Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond asks and considers: What is feminist parenting? Is it something for all parents? What does it mean to be a feminist parent in practice? The collection aims to fill a gap on feminist parenting in the existing literature by bringing timely non-Eurocentric perspectives. More specifically, the anthology’s main contribution is to broadcast reflections and experiences that emanate primarily from voices that are often overlooked in global feminist discourses: those of African women (and men), living on the continent or in the diaspora, and from others born and raised or currently living in the Global South. The 30 contributors from diverse backgrounds, walks of life and countries gathered in this anthology share powerful responses to the above questions by narrating their experiences of some of the challenges, dilemmas, promises and compromises of parenting with a feminist perspective. The volume is one of the first collections that collates first-person essays that describe the authors’ touching, beautiful and sometimes painful journeys of becoming feminist parents. In doing so, the authors of this book aim at (re)claiming parenting as a necessarily political terrain for sub-version, radical transformation and resistance to patriarchal oppression and sexism.

Rama Salla Dieng, PhD, is a Senegalese writer, academic, and activist. She is currently a lecturer in Africa and international development at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. Her PhD thesis provided a feminist political economy analysis of selected agricultural investments and their socioeconomic outcomes in Northern Senegal during what has been dubbed “the land rush” between 2008 and 2017. Between 2010 and 2015, she worked successively as a research assistant and then as a research fellow at the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP) based in Senegal. Rama is also a feminist activist who has collaborated with several feminist organisations on agrarian change, gender and development, and social reproduction. Rama has published a novel La Dernière Lettre with Présence Africaine in 2008, and has contributed to an edited volume published by Gender Links called Polygamy: At the Heart of the Matter (2009) as well as to an edited volume called Democracy and Development: Perspectives of Young African Researchers (2013) published by l’Harmattan.

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Dr. Andrea O’Reilly is internationally recognized as the founder of Motherhood Studies (2006) and its subfield Maternal Theory (2007), and creator of Matricentric Feminism, a feminism for and about mothers (2016) and Matricritics, a literary theory and practice for a reading of mother-focused texts (2024). She is full professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University, founder/editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative and publisher of Demeter Press. She is co-editor/editor of thirty plus books on many motherhood topics including: Feminist Mothering, Young Mothers, Monstrous Mothers, Maternal Regret, Normative Motherhood, Mothers and Sons, Mothers and Daughters, Maternal Texts, Academic Motherhood, Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism and Mothering and Covid-19. She is editor of the Encyclopedia on Motherhood (2010) and co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Motherhood (2019). She is author of Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart (2004); Rocking the Cradle: Thoughts on Motherhood, Feminism, and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering (2006); and Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice, The 2nd Edition (2021). Forthcoming titles include: The Mother Wave: Theorizing, Enacting, and Representing Matricentric Feminism , The Missing Mother, and Revolutionizing Motherlines. She is currently completing her monograph Matricritics as Literary Theory and Criticism: Reading the Maternal in Post-2010 Women’s Narratives. Matricritics as Literary Theory and Criticism: Reading the Maternal in Post-2010 Women’s Narratives. She is twice the recipient of York University’s “Professor of the Year Award” for teaching excellence and is the 2019 recipient of the Status of Women and Equity Award of Distinction from OCUFA (Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations). She has received more than 1.5 million dollars in grant funding for her research projects including two current ones: “Millennial Moms” and “Mothers and Returning to ‘Normal’: The Impact of the Pandemic on Mothering and Families.”

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