The Good Mothers

Author: Alex Perry
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062655639
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description
NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES The electrifying, untold story of the women born into the most deadly and obscenely wealthy of the Italian mafias – and how they risked everything to bring it down. The Calabrian Mafia—known as the ’Ndrangheta—is one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates in the world, with branches stretching from America to Australia. It controls seventy percent of the cocaine and heroin supply in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, brokers illegal arms deals—supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists—and plunders the treasuries of both Italy and the European Union. The ’Ndrangheta’s power derives from a macho mix of violence and silence—omertà. Yet it endures because of family ties: you are born into the syndicate, or you marry in. Loyalty is absolute. Bloodshed is revered. You go to prison or your grave and kill your own father, brother, sister, or mother in cold blood before you betray The Family. Accompanying the ’Ndrangheta’s reverence for tradition and history is a violent misogyny among its men. Women are viewed as chattel, bargaining chips for building and maintaining clan alliances and beatings—and worse—are routine. In 2009, after one abused ’Ndrangheta wife was murdered for turning state’s evidence, prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti considered a tantalizing possibility: that the ’Ndrangheta’s sexism might be its greatest flaw—and her most effective weapon. Approaching two more mafia wives, Alessandra persuaded them to testify in return for a new future for themselves and their children. A feminist saga of true crime and justice, The Good Mothers is the riveting story of a high-stakes battle pitting a brilliant, driven woman fighting to save a nation against ruthless mafiosi fighting for their existence. Caught in the middle are three women fighting for their children and their lives. Not all will survive.

The School for Good Mothers

Author: Jessamine Chan
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 540

Book Description
In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance.Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn't have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents' sacrifices. She can't persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.Until Frida has a very bad day.The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgment, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother's devotion.Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.A searing page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of "perfect" upper-middle-class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages. Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.

The Good Mother Myth

Author: Avital Norman Nathman
Publisher: Seal Press
ISBN: 1580055036
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
In an era of mommy blogs, Pinterest, and Facebook, The Good Mother Myth dismantles the social media-fed notion of what it means to be a "good mother." This collection of essays takes a realistic look at motherhood and provides a platform for real voices and raw stories, each adding to the narrative of motherhood we don't tend to see in the headlines or on the news. From tales of mind-bending, panic-inducing overwhelm to a reflection on using weed instead of wine to deal with the terrible twos, the honesty of the essays creates a community of mothers who refuse to feel like they're in competition with others, or with the notion of the ideal mom—they're just trying to find a way to make it work. With a foreword by Christy Turlington Burns and a contributor list that includes Jessica Valenti, Sharon Lerner, Soraya Chemaly, Amber Dusick and many more, this remarkable collection seeks to debunk the myth and offer some honesty about what it means to be a mother.

Things Good Mothers Know

Author: Alexandra Stoddard
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061974919
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
In this warm and wise book, Alexandra Stoddard not only celebrates what mothers know—and what we would like them to know—she encourages them to attend to their own happiness in the quest to become better mothers. Raising a good child to become a good person begins with a mother's own inner transformation. Don't think if you are a good mother you will automatically be happy, she cautions. Be happy and you will be good at everything that is meaningful and valuable in your life! From giving practical advice, to taking a more philosophical approach, to offering a comforting pat on the back, Stoddard reaches out to mothers with words that will encourage, support, and cheer them on.

The Good Mother

Author: Sue Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1526654938
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
A reissue of the powerful and troubling debut sensation - which spent over six months at top of the New York Times bestseller list on its original publication thirty years ago Recently divorced, Anna Dunlap has two passionate attachments: her daughter, four-year-old Molly, and her lover, Leo, the man who makes her feel beautiful - and sexual - for the first time. Swept away by happiness and passion, Anna feels she has everything she's ever wanted. Then come the shocking charges that would threaten her new love, her new family - that force her to prove she is a good mother.

The Good Mothers

Author: Alex Perry
Publisher: William Collins
ISBN: 9780008222109
Category : Organized crime
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
You are born into it or marry in. Loyalty is absolute, bloodshed revered and you kill or go to your grave before betraying The Family. This code of omerta is how the 'Ndrangheta became the world's most powerful mafia. "The Good Mothers" is the story of the women who broke the silence. We live in their buildings, work in their companies, shop in their stores, eat in their restaurants and elect politicians they fund. Founded more than 150 years ago by shepherding families in the toe of Italy, the 'Ndrangheta is today the world's most powerful mafia, with a crushing presence in southern Italy, a market-moving size in global finance and a reach that extends to fifty countries around the world. And yet, remarkably, few of us have ever heard of it. The 'Ndrangheta's power rests on a code of silence, omerta, enforced by a claustrophobic family hierarchy and murderous misogyny. Men and boys rule. Girls are married off as teenagers in arranged clan alliances. Beatings are routine. A woman who is `unfaithful' - even to a dead husband - can expect her sons, brothers or father to kill her to erase the `family shame'.

