The time has come for a radical, bold and creative approach to the question of mothers, children and care.

Highly acclaimed by leading parenting authors, academics and activists, with a foreword from Naomi Stadlen, founder of Mothers Talking and author of What Mothers Do, and How Mothers Love.

If it is true that there have been waves of feminism, then mothers’ rights are the flotsam left behind on the ocean surface of patriarchy.

For all the talk of women’s liberation, when it is predicated on liberation from motherhood, it is no liberation at all. Under twenty-first century capitalism, the bonds of motherhood are being replaced with binds to the market within wage slavery and ruthless individualism. Mothers are in bondage – and not in a 50 Shades way.

Vanessa Olorenshaw is clear: When mothering is on our terms, it can be liberating. The time has come for a radical, bold and creative approach to the question of mothers, children and care.

Liberating Motherhood discusses our bodies, our minds, our labour and our hearts, exploring issues from birth and breastfeeding to mental health, economics, politics, basic incomes and love and in doing so, broaches a conversation we’ve been avoiding for years: how do we value motherhood?

A witty and forensic discussion of the politics and economics of motherhood. Olorenshaw goes beyond both the religious fetishisation of mothering and the ‘feminist’ fetishisation of jobs to build a solid case for an economy built around care — for ourselves, each other and the world we live in.
Barb Jacobson, Basic Income UK

Liberating Motherhood is an important contribution to a vital debate of our times. Vanessa Olorenshaw speaks with warmth, wit and clarity, representing lives and voices unheard for too long.
Shami Chakrabarti, author of On Liberty, former director of Liberty and formerly ‘the most dangerous woman in Britain’

Liberating Motherhood is an important and heartfelt analysis of the misogyny underpinning Western culture and our disastrous devaluation of the maternal: read it.
Antonella Gambotto-Burke, author of Mama: Love, Motherhood and Revolution