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E-book
Author Bobel, Chris, 1963-

Title The paradox of natural mothering / Chris Bobel
Published Philadelphia, PA : Temple University Press, 2002

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Description 1 online resource (ix, 226 pages) : illustrations
Series UPCC book collections on Project MUSE
Contents Contents; Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction: Five Women, Five Stories; 2. Female Moral Reform and the Maternal Politics of Accommodation; 3. A Closer Look: The Ideological Components of Natural Mothering; 4. Interrogating the Ideology of Natural Mothering: Choice, Nature, and Inevitability; 5. Resisting Culture, Embracing Nature: Natural Mothering and Control; 6. Natural Mothering: Social Change or Narcissistic Retreat?; 7. Conclusion; Appendix: On Being a (Quasi) Natural Mother Studying Natural Mothers; Notes; References; Index
Summary Annotation Single or married, working mothers are, if not the norm, no longer exceptional. These days, women who stay at home to raise their children seem to be making a radical lifestyle choice. Indeed, the women at the center of The Paradox of Natural Mothering have renounced consumerism and careerism in order to reclaim home and family. These natural mothers favor parenting practices that set them apart from the mainstream: home birth, extended breast feeding, home schooling and natural health care. Regarding themselves as part of a movement, natural mothers believe they are changing society one child, one family at a time. Author Chris Bobel profiles some thirty natural mothers, probing into their choices and asking whether they are reforming or conforming to women's traditional role. Bobel's subjects say that they have chosen to follow their nature rather than social imperatives. Embracing such lifestyle alternatives as voluntary simplicity and attachment parenting, they place family above status and personal achievement. Bobel illuminates the paradoxes of natural mothering, the ways in which these women resist the trappings of upward mobility but acquiesce to a kind of biological determinism and conventional gender scripts
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Mothers -- United States -- Attitudes
Homemakers -- United States -- Attitudes
Alternative lifestyles -- United States
Childbirth at home -- United States
Home schooling -- United States
Social sciences.
Homemakers -- Attitudes
Social Sciences
social sciences.
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS -- Parenting -- Motherhood.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- General.
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS -- Parenting -- Motherhood.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- General.
Alternative lifestyles
Childbirth at home
Home schooling
Mothers -- Attitudes
Social sciences
Mutterschaft
Gesunde Lebensführung
Alternative Medizin
Hausgeburt
Mutterschaft
Gesunde Lebensführung
Alternative Medizin
Hausgeburt
Opvoeding.
Moederschap.
Opvoeding.
Moederschap.
United States
USA
USA.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2001027641
ISBN 9781439905265
1439905266
9781566399067
1566399068
9781566399074
1566399076
1282658441
9781282658448
9786612658440
6612658444