The Good Mother

Author: Susan Goodwin
Publisher: Sydney University Press
ISBN: 1920899537
Category : Motherhood
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Book Description
The Good Mother brings together essays on the contemporary relevance of the 'good mother' in Australia. Although the ideals of the 'good mother' change with time, fashion and context, they persist in public policy, the media, popular culture and workplaces. They place pressure on women to conform to particular standards, against which they are judged and judge themselves. This book captures the diversity of contemporary women's experiences. Chapters address the experiences of executive mothers, mothers working in manual trades, 'yummy mummies' and 'slummy mummies', low income mothers, single mothers, Indigenous mothers, lesbian parents, adoptive mothers and mothers negotiating schools and school choice. The essays demonstrate that while the 'good mother' is no longer exclusively white, heterosexual, economically dependent and child focused, prevailing ideas about mothers and motherhood continue to influence the way 'types' of women are represented and the way that all mothers think, act and present themselves.

Myths of Motherhood

Author: Sherry Thurer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140246835
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
This groundbreaking and irreverent history of motherhood is worth a hundred advice books for any mother who’s ever been made to feel guilty or frazzled by society’s impossible expectations. Analyzing data from the psychoanalyst’s couch to the hidden history of wet nursing, psychologist Shari L. Thurer wends her way from the Stone Age to the age of Hillary Rodham Clinton, painting a vivid, often frightening picture of life for mothers and children in a time when their roles were constructed by men. Along the way, she debunks myth after myth—exposing the not-so-golden ages of Classical Greece and the Italian Renaissance, and revealing the pervasive ideal of Dr. Spock’s selfless, stay-at-home mother as the historical aberration it actually was. A work of impassioned scholarship and astonishing range, The Myths of Motherhood does nothing less than recast our conception of good mothering.

The School for Good Mothers

Author: Jessamine Chan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982156139
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
"Set in near-future America, The School for Good Mothers introduces readers to a government-run reform program where bad mothers are retrained using robot doll children with artificial intelligence. Protagonist Frida Liu, a 39-year-old Chinese-American single mother in Philadelphia, loses custody of her 18-month-old daughter, Harriet, after she leaves Harriet home alone for two hours on one very bad day. To regain custody, Frida must spend a year at a newly-created institution, where she practices parenting with bad mothers from all over the county. There, she learns to love an uncannily life-like toddler girl doll in order to demonstrate her maternal instincts and prove to her family court judge that she deserves a second chance. Frida is an outsider in every way: better educated, more affluent, and the only Asian. The mothers, whose transgressions range from benign to horrific, are under constant surveillance. If they don't pass all the school's tests, their parental rights will be terminated. Inspired by dystopian classics such as 1984, Never Let Me Go, and The Handmaid's Tale, the novel eviscerates the dominant American parenting culture, while highlighting the tragedy of state-sponsored family separation. Is there one right way to mother? Can a bad mother ever be redeemed? With warmth, heart, and dark humor, the novel tells a timeless story of a mother fighting to win back her child, and her struggle to hold onto her integrity while being indoctrinated"--

Mad Mothers, Bad Mothers, and What a "Good" Mother Would Do

Author: Sarah LaChance Adams
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231537220
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
When a mother kills her child, we call her a bad mother, but, as this book shows, even mothers who intend to do their children harm are not easily categorized as "mad" or "bad." Maternal love is a complex emotion rich with contradictory impulses and desires, and motherhood is a conflicted state in which women constantly renegotiate the needs mother and child, the self and the other. Applying care ethics philosophy and the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Simone de Beauvoir to real-world experiences of motherhood, Sarah LaChance Adams throws the inherent tensions of motherhood into sharp relief, drawing a more nuanced portrait of the mother and child relationship than previously conceived. The maternal example is particularly instructive for ethical theory, highlighting the dynamics of human interdependence while also affirming separate interests. LaChance Adams particularly focuses on maternal ambivalence and its morally productive role in reinforcing the divergence between oneself and others, helping to recognize the particularities of situation, and negotiating the difference between one's own needs and the desires of others. She ultimately argues maternal filicide is a social problem requiring a collective solution that ethical philosophy and philosophies of care can inform.