I'm looking for intelligent books or essays about motherhood.
December 17, 2015 4:47 AM Subscribe
I would like some reading material on motherhood and/or pregnancy that goes beyond the standard "it's hard, but it's SO rewarding."
I'm crawling out of my first trimester right now, and feeling apathetic, at times angry and sad, about this pregnancy that was something I did purposefully and with much forethought. (I know some of this is normal, and I'm not yet concerned about getting treated for depression; I have those resources available when I need them.) What I want right now are some reading recommendations. I'm interested in writing by other women grappling with ambivalence in the process, fears about loss of selfhood, and how they came to connect with the child they were carrying, either before or after birth. Oddly, the one piece that has really resonated with me since becoming pregnant has been "Thanksgiving in Mongolia," Ariel Levy's account of a harrowing birth in Ulan Bator. I related to her years of ambivalence about parenthood, about her pride in and reluctance to give up her independence and sense of adventure, and I loved her description of feeling like a witch brewing up a potion when she became pregnant. I appreciate good writing and smart, strong women. Thanks for any recommendations!
I'm crawling out of my first trimester right now, and feeling apathetic, at times angry and sad, about this pregnancy that was something I did purposefully and with much forethought. (I know some of this is normal, and I'm not yet concerned about getting treated for depression; I have those resources available when I need them.) What I want right now are some reading recommendations. I'm interested in writing by other women grappling with ambivalence in the process, fears about loss of selfhood, and how they came to connect with the child they were carrying, either before or after birth. Oddly, the one piece that has really resonated with me since becoming pregnant has been "Thanksgiving in Mongolia," Ariel Levy's account of a harrowing birth in Ulan Bator. I related to her years of ambivalence about parenthood, about her pride in and reluctance to give up her independence and sense of adventure, and I loved her description of feeling like a witch brewing up a potion when she became pregnant. I appreciate good writing and smart, strong women. Thanks for any recommendations!
There is some smart, strong writing in this genre by smart, strong women.
Two collections:
Mothers Who Think
and -- not only about motherhood but still relevant
The Bitch in the House
Finally, Anne Lamott is one of those writers you might love or hate, probably depending on your taste for a certain kind of spirituality. She is certainly strong and smart though.
Operating Instructions
On preview: Essays in Mothers Who Think are also taken from the blog mentioned above.
posted by flourpot at 5:06 AM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
Two collections:
Mothers Who Think
and -- not only about motherhood but still relevant
The Bitch in the House
Finally, Anne Lamott is one of those writers you might love or hate, probably depending on your taste for a certain kind of spirituality. She is certainly strong and smart though.
Operating Instructions
On preview: Essays in Mothers Who Think are also taken from the blog mentioned above.
posted by flourpot at 5:06 AM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
"Maternal ambivalence" is a term that might help in your searches; Barbara Almond has written about it, and this recent "Dear Sugar" podcast, "Moms Who Hate Motherhood" (one of the hosts is son Steve almond), has a tough, compelling discussion of the subject. I don't know the work of Rozsika Parker, but she might have some relevant reading for you. (Been thinking about posting on this, and will be watching this thread with interest.) Good luck.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:30 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:30 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
On the motherhood end, Shirley Jackson's "Among the Savages" (about parenting her four children) is laugh-out-loud funny. And sometimes a bit dark, and she is clearly not at all sure she wanted to end up with four of them, or in rural Vermont, but she copes with it by applying a hilarious and sometimes dark wit.
Alison Gopnik's The Philosophical Baby is one I recommend to all the brainy moms I know -- It's not a personal parenting memoir or a "how to parent" book, but she surveys recent developments in neuroscience and what those developments show us about the infant brain, and what implications THAT has for our philosophical ideas about how we learn, how we know things, what love is/means/does, etc. If you have ever read Locke or Descartes or Plato and thought, "Dude, did this guy KNOW any children?" when they were nattering on about how to educate children and how brains obviously work, THIS IS YOUR BOOK. I thought it made my infants both more comprehensible ("ohhhh, I get why he's doing this weird attentional thing, that's really interesting!") and much more interesting to ponder whether humans are mental "blank slates" and how they begin to fill them, etc. It both demystifies babies, and fills you with an incredible sense of wonder about how complex they (we!) are.
Parenting for Primates, while not as brain-expanding as The Philosophical Baby was for me, is in a little bit the same vein; a primatologist basically walks through how other primates parent their infants, and how that is like and unlike us human primates, and what we can learn about our own humanity by watching our close cousins undertake the same tasks we're undertaking. (I think the author goes in for romanticizing primitive human tribes and ascribing all good and natural parenting to them and trying to universalize it across societies, and bad and unnatural parenting to modern parents who live in more advanced societies and worry about SIDS and stuff. But it's pretty typical looney-end of Attachment Parenting noble-savage bullshit; if you're not used to it already, you will be soon, and you can just roll your eyes and skim those bits. The monkey bits are the good bits.) (Warning: bad monkey parenting often ends in baby monkey death. It's not the focus of the book but it does happen a few times.)
