The most recommended books about motherhood

I normally gravitate toward fiction, so this one came out of left field for me.

Abigail Tucker, a correspondent for Smithsonian magazine, dives deep into the science of what makes a mother. I think I enjoyed this book so much because it almost reads like fiction between its accessible (and surprisingly funny!) tone and the stranger-than-fiction revelations about what happens to a woman’s brain when she becomes a mom.

Schwartz’s book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how central black women’s reproduction was to the project of American slavery.

The book illustrates how new doctors needing specialization and clientele found common cause with slaveholders’ needs to control the reproductive capabilities of their enslaved workforce. The ongoing conflicts between slaveholders, enslaved women, and the doctors who were employed to thwart any attempts of resistance and autonomy on their part is truly mind-blowing.

Anyone tracking our current state of affairs post the Dobbs decision, with doctors in states like Texas being forced to choose between providing women necessary healthcare or complying with state law, can see the looming shadow of the history explored in Schwartz’s illuminating book.

Mothers are too often blamed for their children’s and adult daughters’ problems. I regard Paula Caplan’s book as the quintessential text on understanding how patriarchy blames mothers and how mother-blaming harms mothers, women, and the mother-daughter relationship. Paula exposes the myths surrounding motherhood – revealing that there is no such thing as a “perfect mother.” 

The Part That Burns is not a linear narrative but a memoir in fragments. Each essay or chapter is different, interesting, engaging like scattered pieces of a puzzle that the writer—and reader—are trying to put together.

It's about a childhood wrought with abuse and rejection, about trauma and epigenetics, home and roots. It's about a girl who grows up to become a teenager who becomes a young woman who becomes a wife and a mother and every step of the way, she yearns for what we all yearn for: acceptance and love.

My memoir is as slim and sparse as Ouellette’s and some might consider my chronological story as fragmented because of its tiny chapters and missing connective tissue from one chapter to the next.  

This book delves into the science of pregnancy, but through a feminist lens. Through extensive research, Garbes details just how the female body creates life, a sometimes grisly and often wonderous process, as well as pans across our culture, with all its pitfalls, to explain just why women deserve better support through medical care and social nets.

I loved this book. The second nine months is the true story of Vicki Glembocki's journey into those first few months after childbirth. Although the story is a memoir, Glembocki writes it so well that it reads like a novel—a novel you won't put down until you are finished. From beginning to end, Glembocki bravely bares her soul for the new mom's benefit and cleverly manages to hit all the "new mom" topics through her personal experience. From breastfeeding, to newborn crying, to changes in relationships, to new mom bonding, to finding other new mom friends, to back to work issues, Glembocki manages to cover them all with wit and candor. I found her new mom tale "spot on accurate." It is so exciting that truth is finally coming out. Take advantage of the gift this author has created, New Moms, and read about her experience. Moms will find that… show more.

Motherhood features in diverse literary traditions, from antiquity to the present, as perhaps the most prominent aspect of female power.

Already in the womb and shortly after, during the formative stage of the child's upbringing, the mother occupied a unique, almost exclusive, position vis-à-vis its offspring, imbuing it with character and ideals. It is for this reason that maternal power and roles have been treated so extensively in diverse literary traditions and genres, constituting an object of religiously-charged imageries.

In Conceiving Identity, Keuny masters a rich Islamic literary corpus in order to show how literary images constituted a means for women to negotiate their patriarchal-designated office and imbue their office with their own set of ideals.

While Americans imagined all Soviet refusniks as political prisoners fighting tirelessly for the cause of freedom, Mother Country reminds that the majority of those who apply to immigrate aren’t firebrand orators or wanted criminals. They are regular people, worried about providing for their families and betting that there has to be a better life on the other side of the world. Sharansky and Sakharov may have made international headlines about being prevented from immigrating, but most people were simply waiting, going about their lives, tolerating causal Antisemitism along with periodic bursts of violence, while also managing to find joy in simple things, and just getting through life one day at a time. The same as anyone else anywhere else in the world.

In the beginning of the novel, Valentine writes, “What if instead of telling women to be grateful for their suffering we actually helped them with it.” That line hit me like a bolt of lightning.

So many pregnant women and new moms have had awful experiences similar to the main character of Delicate Condition, including myself. This novel truly highlights what it is like for women to go through a complicated pregnancy in a world where medical staff, friends, and family all minimize the physical and mental pain it takes to bring a new life into the world.

For those who have suffered birth trauma and are ready to process it, this book will certainly speak to you. Overall, it is a well-written fast-paced supernatural thriller that will open your eyes to how the struggles of expecting and new mothers are often brushed under the rug. 

I love it when stories are told through the lens of contemporary issues but still manage to be deeply personal and funny. Impersonation fits the bill, taking place against the backdrop of #MeToo and the Trump presidency, and starring sharp-witted forty-year-old single mom Allie Lang, who you root for right from the start. Allie is hired ghostwrite the memoir of a high-powered feminist with political ambitions, to make her seem more maternal and relatable. It’s a nearly impossible task—until Allie starts bringing herself to the page.