The best books about modern motherhood

Documenting a year of Clover Stroud’s fierce mother-love as her family expands with the arrival of her newborn son, this searing memoir veers far from the saccharin version of motherhood so often portrayed in fiction and on socials. 

That her five children span almost the entire breadth of childhood allows the reader a rare insight into what it means to mother simultaneously across a multitude of ages, from the visceral bond with the baby to the inevitable distance that comes with adolescence as older children begin to both rebel and repel.

Stroud’s intimate writing is as raw and euphoric as labour and something I turn to when I want to be reminded of just how deeply words can make you feel.

It was McNish’s poem Embarrassed – a reflection on society’s inability to cope with a mother breastfeeding her child in public – that first led me to her work. I shared it with everyone. 

Part diary, part poetry collection, Nobody Told Me is born of the same honesty and documents her experience from the moment she discovered she was pregnant at Glastonbury and through the first two years of her daughter’s life. 

There’s an immediacy that comes with the pieces being offered exactly how they were written, whether that was “at four AM, some on the loo...[or] at work”. Motherhood, especially early motherhood, has little time for polishing (of furniture or of words), and this lack of editing is, I think, what allows me to see myself reflected in the poems.

“It came, over and over, down to this. What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?” Nineties suburban America sets the scene for Ng’s second novel, which I adored for its exploration of mothering in various forms – surrogacy, adoption, abortion, and the blood that isn’t always thick enough to bond us. 

As someone who tends to write in the first person, I hugely admire Ng’s ability to move between different characters’ perspectives. The empathy she incites in her reader is a testament to the sensitivity with which she handles her varied cast. Having felt so passionately about the book, I was nervous to watch the TV adaptation but genuinely loved that too.

A shooter in a zoo might not sound like the premise for an exploration of motherhood, but this brilliantly paced thriller is just that. On a day trip to the zoo with her four-year-old son, Joan must flee from a gunman, a task made all the more complicated by having to simultaneously negotiate the quotidian questions and tasks of parenting.

A hungry child, or one who needs the toilet, can be challenging at the best of times, let alone while hiding in an empty animal enclosure trying to avoid imminent death! Ultimately, the primary role of any parent is to keep their child alive. Fierce Kingdom puts this ordinary occupation in extraordinary circumstances, and the result is utterly compelling. 

As Spilt Milk’s protagonist Bea Straw is a mum-blogger, I was keen to read experiences of real-life “mummy influencers”. Braithwaite’s book – part memoir, part manifesto – was of particular interest because she is Black, somewhat of a rarity in the picture of motherhood painted by social media that tends to be both very white and very middle class. 

Documenting the difficult birth of her daughter and the subsequent mishandled complications, Braithwaite exposes the many and varied ways in which women of colour are disadvantaged and endangered by racial bias. 

While light in tone, there’s a power and vulnerability in Braithwaite’s writing, and I learnt so much from this brilliant book.