BAD MOTHERS: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America

In the past quarter century, bad mothers have moved noticeably toward center stage in American culture. While Susan Smith will eventually fade from the tabloids, the monster mother that she represents has a storied and long history. Mothers have been blamed for a host of problems, from autism in children (due to chilly refrigerator mothers), to homosexuality (attributed to smothering moms), to welfare dependency and crime (caused by black matriarchs and single mothers).

Some mothers are not good mothers. No one can deny that. There are women who neglect their children, abuse them, and fail to provide them with proper psychological nurturance. While such mothers have always stimulated the American imagination, the definition of what constitutes a bad mother has expanded significantly in recent years. Indeed, with a distinct minority of American families living the two-parent, one-worker lifestyle once considered the norm, we all face the discomfiting question, Do most mothers now qualify as bad mothers in one way or another?

Drawing together the work of prominent scholars and journalists, Bad Mothers considers such diverse topics as the mother-blaming theories of psychological and medical experts, bad mothers in the popular media, the scapegoating of mothers in politics, and the punitive approach to bad mothers by social service and legal authorities. The volume also includes the stories of individual bad mothers, from sterilization survivor Willie Mallory to rock star Courtney Love. Ably edited by two leading scholars, Bad Mothers marks an important contribution to the literature on motherhood.