Written by Michelle Attebury, Marta Cuboni, and Amy Bergholtz

Rich opens her essay with a description of a case where a woman named Joanne Michulski, a mother of eight, killed her two youngest children. This case illustrates her argument about the violence of institutionalized motherhood. Rich makes several historical and cultural references to develop this argument with the aim of proving how universal is the view that women are primarily and necessarily mothers and that they don't get the respect, support, and compensation that motherhood deserves. She also uses this framework to discuss the contentious issues of abortion, infanticide, single motherhood and out-of-wedlock births.

Rich traces the changing implications of infanticide across time and culture, documenting the instances in pre-eighteenth-century European and non-European cultures where female infanticide was sanctioned because daughters were thought to be a burden, whereas sons were considered assets. In the eighteen-century in Europe, the queens of several countries began reforms to alleviate the desperation of the mothers who would have been driven to infanticide because of unwanted pregnancies and social pressures against out-of-wedlock births. In America, Elizabeth Cady Stanton worked in defence of mothers, saving them from the persecution by patriarchal, religious, and family institutions.

These reforms were necessary because "instead of recognizing the institutional violence of patriarchal motherhood, society labels those women who finally erupt in violence as psychopathological." (p.263) Rich points out that this labeling was legitimized at the time by basing itself on Freudian analysis.

Contributing to the institutionalization of motherhood were attitudes and legislations concerning abortion and contraception, which served the interests of the state but not those of individual women. In section three of Rich's essay, she gives examples of how "abortion legislation has always come and gone with the rhythms of economic and military aggression, the desire for cheap labor or for greater consumerism." (p. 271)

As a closing statement, Rich strongly advocates the destruction of the institution of motherhood as it now exists. Under the current structure, women struggle to be valued beyond their capacity for motherhood and are trapped by the violence of institutionalized motherhood. The solution lies in motherhood becoming freely chosen and not forced, forbidden, or inescapable.