Essentially a Mother argues that the law of pregnancy and motherhood has been overrun by sexist ideology. Courts have held that a pregnant woman’s nine months of gestation hardly count in her claim to parent the child she bears and that a man’s brief moment of ejaculation matters more than a woman’s labor. Armed with such dubious arguments, courts have stripped women of the right to abortion, treated surrogate mothers as mere vessels, and handed biological fathers—even those who became fathers through rape—automatic rights over women and their children. In this incisive and groundbreaking book, Jennifer Hendricks argues that feminists must overthrow the skewed value system that subordinates women, devalues caregiving, and denies too many the right to parent.
Jennifer Hendricks is Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School.
ContentsIntroduction PART ONE SEX DIFFERENCE AND ACCOMMODATION1 • Mothers at Work 2 • Fathers at Home 3 • What the Law Protects . . . 4 • . . . and Why PART TWO THE COLLAPSE OF THE CARETAKING5 • Expanding Fathers’ Rights against Mothers6 • Sidelining Inconvenient Fathers 7 • Leveling Down to Genes PART THREE A FEMINIST APPROACH8 • How to Reason from the Body 9 • The Body and Beyond Conclusion Timeline of Cases Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
"Comprehensive yet concise. . . . Essentially a Mother arrives just when we need a reminder that it is time to update the values at the basis of American law and that relational feminism shows us how to do it."
