Motherhood Studies

At once provocative and laugh-out-loud funny, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother ignited a global parenting debate with its story of one mother’s journey in strict parenting. Amy Chua argues that Western parenting tries to respect and nurture children’s individuality, while Chinese parents typically believe that arming children with skills, strong work habits, and inner confidence prepares them best for the future.

On Instagram, the private work of mothering has been turned into a public performance that’s generating billions of dollars, and the message is simple: that we’re all just a couple of clicks away from a better, more beautiful experience of motherhood. Momfluenced examines the performance of motherhood—producers of it and consumers of it—through the multilayered phenomenon of the mommy influencer.

Maternal instinct - the all-consuming, utterly selfless love that mothers lavish on their children - has long been assumed to be an innate, indeed defining element of a woman's nature. But is it? In this provocative, groundbreaking audiobook, renowned anthropologist (and mother) Sarah Blaffer Hrdy shares a radical new vision of motherhood and its crucial role in human evolution. Hrdy strips away stereotypes and gender-biased myths to demonstrate that traditional views of maternal behavior are essentially wishful thinking codified as objective observation.

We told women that to break glass ceilings and succeed in their careers, all they needed to do is dream big, raise their hands, and lean in. But data tells a different story. Historic numbers of women left their jobs in 2021, resulting in their lowest workforce participation since 1988. Women’s unemployment rose to nearly fifteen percent, and globally women lost over $800 billion in wages. Fifty-one percent of women say that their mental health has declined, while anxiety and depression rates have skyrocketed.

Ruthie Ackerman had long believed that the decision to not have children was a radical act. She’d grown up being told that she came from a long line of women who had abandoned their kids and feared she would pass on her half-brother’s rare genetic disorder. So when she marries a man who doesn’t want children, she hopes she can be happy without any. But a voice in her head keeps returning to the question: What if mothering can be a radical act too?

What kind of mother abandons her child? During the pandemic, trapped at home with young children and struggling to find creative space to write, journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz became fixated on artistic women who overcame both society’s condemnation and their own maternal guilt to leave their children—at will or due to economic or other circumstances. The Abandoners is sharp, at times slyly humorous, and always deeply empathetic.

Despite more power and choices than ever before, women are still angry; that's not necessarily a bad thing, as anger is what continues to open the door for change. In this collection, 15 women speak boldly and passionately about choices they've made, about sex, children, love, and work, and explore what's working and what is not.

This is the story of one of Church history's most revered women, the godly mother of John and Charles Wesley. This biography recounts the story of a woman who used her strong leadership and faith to raise well educated and spiritually disciplined children. Her unwavering devotion to God and family in the face of grief, poverty, and a sometimes difficult marriage is a tremendous inspiration.

Best-selling author Naomi Wolf demythologizes motherhood and reveals the dangers of common assumptions about childbirth. With uncompromising honesty, she describes how hormones eroded her sense of independence, ultrasounds tested her commitment to abortion rights, and the keepers of the OB/GYN establishment lacked compassion. Wolf's courageous willingness to talk about the unexpected difficulties of childbirth will help every woman become a more knowledgeable planner of her pregnancy and better prepare her for the challenges of balancing a career, freedom, and a growing family.

Anxiety among mothers is a growing but largely unrecognized crisis. In the transition to mother­hood and the years that follow, countless women suffer from overwhelming feelings of fear, grief, and obsession that do not fit neatly within the outmoded category of “postpartum depression.” These women soon discover that there is precious little support or time for their care, even as expectations about what mothers should do and be continue to rise.

Silverstein, one of the founding members of the Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy, calls for mothers and fathers alike to refuse to sanction the emotional shutdown we traditionally demand of boys, thus enabling sons to grow up to be not only strong men but whole people.

Telling her son's story against the backdrop of a society plagued by systemic racism, economic inequality, and mass incarceration, Golden offers a form of witness and testimony in a time of crisis for Black Americans. Explore Black boys' difficult road to adulthood in the US and learn why single Black mothers are often wrongly blamed for their sons' actions. Gain invaluable advice and knowledge from trustworthy sources. In Saving Our Sons, Golden documents her conversations with psychologists, writers, and young Black males themselves.

On May 23, 2009, Amanda Stott-Smith drove to the middle of the Sellwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and dropped her two children into the Willamette River. Forty minutes later, rescuers found the body of four-year-old Eldon. Miraculously, his seven-year-old sister, Trinity, was saved. As the public cried out for blood, Amanda was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.

In A Simpler Motherhood, Emily's on a mission to remove stress from the lives of moms and busy families seeking less stuff and more joy in their daily life.

Seventeen years ago, when Rebecca Thompson endured a string of life-threatening pregnancy losses and rare medical conditions, her training as a physician didn’t protect her from feeling isolated and overwhelmed. What she longed for was a community of women—or even one encouraging story—to reassure her that she wasn’t alone. Deciding to create the community she couldn’t find in her own time of need, Dr. Thompson reached out to friends, patients, and medical colleagues and asked them to share the stories of their personal journeys to parenthood.

This program is read by the author. Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them. In her groundbreaking and essential debut The...

Women are constantly being told that it's simply too difficult to balance work and family, so if they don't really "have to" work, it's better for their families if they stay home. Not only is this untrue, Leslie Bennetts says, but the arguments in favor of stay-at-home motherhood fail to consider the surprising benefits of work and the unexpected toll of giving it up. It's time, she says, to get the message across: combining work and family really is the best choice for most women.

It's not news that women work, have families, and are conflicted about it. No one needs to be reminded that motherhood is hard. Enter Caitlin Flanagan with a fresh, witheringly funny take on women's lives today, the weddings, nannies, overscheduled children, sex (and the lack of sex), the cult of the "domestic goddess" and its manias for home decorating and gourmet cooking, and the endless tension between working moms and stay-at-home moms.

Anna Prushinskaya explores the deep life shifts of pregnancy, birth and motherhood in the United States, a world away from the author's Soviet homeland. Drawing from inspirations as various as midwife Ina May Gaskin, writer and activist Alice Walker, and frontierswoman Caroline Henderson, Prushinskaya captures the inherent togetherness of motherhood alongside its accompanying estrangement. She plumbs the deeper waters of compassion, memory and identity, as well as the humorous streams of motherhood as they run up against the realities of work and the ever-present eye of social media.

Most people who talk about motherhood start out by telling you how much they always wanted to be a mom. Not Lisa-Jo Baker. She was 18 and growing up in South Africa when her mom died, and she swore she would never have kids. But then she fell in love with an American boy with cowboy-green eyes, married him, and now, a decade and two continents later, they have three. This is the unlikely story of how she got there.