Mojo Mom at the Motherlode Conference

I am leaving for Toronto this morning for the Motherlode Conference. I am excited! I'll be presenting two talks at this academic conference, my first in a long time. I'll blog from the road but this morning I am running around getting ready, so I thought I'd post the news release describing the conference. My talks are called, Motherhood as a journey to explore, not a ladder to climb and The Fall of the "Unencumbered Worker" and the Future of the Mothers' Movement.

In addition to providing a chance to meet many authors and scholars I've admired for a long time, this conference is exciting because it feels like the first intersecting loop with the academic road I was once on as a neuroscientist. I am grooving on being back in academia, for 4 days at least.

Motherhood issues the focus of major York U conference
Academics and activists discussing everything from babies to blogging

TORONTO, October 20, 2006 - The largest conference ever organized on the subject of motherhood will begin on Thursday in Toronto, with a name that reflects the size and scope of the project: “The Motherlode: A Complete Celebration of Motherhood.”

It is the 10th anniversary of the first international conference on motherhood organized in 1997 by professors Andrea O’Reilly and Nancy Mandell of York University’s Centre for Feminist Research. The response to that first conference led to the establishment of the Association for Research on Mothering (ARM), which now has more than 600 members in two dozen countries.

While previous ARM conferences focused on a particular motherhood theme or issue, the Motherlode conference will consider every imaginable motherhood issue, says O’Reilly, director of the association.

“This conference is very much interdisciplinary, with scholars from fields as varied as women’s studies, business and the visual arts. “We will have academics and activists discussing how best to meet the needs of mothers – particularly those who are disadvantaged. We will also be addressing topics that have not been researched enough – for example, mothers and HIV, mothering children with disabilities, reproductive health, teen mothers, and raising bi-racial children.”

ARM, which was founded in 1998, has since established both a journal and, more recently, the first feminist scholarly press on motherhood, and it has hosted annual conferences focused on topics such as mothering and work, and motherhood and sexuality.

This year’s conference will not only consolidate motherhood studies as a vibrant academic discipline, but will take it up a notch, says O’Reilly. There are 200 academics and activists from more than 10 countries scheduled to speak at the conference, on topics ranging from concepts of motherhood in rural Brazil to blogs about motherhood. More than 20 visual and performance artists, poets, writers and storytellers will present their work during a gala literary night, and there are a number of interesting plenary sessions planned, including “Motherhood, Representation and Public Policy” for example, and “Motherwork: Challenging the Status Quo.”

Some of the leading presenters at the conference include:
• Andrea Doucet (Carleton University, author of Do Men Mother?)
• Ann Douglas (author of The Mother of All Pregnancy Books)
• Andrea O’Reilly (York University, author of Rocking the Cradle: Thoughts on
Feminism, Motherhood and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering)
• Ann Crittenden (author of The Price of Motherhood)

Academics, social workers, activists, midwives, policymakers and others will take part in the conference, discussing experiences of motherhood in countries as varied as China, Uganda, India, France and Australia. A few of the many
topics at the conference are: post-partum depression, new reproductive technologies, raising transgendered children, fetal alcohol disorder, sex trade workers, mothering and globalization, and adoption.