ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the book mapping the literature on motherhood in the context of the development of western modernity. It takes shape around a series of theoretical and empirical questions: What is the relationship between liberal individualism and the institution of motherhood in modern western society? What are the early modern and late modern ‘sexual contracts’ and how have they shaped the terms of women’s participation in civil society? Through a broad overview of the interdisciplinary literature I outline my theoretical argument that feminist analyses of modernity typically concentrate on women’s sequestration or, alternatively, on their emancipation without examining the complex, mutually constitutive relation between the two. I make the argument that modern women’s freedom is inextricably linked with their sequestration and that this is the deeper contradiction at the heart of the dual-role problematic. This is the theoretical basis for exploring the empirical questions: If, as a group, women have moved out of the home over the last forty years and this has precipitated dual-role conflicts when (or if) they become mothers, how are some mothers challenging and reconstructing these conflicts? How, in effect, are mothers ‘rewriting the sexual contract’? And what role does maternal absence play in shifting gendered dynamics in the home and in society at large?
