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Defining Maternal Studies in Australia: The Birth of a Field

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Australian Mothering

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Abstract

Australian research and scholarship on mothers, mothering and motherhood developed alongside the changing historical context, reflecting and influencing shifts in the broader Australian society. Sociological and historical scholarship concerning Australian mothers largely developed in parallel across the twentieth century. This research was in dialogue with international, particularly Anglophone, scholarship, but with specifically antipodean inflections. This chapter will trace the development of a distinctively Australian body of maternal scholarship over the past century, tracing transnational influences and interdisciplinary conversations, before analysing key themes across the emergence of the field.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman, cited in Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States, xi.

  2. 2.

    Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1982).

  3. 3.

    See also Marilyn Lake, ‘A Revolution in the Family: The Challenge and Contradiction of Maternal Citizenship,’ in Kovan and Michel (eds.), Mothers of a New World; Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1999).

  4. 4.

    Marilyn Lake, ‘State Socialism for Australian Mothers: Andrew Fisher’s Radical Maternalism in Its International and Local Contexts,’ Labour History 102 (2012), 56. (Reprinted Chap. 3 this volume).

  5. 5.

    Ann Curthoys, ‘Gender Studies in Australia: A History,’ Australian Feminist Studies 15, no. 31 (2000), 19–20.

  6. 6.

    Anne Oakley, Taking it Like a Woman: A Personal History (London: Cape, 1984), 74.

  7. 7.

    A notable exception here is Kerreen Reiger’s work which combined the disciplines of history and sociology. Kerreen Reiger, The Disenchantment of the Home: Modernizing the Australian Family 1880–1940 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985).

  8. 8.

    See their key texts: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963), Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (1970); Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics (1970); Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (Sydney: Harper Collins, 1970).

  9. 9.

    Commenting on the replacement of breastmilk with formula milk in the mid-twentieth century, Greer wrote, ‘In modern consumer society, the attack on mother-child eroticism took its total form; breastfeeding was proscribed and the breasts reserved for the husband’s fetishistic delectation. At the same time, babies were segregated, put into cold beds alone and not picked up if they cried.’ Germaine Greer, Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 248.

  10. 10.

    See Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman (London: Random House, 2000), 260; Julie Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking: Feminism, Memory and Care (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 43–59.

  11. 11.

    Greer, The Female Eunuch, 21.

  12. 12.

    Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking, 82–87.

  13. 13.

    Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking, 43.

  14. 14.

    Cited in Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking, 85.

  15. 15.

    Lynne Segal, Making Trouble: Life and Politics (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2007), 83–90.

  16. 16.

    Curthoys, ‘Gender Studies in Australia.’

  17. 17.

    Anne Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia (Ringwood, VIC: Allen Lane, 1975); Edna Ryan and Anne Conlon, Gentle Invaders: Australian Women at Work, 1788–1974 (West Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1975); Miriam Dixson, The Real Matilda: Woman and Identity in Australia 1788 to 1975 (Ringwood, VIC: Penguin, 1976); Marilyn Lake and Farley Kelly, eds., Double Time: Women in Victoria—150 Years (Ringwood, VIC: Penguin, 1985); Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath, and Marion Quartly, Creating a Nation 1788–1990 (Ringwood, VIC: McPhee Gribble, 1994).

  18. 18.

    Dixson, The Real Matilda, 11.

  19. 19.

    Michelle Arrow, ‘Damned Whores and God’s Police is Still Relevant to Australia 40 Years on—More’s the Pity,’ The Conversation, September 21, 2015, https://theconversation.com/damned-whores-and-gods-police-is-still-relevant-to-australia-40-years-on-mores-the-pity-47753

  20. 20.

    Ann Game and Rosemary Pringle, ‘Sexuality and the Suburban Dream,’ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 15, no. 2 (1979), 12.

  21. 21.

    Jan Harper and Lyn Richards, Mothers and Working Mothers (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1979), 4–5.

  22. 22.

    Harper and Richards, Mothers and Working Mothers, 45.

  23. 23.

    Ann Oakley, ‘Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms,’ in Doing Feminist Research, ed. Helen Roberts (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1981), 30–61; Sandra Harding, ‘Is There a Feminist Method?’ in Feminism and Methodology: Social Science Issues, ed. Sandra Harding (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 1–14.

