From the category archives:

The Politics of Motherhood

Voices of motherhood

March 19, 2010

Last year I received an email so hateful that I felt sick for weeks. It was an email criticising that fact that I wrote about my son and about his illness on my blog, how I wrote about parenting instead of actually parenting and how I was doing that for money and pageviews and links [...]

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Just a mother

November 3, 2008

Edward is now a gurgling, joyous seven-month-old and I am at last – and some would say not before time – starting to look outwards at the world around me again. I have hunkered down since he was born in order, I think, to survive, although this has been in a psychological sense since I [...]

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United Nations report on child well-being in economically advanced nations

February 22, 2007

A report out last week says that the UK is ranked as the worst place in the Western world for children to grow up. The UNICEF report ranks child well-being in economically advanced countries. According to the report, the UK and US are the worst places for children to grow up. The Netherlands topped the [...]

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Motherhood vs mothering

November 28, 2006

I had an email last month from Georgia (hi Georgia) asking me about the terms ‘motherhood’ and ‘mothering’, both of which I use on this site. She asks are these terms interchangeable or is there a difference between them? My answer is I’m not sure, at least ‘officially’ – I’m not a scholar of women’s [...]

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The problem with motherhood

September 19, 2006

Yesterday I was paid for an article I wrote about parenting. It was a good moment. Although I have been writing for nearly two years it was validation of my writing efforts to receive money for writing more or less what I write here every week (For free! What a bargain for you all!). Which [...]

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Stay at home mom

August 24, 2006

My annual postgrad alumni invitation has once again arrived with a thud in my inbox. It always feels heavy, even though it is an e-mail, because you can sense the gravitas with which my college issues the summons. And it does feel like a summons rather than an invitation. These days I receive it with [...]

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Isolated parenting

October 26, 2005

On Monday I watched a programme called “Having a Baby Ruined my Life“. I would normally avoid programmes like this because having a baby didn’t ruin my life – although it made it bloody hard at times – and any programme broadcast on Channel Five is generally rubbish. But as I watched I found myself [...]

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What it is (to be a mother)

February 5, 2005

I’ve been trying to pinpoint what it means to be a mother, particularly a stay-at-home mother, in the twenty-first century. I don’t mean the day-to-day stuff. That is obvious enough. But when I think back to how far women’s rights have come in the last few years it seems impossible that we are still at [...]

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