Mothers: An essay on cruelty and love is organized around a well-defined idea: in western culture, motherhood is that space in which we bury the reality of our own conflicts, those that identify us as fully human. Mothers are ultimately responsible for our personal failures, for everything that is wrong in our politics and in our society and that, in some way, they have the obligation to amend; a task, clearly, as unfair as it is not feasible.

To the historical feminist claim regarding the excessive demands that mothers are subjected to, the author adds a new facet when considering what we are doing by transferring to them what we find most difficult to accept.
Because, by making them have the duty to suffer all kinds of cruelty, we are closing our eyes to the flagrant inequalities that surround us.

Using articles, literary works, official documents or examples from daily life, Jacqueline Rose's work ultimately stands as an incisive and compelling call to action: or we recognize at once what exactly we are asking mothers to do. do in and for the world, or we will continue to destroy the world and mothers themselves.