  24. 24.

    Nancy J. Chodorow and Susan Contratto, ‘The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother,’ in Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory, ed. Nancy J. Chodorow (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), 79–96.

  25. 25.

    Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking, 51.

  26. 26.

    Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking, 43–70.

  27. 27.

    As Stephens writes, ‘According to this narrative, paid work and giving birth to the (motherless) self are thus intimately linked. Once again, there is an intersection between the logic of neoliberal policy around work and feminist demands for autonomy. This illusion of self-sufficiency and the related fantasy of motherlessness is a key feature of postmaternal thinking.’ Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking, 59.

  28. 28.

    Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 [1978]), 40, 175.

  29. 29.

    A position that was subsequently revealed to be specific to white, middle-class women.

  30. 30.

    Nancy Chodorow, ‘Preface to the Second Edition,’ xv–xvi.

  31. 31.

    Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976).

  32. 32.

    It should be noted that not all women experience economic dependence on marriage as oppressive. Cathering Hakim’s work shows that ‘home-centred women’ and many ‘adaptors’ are in favour of men—specifically their husband’s—in a breadwinning role. Catherine Hakim, ‘Lifestyle Preferences Versus Patriarchal Values: Causal and Non-Causal Attitudes,’ in Changing Life Patterns in Western Industrial Societies (Oxford: Elsevier, 2004), 83. Moreover, more recent cross-national research shows that of married mothers homemakers are slightly happier than those who work full-time. Judith Treas, Tanja van der Lippe, and Tsui-o Chloe Tai, ‘The Happy Homemaker?: Married Women’s Well-Being in Cross-National Perspective,’ Social Forces 90, no. 1 (2011): 111–132.

  33. 33.

    Lynne Segal, Is the Future Female?: Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism (London: Virago, 1987), 144.

  34. 34.

    Julie Stephens, ‘Beyond Binaries in Motherhood Research,’ Family Matters 69 (2004), 89. See Kathy Pitt, ‘Being a New Capitalist Mother,’ Discourse and Society 13, no. 2 (2002): 251–267. See also Anne Manne, Motherhood: How Should We Care for Our Children? (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005), 258–259; Ruth Quiney, ‘Confessions of a New Capitalist Mother: Twenty-First Century Writing on Motherhood as Trauma,’ Women: A Cultural Review 18, no. 1 (2007), 19–40.

  35. 35.

    Juliet Mitchell, Women’s Estate (London: Penguin, 1971); Ann Oakley, Housewife (London: Penguin, 1974).

  36. 36.

    Kerreen Reiger personal communication.

  37. 37.

    Christine Everingham, Motherhood and Modernity: An Investigation into the Rational Dimension of Mothering (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994).

  38. 38.

    Everingham, Motherhood and Modernity, 7.

  39. 39.

    Betsy Wearing, The Ideology of Motherhood: A Study of Sydney Suburban Mothers (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984).

  40. 40.

    Wearing, The Ideology of Motherhood.

  41. 41.

    Cora Baldock and Bettina Cass, eds., Women, Social Welfare and the State in Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1983).

  42. 42.

    Bettina Cass, ‘Citizenship, Work, and Welfare: The Dilemma for Australian Women,’ Social Politics 1, no. 1 (1994): 112.

  43. 43.

    Their emphasis upon cultural and socio-economic diversity in this collection can be read as a response to critiques of 1970s feminist historiography as being too Anglo-Australian and middle class.

  44. 44.

    Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath, and Marian Quartly, Creating a Nation (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1994); Shurlee Swain and Renate Howe, Single Mothers and their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Joy Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Christina Twomey, Deserted and Destitute: Motherhood, Wife Desertion and Colonial Welfare (Kew, VIC: Australian Scholarly Press, 2002).

  45. 45.

    Joan Wallach Scott, ‘The Evidence of Experience,’ Critical Inquiry 17, no. 4 (1991), 773–797.

  46. 46.

    Lisa Featherstone, ‘Breeding and Feeding: A Social History of Mothers and Medicine in Australia, 1880–1925’ (PhD, Macquarie University, 2003).

  47. 47.

    Janet McCalman, Sex and Suffering: Women’s Health and a Women’s Hospital (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1995).

  48. 48.

