Mothering and Sociology

In the scenario of developing countries, Hepatitis is a well known and continuously spreading disease. In Pakistan the situation is also not satisfactory. Government and private sector striving to control this dangerous disease but graph is still going up.  Pakistani pregnant women are facing this disease with the high risk and a major reason to transmit the virus to their fetus. This study is focused to address the prevalence of deadly hepatitis B and C among pregnant women of Wah cant. As primary source of information secondary data was used to explore the topic of interest. There for one year record of Hepatitis B+/C+ registered pregnant women (n=116) was collected from health staff by getting permission from the authorities of Al-Moeed Hospital, Wah Cant. Taxila. Data was entered in SPSS and also analyzed by using the same application. Findings of the study show that the ratio of hepatitis B and C is increasing in Pakistan especially among pregnant women. The reason is that the pregnant women are most vulnerable for this kind of viral diseases. Results of the study shows that 64.66% of women are hepatitis B positive and 35.34% women are infected with hepatitis C. Majority of the infected pregnant women lives in rural area and but 39.65% women of urban area is also infected with this disease. The prevalence of hepatitis is getting higher day by day among pregnant women and also among common people in Pakistan. Identified causes of prevalence of this deadly disease e.g. poor hygiene, water and sanitation issues and there is also lack of awareness among people especially rural population of the country.

La intención de este artículo es proponer que, en el imaginario sociocultural, todavía persisten creencias que otorgan a las mujeres el rol de meros objetos reproductores de las exigencias de los varones, sean estos humanos o divinos, y esbozar cómo esa función reproductora se recrea en el tiempo. La invención de la categoría de simple recipiente de la semilla del macho que se atribuía a la mujer tiene un largo recorrido histórico que, contra lo que podría esperarse, en lugar de ir eclipsándose se mantiene viva en el siglo XXI. Obviamente, los discursos y procesos son cada vez más sutiles y menos visibles, lo cual permite una continua impregnación a nivel social de las ideologías que mantienen activas las creencias y sus prácticas. Y, con ello, la idealización de la maternidad como destino de las mujeres."

What does ‘care’ mean in contemporary society? How are caring relationships practised in different contexts? What resources do individuals and collectives draw upon in order to care for, care with and care about themselves and others? How do such relationships and practices relate to broader social processes? Care shapes people’s everyday lives and relationships and caring relations and practices influence the economies of different societies. This interdisciplinary book takes a nuanced and context-sensitive approach to exploring caring relationships, identities and practices within and across a variety of cultural, familial, geographical and institutional arenas. Grounded in rich empirical research and discussing key theoretical, policy and practice debates, it provides important, yet often neglected, international and cross-cultural perspectives. It is divided into four sections covering: caring within educational institutions; caring amongst communities and networks; caring and families; and caring across the life-course. Contributing to broader theoretical, philosophical and moral debates associated with the ethics of care, citizenship, justice, relationality and entanglements of power, Critical Approaches to Care is an important work for students and academics studying caring and care work in the fields of health and social care, sociology, social policy, anthropology, education, human geography and politics.

"The collection of 23 essays provides an exciting snapshot of contemporary theorising on the maternal within psychoanalytic and social theory. The introduction serves as an excellent overview of this interdisciplinary field and its importance both to motherhood studies and broader feminist thinking. This book is a triumph!" Assistant Professor Julie Kelso, Department of Philosophy and Literature, Bond University "Mothering and Psychoanalysis brings together a vibrant collection of critical, interdisciplinary perspectives on psychoanalysis, feminism, motherhood and sociology. In her engaging introduction, Petra Bueskens provides a comprehensive overview of the key debates in the field and their contemporary implications. The collection includes reprinted essays from important thinkers and international contributions from a diverse range of writers who offer fresh and original insights into psychoanalysis and mothering. The book represents some of the best of the new scholarship in maternal studies." Associate Professor Julie Stephens, College of Arts, Victoria University, Australia

