Motherhood has changed. For several decades there has been tension between traditional ideas and modern values of mothering. For years the trend was away from the constraints which bound down our own mothers and towards liberating women. But in the 1980s and 1990s the momentum has shifted into sharp reverse. This study documents the present backlash, examining responses in the media, the courts, the government, in medicine and through pop psychology, which reasserts an old-fashioned, conservative and narrow view of what a mother should be and do. In addition, the author explores the strong, highly idealized concept of motherhood that exists in the West, finding reflections of that image in history, in Christianity, in literature and in mythology.