Introduction

Abstract

In 2005, Newsweek devoted its cover story to exploring how contemporary women are managing their lives as second wave beneficiaries once they become mothers. The feature article opens with the following question: “What happened when the girls who had it all became mothers?” (Newsweek). At the heart of this query is a fundamentally important feminist question: How have the changes brought about by white second wave feminism impacted (or not) women’s experiences once they become mothers? While the Newsweek story does not address the subject as a specifically feminist topic, contemporary feminists are beginning to grapple with this question.

Revision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a critical direction—is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. (Adrienne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken” 540)

One motivation for the recent surge of scholarship on the second wave is the renewed importance of understanding its [feminism’s] problems and possibilities during a period when many of its gains are simultaneously taken for granted and under attack. (Bonnie Dow 91)