    Stephanie Brown, Judith Lumley, Rhonda Small, and Jill Astbury, Missing Voices: The Experience of Motherhood (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 78.

  49. 49.

    The follow-up study went on to explore common variables and different experiences of PND, explaining that when so much about motherhood is trivialised as inconsequential, the researchers felt it was important that maternal experiences be carefully listened to, including those that represent the darker side of maternity. Brown, et al., Missing Voices, 134, 263.

  50. 50.

    Mira Crouch and Lenore Manderson, New Motherhood: Cultural and Personal Transitions (Yverson, Switzerland: Gordon and Breach Science, 1993).

  51. 51.

    Kerreen M. Reiger, Our Bodies, Our Babies: The Forgotten Women’s Movement (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2001).

  52. 52.

    Kerreen Reiger, ‘“Sort of Part of the Women’s Movement. But Different”: Mothers’ Organisations and Australian Feminism,’ Women’s Studies International Forum 22, no. 6 (1999), 585–595.

  53. 53.

    Gisella Kaplan, The Meagre Harvest: The Australian Women’s Movement 1950s–1990s (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1996); Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1999); Marion Sawer, Making Women Count: A History of the Women’s Electoral Lobby (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008).

  54. 54.

    Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath, and Marian Quartly, Creating a Nation, 1788–1990 (Ringwood, VIC: McPhee Gribble, 1994).

  55. 55.

    Natasha Campo, From Superwoman to Domestic Goddesses: The Rise and Fall of Feminism (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 6.

  56. 56.

    Chila Bulbeck, Living Feminism: The Impact of the Women’s Movement on Three Generations of Australian Women (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 143–144.

  57. 57.

    Arlie Hochschild with Anne Machtung, The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home (New York: Viking, 2012 [1989]), 44–46.

  58. 58.

    Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift, 12.

  59. 59.

    Rich, Of Woman Born.

  60. 60.

    Jessie Barnard, The Future of Motherhood (New York: Dial Press, 1974).

  61. 61.

    Ann Oakley, Housewife.

  62. 62.

    Christine Delphy and Dianna Leonard, Familiar Exploitation: A New Analysis of Marriage in Contemporary Western Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).

  63. 63.

    Michael Young and Peter Willmot, The Symmetrical Family (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).

  64. 64.

    Michael Bittman and Jocelyn Pixley, The Double Life of the Family: Myth, Hope and Experience (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1997), 96.

  65. 65.

    Bittman and Pixley, The Double Life of the Family, 145–171.

  66. 66.

    Bittman and Pixley, The Double Life of the Family, 170.

  67. 67.

    Anthony McMahon, Taking Care of Men: Sexual Politics in the Public Mind (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Ken Dempsey’s Inequalities in Marriage: Australia and Beyond (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997); Ken Dempsey, ‘Women’s Perceptions of Fairness and the Persistence of an Unequal Division of Housework,’ Family Matters 48 (1997): 15–19; Janeen Baxter and Mark Western, ‘Satisfaction with Housework: Examining the Paradox,’ Sociology 32, no. 1 (1998): 101–120; Janeen Baxter, ‘Patterns of Change and Stability in the Gendered Division of Labour in Australia, 1996–1997,’ Journal of Sociology 38, no. 4 (2002): 399–424.

  68. 68.

    Deborah Brennan, The Politics of Australian Child Care: Philanthropy to Feminism and Beyond (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

  69. 69.

    Sharon Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 3, 131.

  70. 70.

    Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, 8.

  71. 71.

    Susan Maushart, The Mask of Motherhood: How Motherhood Changes Everything and Why We Pretend It Doesn’t (Milsons Point, NSW: Random House, 1996), 7.

  72. 72.

    Maushart, The Mask of Motherhood, 157.

  73. 73.

    Martha McMahon, Engendering Motherhood: Identity and Self-Transformation in Women’s Lives (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), 3.

  74. 74.

    Bonnie Fox, ‘Reproducing Difference: Changes in the Lives of Partners Becoming Parents,’ in Family Patterns, Gender Relations, ed. Bonnie Fox (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001), 287.

  75. 75.

