Essential Breakthroughs: Conversations About Men, Mothers, and Mothering thinks from the nexus of gender, essentialism, and care. The authors creatively blend the philosophical and the personal to collectively argue that while gender is essential to our social and theoretical definitions of care, it is dangerously co-opted into naturalized discourses, which limit particular identities and negate certain forms of care. The perspectives curated in Essential Breakthroughs illuminate how care, as a respected and productive cultural ethic, is neither inherent nor instinctual for any human, but is learned and fostered. The chapters are informed by feminist, queer, and trans politics, wielding post-structuralist methodologies of unlearning and deconstruction, while maintaining the maternal lens as a credible feminist analytical tool and not as a gender-essentialist practice.

Fiona Joy Green (she/her) is a cisgender, temporarily able-bodied, straight feminist mother who believes in the power of revolutionary feminist motherwork beyond the gender binary. She is a white settler and holds the position of Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg, located on ancestral lands, on Treaty One Territory, and on the homeland of the Métis peoples. Fiona is the author of Practicing Feminist Mothering (ARP) and co-editor of seven Demeter Press collections that address ever-changing feminist parenting practices and maternal pedagogies. Recent titles include Mothers, Mothering and COVID-19: Reflections from a Pandemic (2021), Parenting/ Internet/ Kids: Domesticating Technologies (2022), Coming into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism, (2023) and the forthcoming co-edited collection Revolutionizing Motherlines (2025).

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Gary Lee Pelletier is a Ph.D. candidate in the Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies Graduate Program at York University. His current research focuses on the intersection of queer negative affects, feminisms, and the burgeoning North American Men’s Rights Movement. He lives in Toronto with his partner, many cats, many plants, a dog, and his hip 92 year old grandmother.

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