The articles in this book are chronologically arranged, tracing the different stages that motherhood as a concept has traversed in India – from goddess worship to nationalism, to being a vehicle of reproduction of the sexual division of labour and the inheritance of property via the male-line. Underlying these stages are the dialectics between them that have been facilitated by agents such as the state – the ultimate controller of a woman’s reproductive powers. The feminist critique of ‘essentialising’ the role of a woman has been employed to deconstruct and humanise the experiences and lives of mothers. This anthology therefore attempts to initiate a meaningful and ‘sensitive’ engagement with issues pertaining to a woman’s autonomy over her body and her role also as a mother.