Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 291 In her introduction to Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Empowered

Mothering (2004), Andrea O’Reilly repeatedly calls on feminist scholars to define, document, and imagine “[e]mpowered mothering, or what may be termed ‘outlaw mothering ’ or ‘mothering against motherhood’ ” (4). Two years after the publication of Mother Outlaws, O’Reilly issued a similar challenge in her plenary address at the 2006 National Women’s Studies Association Conference in Oakland, California. She asserted that mothering continues to be described primarily in terms of what it is not—patriarchal motherhood—and asked for renewed vigor in defining and theorizing it. This article responds to O’Reilly’s call by arguing that in her fiction, American writer Grace Paley suggests a compelling model of empowered mothering and maternal well-being. I draw on nineteenth-century American urban history, turn-of-the-century theories of democracy, and the work of Adrienne Rich (1976) and Andrea O’Reilly in order to show that Paley’s mothers practice a version of democracy that challenges early-twentieth-century ideas of civic uplift and gender roles. Deliberately inconsistent, Paley’s female protagonists defy an easy categoriza-tion. Their only consistent commitment, I argue, is to work for social justice, both in the urban spaces they inhabit and in the world beyond. For Paley’s female characters, mothering ultimately involves sustaining and cultivating the kind of democratic engagement—always urban, inevitably incomplete and dissensual—that Dana D. Nelson (2002) has called “ugly democracy.” Grace Paley has so consistently affirmed the connection between mothering and activism that it has become something of a commonplace in criticism to identify it as a major theme both in her life and in her stories. Similarly, Paley’s readers have routinely noted the importance of urban spaces in her fiction. For instance, Blanche Gelfant (1980) observes that “[f]riendships in Paley’s storie