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4.27 AVERAGE
4.27 AVERAGE
Would like to buy this book and re-read every year or during hard moments
I read this as a hard copy and listened to it as an audiobook. I ended up annotating so many parts of the book because my greatest takeaway was I WISHED I WOULD’VE READ THIS SOONER.
If you’re pregnant (first, second or third time), read this book.
If you have young kids, read this book.
If you felt/feel resentment building or displaced emotions, read this book.
If the transition to motherhood has made you question your ability, read this book.
If your marriage is rocky and you’re at your wit’s end because of parenthood, read this book.
If you’re in constant survival or crisis mode because of motherhood , read this book.
If you need to feel less lonely on this journey, read this book.
This book has helped me understand the emotions attributed to being a first time mom is SO normal. Grieving the person you were before kids is part of the process.
If you’re pregnant (first, second or third time), read this book.
If you have young kids, read this book.
If you felt/feel resentment building or displaced emotions, read this book.
If the transition to motherhood has made you question your ability, read this book.
If your marriage is rocky and you’re at your wit’s end because of parenthood, read this book.
If you’re in constant survival or crisis mode because of motherhood , read this book.
If you need to feel less lonely on this journey, read this book.
This book has helped me understand the emotions attributed to being a first time mom is SO normal. Grieving the person you were before kids is part of the process.
For a book that's supposed to focus on "modern dilemma", the author certainly perpetuated a ton of gender stereotypes. I can't help but feel the author projected a lot of her personal experience onto her clients as well as women in general. I guess I was hoping to be enlightened, that did not happen. The book is also tediously repetitive. Among the cases used by the author, honestly, all the women are over-invested / guilt-ridden / spend-more-time-at-home / wealthy-enough-to-see-therapist mothers, and all the men are career-driven, working long-hours, loving, and "helping out" their wives with childcare, but-def-not-getting-up-in-the-middle-of-night-to-feed-the-baby-since-their-sleep-matters fathers. That just sounds awfully like a specific demographic, and for god's sake please don't expect everyone to relate.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
I read this when my first was 15 months, I think if you don’t have a close mom’s circle and are in therapy it would be balm on your heart. For me it was less revolutionary but a good reminder you are not alone.
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
This book is designed to enlighten and support mothers by honoring the complexity of their life transitions and helping them navigate big changes with honesty, courage, and acceptance. The author draws upon current research, her own experiences, and the lives of her therapy patients to illustrate and work through the ways that real-life motherhood doesn't live up to anyone's expectations, and as she explores the difficult emotions inherent in caring for babies and children, she provides advice for how women can maintain a sense of themselves, keep a realistic view, and resolve strain in their marital relationships.
This is a worthy goal, and the book mostly lives up to it, since the author does an excellent job presenting the complexity of motherhood and has lots of good attachment theory advice for couples. However, because of some issues that I have with this book, I'm only giving it three stars. It's frequently repetitive, which makes the book seem too long, and even though the author draws upon current research and has lots of good advice, she is overly constrained by the limits of her personal and clinical experience. Even though it makes sense for her to write from her own experience, she makes very universal claims without exploring the lives of those who lack her privileges, or who cannot afford to go to therapy for their motherhood-related emotional issues.
Also, even though she directly explains at the beginning that she is focused on heterosexual couples based on her own experiences and her clinical work, there is absolutely ZILCH about how motherhood transitions affect adoptive mothers, and she never acknowledges this at all. Since nothing about the title indicates that she is talking about biological motherhood alone, I think that it is a major problem for her to not at least make it clear up-front that she does not speak to the dynamics of adoption at all and is only writing about mothers for whom childbirth is part of their life transition.
Another issue that I have with this book is her treatment of gender imbalances in marriages after children come along. Some of this material is very good, but she swings back and forth between dissonant ideas. She writes repeatedly about how mothers have an incredibly unique, biological, primitive knowledge of their babies and their needs, but she also claims that the reason why women are more destabilized by a baby's arrival than their husbands is because of patriarchal expectations. So, are mothers deeply attuned to their babies because of biology, or is the unique mother-baby unity observed throughout human history the product of cultural conditioning and dads not stepping up enough? Her verdict differs from paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter. It's a complex issue, to be sure, but it frustrated me that she would make seemingly contradictory statements without working through the nuance enough.
Also, her ideas of equality in marriage send the message that traditional arrangements are always harmful. She laments that 50/50 childcare is more of a dream than the norm, since women tend to take on the brunt of domestic duties even when they are working equal hours to their husbands, but even when she is writing about stay-at-home moms, she conveys a sense of judgment about how much more involved women are, and how much more parenthood affects them than their spouses. She views marriages as patriarchal and unequal when there isn't an even labor split, and that is absolutely unreasonable, especially considering the biological elements that she kept contradicting herself on.
As she explains, women have an innate, attuned sensitivity to their babies because of their prenatal relationship and hormonal changes. Dads, on the other hand, have to actively work to develop a bond with their babies, and become attuned through practice and repetition. However, she isn't willing to accept this as a signal that maybe it is really okay if Mom is the one who does most of the childcare, while Dad is the primary provider and is involved secondarily in child-rearing. This arrangement doesn't work for everyone, and isn't possible when the family's survival depends on two incomes, but she is amazingly resistant to accepting that it's okay for some people to take their cues from biology. She is completely unwilling to give up on the idea that parents should have equal investments in childcare, and even though she provides great advice about how dads can get more involved and develop deep bonds with their babies, her preconceived notions distort this part of the book.
