Motherhood And Space

This interdisciplinary collection explores the complex ways motherhood is experienced by studying the concrete and imaginary spaces mothers inhabit. The authors examine locations for birth, negotiations of domesticity, institutional framings of the mother's world, and maternal metaphors in art and popular culture. Using conceptions of space as a common lens, these essays articulate the interplay between motherhood as a cultural construction and motherhood as a lived experience. The collection as a whole reveals how the spaces of motherhood are varied, changing, and politically charged.

Motherhood and Space is a collection on the spatial dimensions of motherhood. Engaging both theoretical and empirical perspectives, a set of essays describe the intersection of space and gender across a variety of contexts. Both familiar and unexpected territories are explored, such as the architecture of maternity wards, the contemporary idea of the birthplace, and a critical examination of nationalism in Irish contraceptive law. Essays expand the theoretical framework of feminist thought into the tangible and spatial world, from the intimacy of the home to the public world of the workplace. The collective contention of the contributors is that the physical settings of many contemporary debates over gender and maternity impose their own conditions apart from those portrayed by feminist theorists.