Help Us Stay Paywall-Free

Democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Help sustain it with a tax-deductible donation today.

May 10, 2021

Pandemic Moms. Trans Moms. Marxist Moms. Robot Moms.

—and those who wish they could be mothers. Our annual Mother’s Day reading list.

In 2020 many families were stretched to the brink. Parents scrambled to continue working their jobs under rapidly changing and often dangerous conditions, all while having to care for their children as schools and daycares shuttered practically overnight. As Anne L. Alstott wrote in our pages a year ago, the heaviest burden fell on mothers—especially the eight million single ones raising children alone. These mothers had to face a near-impossible choice between caring for their children and staying afloat financially.

But the conditions that led to such decisions were set long before the pandemic arrived in the United States. “The seeming impossibility of the situation is not an unfortunate byproduct of an unforeseen global health crisis,” wrote Julie Kohler in 2020. “It is the inevitable result of an economic worldview that has methodically shifted more and more costs onto families’ shoulders under a façade of ‘family values.’ Neoliberalism has caused the family structure to become, along with race and gender, one of the prime sources of inequality in the United States.”

Today’s Mother’s Day reading list thus doles out a dose of realism, outlining the ways families have been given short shrift this past year. But it’s not without hope and imagination too—especially our interview with Silvia Federici. “Every woman is a working women,” the famed feminist activist argues, making the case that even stay-at-home moms are part of capitalist production and thus should receive wages. Elsewhere, three short stories provide some escapism, while archival essays on a range of topics round off the list. From mail-order robot moms to trans moms to poet moms, the picks below put the varied lives of mothers front and center.

We also recognize those women who wish they could be mothers but who have reproductive health issues that prevent them from conceiving. In the lead essay from our Summer 2018 book Once and Future Feminist, Merve Emre traces the history of assisted reproduction from the first artificial womb to contemporary IVF treatments, asking whether everyone with a uterus could be emancipated by such technologies and critiquing our obsession with the “natural.”

Society relies on the unpaid, invisible work of parents—mostly mothers—to care for children and to buffer kids from trauma and stress. Supporting that work during COVID-19 requires direct cash support to families.
Anne L. Alstott
Neoliberalism rests on the myth that “good” families can provide for their own without public support.
Julie Kohler

Amid widespread indifference toward the most vulnerable, even small acts of kindness can make a difference.

Michael McColly

Balancing work-life pressures is often considered the holy grail, but men can still opt out of these policies. To move the needle on gender inequality, the state needs to take more coercive action. 

Gina Schouten
Fiction

When bees around the world exhibit a frightening new behavior, a researcher takes comfort in a familiar hive. Short Story

JR Fenn
Fiction

Once I learned of the existence of mothers, I decided to order one for myself.

JR Fenn

Silvia Federici interviewed by Jill Richards.

Silvia Federici, Jill Richards
Fiction

A mother is a mother, regardless of the latest information regarding her children.

Sarah Bruni
Fiction
Winner of the Fall 2019 Aura Estrada Short Story Contest.
Sabrina Helen Li

Elisabether Badinter blames "naturalism" for all-consuming motherhood, but she leaves the real culprits off the hook.

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
Fiction

Motherhood can be a crushing disappointment.

Domenica Ruta
Stephanie Burt

When your father is trans, memoir is both personal and political.

Judith Levine

Forum

Feminism needs better reproductive strategies.

Merve Emre

Forum

Stay-at-home mothering is bad for mothers, their kids, and women’s equality.

Nancy J. Hirschmann

Our weekly themed Reading Lists compile the best of Boston Review’s archive. Sign up for our newsletters to get them straight to your inbox before they appear online.

Boston Review is nonprofit and reader funded.

We believe in the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a more just world. That’s why we’re committed to keeping our website free and open to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. But we can’t do it without the financial support of our readers.

Help sustain a public space for collective reasoning and imagination, without ads or paywalls:

Become a supporting reader today.

Get Our Newsletter

Sign up to get vital reading on politics, literature, and more sent straight to your inbox.

Donate to support work like this:

Most Recent

Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix discuss their new book, Solidarity: The Past, Present, And Future of a World-Changing Idea

Astra Taylor, Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Aziz Rana
Poetry

a sunset makes a sound doesn't it
I learned    too late

James Fujinami Moore

The Supreme Court’s latest bid to control agencies like the EPA—and Congress itself.

Lisa Heinzerling

We are teaming up this spring to offer a year of both magazines.

Use code DISSENT when you purchase a print BR membership.

Act fast: offer ends March 31!

Use code DISSENT when you purchase a print BR membership. Offer ends March 31.