Book review

Name of the book-Feminism and the politics of childhood Friends or foes?

Author of the book-Rachel Roshen and Katherine Twamley

DOI: //https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787350632

Publisher 

UCLPRESS (university college London)

www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press

Published in

2018

Feminism and the politics of childhood friends or foes? is written and edited by Rachel roshen and Katherine Twamley. The book consists of eighteen chapters in itself. The book is a contribution of many scholars, psychologists, professors and lecturers of education, catholic priest, activist and anthropologists. 

Rachel Rosen is a senior lecturer in childhood in the department of social science at the UCL institute of Education and Katherine Twamley is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow in the department of social science at the UCL institute of Education.

The book discussed various kinds of feminism and children’s politics. It has an exploration of perceived commonalities and conflicts between the women and children. The whole book is in a dialogic method from a range of geographical contexts, social science discipline, activist organisations, and theoretical perspectives. The wide varieties of subjects include refugee camps, care labour, domestic violence and childcare and education. The author focuses on the local & global level and tries to drive the interconnection about the theoretical traditions.

Erica Burman found that the formulation of relation between women and children are representative. The responsibility of child caring is totally up to the mother as the bundling of women has been comprehensively critiqued. She also focused on the early care education of childhood. The book consists of childhood studies and women’s studies. Women and children are vulnerable victims or valorized as angelic innocents of home and hearth and the subject through which hope for national development flows. She said we should try to provide social and economical justice to the women and children. 

The book discussed gender & society. Barrie Throne wanted to ask about feminism and the politics of childhood. Thrawn worked with various frameworks and theories such as intersectionality theory, psychosocial studies, and critical disability studies. Grassroots Women (GW) was an anti- imperialist, feminist organization in East Vancouver, Canada in early 1990s. The organization welcomed her members with their children. They said the presence of children makes their members also focused on their work. They consider universal childcare a woman’s right. In the end they said (GW) children and women are became great power if they united. 

The book had a glance about the children and caretaker rights. Every child has the right of proper care and love. Radical feminism considers the children as the burden over the women and ground of oppression of women. They also discussed the challenges of/to feminist solidarity in the Sahrawi refugee camps (South Africa). 

Marxist feminism focused over the renewed frame attention to social reproduction. They consider the women as the second and less paid workers. Taking care of the children should be the first job of women. 

The concept of surrogacy is also shared here. The data is collected by the international commercial surrogacy. Here the practice of surrogacy is considered as the reproductive and productive laboring. Some feminist are in favor as some are in against. It directly impacts the child and women’s mental, emotional and physical condition. Decolonising childbearing and challenging the patriarchal nuclear family through indigenous knowledge is also shared here. In this chapter we discuss the role of men in child care and how the traditional value system of child bearing will guide the people to develop more effective programming for parent education and support family reunification. Child marriage practice is also criticized by the feminist. They share the world wide data of the early child marriage and its impact on the children and women. 

The feminist is mean to be a fighter of social justice, they fight and struggle to get the social justice foe women and children. Domestic violence is a cycle of violence, a person tries to fill a woman or a child with a lot of guilt and shame so she could not try to stop the violence over her. Feminist also work in this sector too for give a save environment for them. 

I chose this book for many reasons and one of them is this it discusses various feminism waves and theories. It gives a clear understanding of why we need feminism and the different context of women and children’s condition. Children and women are inseparable in order to provide strength to each other. 

Reflection 

The book is really Informative and interesting. It consists different view of feminism and feminist which going to help in my assessment too. The book had a broad number of examples, interviews and experiences about the challenges faced by the women and children at local and global level. Why we need feminist and how they struggle to achieve the goal of social justice for all. Here I also find the difference between radical feminism is different feminism. They consider child bearing as the ending of life or burden over the women or women does not want children or should not have children if they want to do something. The book gives a holistic perspective to think about geographical, social and economical impact on the condition of women and children. Everyone should go through the book once. They provide you with alternate theoretical constructs and practical examples of research on how best make sense of the importance of relation and thinking with complexity.