Good enough mothering?
Subtitle: feminist perspectives on lone motherhood
By: edited by Elizabeth Bortolaia Silva.
Contributors: Silva, Elizabeth Bortolaia.
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1996
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 241
Subjects: Single mothers; Motherhood; Single mothers -- Government policy; Feminism
Description: Lone mothers and their children currently comprise almost 20 per cent of all families with dependent children in Britain. Their numbers have nearly trebled since 1970. Politicians and the media have focused on them as a symptom and cause of a broader social breakdown, yet little is known about the causes, consequences and conditions of lone motherhood.

Good Enough Mothering? provides accounts of historical patterns of mothering and ideologies of the family, cross-national comparisons of policies and experiences of lone mothers in developed and developing countries. It analyses recent social policies and legislative changes in family law, the Child Support Act and discourses about the creation of an underclass in Britain and the USA.

This edited collection, with contributions from leading academics in their fields, builds on feminist scholarship on motherhood and 'the family' and contributes significantly to the feminist and social policy literature on lone mothers. Good Enough Mothering? will be essential reading for all students of social policy, women's studies and sociology.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-231) and index.
Table of contents: title: The transformation of mothering / Elizabeth Bortolaia Silva; title: Deconstructing motherhood / Carol Smart; title: Mothering and social responsibilities in a cross-cultural perspective / Henrietta L. Moore; title: Diversity in patterns of parenting and household formation / Carolyn Baylies; title: Mothers, workers, wives : comparing policy approaches to supporting lone mothers / Jane Millar; title: Rational economic man or lone mothers in context? : the uptake of paid work / Rosalind Edwards and Simon Duncan; title: Parental responsibility : the reassertion of private patriarchy? / Lorraine M. Fox Harding; title: Social anxieties about lone motherhood and ideologies of the family : two sides of the same coin / Mary McIntosh; title: Debates on disruption : what happens to the children of lone parents / Louis Burghes; title: Social constructions of lone motherhood : a case of competing discourses / Anne Phoenix; title: Unpalatable choices and inadequate families : lone mothers and the underclass debate / Sasha Roseneil and Kirk Mann.