New collection on men, mothers, and mothering

Fri. May. 4, 2018

Essential Breakthroughs: Conversations About Men, Mothers, and Mothering

Edited by Fiona Joy Green and Gary Lee Pelletier
Forward by Andrea Doucet

Essential Breakthroughs: Conversations About Men, Mothers, and Mothering thinks from the nexus of gender, essentialism, and care. The authors creatively blend the philosophical and the personal to collectively argue that while gender is essential to our social and theoretical definitions of care, it is dangerously co-opted into naturalized discourses, which limit particular identities and negate certain forms of care. The perspectives curated in Essential Breakthroughs illuminate how care, as a respected and productive cultural ethic, is neither inherent nor instinctual for any human, but is learned and fostered.

The chapters are informed by feminist, queer, and trans politics, wielding post-structuralist methodologies of unlearning and deconstruction, while maintaining the maternal lens as a credible feminist analytical tool and not as a gender-essentialist practice.

“Essential Breakthroughs contributes to the queering of motherhood studies through examining a diverse set of phenomenological perspectives and epistemological standpoints on caregiving. Including compelling narratives and analyses from expectant fathers and male nannies to lesbian mothers and transmen making different reproductive decisions, Green and Pelletier’s collection provides a rich starting place from which to think about the limitations of normative discourses around mothering. This is a vital collection for those wishing to engage a conversation about men and mothering that is simultaneously queer and feminist, that abandons gender essentialism while retaining a maternal lens as an essential tool of critical analysis.” —Shelley Park, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Central Florida; author of Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood

“Formal equality reigns in an increasing number of countries, and yet sexist and heterosexist parenting norms still define our families. Essential Breakthroughs presents a path-breaking and engaging collection of essays, theoretical and personal, that invite us to think about our families beyond the binary.” —Darren Rosenblum, Professor of Law, Pace Law School