Description:
Personal and Cultural Shadows of Late Motherhood explores the topic of delayed motherhood from a Jungian psychoanalytic perspective, using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. It provides a unique contribution to our understanding of the pressures faced by women today on the topic of delayed motherhood.
Review Quotes:
'I believe there are ways in which we can know ourselves and those who bring us the important stories, songs, and narratives we need to better live our multi-dimensional lives. Maryann Barone-Chapman in Personal and Cultural Shadows of Late Motherhood, provides us with such a rich and embracing narrative.' --Foreword by Fanny Brewster, Ph.D., M.F.A., LP, an analytic member of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, Professor of Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Author, Archetypal Grief: Slavery's Legacy of Intergenerational Child Loss (2018).
'Through this innovative study, Dr. Barone-Chapman explores the unconscious processes that necessitate a shift in midlife for women to seek a procreative identity. Psychosocial aspects of delayed motherhood are thoroughly researched through related literature, particularly the evidence of a historical patriarchal bias towards women, in psychoanalysis. Transforming Jung's Word Association Experiment (WAE) into a key feminist research methodology for accessing personal, cultural, and collective intergenerational complexes within delayed motherhood, Dr. Barone-Chapman revitalizes and modernizes Jung's important research tool for examining unconscious complexes and their symptomology. This book makes an important contribution to feminist post-Jungian studies and will be an invaluable resource in furthering interdisciplinary studies into motherhood, psychoanalysis, and WAE.' --Elizabeth Brodersen, PhD, Accredited Training Analyst and Supervisor, CGJI Zürich. Author, Taboo: Personal and Collective Representations, Origin and Positioning within Cultural Complexes (2019)
'Maryann Barone-Chapman has written a fascinating book about delayed motherhood, including (as she says) its "idealization, denigration, avoidance, and ambivalence," in psychological significance. From the personal to the archetypal, and from the literal to the symbolic, the meanings associated with delayed reproduction in women are compelling. Barone-Chapman has covered them all. Postponing childbirth and being able to become pregnant through new bio-technical means have implications for women all over the planet, but especially for those who are educated, and determined to lead their own lives. If you are a woman considering your own reproductive possibilities, or a clinician treating women struggling with infertility, indecision, and/or fear of decision-making, this book will help you see the complexity of women's newfound "autonomy." I very much appreciated the depth of Barone-Chapman's inquiry and her desire to see motherhood in a new register.' --Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., Author, Love Between Equals: Relationship as a Spiritual Path (2019)
'This important book demonstrates the unconscious complexities of late motherhood, moving beyond any blame game towards a far-reaching understanding of the situation facing an increasing number of women today. Highly recommended.' --Valerie Walkderdine, Distinguished Research Professor, Cardiff University
'Barone-Chapman majestically invites us to rethink what a mother complex is. Her research into the layers of a woman's decision to wait until midlife to become a mother reveals how consciousness grows from frustration and conflicts suffered with a trickster's ability to turn double binds around. This ground-breaking work points to the happy surprise of a child who can recognize how much more there is in the mother when women dream their agency forward to generate lives that are genuinely chosen.' --John Beebe, M.D., past president, C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, Author, Integrity in Depth