    Deborah Lupton, ‘“A Love/Hate Relationship”: The Ideals and Experiences of First-Time Mothers,’ Journal of Sociology 36, no. 1 (2000): 50–63; Deborah Lupton and Virginia Schmied, ‘“The Right Way of Doing It All”: First-Time Australian Mothers’ Decisions about Paid Employment,’ Women’s Studies International Forum 25, no. 1 (2002): 97–107.

  76. 76.

    Lupton, ‘A Love/Hate Relationship,’ 58.

  77. 77.

    Lupton, ‘A Love/Hate Relationship,’ 161.

  78. 78.

    Lucy Bailey, ‘Refracted Selves? A Study of Changes in Self-Identity in the Transition to Motherhood,’ Sociology 33, no. 2 (1999): 335.

  79. 79.

    Tina Miller, Making Sense of Motherhood: A Narrative Approach (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  80. 80.

    Rachel Cusk, A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother (New York: Picador, 2001).

  81. 81.

    John Murphy and Belinda Probert, ‘Never Done: The Working Mothers of the 1950s’ in Double Shift: Working Mothers and Social Change in Australia, ed. Patricia Grimshaw, John Murphy, and Belinda Probert (Melbourne: Circa, 2005), 133–152.

  82. 82.

    Grimshaw, Murphy and Probert, Double Shift.

  83. 83.

    Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, 3.

  84. 84.

    Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); Andrew Leigh, Disconnected (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010).

  85. 85.

    Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1992); Deborah Lupton, Risk (London: Routledge, 1999).

  86. 86.

    Suzanne M. Bianchi, John P. Robinson, and Melissa A. Milkie, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007); Lyn Craig, Contemporary Motherhood: The Impact on Adult Time (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2007).

  87. 87.

    Manne, Motherhood, 258.

  88. 88.

    Stephens, ‘Beyond Binaries in Motherhood Research,’ 89.

  89. 89.

    This book was based on an earlier article, Virginia Haussegger, ‘The Sins of our Feminist Mothers,’ The Age, Melbourne, July 23, 2002, https://www.theage.com.au/national/the-sins-of-our-feminist-mothers-20020723-gduf2x.html

  90. 90.

    Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children (New York: Miramax Books, 2002).

  91. 91.

    Hewlett, Creating a Life, 116.

  92. 92.

    Leslie Cannold, What, No Baby? Why Women Are Losing the Freedom to Mother, and How They Can Get It Back (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2005).

  93. 93.

    Peter McDonald, ‘Low Fertility in Australia: Evidence, Causes and Policy Responses,’ People and Place 8, no. 2 (2000): 6–21.

  94. 94.

    Fiona Giles, Fresh Milk: The Secret Life of Breasts (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2003).

  95. 95.

    Alison Bartlett, ‘Breastfeeding, Bodies and Choice in Late Capitalism,’ Hecate 29, no. 12 (2003), 153–164.

  96. 96.

    Bartlett, ‘Breastfeeding, Bodies and Choice in Late Capitalism,’ 153.

  97. 97.

    Alison Bartlett, ‘Scandalous Practices and Political Performances: Breastfeeding in the City,’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 16, no. 1 (2002): 11–21. See also, Alison Bartlett and Fiona Giles, ‘Introduction: Taking our Breasts to Work,’ Australian Feminist Studies—Theme: Meanings of Breastmilk: New Feminist Flavours 19, no. 45 (2004): 269–271.

  98. 98.

    Bartlett, ‘Scandalous Practices and Political Performances,’ 11–21.

  99. 99.

    Meredith Nash, Making Postmodern Mothers: Pregnant Embodiment, Baby Bumps and Body Image (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

  100. 100.

    Catherine Hakim, Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 5–10, 89–94.

  101. 101.

    Howard sent his main social policy adviser, John Perrin, to meet Hakim in London and, as one journalist put it, ‘partly thanks to the Prime Minister’s advocacy and interest, Hakim’s latest book Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century is now on waiting lists in libraries all over NSW.’ No author. ‘The Mothers’ Club,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, September 7, 2002, https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-mothers-club-20020907-gdfm2y.html

  102. 102.

    John Howard, ‘Prime Minister’s Address to Federal Women’s Forum,’ Liberal Party Federal Council, April 12, 2002, www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/2002/speech1594.htm

  103. 103.

    Although his taxation laws favouring single-income families also favoured working single mothers by default. On Howard’s policies, see Anne Summers, The End of Equality: Work, Babies and Women’s Choices in 21st Century Australia (Sydney: Random House, 2003).