She acknowledges that it sets mothers up for frustration to expect childcare to be 50/50, but she keeps pushing for this anyway, instead of seeing that it isn't always feasible or even desirable. I wish that she could have provided insight on how couples can seek a more balanced division of labor when they want to without harping on traditional divisions of labor and believing that they are inherently harmful. Sometimes it works really well for Dad to work and Mom to stay at home, and just because this author doesn't find that desirable doesn't mean that other people's marriages are unequal as a result. Equality in a relationship ultimately comes down to spouses having equal respect, equal love, and the equal right to ask for and expect support. People don't have to divide all types of labor perfectly equally to have justice and balance in their marriages, and I was very disappointed by her unwillingness to see this.
Overall, this is a worthwhile resource, and I would never discourage any new biological mother from reading it. However, because it completely ignores dynamics related to adoption, and because of the other issues that I enumerated above, I would never make this a blanket recommendation for all mothers, and would never make this a staple to give to people at baby showers. It's a mixed bag that is well worth exploring under the right conditions, but it shouldn't be enshrined as the new best resource or an instant classic.
This is a worthy goal, and the book mostly lives up to it, since the author does an excellent job presenting the complexity of motherhood and has lots of good attachment theory advice for couples. However, because of some issues that I have with this book, I'm only giving it three stars. It's frequently repetitive, which makes the book seem too long, and even though the author draws upon current research and has lots of good advice, she is overly constrained by the limits of her personal and clinical experience. Even though it makes sense for her to write from her own experience, she makes very universal claims without exploring the lives of those who lack her privileges, or who cannot afford to go to therapy for their motherhood-related emotional issues.
Also, even though she directly explains at the beginning that she is focused on heterosexual couples based on her own experiences and her clinical work, there is absolutely ZILCH about how motherhood transitions affect adoptive mothers, and she never acknowledges this at all. Since nothing about the title indicates that she is talking about biological motherhood alone, I think that it is a major problem for her to not at least make it clear up-front that she does not speak to the dynamics of adoption at all and is only writing about mothers for whom childbirth is part of their life transition.
Another issue that I have with this book is her treatment of gender imbalances in marriages after children come along. Some of this material is very good, but she swings back and forth between dissonant ideas. She writes repeatedly about how mothers have an incredibly unique, biological, primitive knowledge of their babies and their needs, but she also claims that the reason why women are more destabilized by a baby's arrival than their husbands is because of patriarchal expectations. So, are mothers deeply attuned to their babies because of biology, or is the unique mother-baby unity observed throughout human history the product of cultural conditioning and dads not stepping up enough? Her verdict differs from paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter. It's a complex issue, to be sure, but it frustrated me that she would make seemingly contradictory statements without working through the nuance enough.
Also, her ideas of equality in marriage send the message that traditional arrangements are always harmful. She laments that 50/50 childcare is more of a dream than the norm, since women tend to take on the brunt of domestic duties even when they are working equal hours to their husbands, but even when she is writing about stay-at-home moms, she conveys a sense of judgment about how much more involved women are, and how much more parenthood affects them than their spouses. She views marriages as patriarchal and unequal when there isn't an even labor split, and that is absolutely unreasonable, especially considering the biological elements that she kept contradicting herself on.
As she explains, women have an innate, attuned sensitivity to their babies because of their prenatal relationship and hormonal changes. Dads, on the other hand, have to actively work to develop a bond with their babies, and become attuned through practice and repetition. However, she isn't willing to accept this as a signal that maybe it is really okay if Mom is the one who does most of the childcare, while Dad is the primary provider and is involved secondarily in child-rearing. This arrangement doesn't work for everyone, and isn't possible when the family's survival depends on two incomes, but she is amazingly resistant to accepting that it's okay for some people to take their cues from biology. She is completely unwilling to give up on the idea that parents should have equal investments in childcare, and even though she provides great advice about how dads can get more involved and develop deep bonds with their babies, her preconceived notions distort this part of the book.
She acknowledges that it sets mothers up for frustration to expect childcare to be 50/50, but she keeps pushing for this anyway, instead of seeing that it isn't always feasible or even desirable. I wish that she could have provided insight on how couples can seek a more balanced division of labor when they want to without harping on traditional divisions of labor and believing that they are inherently harmful. Sometimes it works really well for Dad to work and Mom to stay at home, and just because this author doesn't find that desirable doesn't mean that other people's marriages are unequal as a result. Equality in a relationship ultimately comes down to spouses having equal respect, equal love, and the equal right to ask for and expect support. People don't have to divide all types of labor perfectly equally to have justice and balance in their marriages, and I was very disappointed by her unwillingness to see this.
Overall, this is a worthwhile resource, and I would never discourage any new biological mother from reading it. However, because it completely ignores dynamics related to adoption, and because of the other issues that I enumerated above, I would never make this a blanket recommendation for all mothers, and would never make this a staple to give to people at baby showers. It's a mixed bag that is well worth exploring under the right conditions, but it shouldn't be enshrined as the new best resource or an instant classic.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
A must read for every mother/wife AND father/husband!
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced