Doing It All: The Social Power of Single Motherhood

by Ruby Russell

Overview

A feminist exploration of single motherhood and a passionate call to reclaim the power of mothering 

In the United States, one child in five is raised by a single mother. Yet the single mom is still cast as victim or welfare queen, sexually irresponsible or too independent for her own (or her children’s) good.    

In Doing It All,journalist and single mother Ruby Russell tells a different story, of single mothering not defined by loss but whole and powerful in its own right. She finds narratives of liberation in Victorian brothels and postwar British slums, in Black feminist theory and the grassroots activism of women fighting for welfare rights.

Doing It All is a personal quest for empowerment, a fierce critique of the systems that leave single moms marginalized and exhausted, and a call to reclaim mothering as the life force of sustainable, connected, and radically responsible communities.   

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541602199
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,047,050
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Ruby Russell is a single mom and environmental journalist. Originally from London, she currently lives in Berlin, Germany, with her kid and their cat.  

Editorial Reviews

03/04/2024

Russell, a journalist and single parent, debuts with a probing meditation on how society fails unmarried mothers. The social ideal of the nuclear family harms women, Russell contends, citing as proof the story of a mother in Germany who was forced by the country’s courts to grant her manipulative ex-boyfriend joint custody of their son. Despite the fact that the son cried inconsolably after every visit with his father, the judges viewed such an arrangement as an acceptable approximation of the two-parent household to which all families should aspire. Though the peer support network Single Mothers by Choice was founded in 1982 by psychotherapist Jane Mattes to “refute the assumption that single motherhood is always a misfortune or mistake,” Russell criticizes the group for ostracizing women who become single mothers from divorce or unplanned pregnancy. Envisioning alternative social arrangements to better support mothers and children, Russell finds a powerful model in the “othermothering” networks seen in Black communities—in which women, potentially but not necessarily related by blood, rely on one another to meet the needs of each other’s children—and advocates for policies that ease the burden of childcare, such as a universal basic income and reduced work week. Buoyed by searching analysis and affecting stories, this makes a persuasive case for normalizing alternatives to the nuclear family. (May)

Publishers Weekly

A feisty new addition to feminist thinking…it mightily encourages dreams of a society where mothering is the most important activity of all.”—Irish Independent

“Doing It All is a fascinating and compelling exploration of motherhood beyond the confines of the patriarchy. Anchored in Ruby Russell’s own experience as a single mother, Doing It All is at once deeply personal and profoundly political—with courage, compassion, and generosity, Russell presents an intersectional history which honors single motherhood in all its complexity, while exposing the structural forces that have long sought to diminish acts of mothering that exist outside of male control. Bold, revelatory, and a joy to read, Doing It All will ignite much-needed conversations about the communal and collective power of single mothers. A brilliant book, fearlessly told.”—Elinor Cleghorn, author of Unwell Women

“In this lucid and liberating book, Russell shows how single motherhood exposes the idiocy of the ‘biological clock’; throws light on concepts of choice, freedom, responsibility and fulfilment; and reveals the shortcomings of society’s organization of childrearing for all.”—Eliane Glaser, author of Motherhood

“Russell’s Doing It All is a riveting memoir-cum–cri-de-coeur–cum-manifesto for envisioning motherhood anew—as the anchor for a society built on caring, connection, and sustaining each other and the earth. Deftly marrying history with her own story, Russell gives us a vision of single mothers as avatars of a better world. It is a world we can all embrace, and all aspire to.”—Kirsten Swinth, author of Feminism’s Forgotten Fight

“A probing meditation on how society fails unmarried mothers…Buoyed by searching analysis and affecting stories, this makes a persuasive case for normalizing alternatives to the nuclear family.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher