Description: Mothers, Community, and Friendship is an anthology that explores the complexities of mothering/motherhood, communities, and friendship from across interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives. The chapters in this text not only examine how communities and friendship shape and influence the various spectrums of motherhood, but also analyze how communities and friendship are necessary for mothers. Through personal, reflective, critical essays, and ethnographies, this collection situates the ways mothers are connected to communities and how these relationships forms, such as in mothering groups and maternal friendships. By calling attention to these central and current topics, Mothers, Community, and Friendship represents how communities and friendship become means of empowerment for mothers.
Review Quotes: "Motherhood is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks faced by human beings - without formal training, without explicit guidelines, without a map. As explored in this collection, motherhood is made viable, sustainable, and joyous when mothers find solace, support, and solidarity through friendship and community, near and far, formal and informal. In fact, it is friendship and community that makes us stronger, less alone, and open to the universalities of motherhood while being fully cognizant of the disparities and differences. My greatest wish is that this message reaches all mothers, everywhere. We need each other. Together, we are stronger." --Michelann Parr is professor in the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University and co-editor of Writing Mothers: Narrative Acts of Care, Redemption, and Transformation