Redefining historical mothers

Motherhood has long been considered as something expected rather than extraordinary. However, in this episode of the History Extra podcast, Eleanor Clegghorn explains to Lauren Good that there are many stories throughout history that demonstrate that this isn't the case, from pregnant women predicting their futures to midwives questioning the status quo. Hello, Eleanor, thank you so much for joining me today. Hi, Lauren, thank you so much for having me. We're talking today about your new book, A Woman's Work Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering.

Can we start with a pretty sizable question? What was your main intention in writing this book? Well this book, or the initial idea for this book or impulse for this book really came when I was writing and researching my first book, Unwell Women, which is a history of women's relationship with medicine over its long history, the way that women have been treated by doctors and by medical thinkers and authors over medicine's long history. And one of the reasons often touted

by physicians and doctors throughout history about not only women's illnesses, but why women have to have certain kinds of lives, is that they are destined to bear children, be mothers, raise children, exist in the home. So not only were women's illnesses often pivoted back to their reproductive organs or their assumed reproductive function, there was also this huge kind of overarching social narrative. around women's place being in the home, women's social and biological role being motherhood, and the ways that those kind of predestined ideas sort of framed other kinds of thinking throughout history about, you know, who women are, what their bodies are for, what women should do in the in society and in the world. So it was really thinking about motherhood as it is, you know, one of the most defining roles in women's lives throughout history. And often

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