Not until the eighteenth century was the image of the tender, full-time mother invented - an image that retains its power today. Inventing Maternity demonstrates that, despite its association with an increasingly standardized set of values, motherhood remained contested terrain. Drawing on feminist, cultural, and postcolonial theory, Inventing Maternity surveys a wide range of sources - medical texts, political tracts, religious writings, poems, novels, slave narratives, conduct books, and cookbooks.

In her introduction, Greenfield provides a historical overview of early modern interpretations of maternity. She also considers their impact on current debates about reproductive rights and technologies, child custody, and the cycles of poverty.