Of woman born:

Motherhood as Experience and Institution

reviewer: Anne-marie Taplin

month entered: 02/2007

author: Adrienne Rich

year of publication: 1977

review:

Radical in its time, this ground-breaking book still packs a punch almost 30 years later. I got my copy on the internet (www.Abebooks.com) for a song, after hearing the first paragraph (see below) on a radio program. It’s described as “political, scholarly and passionate” and “fierce, urgent and rare”. It lies somewhere between a memoir and a sociological text exploring the role of woman as mother throughout history. It’s disappointing that much of the book still rings true despite the ‘progress’ of feminism in the past three decades. This book touched my heart and mind in a way that no other book on the subject of motherhood has done, particularly in its exploration of the ‘darker side’ of motherhood, and of the relationship between mothers and sons, and mothers and daughters. An amazing book that every mother should read.

Excerpt:

“All human life on this planet is born of woman. The one unifying, incontrovertible experience shared by all women and men is that months-long period we spent unfolding inside a woman’s body. Because young humans remain dependent upon nurture for a much longer period than other mammals, and because of the division of labour long established in human groups, where the women not only bear and suckle but are assigned almost total responsibility for children, most of us first know both love and disappointment, power and tenderness, in the person of a woman.”

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