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A review essay on books by (1) Ann Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades before Roe v. Wade (Penguin Press, 2007); & (2) Rosanna Hertz, Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood without Marriage and Creating the New American Family (Oxford U Press, 2006).

Discusses the clash between motherhood & soldiering present since the US passed a law allowing women with dependent children to enlist in the military, using the case of Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson to illustrate. At issue is why the US military is allowed to engage in a "morally questionable" policy of recruiting mothers or soon-to-be mothers. It is contended that this practice exists as a function of US cultural values & because the military as well as political leaders have remained silent on the subject; further, there seems to be an activist & academic blindness to the moral distinction between women & mothers. Of particular interest is why progressives & conservatives bear responsibility for the fate of military mothers as represented by Hutchinson's story. Attention is given to some of the empirical evidence indicating the impact of military service on mothers & their children, & to the tricky issue of distinguishing women service members with children from those without them. D. Edelman

Explores the effects of nationalist sentiment on motherhood, arguing that nationalist propaganda urges mothers to support war & reproduce to increase the population of the nation. The case of war in the former Yugoslavia illustrates how the church & state usurped control of women's bodies by supporting nationalist antiabortion movements, even to the degree of accepting rape-related pregnancies. Patriarchal constructions are seen in the objectification of women in relation to the notion of rape as ethnic cleansing; ie, only the male seed determines the identity of a child that a women must passively agree to carry. The psychological trauma caused by wartime rape is discussed, as well as the UN's responsibility for it. M. Nichols-Wagner

Western countries differ greatly in the extent to which single mothers participate in the labor market. Using LIS data for 15 countries, I propose & estimate a simple structural model of labor supply that incorporates the main variables that influence the work decision for single mothers. The results suggest that a large part of the cross-country variation in the employment rates of single mothers can be explained by their different demographic characteristics & by the variation in expected income in the in-work vs out-of-work states. Women with higher expected earnings are more likely to work. Higher in-work benefits encourage employment. Single mothers with higher income from other sources, including child support, are less likely to work. Even after demographic & income variables are controlled for, the country dummies remain significant. This indicates that other variables not explicitly incorporated in the model, such as child care arrangements or social & cultural backgrounds, may also play a relevant role. 10 Tables, 1 Appendix, 24 References. Adapted from the source document.