"The collection of 23 essays provides an exciting snapshot of contemporary theorising on the maternal within psychoanalytic and social theory. The introduction serves as an excellent overview of this interdisciplinary field and its importance both to motherhood studies and broader feminist thinking. This book is a triumph!" Assistant Professor Julie Kelso, Department of Philosophy and Literature, Bond University "Mothering and Psychoanalysis brings together a vibrant collection of critical, interdisciplinary perspectives on psychoanalysis, feminism, motherhood and sociology. In her engaging introduction, Petra Bueskens provides a comprehensive overview of the key debates in the field and their contemporary implications. The collection includes reprinted essays from important thinkers and international contributions from a diverse range of writers who offer fresh and original insights into psychoanalysis and mothering. The book represents some of the best of the new scholarship in maternal studies." Associate Professor Julie Stephens, College of Arts, Victoria University, Australia

What does ‘care’ mean in contemporary society? How are caring relationships practised in different contexts? What resources do individuals and collectives draw upon in order to care for, care with and care about themselves and others? How do such relationships and practices relate to broader social processes? Care shapes people’s everyday lives and relationships and caring relations and practices influence the economies of different societies. This interdisciplinary book takes a nuanced and context-sensitive approach to exploring caring relationships, identities and practices within and across a variety of cultural, familial, geographical and institutional arenas. Grounded in rich empirical research and discussing key theoretical, policy and practice debates, it provides important, yet often neglected, international and cross-cultural perspectives. It is divided into four sections covering: caring within educational institutions; caring amongst communities and networks; caring and families; and caring across the life-course. Contributing to broader theoretical, philosophical and moral debates associated with the ethics of care, citizenship, justice, relationality and entanglements of power, Critical Approaches to Care is an important work for students and academics studying caring and care work in the fields of health and social care, sociology, social policy, anthropology, education, human geography and politics.

This chapter engages with broad debates from a range of disciplines surrounding transnational parenting in Asia, to identify and analyze gaps in the literature. Providing a case study from my work on social reconstructions of mothering, I offer that, while moral communities are often founded upon thick social relations, my participants’ practices of maternal transnational care towards others depict an inter-weaving of both thick and thin social relations. While I continue in the tradition of work which uncovers everyday transnationalism ‘on the ground’, I emphasize the gendered, maternal dimensions of performing this within the g/local South Asian, specifically Coorg, context using instances of kinwork, emotions, and (transnational) charity beyond the community. I suggest the construction of extended moral communities of co-responsibility is at play in the maternal-inspired generational, gendered motherwork of my participants and their trans-domestic, transnational citizenship practices of raising model citizens in global cities. I finally propose a research agenda for the future of the subfield of gender and transnational parenting.

This is an open-access publication available from https://hcs.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/hcs/article/view/137/168

This paper utilizes disability studies informed by feminist phenomenology to explore how contemporary representations of autism, and autism mothers, are integrally caught up in Western (and now globalizing) understandings of health, happiness and the “normative” human. I examine the historical emergence of “autism mothers” as a new category of identity, and trace this alongside a global autism mother recruitment campaign to get at what’s “behind” this phenomenon. I argue that emerging autism mother figures like the feminine warrior are new and contradictory neoliberal subjectivities that contain a most “hateful” unethical and increasingly global duty: the reinscription and intensification of the “normal” human as bourgeois, nondisabled, white and Western, and the “new” femininity as “naturally” nurturing and necessarily instrumental. Even more, these new subjectivities are governmental, operating as Western colonialist translations of happiness, compelling compulsory participation in increasingly limited, violent, and globalizing frames of normative humanity for us all.

This paper examines the difficulties inherent in mothering, especially attachment parenting, in the context of modern social structure with its sequestration of women to the private sphere and emphasis on individual fulfilment.  Caring for a baby is always an act of culture but in modern societies, it is to experts that we turn for guidance and advice. Broadly speaking, in the modern west, baby and childcare has been split
between a rational-efficiency model (for example, four hourly feeds, the rise of domestic hygiene, bottle feeding, developmental psychology and so on) and a romantic model, which seeks to dissolve authority and efficiency in favour of a
"natural," more bonded style of care (for example, long-term unregulated breast feeding, the family bed, permissive parenting and so on). This article will explore the renewed emphasis by our "baby-experts" on the second, more
romantic model of care, or, what the well known pediatrician William Sears aptly terms, "immersion mothering" (1982: 181), in the latter part of the twentieth century. I address the paradoxes that emerge when experts call this style of caregiving "natural" or "traditional" before moving into some of
the dilemmas that result for late-modern women when they attempt to enact "immersion mothering." My contention is that the high personal sacrifice, isolation, and immobility required by such intensive caregiving is antithetical to successful participation in a modern differentiated society.

