Law Commons^™

Judging Vanessa: Norm Setting And Deviance In The Law Of Motherhood, Michelle Oberman

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This article, by an author who has devoted over a decade to the study of women whom the law deems "bad" mothers, undertakes a more probing consideration of what truly separates the deviant mother from the "good" mother. In this article, she exposes the flaws in a binary classification of mothers as either "good" or "bad." She accomplishes this task by juxtaposing the stories, both legal and personal, of Vanessa, a woman whom society has judged to be a "bad" mother, and the author, a mother most in society would view as "good." In the end, the author not only …