In "Mothers on the Move, " anthropologist Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg explores how Cameroonian women in Germany seek to establish their belonging through birthing and caring for children and what happens to their ties to places of origin and places of migration in the process. The book is about the social actions and webs of relationships through which Cameroonian women manage the tension between mobility and belonging. Marriage and reproduction have long involved movement for Bamileke and other Grassfields women. Feldman-Savelsberg argues that predicaments regarding reproduction ( reproductive insecurity ) and the perils of belonging motivate migration, from rural to urban areas, and from cities to transnational locales. But each movement engenders new problems of belonging. Women manage these challenges by building up relationships with others; maintaining them through stop-and-start, emotion-laden exchanges and circulating stories regarding how to get along with families, with migrant community organizations, and with German state and social service actors stories that then crystallize into collectively held orientations and repertoires. Rather than talking in generalizations about Cameroonian migrant mothers, Feldman-Savelsberg strives to introduce a variety of characters, each with her unique history, concerns, and voice. She also enlivens ideas about migration and networks by describing scenes for example, a hometown association s year-end party, a celebration for a new baby, and a visit to the Foreigner s Office that then place women s individual voices within significant social interactional contexts. This work makes an important contribution to our strong lists on African migration to Europe, African women s studies, and related areas."

Trust your gut, take care of yourself, and find new life on the other side with this “straightforward” (Ilene S. Cohen, PhD, award-winning author of When It’s Never About You), empowering guide to divorce for moms. We hear it all the time on the news. The divorce rates are rising. More children are being raised in split homes. But you didn’t think it would happen to you. Luckily, you’re not alone. Popular divorce coach Michelle Dempsey-Multack not only survived her own divorce but figured out how to move on with her life, just like you will, too. Now happily remarried with a blended family, she’s living proof that no matter which “firsts” you might be experiencing as you end your marriage, and no matter how long you stayed with someone who didn’t meet your needs, your best days are ahead. Mom’s Moving On is your “go-to guide” (Dr. Elizabeth Cohen, psychologist and author of Light on the Other Side of Divorce), filled with practical, actionable, and empowering advice from someone who has been through it and has come out the other side. Through Michelle’s guidance, you’ll learn how to navigate your divorce with confidence, adjust to life as a single mother, and shift your perspective to find your way back to your best self. From coparenting to dating as a single mother, you’ll learn how to truly move on and create the life you deserve.

The massive scale and complexity of international migration today tends to obscure the nuanced ways migrant families seek a sense of belonging. In this book, Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg takes readers back and forth between Cameroon and Germany to explore how migrant mothers—through the careful and at times difficult management of relationships—juggle belonging in multiple places at once: their new country, their old country, and the diasporic community that bridges them. Feldman-Savelsberg introduces readers to several Cameroonian mothers, each with her own unique history, concerns, and voice. Through scenes of their lives—at a hometown association’s year-end party, a celebration for a new baby, a visit to the Foreigners’ Office, and many others—as well as the stories they tell one another, Feldman-Savelsberg enlivens our thinking about migrants’ lives and the networks and repertoires that they draw on to find stability and, ultimately, belonging. Placing women’s individual voices within international social contexts, this book unveils new, intimate links between the geographical and the generational as they intersect in the dreams, frustrations, uncertainties, and resolve of strong women holding families together across continents.

Who was your mother before she was a mother? Essays and photos from Brit Bennett, Jennifer Egan, Danzy Senna, Laura Lippman, Jia Tolentino, and many more. In this remarkable collection, New York Times–bestselling novelist Edan Lepucki gathers more than sixty original essays and favorite photographs to explore this question. The daughters in Mothers Before are writers and poets, artists and teachers, and the images and stories they share reveal the lives of women in ways that are vulnerable and true, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always moving. Contributors include: Brit Bennett * Jennine Capó Crucet * Jennifer Egan * Angela Garbes * Annabeth Gish * Alison Roman * Lisa See * Danzy Senna * Dana Spiotta * Lan Samantha Chang * Laura Lippman * Jia Tolentino * Tiffany Nguyen * Charmaine Craig * Maya Ramakrishnan * Eirene Donohue * and many others

It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken beauty. Mourning her mother's recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. It's not serious-- until the pregnancy. As years move by, Nadia, Luke, and her friend Aubrey are living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully maneuver, and dogged by the constant, nagging question: What if they had chosen differently?

Taking a career break is a conflicted and risky decision for high-achieving professional women. Yet many do so, usually planning, even as they quit, to return to work eventually. But can they? And if so, how? In Opting Back In, Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy revisit women first interviewed a decade earlier in Stone’s book Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home to answer these questions. In frank and intimate accounts, women lay bare the dilemmas they face upon reentry. Most succeed but not by returning to their former high-paying, still family-inhospitable jobs. Instead, women strike out in new directions, finding personally gratifying but lower-paid jobs in the gig economy or predominantly female nonprofit sector. Opting Back In uncovers a paradox of privilege by which the very women best positioned to achieve leadership and close gender gaps use strategies to resume their careers that inadvertently reinforce gender inequality. The authors advocate gender equitable policies that will allow women—and all parents—to combine the intense demands of work and family life in the twenty-first century.

In this book the authors examine in depth the lives of inner-city adolescent mothers, going beyond stereotypes to illuminate the diverse pathways to young adulthood taken by these young women. The different ways they respond to becoming a parent reflect a range of abilities, aspirations, and supports. Their often-creative solutions to living in poverty, the intensity of their desires to make their children's lives better, the height of their youthful ambition when they succeed, and the depth of their pain when they fail, all show a surprising range. The authors argue that adolescent mothers who enter young adulthood with the skills and desires to care for themselves and their children are not the resilient few and present a lengthy analysis of the multidimensional processes that lead to and characterize this resilience. In making constructive suggestions for social welfare policies and reforms, this book serves as an ideal model of the important uses of qualitative research for understanding the adolescent experience. More than that, the book stands out among others by this social policy perspective and its focus on encouraging adolescent mothers to reach their potentials. This volume aims to attract those who wish to learn more about the adolescent experience without getting lost in the detail of the methods and analyses. To this end, the main body of the text presents general methods and results. Scholarly details of the work are placed in appendices to which the interested reader can refer. A second highlight is the inclusion of impressionistic material, such as quotes from the adolescent mothers who were participants in this research. Such material brings to life the real issues of very real adolescents--their triumphs and struggles, their riches and poverty, their strengths and weaknesses.

This book, first published in 1985, is a scholarly examination of the of the British wartime evacuation of 4 million people, mostly children, from the cities to the countryside – and how it affected social life during the war years. It uses hitherto unpublished material from the collections of the Children’s Overseas Reception Board and the Mass Observation Archive.