This article was selected for re-printing in Andrea O’Reilly (ed.) Mother Matters: Motherhood as Discourse and Practice (2004). In addition, it has been cited, written about and reviewed in many places.  See:

Joan B. Wolf, Is Breast Best? Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood, New York University Press, New York, 2011.

Ivana Brown, A Sociological Analysis of Maternal Ambivalence: Class and Race Differences Among New Mothers, PhD Thesis, Rutgers University, 2011.

Martha McCaughey, “Got Milk?: Breastfeeding as an ‘Incurably Informed’ Feminist STS Scholar“, Science as Culture,vol. 19, no. 1, 2010, pp. 79-100.

Ruth Cain, ” A View You Won’t Get Anywhere Else’’? Depressed Mothers, Public Regulation and ‘Private’ Narrative” Feminist Legal Studies, vol. 17, 2009, pp. 123-143.

“The Impossibility of ‘Natural Parenting’ for Modern Mothers, babycentre.com thread posted by ‘vaptek’ on 30/08/2008.

Shelley Kulperger, “Loss of Mother/Hood: Maternalising Postcolonial Cultural Memory” Hecate, vol.33, no.1, 2007, p.223.

Joan B Wolf, “Is Breast Really Best? Risk and Total Motherhood in the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign“, Journal of Health, Policy and Law, vol. 32, no.4, 2007, pp.  595-636

Andrea O’Reilly (ed.), From Motherhood to Mothering: The Legacy of Adrienne Rich’s “Of Woman Born“, SUNY Press, New York, 2004. See in particular the introduction, p. 6.

Chris Bobel, “When Good Enough Isn’t: Mother Blame in the Continuum Concept“, Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, vol. 6, no. 2, 2004, pp. 68-78.


Alison Bartlett, “Breastfeeding Bodies and Choice in Late Capitalism“, Hecate, vol, 29, no. 2, 2003,  pp. 153-165.


See also the links for Google scholar.

Tal i com comentàvem en l’entrega anterior, hem decidit dedicar les dues últimes Newsletter corresponents a l’any 2010, a ressenyar els principals resultats presentats en un conjunt de Congressos Internacionals i Nacionals, sobre Infància i Joventut en general i sobre adopció en particular, celebrats durant l’any en diferents ciutats del món.

As a new mother, something that is constantly on my mind is how to teach my daughter morals and values.  She just turned three and has a strong awareness of what is going on around her.  Her vocabulary is vast and continues to grow daily.  I know that if I don’t start teaching her values now, I am missing out on an important opportunity.

Although I was raised Catholic and consider myself a “cultural Catholic,” I am uncomfortable with Catholic traditional prayers because of their lack of gender inclusiveness, among other things.  We don’t attend church as we have not yet found a community that we feel is a good fit for our family.

"Como comentábamos en la entrega anterior, hemos decidido dedicar las dos últimas Newsletter correspondientes al año 2010 a reseñar los principales resultados presentados en un conjunto de Congresos Internacionales y Nacionales sobre Infancia y Juventud en general y sobre adopción en particular celebrados durante el año en distintas ciudades del mundo .
Se trata, sobre todo, de difundir entre la mayor cantidad de personas interesadas en las infancias en general, los temas, problemáticas y avances producidos en los últimos tiempos en dicho campo en distintas disciplinas.
Se trata, asimismo, de un objetivo que mantendremos durante el año 2011 con la publicación de una o dos Newsletters dedicadas a comentar las reuniones de las que los integrantes del Grupo de Investigación AFIN participen u organicen.""