All Joy and No Fun is languishing on my kindle and I haven't read it yet, but it's been very well-reviewed and it's about the sort-of oppressive aspects of modern parenting and the culturally fucked-up bits of it. It's literally exactly about the attitude "It's so hard, but it's SOOO rewarding!" that we now accept as a normal attitude towards parenting.
The Monster Within is a psychoanalyst writing about the near-universality of maternal ambivalence. I haven't read it myself, but a friend who had bad PPD said it was the book that helped her regain her grip on her sanity by reassuring her it was TOTALLY NORMAL to be ambivalent about being a mother. My impression is that it's kinda Freudian in the classical sense, which may or may not be your thing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:36 AM on December 17, 2015 [17 favorites]
Alison Gopnik's The Philosophical Baby is one I recommend to all the brainy moms I know -- It's not a personal parenting memoir or a "how to parent" book, but she surveys recent developments in neuroscience and what those developments show us about the infant brain, and what implications THAT has for our philosophical ideas about how we learn, how we know things, what love is/means/does, etc. If you have ever read Locke or Descartes or Plato and thought, "Dude, did this guy KNOW any children?" when they were nattering on about how to educate children and how brains obviously work, THIS IS YOUR BOOK. I thought it made my infants both more comprehensible ("ohhhh, I get why he's doing this weird attentional thing, that's really interesting!") and much more interesting to ponder whether humans are mental "blank slates" and how they begin to fill them, etc. It both demystifies babies, and fills you with an incredible sense of wonder about how complex they (we!) are.
Parenting for Primates, while not as brain-expanding as The Philosophical Baby was for me, is in a little bit the same vein; a primatologist basically walks through how other primates parent their infants, and how that is like and unlike us human primates, and what we can learn about our own humanity by watching our close cousins undertake the same tasks we're undertaking. (I think the author goes in for romanticizing primitive human tribes and ascribing all good and natural parenting to them and trying to universalize it across societies, and bad and unnatural parenting to modern parents who live in more advanced societies and worry about SIDS and stuff. But it's pretty typical looney-end of Attachment Parenting noble-savage bullshit; if you're not used to it already, you will be soon, and you can just roll your eyes and skim those bits. The monkey bits are the good bits.) (Warning: bad monkey parenting often ends in baby monkey death. It's not the focus of the book but it does happen a few times.)
All Joy and No Fun is languishing on my kindle and I haven't read it yet, but it's been very well-reviewed and it's about the sort-of oppressive aspects of modern parenting and the culturally fucked-up bits of it. It's literally exactly about the attitude "It's so hard, but it's SOOO rewarding!" that we now accept as a normal attitude towards parenting.
The Monster Within is a psychoanalyst writing about the near-universality of maternal ambivalence. I haven't read it myself, but a friend who had bad PPD said it was the book that helped her regain her grip on her sanity by reassuring her it was TOTALLY NORMAL to be ambivalent about being a mother. My impression is that it's kinda Freudian in the classical sense, which may or may not be your thing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:36 AM on December 17, 2015 [17 favorites]
I read Between Interruptions: 28 Women Tell the Truth about Motherhood not long after I returned to work after my mat leave. I was comforted that I wasn't the only one feeling a bit lost as I figured out how to be all the things my life needed me to be.
This isn't essays, but a book I really found helpful during my pregnancy was From the Hips. It really helped me with my "OMG, what did I just do to my life" freakouts I had throughout the pregnancy. The tone was good and had lots of anecdotes from parents (not just moms) in the trenches.
posted by melissa at 5:55 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
This isn't essays, but a book I really found helpful during my pregnancy was From the Hips. It really helped me with my "OMG, what did I just do to my life" freakouts I had throughout the pregnancy. The tone was good and had lots of anecdotes from parents (not just moms) in the trenches.
posted by melissa at 5:55 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
The Birth of a Mother does a good job of talking about how while everyone's preparing for the new baby, the metamorphosis of the mother is something that should be examined and appreciated as well.
Great with Child is a collection of letters by a poet to her mentee, and they are exquisite.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 6:23 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
Great with Child is a collection of letters by a poet to her mentee, and they are exquisite.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 6:23 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
Life After Birth by Kate Figes really goes into the topic from a realistic view, rather than a rose-colored-glasses view. (Disclaimer: I read this years before I became a mother)
posted by jillithd at 6:32 AM on December 17, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by jillithd at 6:32 AM on December 17, 2015 [5 favorites]
It's audio, not reading material, but this most recent post called 'Moms Who Hate Motherhood' from Dear Sugar is food for thought.
posted by analog at 6:49 AM on December 17, 2015
posted by analog at 6:49 AM on December 17, 2015
Rachel Cusk's A Life's Work is often cited as being an honest and controversial look at new motherhood in the face of societal expectations.
posted by srednivashtar at 6:52 AM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by srednivashtar at 6:52 AM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit is a great on the ambivalence question, from someone who is childfree. Harpers also did a recent issue themed specifically on parenthood, with a variety of perspectives.
