The Politics of Parenthood: Child Care, Women's Rights, and the Myth of the Good Mother [Hardcover]

Mary Frances Berry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1993

Who is responsible for our children--and why? A distinguished scholar gives us a fascinating and long-overdue historical perspective on parenthood in America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Berry, a lawyer, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a University of Pennsylvania history professor, follows her Why ERA Failed with this absorbing book, a rallying cry for making child care the equal province of both parents. Using interesting historical detail from colonial times to the present, the author shows how gender politics have shaped the practice of American child care, and she lays out society's rationales for absolving men of responsibility for child care. Berry maintains that fathers played a more important role in their children's upbringing prior to the 20th century. She also offers the African American perspective. Included in the chronicle are slaves and slave mistresses, Jane Addams, Phyllis Schlafly, Thomas Jefferson, Reagan, Bush, the present Supreme Court and a litany of bills and laws that have failed to solve the problems. Berry makes a strong case that women must lobby to have men assume an equal share of child rearing if women are to pursue careers.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In a timely and fascinating book, Berry, a lawyer and University of Pennsylvania history professor, reviews the social history of the American family in support of the thesis that the "mother care tradition" is purely a result of acculturation, that it is "neither traditional nor necessary," and that it reinforces male dominance. An acute sense of the painfulness of social change and the difficulty of building a political consensus are successfully conveyed through the history of day care and parental leave legislation. However, Berry's emphasis on acculturation becomes didactic and impersonal; it slights the complex genetic heritage that is the ultimate source of individuality as well as gender identity and that complicates the issue of defining and achieving workplace "equality." The gender-neutral Pregnancy Act did not, as the author erroneously states, entitle women to an "unpaid disability or maternal leave with guaranteed job reinstatement" precisely because it addressed motherhood in terms of political realities divorced from biological ones. For academic and larger public library social science collections.
- Carol Watwood, Western Kentucky Univ. Lib., Bowling Green
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1St Edition edition (March 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670837059
• ISBN-13: 978-0670837052
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,057,506 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)