... the models of temporality and place-making practices that emerge within postmodernism allow for ... The post-modern family, as feminist philosopher Cheshire Calhoun (1997) notes (and Virilio [1995 ... Automating gender: Postmodern feminism in the age of the intelligent machine. ...

Mediating Mother-Activism Edited by Gilda Seddighi and Sara Tafakori Recent years have seen a renewed interest in exploring motherhood and mothering as political and emotional resources for digital activism. Although the intertwinement of mothering and politics predates the digital context, feminist debates around the politicization of mothering, from protests against state killings and disappearances, via the role of the mother in nation-building, to advocacy for right wing populisms, need addressing all the more urgently as we endeavour to

Globalization and its imminent effect on education have received attention in recent years. Less widely acknowledged is the discussion of the role of middle-class mothers who are stuck amidst the changes in their children's education and future. With the aid of in-depth face-to-face interviews and extensive participant observation in Kolkata, this chapter examines how middle-class mothers resort to commercial solutions to help manage their crisis in a neoliberal India. The crisis managers in the form of "mom-schooling" agencies support and coach mothers to negotiate with the changing education system and parenting methods that have become highly Americanized. In this chapter, the author uses Bourdieu's theory of conversion of capital to argue that mothers in Kolkata are acting as "converters" of capital with the help of commercial mom-schools by converting economic capital to a distinct form of cultural capital that they transfer to their children for the latter's success in a global economy.

The article is based on research about holistic mothering in contemporary Portugal. Holistic mothering is an umbrella term, used here to describe different mothering choices based on the assumption that pregnancy, birthing and early mothering are important spiritual experiences for the mother and the child, but also for the father. In Portugal, many holistic mothers choose homebirth and avoid what they perceive as excessive medicalization during hospital birth. Influenced by Davis-Floyd’s analysis of birth as an American rite of passage and her distinction between a technocratic and a wholistic model of birth, Portuguese holistic mothers conceptualize homebirth as a rebellious choice that subverts the predominant, biomedical model. The subversive aspects of homebirth are underscored by the fact that it exists in a legal void and is presented in the media and in popular discourse as a dangerous choice that poses an obstacle to the country’s modernization. Drawing on ethnographic data, I argue that the entrenchment of two opposing models, what Davis-Floyd calls the wholistic and the technocratic, is counter-productive and contributes to traumatic experiences for holistic mothers who choose homebirth but who end up hospitalized, and consequently targeted for critique by the medical establishment and the wider social environment, which originates a sense of guilt and/or inadequacy for not being able to follow-through with the birth at home.

Malacrida, Claudia (2012). “Relational teaching and mothers with disabilities: Bridging the public/private, dependency/nurturance divides.”  In Springgay, S. & Freedman, D., editors. Mothering a bodied curriculum: Emplacement, desire, affect. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. 88 – 102.

Within the context of neoliberal times, mothers are said to be increasingly monitoring their children’s lives. Yet, the extent to which neoliberalism can explain mothers’ aspirations for their children remains unclear. This article explores how 26 Australian mothers, half of whom had a child with an eating disorder, spoke about happiness in regards to their aspirations for their children. We argue that the mothers resist materialistic aspirations for their children by privileging their child’s happiness, defined as a selection of inner qualities that their children can possess. While all the mothers were aspirational about their children’s future happiness, happiness to mothers with a child with an eating disorder was more moderate and viewed as a way of protecting their children. Further, privileging these inner qualities of happiness brings its own limitations. We highlight the contextual nature of happiness, arguing for a more nuanced understanding of family circumstances in neol...

One of the key issues concerning breastfeeding and work is women having the flexibility to feed while they are working. This calls for a radical transformation in the culture of work. While most women manage this combination through pumping, as maternal scholar Julie Stephens notes, this relationship superimposes neo-liberal work norms onto mothers, by separating maternal and infant (or toddler) bodies (2010). With pumping, it is the mother who adjusts to an individualist work culture rather than the other way around. Mothers remove their milk and remain separated at the bodily level from their babies – keeping up the “supply” of both milk and work - while maintaining a façade of the disembodied worker. https://www.routledge.com/nursing/posts/7619?utm_source=routledge&utm_medium=cms&utm_campaign=sbu2_hmc_2pr_8cm_5hsc_aed15_x_x_world%20breast%20feeding%20week

What does ‘care’ mean in contemporary society? How are caring relationships practised in different contexts? What resources do individuals and collectives draw upon in order to care for, care with and care about themselves and others? How do such relationships and practices relate to broader social processes? Care shapes people’s everyday lives and relationships and caring relations and practices influence the economies of different societies. This interdisciplinary book takes a nuanced and context-sensitive approach to exploring caring relationships, identities and practices within and across a variety of cultural, familial, geographical and institutional arenas. Grounded in rich empirical research and discussing key theoretical, policy and practice debates, it provides important, yet often neglected, international and cross-cultural perspectives. It is divided into four sections covering: caring within educational institutions; caring amongst communities and networks; caring and families; and caring across the life-course. Contributing to broader theoretical, philosophical and moral debates associated with the ethics of care, citizenship, justice, relationality and entanglements of power, Critical Approaches to Care is an important work for students and academics studying caring and care work in the fields of health and social care, sociology, social policy, anthropology, education, human geography and politics.

The article compares the development of policies pertaining to care for preschool children in the course of the second half of the 20th century in France and in the Czech Republic. It aims at identifying the key factors that led to the differentiation of the policies and institutions in the two countries, especially with respect to support for extra-familial care and formal care institutions (nurseries). We build on the theories of ‘new’ institutionalisms and we apply framing analysis, which allows us to understand the formation of ideas that precede policy changes. Specifically, we discuss the role of expert discourse and the framings of care for young children in the process of social policy change. We argue that expert knowledge in interaction with the political, economic, and demographic contexts and how it has been presented in public have had a fundamental impact on the formation of childcare policies and institutions in the two countries.

"The collection of 23 essays provides an exciting snapshot of contemporary theorising on the maternal within psychoanalytic and social theory. The introduction serves as an excellent overview of this interdisciplinary field and its importance both to motherhood studies and broader feminist thinking. This book is a triumph!" Assistant Professor Julie Kelso, Department of Philosophy and Literature, Bond University "Mothering and Psychoanalysis brings together a vibrant collection of critical, interdisciplinary perspectives on psychoanalysis, feminism, motherhood and sociology. In her engaging introduction, Petra Bueskens provides a comprehensive overview of the key debates in the field and their contemporary implications. The collection includes reprinted essays from important thinkers and international contributions from a diverse range of writers who offer fresh and original insights into psychoanalysis and mothering. The book represents some of the best of the new scholarship in maternal studies." Associate Professor Julie Stephens, College of Arts, Victoria University, Australia

In her introduction, Bueskens demonstrates her formidable capacity for inspiring interdisciplinary dialogue for she not only sign-posts the key developments in psychoanalysis and maternal studies but also encourages us to be productive readers. She arms us with some of the salient questions we might ask as we move through this text: Who is this subject we name “mother”? How might we unpack some of the fantasies that surround the mother/child dyad-arising both in the psychic and social realms, and how might we move towards a more radical reconceptualisation of the maternal where “the mother” is constituted as “an agent of psychic and social change” (2014, p. 61). As Bueskens asks: “What is the relationship between psychoanalysis and feminism and how does this impact our understanding of mothers? What does it look like – in theory and practice – to centre the mother’s subjectivity?“ (2014, p. 4).

The introduction to Motherhood & Psychoanalysis focuses on the psychic/social dichotomy internal to feminist psychoanalytic theory. Bueskens uses this theoretical tension as a vehicle through which to trace the historical/critical developments in both feminist and psychoanalytic understandings of the maternal as she organises her introductory discussion into a series of productive sub-sections from the early work of Freud through the critique of the neo-Freudians, the developments of Klein and Winnicott and into feminist critiques and theoretical developments in both the second and third waves. These sub-sections tease out nuances of the psychic/social binary within feminist psychoanalytic theory investigating “the acquisition of gender identity, the nucleus of the neuroses, the position of the “the mother” and maternal subjectivity” (2014, p. 4) and, at every turn, Bueskens argues for a re-reading of this relationship as she writes: “for me, neither pole – psyche or social – can be isolated as entirely autonomous from the other” (2014, p. 20). Interested in the intersection between social and symbolic change, Bueskens argues that feminists are invested in both positions and must traverse the line of social construction (of gender and motherhood) and psychic universals.

