While numerous historians have questioned the assumption that the 1950s were wholly conservative in terms of gender politics, few have systematically explored the nuances of debates over motherhood in particular. This article asks how depictions of motherhood in two popular New Zealand magazines reflected multiple voices that spoke of the complexities of mothers’ experiences and broader ideologies of motherhood during this era. It develops the concept of “dialectics of motherhood” in order to account for the interwoven ways in which sophisticated debates over “good” and “bad” mothers helped to propel social changes that led to the second-wave feminist movement.

中文翻译：

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1950年代新西兰的母亲辩证法

尽管许多历史学家对1950年代在性别政治方面完全保守的假设提出了质疑，但很少有人系统地探讨特别是关于母性的辩论的细微差别。本文询问新西兰两本流行杂志对母性的描写如何反映出多种声音，这些声音谈到了这个时代母亲经历的复杂性和更广泛的母性意识形态。它发展了“母性辩证法”的概念，以解释交织在一起的方式，在这些方式中，关于“好”母亲和“坏”母亲的复杂辩论有助于推动导致第二波女权运动的社会变革。