A Review of: “O'Brien Hallstein, D. Lynn. White Feminists and Contemporary Maternity: Purging Matrophobia.”

O'Brien Hallstein, D. Lynn. White Feminists and Contemporary Maternity." Purging Matrophobia. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 192 pp. $80.00 (hardcover). ISBN-10:0230 60 8639. White second wave feminism has recently come under fire from within and outside of the academy. While our past certainly bears critique, so too does it provide a foundation from which contemporary feminism can still draw strength. From this premise emerges D. Lynn O'Brien Hallstein's White Feminists and Contemporary Maternity: Purging Matrophobia. O'Brien Hallstein analyzes White second wave feminism and contemporary feminism with fresh eyes, critically following the development and impact of matrophobia in the field. Through a series of complicated yet ultimately convincing arguments, O'Brien Hallstein reveals how the underlying matrophobia in so much of feminist thinking divides women from one another and from themselves, forcing the potentially liberating critical subject position of mother into the shadows and structuring feminist works around an either/or binary analysis that focuses only on one side. Deeply grounded in feminist literature, this book makes important strides for rethinking the ways in which feminists handle the institution of motherhood, the empowering potential of mothering, and the complicated subject position of mother. To begin, O'Brien Hallstein highlights the definition of matrophobia as the fear of becoming one's mother. She then links the history of matrophobia in feminism to the wave metaphor, the sister metaphor, and the (mis)appropriation of Adrienne Rich's ideas in her influential book, Of Woman Born." Motherhood as Experience and Institution. Finally, O'Brien Hallstein contends that silence about mothering prevents feminism from moving beyond matrophobia. O'Brien Hallstein's historical outline of how matrophobia developed is one of the great strengths of this book. She begins by explaining how feminists in the 1960s identified with suffragists of the late 1800s/early 1900s for political strength and legitimacy and then disidentified themselves from their own feminist mothers because the suffragists didn't go far enough or were placated by the vote. Their initial self-positioning as a "second wave" of the feminist movement was promoted as "new," "real," and ultimately "better" version of feminism (p. 29). At the same time, feminists developed the sister metaphor, seeking to solidify the image of women working together as connected equals. While the metaphor intended to position all women as equals, the Sister System worked to reject mothers and mothering as a theoretical and political location of critique. Because the Sister System promoted a clear and consistent differentiation and separation from first wave feminism, it was inherently matrophobic. Thus as the Sister System gained momentum, mothers and mothering as a specific critical position were rejected. At a time when women's institutionalized roles as mothers began to undergo critique, the silencing and rejection of "mother" as a political location of critique within feminism increased. In 1976, Rich's Of Woman Born made the landmark distinction between "motherhood" as the oppressive institution and "mothering" as the potentially empowering act of women. While acknowledging and admiring the power of Rich's distinction, O'Brien Hallstein claims that this distinction created an either/or binary in feminist work; we either focus on the oppressive institution of motherhood or the empowering experience of mothering, and few works successfully focus on both. When we focus on only one side of a binary, we effectively silence the other. In this way, appropriations of Of Woman Born worked to deepen matrophobia in feminism. While this text might "talk" to anyone who criticizes feminism as antimotherhood or scholars interested in mothering, the sophisticated and intricate nature of the arguments are for readers with some knowledge of the history of feminist theory. …