ABSTRACT
Maternal peace politics begins in a myth: mothers are peacemakers without power. War is men’s business; mothers are outsiders or victims; their business is life. As feminists insist that women and men share fairly the burdens and pleasures of battle, many young women expect their lives to include, without contradiction, both fighting and mothering. The feminist assumption is that gender divisions of work, pleasure, power, and sensibility are socially created, detrimental to women and, to a lesser degree, to men, and therefore can and should be changed. The feminist soldier heroine may be most perfectly represented by a young woman with a baby in her arms and a gun over her shoulder, although an armed girl dressed as and sometimes passing for a comely man is a close second. The confrontation of mothers and feminists is deeply beneficial to mothering. A feminist mother becomes increasingly clear-sighted about the violences she has suffered or inflicted and increasingly able to resist them.