Mimi Smartypants is also quite smart on the subject if you look through her archives (starting around 2004), especially that balance of being an individual first, not just a mom.
posted by veery at 7:05 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Mimi Smartypants is also quite smart on the subject if you look through her archives (starting around 2004), especially that balance of being an individual first, not just a mom.
posted by veery at 7:05 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm not a mom, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt, but I'm quite enamored of Meaghan O'Connell's writing on the subject of motherhood, much of which is collected on NY Mag. She put together a reading/watching list that covers some of what you're talking about.
posted by adastra at 7:09 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by adastra at 7:09 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
Mutha Magazine looks at motherhood through an honest, diverse lens. I am not a mother but I enjoy a lot of the pieces posted there.
posted by darksong at 7:14 AM on December 17, 2015
posted by darksong at 7:14 AM on December 17, 2015
Mother Shock was written by a MeFite. In this Ask Metafilter comment she recommends a couple of other helpful books and says:
It was my own experience navigating the identity shift of pregnancy and that first year of motherhood that provoked me to write my first book, Mother Shock, about the culture shock of new motherhood. I tried to write about the vulnerability of motherhood, and the worries/fears/dark places many of us experience but don't feel comfortable speaking about in the context of maternity, and I have heard from many women that they found the book comforting to them.posted by stefanie at 7:49 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
+1 for birth of a mother. It's a deep and sensitive look at the identity changes a woman faces when becoming a mother. Based on research of a few hundred women.
I asked a very similar question just 5 months ago. I can safely say that I haven't lost myself, I feel like the exact same person... Except more tired. The anticipation is worse than the actual, and commercials / media don't help any. Good luck.
posted by serenity soonish at 8:09 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
I asked a very similar question just 5 months ago. I can safely say that I haven't lost myself, I feel like the exact same person... Except more tired. The anticipation is worse than the actual, and commercials / media don't help any. Good luck.
posted by serenity soonish at 8:09 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
Amanda Palmer has recently become a mother and has been writing a lot of excellent things regarding her thoughts and identity changes. This song cover is really excellent about dealing with all of the identity changes a person can go through, including becoming a mother. This medium post is pretty great about dealing with external and internal expectations. She also posts on her Patreon page a lot of thoughts she has about struggling through this whole new mother thing.
posted by jillithd at 8:19 AM on December 17, 2015
posted by jillithd at 8:19 AM on December 17, 2015
I love that Ariel Levy piece. I would recommend the novel Department of Speculation and Maggie Nelson's memoir The Argonauts. Also, it's from a father's perspective, but I love the minutia of the depictions of building a family in Karl Ove Knausgard's My Struggle, Volume 2: A Man in Love.
posted by raisindebt at 8:37 AM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by raisindebt at 8:37 AM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
I've recommended it here before, but there's an incredible book which is a survey on the anthropology of childbearing and parenting small children. It's called Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent. I've given it to two different expectant mothers, and they both said it made them feel less freaked out, because it shows what an incredible range of cultural practices around babies exist. It makes you feel like all this obsession about Doing Things Perfectly is silly. I loved it.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:38 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:38 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Also, A Birth Story by Meaghan O'Connell is amazing if you haven't read it--she also writes great columns for The Cut
posted by raisindebt at 8:41 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by raisindebt at 8:41 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
I loved Naomi Stadlen's What Mothers Do. It's an insightful look at the emotional work of mothering and of understanding yourself as a mother, with a lot about ambivalence, identity and change. Can't recommend this enough. It is honest (sometimes brutally so), thoughtful, and intelligent.
Anne Roiphe's A Mother's Eye: Motherhood and Feminism is great. I go back and forth on how much I agree with her, but I get a lot out of her writing.
I also really liked Our Babies, Ourselves, mentioned above, on the cultural context of parenting. Dream Babies is the same kind of thing on the history of parenting advice. I never got along with prescriptive baby-advice books, but I found books that said basically "there is no One True Best Way to parent, here is how our expectations of parenting and babies are shaped by our cultures and how our biology and evolutionary history play into that" to be great for my own sense of confidence in myself as a mother.
'Mommy blogging' gets a bad rap, but in the earlier days of blogging there was some amazing writing done by parents writing about the reality of their own lives and experiences. (There probably is still, it's just harder to find among the Pinterest-and-sponsored-posts thing that blogging has got into these days.) Of those who still have archives around from about ten years ago, I would recommend Finslippy, Lesbian Dad, Dooce (from when her older daughter was born around 2004, more than the recent stuff), and A Little Pregnant.
