Category: Maternity at War

Maternal Grief in Black and White: Enslaved Mothers and Antislavery Literature on the Eve of War

Mrs. Tamor and her six children. Helen and her son, a child of “tender years.” Margaret Garner, an “affectionate mother” of four, also pregnant with a fifth child. An unnamed woman whose infant would soon be taken from her and “whose sufferings, on account of the separation from her child, seemed greater than for her… Read more →

A Double-Edged Sword: War and Motherhood in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

The depictions of war mothers are the touchstone for gender debates and political tensions of any given period in history. In nineteenth-century Latin America, mothers became national icons and were the center of many visual and literary representations of war, at a time when the newly formed nations restricted citizenship to men from the criollo… Read more →

Maternity at War: Introduction

Our latest series at Nursing Clio, “Maternity at War,” takes perhaps obvious inspiration from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Coverage of the war, which began over six months ago on February 24, 2022, has been peppered with stories of mothers. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for example, used an attack on a maternity hospital to underscore the… Read more →