НЛО, 2017
Хочу ли я заводить детей? Надо ли мне для этого вступать в брак? Что я думаю о приемных детях и новых репродуктивных технологиях? Что для меня «слишком рано» и «слишком поздно», если думать о материнстве? Придется ли мне выбирать между карьерой, финансовой независимостью и заботой о детях?  Всего несколько десятилетий назад большинство советских женщин не задавались этими вопросами. В предшествующую эпоху раннее материнство являлось безусловной ценностью и нормой. Сегодня многие современницы впервые в истории «нашей части света» имеют дело с феноменом «репродуктивного выбора». Данная книга является попыткой осмыслить новейшие общественные процессы, в результате которых практики и смыслы материнства претерпевают серьезные изменения. Материалом для исследования послужили интервью с современницами из России, Беларуси и Украины — матерями и женщинами, стоящими перед «репродуктивным выбором», а также заметные произведения советской и постсоветской культуры, в центре которых находится материнская идеология. В популярной форме автор описывает и объясняет процессы, в результате которых «цена» заботы о детях неуклонно возрастает, превращая воспроизводство в «дорогостоящий проект», доступный не всем.

The individualization thesis links the period of late modernity with increases in individual freedom of choice. This paper problematizes this assumption based on the results of in-depth qualitative interviews with 18 mothers of children with disabilities. This research finds that while participants do express a desire for individualism, their lived realities do not reflect the experience of freedom of choice that individualization theorists discuss. While this paper acknowledges that individualization theorists recognize some structural constraint in individuals' lives, it argues that individualization theory, as it is currently conceptualized and implemented in research, imposes an exclusionary framework for examining the experiences of mothers. The level of choice and freedom that mothers of children with disabilities are able to exercise is heavily constrained by factors such as lack of institutional support and imposition of ‘good mother’ theory ultimately rendering the current concept of individualization as peripheral in their lives.

As digital cultures become more widespread and we find new technologies increasingly intertwined in our daily lives, it is important to study digital beginnings in order to make visible their materiality and potentiality. In this self-reflexive piece, I will contemplate emerging research methods, new technologies for parents and, more personally, the birth of my first child. The emphasis will be on two particular questions: 1) How might we research the user experience of applications?; 2) How do I situate myself in relation to my research now I am about to become a first-time mother?

Anthropology is a holistic science that targets the study of man in its social, cultural, economic, psychological, political,  geographical and ecological settings. Anthropology views major’s interventions in areas of health to be planned with the complete cognizance of cultural factors that largely effect the target populations regarding their participation in all such major interventions. The Social Impact Assessment (SIA) referred by Anthropology basically demand scientific verification of all such hurdles that may later on impede the acceleration of such heavy funded programs.

In this article we examine the ways discourses of risk manifested and played out within and across two groups of Australian mothers living in two large urban centres in Australia: the first comprised of mothers who had a pre-teen child diagnosed with an eating disorder (n = 13); the second of mothers who had a pre-teen child without the symptoms or diagnosis of an eating disorder (n = 13). In 2011 and 2012, we conducted in-depth interviews with the mothers in their homes on their ideas about health and their relationships with their children. An analysis of the data collected from these interviews indicated that having a pre-teen child diagnosed with an eating disorder had a decisive impact on how the mothers constituted and responded to risk. For mothers, who had a pre-teen child with an eating disorder, risk was intensified by bio-medical discourses. The particular intensifications of risk limited the ways in which mothers could act and often threatened to undermine their abilities as competent carers. By contrast, the mothers who did not have a pre-teen child with an eating disorder spoke about risk less directly, and with less sense of immediacy. Where these mothers acknowledged risk discourses particularly in regard to health, they were in a stronger position to negotiate them. Our analysis indicates that the ways in which mothers responded to risk is contingent on circumstances and contexts. Mothers’ responses to risk were related to the calculability of the risk and their perceived capacity to manage it.