  104. 104.

    Summers, The End of Equality.

  105. 105.

    Anne Summers, ‘The End of Equality? Australian Women and the Howard Government,’ Pamela Denoon Lecture, March 3, 2003, Australian National University, Canberra, http://legacy.annesummers.com.au/speeches/the-end-of-equality/

  106. 106.

    Arlie Hochschild, The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work (California: University of California Press, 2003).

  107. 107.

    Arlie Hochschild, The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012).

  108. 108.

    Hochschild, The Commercialization of Intimate Life, 217.

  109. 109.

    Hochschild, The Commercialization of Intimate Life, 214.

  110. 110.

    These influences developed more fully in a number of essays as well as in her book: Anne Manne, ‘Women’s Preferences, Fertility and Family Policy: The Case for Diversity,’ People and Place 9, no. 4 (2001): 6–25; Anne Manne, ‘Motherhood and the Spirit of the New Capitalism,’ Arena Magazine 24 (2005): 37–68; Anne Manne, ‘Love and Money: The Family and the Free Market,’ Quarterly Essay 29 (2008): 1–90.

  111. 111.

    Manne, Motherhood, 1–16.

  112. 112.

    Michael Leunig, ‘Thoughts of a Baby Lying in a Child Care Centre,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, July 27, 1995.

  113. 113.

    For a fuller discussion of the feminist response to Leunig’s cartoon, see Campo, From Superwomen to Domestic Goddesses, 95–96; Manne, Motherhood, 185–186, 189–190

  114. 114.

    Manne, Motherhood, 37–41.

  115. 115.

    Manne, Motherhood, 258–261, 282–303.

  116. 116.

    Manne, Motherhood, 14.

  117. 117.

    Julie Stephens, ‘Cultural Memory, Feminism and Motherhood,’ Arena Magazine 24 (2005), 69–82; Julie Stephens, ‘Beyond the Binaries in Motherhood Research,’ Family Matters 69 (2004/2005), 89–93; Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking.

  118. 118.

    Daphne de Marneffe, Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2004).

  119. 119.

    de Marneffe cited in Manne, Motherhood, 31.

  120. 120.

    Pru Goward, ‘Oh No Children, We Forgot Motherhood, Did We?’ Australian Review of Public Affairs, January 30, 2006, http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2006/01/goward.html

  121. 121.

    For an early account of these changes see: Karen Davies, Women, Time, and the Weaving of the Strands of Everyday Life (Aldershot: Gower Publishing, 1990). See also, Anne Garey, Weaving Work and Motherhood (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999); Angela Hattery, Women, Work and Family: Balancing and Weaving (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001).

  122. 122.

    Suzanne Bianchi Bianchi, John Robinson, and Melissa Milkie, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life (New York: Sage, 2006); Suzanne, Bianchi, Liana Sayer, Melissa Milkie, and John Robinson, ‘Housework: Who Did, Does, or Will do it and How Much Does It Matter?’ Social Forces 91 (2012): 55–63.

  123. 123.

    Lianne Sayer, ‘Gender, Time and Inequality: Trends in Women’s and Men’s Paid Work, Unpaid Work and Free Time,’ Social Forces 84, no. 1 (2005): 285–303; Lianne Sayer, ‘More Work for Mothers? Trends and Gender Differences in Multitasking,’ in Time Competition: Disturbed Balances and New Options in Work and Care, eds. Tanja van der Lippe and Pascale Peters (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2006): 41–56.

  124. 124.

    Jo Lindsay and JaneMaree Maher, ‘Beyond the “Crisis” Rhetoric: Designing Policy for Work and Family Integration for Employed Mothers,’ Just Policy 38 (2005): 21.

  125. 125.

    Lindsay and Maher, ‘Beyond the “Crisis” Rhetoric,’ 23.

  126. 126.

    JaneMaree Maher, ‘A Mother by Trade: Australian Women Reflecting on Mothering as Activity not Identity,’ Australian Feminist Studies 20, no. 46 (2005): 26.

  127. 127.

    Maher, ‘A Mother by Trade,’ 17.

  128. 128.

