Mothering Mennonite marks the first scholarly attempt to incorporate religious groundings in interpretations of motherhood. The essays included here broaden our understanding of maternal identity as something not only constructed within the family and by society at large, but also influenced significantly by historical traditions and contemporary belief systems of religious communities. Historians and so ciologists have produced substantive scholarship on Mennonite women in general, and have thereby paid some attention to Mennonite mothering, but this has been piecemeal. In feminist studies, where maternal scholarship figures increasingly prominently, scholars have not yet addressed mothering in this specific cultural-religious context. The few writers to give their focused attention to mothering in a Mennonite context stem from the literary arts,fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Mothering Mennonite, a multidisciplinary compilation of essays, joins narrative and scholarly voices to address both the roles of mothering in Mennonite contexts and the ways in which Mennonite mother ing intersects with and is shaped by the world at large. Essayists address cultural constructions of motherhood within ethno-religious Mennonite communities, examining mother-daughter relationships and intergenerational influences, analyzing visual and literary representations of Mennonite mothers, challenging cultural constructions and expectations of motherhood, and tracing the effects of specific religious and cultural contexts on mothering in North and South America. - from Amzon