Based on the research from my Master’s thesis, this article looks at the choices and experiences of ten BC queer couples’ births, early in the twenty-first century. It situates their births in a social context of some of the most queer-family-friendly policies in the world, as well as in a place where midwives have been able to practice legally throughout the province since 1998. I give an overview of three different types of births, from totally medical to totally natural, all the while recognizing that most families chose to experience something in between. In the end, it becomes clear that while I am talking about queer couples, there is nothing essentialist or universal about their choices or experiences. Instead, they offer insight into the everyday experiences, challenges, and choices facing most childbearing couples in British Columbia.

La intencionalitat d'aquest article és proposar que, en l'imaginari sociocultural, encara persisteixen creences que atorguen a les dones el rol de mers objectes reproductors de les exigències dels homes, siguin quests humans o divins, i esbossar com aquesta funció reproductora es recrea en el temps. La invenció de la categoria de simple recipient de la llavor del mascle que s'atribuïa a la dona, té un llarg recorregut històric que, contra el que podria esperar-se, en lloc d'anar eclipsant-se es manté viva el segle XXI. Òbviament, els discursos i processos són cada vegada més subtils i menys visibles, la qual cosa permet una contínua impregnació a nivell social de les ideologies que mantenen actives les creences i les seves pràctiques. I, amb això, la idealització de la maternitat com a destí de les dones.

Purpose - This article develops the methodological and intellectual approach taken in our co-authored book to explore the synergies and disconnections in the experience of being in the academy at different historical moments using the interrelationship between different feminisms in the context of our lived experiences as a mother and daughter whose experience of the academy has crossed second wave feminism into third wave. There have been significant demographic, cultural and legislative shifts, but our conversations demonstrate the endurance of imbalances of power and the continuing need for a feminist politics of difference which can engage with contemporary life in the academy

Design/methodology/approach - This is primarily a theoretical paper which adopts feminist approaches to reflection and dialogue. The article is designed to bring together lived experience across generations, feminist theories and methodologies and the implications for activism We use the device of I-Kath I-Sophie as part of an autoethnographic approach to the cross generational conversation

Findings - Far from being redundant we argue that feminist critiques of inequalities that are often manifest in women's invisibility and silence even in the academy in the twenty first century, there is still the need to support a politics of difference and to explore ways of giving women a voice. The persistence of inequalities means that feminist battles have not been entirely won We argue for dialogue between the feminisms of mothers and daughters.

Research limitations/implications - Feminist concepts and arguments from what has been called the second wave are still useful especially in relation to maintaining the category woman as a speaking subject who can engage in collective action

Practical implications - Our arguments support the continuation of spaces for women to share experience within the academy, for example in feminist reading groups and through women's networks

Originality/value - The article is original in its authorship , methodological approach to a conversation that crosses experience and theoretical frameworks across generations and in its support for a twentyfirst century politics of difference

What does ‘care’ mean in contemporary society? How are caring relationships practised in different contexts? What resources do individuals and collectives draw upon in order to care for, care with and care about themselves and others? How do such relationships and practices relate to broader social processes?

Care shapes people’s everyday lives and relationships and caring relations and practices influence the economies of different societies. This interdisciplinary book takes a nuanced and context-sensitive approach to exploring caring relationships, identities and practices within and across a variety of cultural, familial, geographical and institutional arenas. Grounded in rich empirical research and discussing key theoretical, policy and practice debates, it provides important, yet often neglected, international and cross-cultural perspectives. It is divided into four sections covering: caring within educational institutions; caring amongst communities and networks; caring and families; and caring across the life-course.

Contributing to broader theoretical, philosophical and moral debates associated with the ethics of care, citizenship, justice, relationality and entanglements of power, Critical Approaches to Care is an important work for students and academics studying caring and care work in the fields of health and social care, sociology, social policy, anthropology, education, human geography and politics.