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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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.

Whose Milk? Changing US Attitudes toward Maternal Breastfeeding

Current debates about breastfeeding highlight the political nature of changing cultural norms about motherhood.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Misery and Fortune of Women (1930).

The Lost Abortion Plot

Power and choice in the 1930s novel.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nurse feeding baby milk in a bottle.

The Milk Banks of New York

Milk banks, a successor concept to wet nursing, are a little discussed part of the contemporary landscape of infant care.
Barbara Antmann, whose sister was a Sullivanian, outside one of their buildings.

The Upper West Side Cult That Hid in Plain Sight

In the sixties and seventies, the Sullivanian Institute had a winning sales pitch for young New Yorkers: parties, sex, low rent, and affordable therapy.
Knitted baby booties.

Civil War Surprises: We Didn't Know She Was Pregnant

During the Civil War, women secretly enlisted as men in the Union Army. No one suspected a thing...until they gave birth.

2026 and the Role of Women

"Women of the Republic," published in 1980, has introduced generations to the role of women in the American Revolution and the possibilities of women’s history.
Photographs of a family sitting at table, a woman in a crowd, and parents holding signs of support at a pride parade.

How One Mother’s Love for Her Gay Son Started a Revolution

In the sixties and seventies, fighting for the rights of queer people was considered radical activism. To Jeanne Manford, it was just part of being a parent.
Baby in an old wicker stroller.

The Imperative to Buy the Best Stroller

The baby stroller is only the most visible symbol of the ethos of consumer capitalism that saturates American pregnancy and parenthood.

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