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Mother's hand holding baby's hand on the cover of "Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America".

On Rachel Louise Moran’s "Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America"

A new book challenges the discursive ignorance about the condition.
by Audrey Wu Clark via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on May 25, 2025
Illustration of lady liberty balancing housework and child care, holding cash instead of a torch.

The World That ‘Wages for Housework’ Wanted

The 1970s campaign fought to get women paid for their work in the home—and envisioned a society built to better support motherhood.
by Lily Meyer via The Atlantic on May 23, 2025
Black and white lithograph drawing of a white man dragging away a Black woman as another white man holds her baby.

Maternal Grief in Black and White

Examining enslaved mothers and antislavery literature on the eve of war.
by Cassandra Berman via Nursing Clio on September 22, 2022
Picture of a worried young mother holding a sleeping newborn baby.
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Whose Breast is Best?: "Mom-shaming" in the British Atlantic World

Claims that mothers lacking formula should just breastfeed repeats a centuries-old mistake.
by Laura Earls via Made By History on May 18, 2022
Tintype photograph of a child supported by it's mothers arm.

The Hidden Mothers of Family Photos

The female image is ubiquitous on social media, yet when it comes to pictures of parents with their children many moms feel disappeared.
by Lauren Collins via The New Yorker on February 12, 2022
Photo: "Mother Bird Protecting Her Young"

Motherhood at the End of the World

"My job as your mother is to tell you these stories differently, and to tell you other stories that don’t get told at school.”
by Julietta Singh via The Paris Review on September 1, 2021
Black mother holding baby

The Persistent Joy of Black Mothers

Characterized throughout American history as symbols of crisis, trauma, and grief, these women reject those narratives through world-making of their own.
by Leah Wright Rigueur via The Atlantic on August 11, 2021
African American mother and children in peach vignette, c. 1885.

A Mother’s Influence

How African American women represented Black motherhood in the early nineteenth century.
by Crystal Webster via Lapham’s Quarterly on June 9, 2021
George Washington riding into town while a crowd cheers.

Mary Ball Washington, George’s Single Mother, Often Gets Overlooked – but she's Well Worth Saluting

Martha Saxton dives into the life of the mother of George Washington and how historians have misrepresented her in the past.
by Martha Saxon via The Conversation on May 7, 2021
A hand holding the hand of a baby doll.

The Strange Tradition of “Practice Babies” at 20th-Century Women’s Colleges

A photo archive shows college coeds vacuuming, preparing baby bottles, diapering babies, and generally practicing at motherhood.
by Megan Culhane Galbraith via Hyperallergic on May 2, 2021

Whose Milk? Changing US Attitudes toward Maternal Breastfeeding

Current debates about breastfeeding highlight the political nature of changing cultural norms about motherhood.
by Kimberly B. Sherman via Nursing Clio on September 19, 2018

The Rise of ‘Mama’

Like most cultural shifts in language, the rise of white, upper-middle class women who call themselves ‘mama’ seemed to happen slowly, and then all at once.
by Elissa Strauss via Longreads on May 10, 2015
Jerri Cobb with a space capsule.

The Case for Female Astronauts: Reproducing Americans in the Final Frontier

Imagining a future that separates women from their biological identity seems so “drastic” as to be unimaginable—in 1962 and today.
by Lisa Ruth Rand via The Appendix on July 15, 2014
Document about enslaved baby born to Priscilla.

Active Silence, Archival Presence, and An Enslaved Mother's Legal Knowledge

An enslaved woman’s refusal to name her child challenged Pennsylvania’s gradual abolition laws and left behind a rare archival trace of resistance.
by Cory James Young via The Panorama on June 30, 2025
Aimee Semple McPherson addresses a crowd.

An Eerily Familiar 20th-Century Hoax

Aimee Semple McPherson created a wildly popular personal brand as a preacher—then suddenly disappeared.
by Dorothy Fortenberry via The Atlantic on May 12, 2025
A woman holding her head in distress, and a naked woman sitting on an illustration of a toy car pulled by string.

Frog-Free

The demystification of pregnancy.
by Erin Maglaque via London Review of Books on April 17, 2025
Trad wife dresses in six different colors.

My Babies Are Richer Than Yours: On the Lie of the Online Tradwife

A new theory of the leisure class influencer.
by Lauren Carroll Harris via Literary Hub on January 10, 2025
A group of children spinning on a merry-go-round.

The Parenting Panic

Contrary to both far right and mainstream center-left, there’s no epidemic of chosen childlessness.
by Aaron Bady via Boston Review on October 30, 2024
Crystal Eastman
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Crystal Eastman Plans for After the Election

A reading from 1920 on the fights that follow the 19th Amendment: “Now at last we can begin.”
by Crystal Eastman, Bruce W. Dearstyne via HNN on October 29, 2024
Jane Addams.

‘Childless Cat Ladies’ Have Long Contributed to the Welfare of American Children − and the Nation

Criticisms of women without biological children define motherhood too narrowly, as history reveals the many forms of motherhood.
by Anya Jabour via The Conversation on October 21, 2024
Painting by Mary Cassatt titled "Mother and Child (Goodnight Hug)".

Beyond “Baby Blues”

“Postpartum depression” encompasses various debilitating changes in mood that can occur after giving birth. How did that language come to be?
by Rachel Louise Moran, Jess McAllen via The Baffler on September 30, 2024
A drawing of an angry, long-haired cat holding a sign that reads "Vote for Shes."

A Purrrrfect Political Storm

Crazy cat ladies have come to dominate this election season. It’s hardly the first time.
by Natalie Kinkade via JSTOR Daily on September 25, 2024
Foggy hills in Appalachia.

Love in the Time of Hillbilly Elegy: On JD Vance’s Appalachian Grift

Justin B. Wymer knows a snake when he sees one.
by Justin B. Wymer via Literary Hub on August 27, 2024
The Jersey Devil, a winged creature with horns and a goat-like head, amidst trees wrapped with vines.

Birthing the Jersey Devil

A mythical creature that lurks in the pinelands of New Jersey has served as a reminder of the horrors that result when reproductive freedoms are destroyed.
by Katherine Churchill via JSTOR Daily on July 3, 2024
Misery and Fortune of Women (1930).

The Lost Abortion Plot

Power and choice in the 1930s novel.
by Julia Cooke via The Point on June 11, 2024
Civil War soldiers on horseback with pistols.

The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth Goes On

A new television miniseries depicts the pursuit of Lincoln’s killer. But the public appetite for tales about the chase began even as it was happening.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on March 11, 2024
Image from the filmstrip, showing a grieved woman with her head in her hands, being comforted by a man standing beside her

Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Hands of the Red Scared

Again and again, a fervant British anticommunist's filmstrip of the novel shows images of women in states of distress.
by Georgina Blackburn via Commonplace on February 6, 2024
A still from The Exorcist of Chris, played by Ellen Burstyn, standing next to a priest.

Exorcising American Domestic Violence

The Exorcist in 1973 and 2023.
by Eleanor Johnson via Public Books on December 13, 2023
Betty Friedan circa 1975.

What Betty Friedan Knew

Judge the author of the “Feminine Mystique” not by the gains she made, but by her experience.
by Hermione Hoby via The New Republic on December 1, 2023
A drawing of the outside of colorful windows at night.

Upper West Side Cult

In 1950, the Sullivinian Institute was created to push the boundaries of psychoanalysis. By 1980, its therapists and patients had become a small paramilitary.
by James Lasdun via London Review of Books on July 27, 2023
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