    JaneMaree Maher, Jo Lindsay, and Susan Franzway, ‘Time, Caring Labour and Social Policy: Understanding the Family Time Economy in Contemporary Families,’ Work, Employment and Society 22, no.3 (2008): 547–558.

  129. 129.

    Alison Morehead, ‘Synchronizing Time for Work and Family: Preliminary Insights from Qualitative Research with Mothers,’ Journal of Sociology 37, no. 4 (2001): 358.

  130. 130.

    Morehead, ‘Synchronizing Time for Work and Family,’ 357.

  131. 131.

    Craig, Contemporary Motherhood.

  132. 132.

    See also, Lyn Craig, ‘How Employed Mothers in Australia Find Time for Both Market Work and Childcare,’ Journal of Family and Economic Issues 28, no. 1 (2007): 69–87; Lyn Craig, ‘Is There Really a “Second Shift”, and If So, Who Does It? A Time-Diary Investigation,’ Feminist Review 86, no. 1 (2007): 149–170.

  133. 133.

    Lyn Craig, ‘Children and the Revolution: A Time-Diary Analysis of the Impact of Motherhood on Daily Workload,’ Journal of Sociology 42, no. 2 (2006), 125.

  134. 134.

    Lyn Craig, ‘Does Father Care Mean Fathers Share? A Comparison of How Mothers and Fathers in Intact Families Spend Time with Children,’ Gender and Society 20, no. 2 (2006): 259–281.

  135. 135.

    Craig, ‘Children and the Revolution,’ 133.

  136. 136.

    Craig, ‘Children and the Revolution,’ 2.

  137. 137.

    Hochschild, The Second Shift, 11. See also, Paula England, ‘The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled,’ Gender and Society 24, no. 2 (2010): 149–166; Shannon Davis, Sarah Winslow, and David Maume, eds., Gender in the Twenty-First Century: The Stalled Revolution and the Road to Equality (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017).

  138. 138.

    Leah Ruppanner, ‘Sharing of Household Responsibilities,’ in Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, ed. Alex C. Michalos (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 253–311.

  139. 139.

    Belinda Hewitt and Janeen Baxter, ‘Relationship Dissolution’ in Family Formation in 21st Century Australia, eds. Genevieve Heard and Dharma Arunachalam (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015), 77–79.

  140. 140.

    Kay Cook and Kristin Natalier, ‘The Gendered Framing of Australia’s Child Support Reforms,’ International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 27, no. 1 (2013): 28–50; Kay Cook and Kristin Natalier, ‘Selective Hearing: The Gendered Construction and Reception of Inquiry Evidence,’ Critical Social Policy 34, no. 4 (2014), 515–537.

  141. 141.

    Cook and Natalier, ‘Selective Hearing,’ 520–523.

  142. 142.

    Cook and Natalier, ‘Selective Hearing,’ 515.

  143. 143.

    Kay Cook, ‘The Devaluing and Disciplining of Single Mothers in Australian Child Support Policy,’ Chap. 18 this volume.

  144. 144.

    Petra Bueskens, Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract (London: Routledge, 2018).

  145. 145.

    Bueskens adapts this term from Lisa Adkins. See Lisa Adkins, ‘Gender and the Post-Structural Social,’ in Engendering the Social: Feminist Encounters with Sociological Theory, eds. Barbara Marshall and Anne Witz (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2004), 139–145.

  146. 146.

    Bueskens, Modern Motherhood, 167–172; See also, Petra Bueskens, ‘Fertility Strikes: Modern Motherhood and De-Regulated Patriarchy,’ New Matilda, May 10, 2019, https://newmatilda.com/2019/05/10/fertility-strikes-modern-motherhood-and-the-de-regulated-patriarchy/; Petra Bueskens, ‘Deregulated Patriarchy and the New Sexual Contract: One Step Forward and Two Steps Back,’ Journal of the Motherhood Initiative  10, no. 1 & 2 (2019), 59–82.

  147. 147.

    Bueskens, Modern Motherhood, 142–195.

  148. 148.

    Hewitt and Baxter, ‘Relationship Dissolution,’ 77–79.

  149. 149.

    Carole Pateman, ‘The Patriarchal Welfare State’ in The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 195–204.

  150. 150.

