Andrea O’Reilly, a professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies at York University, used to get a lot of mail. As the founder of the field of motherhood studies more than 20 years ago, aspiring graduate students would often send her letters asking her to convince their supervisors that they could study motherhood. “I had to sort of vouch that it exists,” O’Reilly explained. However, having recently celebrated the publication of the 40th edition of the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative – the first academic journal dedicated to the topic – and after helping to organize more than 50 conferences on motherhood studies, she says she doesn’t get those kinds of letters anymore.
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