Mothers without Their Children. Editors: Charlotte Beyer and Andrea Lea Robertson. (Bradford: Demeter Press, 2019. pp. 284. $34.95)

• Main Author: Cheryl R. Hopson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Library of Humanities 2019-11-01
• Series: Studies in the Maternal
• Online Access: https://www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk/article/id/4289/

Is a mother a mother without her children? As a follow-up, how do we as a society conceive of the mother without her child that is without the very being who “unequivocally define[s] a mother as a mother” (11)? These provocative questions regarding the figure of the mother without her child frame the collection Mothers without Their Children, edited by Charlotte Beyer and Andrea Lea Robertson, and published by Demeter Press. The resounding response of contributors to these overarching questions is yes, and it is complicated. Both Beyer and Robertson, editors as well as writer/theorists, admit to a fascination with the figure of the mother without her children across historical times, and representationally. They write in the introduction to the collection that with the exception of motherhood scholars Rosie Jackson, whose work considers mothers who leave or live without their children, and Elaine Tuttle Hansen, whose 1997 Mothers without Their Children, from whom editors borrow their title, explores literary representations of mothers without their children; theirs is the only work to do so from a feminist intersectional, transnational, and multimodal perspective. Mothers without Their Children is a compelling and thoroughgoing read. Accessible to academic and lay audiences alike, the collection is by turns scholarly and literary, and will undoubtedly draw the attention and critical engagement of motherhood scholars, both nationally and internationally.