Pleasures and gains: contradictions and difficulties

Abstract

The last two chapters of this book attempt to integrate the concerns raised in the initial chapters and in the interview material. Here I ask how ‘feminist mothers’ have constructed their lives — how much scope they have had within societal structures and cultures to find spaces within which to operate according to alternative ideologies. What is it like trying to live according to values outside the mainstream of society? What are the pleasures and gains, and what are the contradictions and difficulties when working out how the personal is political, when trying to find a voice, to become a subject, to defy subordination in a capitalist, sexist, racist society?