Dr. John B. Dossetor
Vangie Bergum explores [the mother/child] relationships through the narrative voice of the women in her research—a methodology for the "science of wisdom," distinct and different from the reductionist science of reproduction and obstetrics . . . Seen from this perspective, our whole health care involvement in the birthing of children takes on a very different slant. The technology of delivery is diminished... by the horizons of this broader vision. The narratives challenge us to reflect about this self/other relationship and the light it could throw on those other complex relationships that concern us in delivery of health care, as well as how it should inform and transform our thinking about our still largely patriarchal society.
Jeffrey A. Nisker
A Child on Her Mind is an important compassion conveyer for health care professionals, especially those who cannot approach true empathy with being pregnant, birthing, or placing, either because of being male or being a woman who has not yet or has chosen not to experience mothering.
Professor Lesley Page
This book will be of interest to…all who care about the moral imperative which mother love provides, to those thinking of adopting or giving up for adoption, for those who care for women and their families around the time of birth, and parents, midwives, doctors, nurses, social workers, and health care leaders. In short, the book will be of interest to all who care about the state of the world, and the crucial foundation of human caring, espcially mother love.
Sally Gadow
I know few researchers as deeply respectful of women's experience as Vangie Bergum. She describes mothering as a moral posture of being-for-the-other, as a life in which at least a corner—if not the center—of a woman's consciousness is irreversibly turned toward her child. The originality of Bergum's work is the proposal that mothering is an archetype of moral experience in which responsibility and reciprocity are linked. Reading the stories here and Bergum's delicate interpretations is itself a moral 'quickening.' I am profoundly grateful that she keeps wondering and worrying and writing about mothers and moral relationship.