize, and Quaker who left their children to pursue a higher religious calling. Regardless of the reason for the maternal absence, overlaying these stories is the pain associated with the nonresident mother role, pain which is made worse by idealized notions of motherhood that are broadly-held in Western society.In the first chapter, Gustafson defines her concept of unbecoming mothers as the process and the quality of many women's experiences of living apart from their birth children on a long-term or permanent basis (p. 1 ). Unbecoming are socially constructed, and the writers in this book explore some common assumptions about mothering and maternal absence as outlined by Gustafson: (1) parenting and other forms of care work are highly gendered, (2) mothering is not a monolithic category, (3) nonresident are not a recent phenomenon, (4) mothering is conducted within local, national, and global contexts that are subject to political and economic forces, and (5) womanhood and motherhood are necessarily linked. Under these conditions, all are forced to walk a tightrope of acceptable mothering behavior, silently praying that they do not lose their balance and fall on the wrong side of the motherhood divide. Women who find themselves in the appropriate circumstances under which to raise children, i.e., a middle-class, heterosexual male-breadwinner marriage, are the lucky ones. Women who are not so lucky or who reject traditional gender roles risk falling into the equivalent of the motherhood abyss.The content of the book is a somewhat surprising mixture of qualitative studies, including both intensive interviews and content analysis of historical documents, as well as personal reflections, subjective narratives, poetry, and even a description of choreography and dance. Such mix of materials effectively conveys the pain faced by women who do not fit into culturally-constructed conceptions of good motherhood. This book is therefore not a place to go for generalizable facts and figures on nonresident motherhood, legal and policy issues surrounding nonresident motherhood, or the effects of nonresident motherhood on children's well-being. Readers should take note that the book focuses on experiences of mother's in Canada, a nation with a tradition of strong support for social welfare. …