The last work of fiction I read that struck a chord with me on motherhood was Emma Donoghue's Room (although, warning for a pretty horrific premise if you're not already familiar with it). The mother in that is described only through the eyes of her 5-year-old, but it does a fantastic job of showing you who she is under what he sees.
posted by Catseye at 9:18 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Anne Roiphe's A Mother's Eye: Motherhood and Feminism is great. I go back and forth on how much I agree with her, but I get a lot out of her writing.
I also really liked Our Babies, Ourselves, mentioned above, on the cultural context of parenting. Dream Babies is the same kind of thing on the history of parenting advice. I never got along with prescriptive baby-advice books, but I found books that said basically "there is no One True Best Way to parent, here is how our expectations of parenting and babies are shaped by our cultures and how our biology and evolutionary history play into that" to be great for my own sense of confidence in myself as a mother.
'Mommy blogging' gets a bad rap, but in the earlier days of blogging there was some amazing writing done by parents writing about the reality of their own lives and experiences. (There probably is still, it's just harder to find among the Pinterest-and-sponsored-posts thing that blogging has got into these days.) Of those who still have archives around from about ten years ago, I would recommend Finslippy, Lesbian Dad, Dooce (from when her older daughter was born around 2004, more than the recent stuff), and A Little Pregnant.
The last work of fiction I read that struck a chord with me on motherhood was Emma Donoghue's Room (although, warning for a pretty horrific premise if you're not already familiar with it). The mother in that is described only through the eyes of her 5-year-old, but it does a fantastic job of showing you who she is under what he sees.
posted by Catseye at 9:18 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Seconding "What Mothers Do" and Rachel Cusk's "A Life's Work." I have done a lot of research in this field and those books sound like exactly what you want. Also, the poet Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born is absolutely brilliant and very honest about the difficulties. All three of these books are written by highly intelligent, non-patronizing women.
Dear Sugar recently aired a podcast, December 11, 2015 show about maternal ambivalence (it's called Moms Who Hate Motherhood) that might be useful; good advice in there. (Both the moms who wrote in for advice dearly wanted children, did IVF, and have found the experience much harder and more disappointing than they expected. A good therapist is interviewed at the end with practical suggestions.)
These four sources are the best of the hundreds things I've read or encountered about the questions you're having. Good luck!
posted by Clotilde at 11:07 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
Dear Sugar recently aired a podcast, December 11, 2015 show about maternal ambivalence (it's called Moms Who Hate Motherhood) that might be useful; good advice in there. (Both the moms who wrote in for advice dearly wanted children, did IVF, and have found the experience much harder and more disappointing than they expected. A good therapist is interviewed at the end with practical suggestions.)
These four sources are the best of the hundreds things I've read or encountered about the questions you're having. Good luck!
posted by Clotilde at 11:07 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
My constant recommenspdation for this question is "Ever since Eve," which is a collection of essays and stories about all aspects of motherhood. I found it very comforting when I was expecting. It is long out if print now, which is a shame.
posted by SLC Mom at 12:10 PM on December 17, 2015
posted by SLC Mom at 12:10 PM on December 17, 2015
I really liked Growing Eden and Waiting for Birdy - both were great, hilarious, descriptions of being pregnant (and the latter of having a toddler)!
I also really like the blogs Mile73, Ugly Volvo, The Pregnant Husband, and Birthing Beautiful Ideas.
The Reluctant Father is on my Amazon Wishlist ;) (First Review: Well I was a mother and I kinda felt this way...)
posted by jrobin276 at 3:17 PM on December 17, 2015
I also really like the blogs Mile73, Ugly Volvo, The Pregnant Husband, and Birthing Beautiful Ideas.
The Reluctant Father is on my Amazon Wishlist ;) (First Review: Well I was a mother and I kinda felt this way...)
posted by jrobin276 at 3:17 PM on December 17, 2015
Bluemilk is the only thing that remains on my must-read list, 7 years on.
posted by geek anachronism at 3:22 PM on December 17, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by geek anachronism at 3:22 PM on December 17, 2015 [5 favorites]
I love this question - I'm 39+5 today. I recommend Life After Birth and look forward to looking through other suggestions. Good luck with your journey. http://www.amazon.com/Life-After-Birth-Kate-Figes/dp/1844084663
posted by hannahlambda at 5:40 AM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by hannahlambda at 5:40 AM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
I read After Birth by Elisa Albert when I was in my 2nd trimester and have been meaning to re-read it now that I'm "on the other side." My number-one recommended book of 2015.
posted by kidsleepy at 2:00 PM on December 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by kidsleepy at 2:00 PM on December 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 5:04 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]