Doing It All explores what it means to be a single mother. Scorned as victims outcasts and
sinners the very existence of lone mothers has long been a 'problem' that skewers the heart of
prevailing systems of morality oppression and power. This book combines personal essay with
interviews and historical research to reveal the shrouded history and present-day struggles of
women who raise their children outside marriage on the fringes of society and in communities
that challenge the very definition of family. It looks to traditions of female solidarity
around the world and to the few explicitly political movements of single mothers in Western
history-most significantly the Sisterhood of Black Single Mothers that arose in the US in the
early 1970s. There has been a wave of wonderfully radical examinations of motherhood in recent
years. But no one has deeply examined the specific questions and communal histories of single
motherhood. Like queer relationships single motherhood has always been an anathema to
patriarchy. Now a long history of the mother as a mere channel through which a man's progeny
is birthed and nurtured into an heir is waning. We no longer need to relinquish our
independence or sexual selves to a man to legitimise our children. Yet for all the feminist
arguments made against marriage half a century ago and more women who choose to be mothers
still aren't offered much else. Single mothers have always been a thorn in society's side
revealing its structural and ideological shortcomings. The welfare state's earliest incarnation
was public assistance for lone mothers breaking the ground for others to receive social
support. Unpacking the hardships single mothers face today Russell argue that the
transformation that society must undergo to accommodate our ways of life are essential to make
homes and workplaces fit for all women and to create a more just and sustainable society.
