Getting the Book: This book is out of print, but copies of all four editions (two in the US, two in the UK) are often found at Powells and other vendors online, in various conditions and at various prices, some so low that shipping costs more than the book. This is humbling but funny — and useful. Blessedly, it’s also in libraries.
Books
What if your motherGrace Paley's Life Stories
Every Mother's Son
Our Mother's Daughters
Ash Creek Series
POEMSFamily Business
- commentary
In 1971, I gave birth to my son and began immediately to worry about whether it would be possible – for me, the mommy – to counteract the forces of conventional male socialization. By the time he was seven years old, I had finished my first book, which was written from a daughter's perspective, and decided to write from the mother’s point of view about the mother/son relationship. I thought doing the book research would help me figure out if we had a chance, any chance at all. Could mothers withstand or at least lessen the fearsome impact of patriarchy and male supremacy? And, at the same time, raise our boys to be real people (their real selves, my son said), people with full human possibility alive in them? Every Mother’s Son was the first feminist analysis of the mother/son relationship published in the USA.
In 1971, I gave birth to my son and began immediately to worry about whether it would be possible – for me, the mommy – to counteract the forces of conventional male socialization. By the time he was seven years old, I had finished my first book, which was written from a daughter's perspective, and decided to write from the mother’s point of view about the mother/son relationship. I thought doing the book research would help me figure out if we had a chance, any chance at all. Could mothers withstand or at least lessen the fearsome impact of patriarchy and male supremacy? And, at the same time, raise our boys to be real people (their real selves, my son said), people with full human possibility alive in them? Every Mother’s Son was the first feminist analysis of the mother/son relationship published in the USA.
- excerpt
Mothers … raising male children … confront … the pattern which has produced nonurturant, emotionally unresponsive, highly competitive and materially oriented males … given to verbal and physical violence, to the domination and frequent abuse of children and women …. We’ve been trapped with our sons, imprisoned in false ways of being … by a culture whose very language turns mother into mocking profanity, son into demeaning insult. But if sons can recognize that there is no danger to them inherent in the mother, discarding the layers of masculinity that cover their humanity, and if mothers will undertake the painful struggle to restore our integrity as women, then mothers and sons can begin to break the constraints of fear and anger between us.
Mothers … raising male children … confront … the pattern which has produced nonurturant, emotionally unresponsive, highly competitive and materially oriented males … given to verbal and physical violence, to the domination and frequent abuse of children and women …. We’ve been trapped with our sons, imprisoned in false ways of being … by a culture whose very language turns mother into mocking profanity, son into demeaning insult. But if sons can recognize that there is no danger to them inherent in the mother, discarding the layers of masculinity that cover their humanity, and if mothers will undertake the painful struggle to restore our integrity as women, then mothers and sons can begin to break the constraints of fear and anger between us.
- responses
A shocking book, in a cleansing, salutary way – I loved it. Against the fashionable tendency to regard women and men as planetary opposites, Judith Arcana reaffirms the ancient bond between sons and their mothers, reminding us of what the human species can accomplish if we own it together. – Martha Roth
This book is truly a major work of feminist analysis. – Joseph Pleck
Arcana compassionately takes mothers and sons together, guiding us carefully toward the hope we will not use our power against each other. – Carol Kleiman
A provocative read … compelling, fascinating. – Chartist (UK)
A shocking book, in a cleansing, salutary way – I loved it. Against the fashionable tendency to regard women and men as planetary opposites, Judith Arcana reaffirms the ancient bond between sons and their mothers, reminding us of what the human species can accomplish if we own it together. – Martha Roth
This book is truly a major work of feminist analysis. – Joseph Pleck
Arcana compassionately takes mothers and sons together, guiding us carefully toward the hope we will not use our power against each other. – Carol Kleiman
A provocative read … compelling, fascinating. – Chartist (UK)