This may seem like an odd theme in my reading given that I’m not a mother. I actually almost didn’t publish this post because I was worried people would think I was either pregnant or “baby-crazy,” but if these books have taught me anything it’s that our societal expectations, prejudices, and stigmas about motherhood need some serious revision.

In your twenties having children is a taboo subject. On the few occasions I’ve discussed kids with other people, they often turn to my partner with mock-horror - saying things like “ooh watch out!” - as if the first time we’ve ever discussed children is over a third pint in a pub with a near stranger (cue eye-roll). There are a number of reasons though that we should all know more about pregnancy and parenting, regardless of our personal feelings about whether or not to become parents.

I’m doing a PhD, and women who are married mothers of young children are a whopping 33-percent less likely to get tenure track jobs compared with unmarried women who aren’t the parents of young children. Before you chock that all up to being a parent, mothers of young children are also 35-percent less likely to get tenure track jobs than fathers of young kids. Academia encourages young women to put off motherhood, resulting in people having children later, at considerably more cost (IVF is expensive), and with considerably more health risks to both mothers and babies.

There are a litany of terrifying statistics which illustrate why parenthood, and motherhood in particular, is such an important topic for all of us to understand. Most horrifying is the fact that compared with their own mothers, American women giving birth today are 50% more likely to die in childbirth, a statistic that is largely the result of skyrocketing maternal mortality rates for black women. Understanding and paying attention to the experiences of mothers is a racial justice issue. If you’re thinking about what to get your mom or another important mother in your life for mother’s day this year, I recommend Black Mamas Matter Alliance, which is a non-profit working to improve the maternal outcomes and experiences of black women in the US.

These books approach the subject of pregnancy and motherhood in a variety of different ways, and they’re not all doom and gloom as the above two paragraphs suggest. I’ve only included non-fiction in this post - tackling the many novels about mothers and mothering is a whole other subject. Also, if anyone knows of any good books about having children written by men or non-binary people please send them my way! Most of the books in this post focus on pregnancy and mothering infants, but I would also be interested in reading about parenting older children as well. A notable book missing from this post is Sheila Heti’s Motherhood (which sparked my interest in reading about mothering), and that’s because I’ve already reviewed it here.

Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy by Angela Garbes

Based on my own totally unscientific polling, most men my age who don’t have children have literally no clue how often infants need to be fed. The most common answer I’ve heard is “breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with a snack here and there.” Given that that guess is wildly off base from the real answer of 8 to 12 feeds per day, with nursing mothers of newborns spending up to 8 hours a day nursing in the first few months of a child’s life, I wonder how much of society’s apathy to the needs of new mothers is based on deeply flawed understandings of the science and logistics of childbirth and parenting.

In Like a Mother Angela Garbes sets out to demystify pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood, and I firmly believe this book should be required reading for everyone. Sifting through the vast sea of misinformation and judgment in parenting books and scientific research, Garbes provides answers to questions from “what actually is a placenta?” to “will my baby die if I eat this piece of sushi?” For a taste of some of these answers there’s a great interview with Garbes on NPR here.

And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready by Meaghan O’Connell

This is the Everything I Know about Love of pregnancy books. O’Connell is at once funny and heart-wrenching, and, like Dolly Alderton, you get the sense she would be super fun to hang out with. The book is billed as “a fiercely honest account of becoming a mother before you're "ready"” and O’Connell does a lot to deconstruct the idea that anyone is ever “ready” to be a parent. When she accidentally falls pregnant O’Connell is nearly 30 and engaged, yet even though she meets a lot of societal criteria about who “should” get pregnant, when, and under what circumstances, she feels completely unprepared.

The memoir discusses O’Connell’s fears about balancing her career as a writer with new motherhood, and she is remarkably honest about the conversations she and her partner had about whether to continue the pregnancy. Of the books I’ve included in this post this one is the most funny and entertaining, but there’s also a pretty intense chapter detailing O’Connell’s traumatic birth story, so I don’t know if I’d recommend that bit to anyone who is currently expecting.

Avalanche: A Love Story by Julia Leigh

Avalanche is Julia Leigh’s ode to the hopeful and excruciating years she spent trying to get pregnant in her late 30’s and early 40’s. The book begins with Leigh rekindling a relationship from her youth, and her subsequent decision to try for a child with her new partner. Avalanche vacillates between hope and despair as Leigh navigates the multi-billion dollar IVF industry, all while grappling with a tumultuous new relationship.

This is an incredibly important book, and I think everyone would benefit from understanding more about the physical, emotional, and financial costs of IUI and IVF. Also, Avalanche is a friendly reminder that asking about people’s reproductive plans is intrusive, and that millions of people privately struggle with infertility. Open and honest conversations about having children are important and needed, but there’s a way to have them without prying.

Mothers: An Essay On Love and Cruelty by Jacqueline Rose

“Unless we recognize what we are asking mothers to perform in the world - and for the world - we will continue to tear both the world and mothers to pieces.”

Jacqueline Rose offers a mediation on mothering unlike anything I’ve ever read. Deconstructing depictions of mothers in literature, history, and media, Rose offers an incisive critique of the figure of “the mother,” demonstrating not only how such images harm mothers themselves, but also how they mask and reflect deeply entrenched societal problems. This argument also reminds me a lot of Mark Greif’s essay “Octomom and the Market in Babies” which was definitely my favorite piece from Against Everything.

One of the most notable sections in Mothers is Rose’s chapter on Elena Ferrante. It is hands down the best writing on Ferrante I’ve ever read. Ferrante, Rose argues, “ploughs the darkest depths of the maternal psyche, excavating, as terror and vision, the aspects of being human that are hardest for anyone to contemplate. Nor is it just that, in her literary hands, pregnancy becomes the original dissolution of all form, in which the world, if it would only shed its most oppressive, self-centered delusions, would do well to recognise itself. It is also because of the way - in one last, perhaps unexpected, twist - she folds this vision into the political reality out of which it at least partly growns, and on which it so violently propagates and feeds itself.” Brb, off to reread the Neaopolitan Novels.