Constructing the Mothering Experience: Videos on Motherhood

CONSTRUCTING THE MOTHERING EXPERIENCE: VIDEOS ON MOTHERHOOD

AND BABY MAKES TWO: SINGLE MOTHERHOOD. 29 mins. 1998. Films for the Humanities and Sciences, P.O. Box 2053, Princeton, NJ 08543-2053; phone: [phone]; email: [email protected]; website: www.films.com. Sale: $89.95.

MOMS: A CELEBRATION OF REAL MOTHERS. 56 mins. 1999. Prod./dir: Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker. Acorn Media Publishing, Inc., 801 Roeder Rd., Suite 700, Silver Spring, MD 20910; phone: [phone]; email: [email protected]; website: www.acornmedia.com. Sale: $19.95.

MOTHER LOVE. 58 mins. 1996. Prod.: Christine Fugate and Eren McGinnis, 1996. Filmakers Library, 124 East 40th St., New York, NY 10016; phone: [phone]; email: [email protected]; website: www.filmakers.com. Rental: $75.00. Sale: $295.00.

THE MINISKIRTED DYNAMO: A MOTHER DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP. 55 mins. 1996. Prod./dir.: Rivka Hartman. Filmakers Library, 124 East 40th St., New York, NY 10016; phone: [phone]; email: [email protected]; website: www.filmakers.com. Rental: $75.00. Sale: $350.00.

These four films demonstrate the conflicted meanings of motherhood in society and through time. The most satisfying of the videos are a celebration of motherhood. Although appreciative of discordant discourses, each emphasizes underlying common themes experienced by women. The fourth, a briefer work, is a stereotypic expression of concern about the growing numbers of single mothers. Stated as a social problem seeking a remedy, the emphasis is on the importance of fathers rather than the unique experience of motherhood.

Mother Love and Moms are medleys of the mothering experience. Women of different races, classes, and generations speak, and economic and educational differences are displayed, yet the emphasis is not on differences, but on what is shared. Filmed over a two-year period in the small southern town of Pikesville, Kentucky, Mother Love has a strong regional flavor. Laden with southern mores, music, and God, the talk is about the mother/daughter relationship: struggles, expectations, loyalties, fears, and joys. As the women speak from their own settings, we learn about their contexts from what we see as well as the words we hear and the sharp twang of their southern drawls. A former welfare mother is given keys to her new home built by Habitat for Humanity. An affluent mother speaks from her lavish living room. A divorced lawyer mother, sharing custody with a former husband, is shown in her office and in a courtroom. A financially marginal mother and her...