The New Motherhoods: Patterns of Early Child Care in Contemporary Culture

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

The New Motherhoods: Patterns of Early Child Care in Contemporary Culture offers innovative perspectives in psychotherapy that accommodate emerging pathways to parenthood, changing roles of mothers, and evolving patterns of family structure. Moms come in all shapes and sizes, and psychoanalytic developmental theory could be modified to better embrace modern mothers and todays childcare practices. In this volume, distinguished clinical psychologists and psychoanalysts offer divergent conceptual perspectives on what shapes contemporary mothering, including the increasing number of single mothers in our society, the additional challenges faced by immigrating mothers, how technology affects the parent-child relationship, and gender identity in families today. Incorporating the most current research along with engaging clinical vignettes, The New Motherhoods provides mental health professionals with an invaluable collection of insights into modern motherhood and its essential role in the care and healthy development of children.

Reviews

This book provides a panoramic view of contemporary motherhood and its challenges. The authors demonstrate the compassion, empathy, and interventions that clinicians need in order to help diverse family constellations. In addition, this book tackles current problematic topics such as the tiger mom, helicopter parenting, and the over-use of technology. What a wonderful addition to the growing literature. -- Ann G. Smolen, author of Mothering Without a Home: Attachment Representations and Behaviors of Homeless Mothers and Children and Six Children: Child Psychopathology and its Treatment
This exceptional volume reappraises the diverse concerns of contemporary motherhood in this brilliant offering of collected papers. The authors have offered a new perspective on mothering embedded in the unique social dimensions of our time by offering us explorations on gender identity, adoption, surrogacy, immigration, socio-cultural embedding and the evolution of an autonomous self within the reciprocity of mothering. This edited volume suggests a revision of our frameworks for defining and signifying maternity within the intrapsychic and externally driven iterations of our times. -- Jaswant Guzder, MD, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University

Author Bio

Salman Akhtar, MD, is professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia.