by Kristen on May 1, 2013
This post is by Kristen Levithan, Happiest Home contributor and blogger at Motherese. You can read previous historical motherhood posts by clicking here.
Photo: Caitlinator, via Flickr Creative Commons
Would you be surprised to learn that Mother’s Day was created by a woman who was never a mother herself? I know I was. In fact it was a daughter, Anna Jarvis, who was so proud of her own mother’s life and work that she lobbied to create a national holiday honoring all mothers and the work done by women’s organizations. [click to continue…]
by Kristen on April 10, 2013
This post is by Kristen Levithan, Happiest Home contributor and blogger at Motherese. You can read previous historical motherhood posts by clicking here.
In addition to being a history buff, I am also a big fan of historical fiction. The period that fascinates me the most is Tudor England, and especially the reigns of King Henry VIII and his daughter, Elizabeth I. Like many of us, I devoured Philippa Gregory’s juicy The Other Boleyn Girl. More recently, I was captivated by Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel’s masterful, Booker Prize-winning fictional biographies of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief advisor.
In all of my reading about this era – fiction and non – my thoughts always turn to Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife and the woman who became a pawn in his insatiable quest to provide England with a male heir by any means necessary. Catherine was Spanish royalty; a dutiful, loving wife; and the mother of his first legitimate child. Nevertheless, once she proved unable to bear him a son, her crown did not rest easily on her head. [click to continue…]
by Kristen on December 5, 2012
This post is by Kristen Levithan, Happiest Mom contributor and blogger at Motherese. If you missed it, you can read the first post in our Historical Motherhood series here.
It’s an image that many of us know well: a young woman, her hair tied back with a red and white bandanna with just a hint of feminine curl sneaking out, her powerful forearm and steely gaze competing for your attention. You may have seen her on a poster in a college dorm room or on the mug of the woman who shares your cubicle.
She’s Rosie the Riveter, symbol of the millions of American women – many of them mothers – who went to work in the factories during World War II, and now a cultural icon associated with women’s rights and economic empowerment. [click to continue…]
by Kristen on November 7, 2012
If you’ve been reading here a while, you may remember that I love, love, love to dissect and analyze the experience of motherhood throughout history, and often do this via the stories of historical mothers, fictional and real, from literature and pop culture.
Guess who else shares my obsession? One of my favorite bloggers, Kristen from Motherese. So Kristen and I are excited to partner up on a series of posts about mothers through history: the fictional and real-life, the high-profile and “regular moms.”
Kristen kicks off the series today, with this profile of a woman who experienced motherhood very much in the spotlight: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. I am so excited about this series and hope you’ll love it, too! – Meagan
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When I was little, I loved looking through the tall books that lived on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in our wood-paneled family room. My favorite of all was a slim, heavy volume celebrating the 50th anniversary of Life magazine. Among affecting photos of the Normandy landing, newly liberated Holocaust Survivors, and snow monkeys in Japan, one picture always stood out: [click to continue…]