    Petra Bueskens, ‘Wollstonecraft’s Dilemma: Feminism and Identity Politics,’ Areo Magazine, July 10, 2019, https://areomagazine.com/2019/07/10/wollstonecrafts-dilemma-identity-politics-and-feminism/. See also her chapter on ‘Gillard’s dilemma,’ Chap. 19 this volume.

  151. 151.

    Petra Bueskens, ‘Mothers and Basic Income: The Case for an Urgent Intervention,’ New Matilda, February 23, 2017, https://newmatilda.com/2017/02/23/mothers-basic-income-case-urgent-intervention/; Petra Bueskens, ‘Poverty-Traps and Pay-Gaps: Why (Single) Mothers Need Basic Income,’ in Views of a Universal Basic Income: Perspectives from Across Australia, ed. Tim Hollo (Melbourne: The Green Institute, 2017), 42–51.

  152. 152.

    Bueskens, Mothering and Psychoanalysis, 1–72.

  153. 153.

    Petra Bueskens, ‘Mateernal Subjectivity: From Containing to Creating,’ in Dangerous Ideas about Mothers, eds. Rachel Robertson and Camilla Nelson (Perth: UWA Publishing, 2018), 197–211.

  154. 154.

    Petra Bueskens, ‘Reproducing the Social: Chodorow and Beyond,’ Journal of Psychosocial Studies (forthcoming, 2019).

  155. 155.

    Petra Bueskens and Kim Toffoletti, ‘Mothers, Scholars and Feminists: Inside and Outside the Australian Academic System,’ in Experiences of Women in Academia: Metaphors, Manifestos and Memoir, eds. Alison Black and Susan Garvis (London: Routledge, 2018), 13–22.

  156. 156.

    Petra Bueskens, ‘Breastfeeding in Public: A Personal and Political Memoir,’ in Mothers at the Margins, eds. Jenny Jones, Marie Porter, and Lisa Raith (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2015): 204–224.

  157. 157.

    Bueskens, ‘Reproducing the Social: Chodorow and Beyond.’

  158. 158.

    Petra Bueskens, ‘Matricentric Feminism is a Gift to the World,’ Forward to Andrea O’Reilly, Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Practice, Activism (Toronto: Demeter Press, 2016), xi–xvii.

  159. 159.

    AMIRCI, The Australian Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, http://www.mothering.org.au/about-us

  160. 160.

    Catherine Kevin, ‘Maternity and Freedom: Australian Feminist Encounters with the Reproductive Body,’ Australian Feminist Studies 20, no. 46 (2005): 3–15.

  161. 161.

    Susannah Thompson, ‘Birth Pains: Changing Understandings of Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Neonatal Death in Australian in the Twentieth Century’ (PhD Thesis, University of Western Australia, 2008).

  162. 162.

    Marian Quartly, Shurlee Swain, and Denise Cuthbert with Kay Drefus and Margaret Taft, The Market in Babies: Stories of Australian Adoption (Clayton: Monash University Press, 2013).

  163. 163.

    Similar studies have been conducted for the UK (and the US (Vandenberg). See Angela Davies, Modern Motherhood: Women and Family in England, 1945–2000 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012); Jodi Vandenberg-Daves, Modern Motherhood: An American History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014).

  164. 164.

    Carla Pascoe Leahy, ‘Selection and Sampling Methodologies in Oral Histories of Mothering, Parenting and Family,’ Oral History 47, no. 1 (2019): 105–116.

  165. 165.

    Wendy Hollway, Knowing Mothers: Researching Maternal Identity Change (Basingstoke, Hampsure: Palgrave, 2015).

  166. 166.

    Carla Pascoe Leahy, ‘From the Little Wife to the Supermom? Maternographies of Feminism and Mothering in Australia since 1945,’ Feminist Studies 45, no. 1 (2019): 1–29; Carla Pascoe, ‘Mum’s the Word: Advice to Australian Mothers since 1945,’ Journal of Family Studies 21, no. 3 (2015): 218–234.

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  1. University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Petra Bueskens & Carla Pascoe Leahy

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  1. University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Carla Pascoe Leahy

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    Petra Bueskens

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Bueskens, P., Pascoe Leahy, C. (2019). Defining Maternal Studies in Australia: The Birth of a Field. In: Pascoe Leahy, C., Bueskens, P. (eds) Australian Mothering. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_2

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