Mothers, Mothering, and COVID-19: Dispatches from the Pandemic [Paperback]

There has been little public discussion on the devastating impact of Covid-19 on mothers, or a public acknowledgement that mothering is frontline work in this pandemic. This collection of 45 chapters and with 70 contributors is the first to explore the impact of the pandemic on mothers’ care and wage labour in the context of employment, schooling, communities, families, and the relationships of parents and children. With a global perspective and from the standpoint of single, partnered, queer, racialized, Indigenous, economically disadvantaged, disabled, and birthing mothers, the volume examines the increasing complexity and demands of childcare, domestic labour, elder care, and home schooling under the pandemic protocols; the intricacies and difficulties of performing wage labour at home; the impact of the pandemic on mothers’ employment; and the strategies mothers have used to manage the competing demands of care and wage labour under COVID-19. By way of creative art, poetry, photography, and creative writing along with scholarly research, the collection seeks to make visible what has been invisibilized and render audible what has been silenced: the care and crisis of motherwork through and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Fiona Joy Greenis a feminist mother and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg who believes in the power of revolutionary feminist motherwork. She’s interested in the agency of children and mothers, in gender socialization and gender identity, and in the ability of matroreform and feminist motherlines to contribute to feminist theorizing and praxis. She’s the sole author ofPracticing Feminist Mothering(Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011) and co-editor of three books addressing feminist parenting and maternal pedagogies published by Demeter Press.Dr. Andrea O’Reillyis Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies l³ç