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Mothers and Sons,
a study of mothers in history (anticipated publication 2008)
Fathers and their sons have made most of the history most people
know. How have mothers contributed to the transmission of culture across
generations? My projected book Mothers and Sons will
explore this problem across the boundaries of civilizations and
throughout historical time. It will survey the expectations of mothers
in ancient, medieval, and early modern civilizations as seen in
prescriptive theoretical works and literary texts. It will study the
pattern of destructive motherhood through the ages, tracing maternal
abuse, neglect, and infanticide. It will consider the profiles of
selected mothers who influenced their sons in three distinctive ways:
those who propelled their sons to power; those who instilled a love of
learning in their sons; and those who inspired their sons to spiritual
self-searching and altruistic activity – to be mystics, prophets, or
holy men. It will argue that mothers, as primary transmitters of
culture, have been powerful shapers of civilization not only through
their own achievements, but through their active involvement with their
sons – rather than daughters, who, in many pre-modern civilizations,
mothers raised for marriage and for motherhood, but not for action in
the public realm.
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