Matthew Frye Jacobson, author of Whiteness of a Different Color:
Parsing the politicized notions of good and bad mothering as well as the dominant discourses of racial equality, Ruth Feldstein offers a sweeping reinterpretation of American liberalism at mid-century. Motherhood in Black and White is, among other things, a deep and insightful prehistory of the Moynihan Report and its devilment. Eye-opening, portentous, smart.
Rickie Solinger, author of Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade:
Motherhood in Black and White is the best, most interesting, most provocative, and most original study of race and gender, culture and public policy in the middle decades of the twentieth century that I have seen. It is an extremely exciting book.
Daniel Horowitz, author of Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism:
In this imaginative, wide-ranging, and provocative cultural history of American motherhood, Ruth Feldstein explores the relationships between gender conservatism and racial liberalism. In the process, she greatly enriches our understanding of the meanings of citizenship, the role of the state, and the problematic connections between race and gender.
Feldstein's examination of motherhood, citizenship, and race in twentieth-century American social policy brings an innovative analytical perspective to our understanding of liberal thought from the 1930 to the 1960s... She has provided a sophisticated and valuable backdrop on which we can view the evolution of American liberalism in the twentieth century; it remains to other scholars to shade in the grey areas between ideas and actions.
This stunning reading of mid-twentieth-century culture and politics revisits the consequences of holding mothers responsible for the fate of the nation. Breaking contemporary links between conservatism and gender traditionalism, Ruth Feldstein troubles the narrative of modern liberalism... After Feldstein's sophisticated commentary, liberalism will never again look the same.
Overall, Motherhood in Black and White is an important and useful work. Feldstein demonstrates that the methods of cultural history can expand and transforn an understanding of the past. She also proves an excellent tour guide through the terrain of postwar US culture.
In recent years, social historians have replaced the standard image of the 1950s as a period of conservatism with one that emphasizes resistance, expressed in the civil rights movement and burgeoning discontent with domesticity. Ruth Feldstein's important book builds on this scholarship and moves it in an exciting new direction... Feldstein's bold reappraisal of race and gender in twentieth-century American liberalism will likely set the terms of debate for many years to come. Students of U.S. women's history, race relations, politics, and popular culture must take Feldstein's provocative insights into account.
