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Sunday, May 10, is Mother's Day. But for some people, it's Other’s Day, an unsettling reminder that their life doesn’t match the greeting-card fantasy. These selections examine the can’t-win pressures surrounding women and motherhood—the unspoken judgment that whatever you do, sorry, it’s wrong. A neuroscientist explains how chattering internal voices shape our reality. Two books describe how women without children, by choice or circumstance, navigate to find meaning and peace. Two nonfiction books run the steeplechase of modern motherhood and wade into the world of “momfluencers.” Two delicious novels toy with illusion (delusions?) of perfect motherhood. Check ‘em out!
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This book is Exhibit A for Other’s Day. “Somehow being happy, kind, well-educated, and successful is no longer enough to be considered everything you can be,” writes Melanie Notkin. “In order to be a full woman, one must be a mother.” Notkin, whose single, childless existence was not her childhood dream, explores the struggle to thrive despite tiresome judgments. Childless Living by Lisette Schuitemaker examines the many ways that women find meaning without children: “What we have in common is that we have more explaining to do to ourselves and to others than people who follow the path of parenthood.”
What about Other's Day for women with children? If you’re not screaming inside when you pick up this book, you will be by Chapter One: “How Did We Get Here?” It provides a Rosetta Stone to decipher the history of why Mother’s Day can feel like equal parts celebration and straitjacket. Opinion writer Jessica Grose talked to 100 mothers for her Technicolor portrait of impossible expectations, conflicting demands, and governmental indifference. But she also sees many paths to raising sturdy children. “You are making the best choices you can,” she writes, “in a system that holds mothers to unachievable standards.”
What do “the silent conversations people have with themselves” have to do with Other’s Day? “We spend one-third to one-half of our waking life not living in the present,” writes neuroscientist Ethan Kross; our internal pressures can hijack our hearts. “The key to beating chatter isn’t to stop talking to yourself. The challenge is to figure out how to do so more effectively. Fortunately, both your mind and the world around you are exquisitely designed to help you do precisely that.” Chatter is not just a book but a window; open it and your world will never look the same.
This sparkling debut bestseller is a masterclass of toxic child-rearing chatter. First-time author Jessamine Chan concocts a believably off-kilter Orwellian Big Mother state with an experimental residential program to “fix” bad parents (read moms). Her tick-tock tale follows Frida Liu’s desperate quest to become a perfect mother and regain her daughter’s custody. Chan scatters sly gems throughout—like locating the program at a bankrupt liberal arts school—and generously endows her characters with tunnel vision. Best of all, she trusts readers to connect the dots and ask hard questions about this virtuous motherhood utopia and what’s missing from its design.
There should be a German word for a pitch-perfect thriller with a paint-by-numbers plot. Author Jo Piazza spent five years becoming to the “mom influencing industrial complex” what Jane Goodall is to chimps. She gleefully unleashes her expertise in this novel of murder and mayhem at Mombomb, a frothy momfluencers’ convention. The result is a glorious romp—until, alas, it isn't. For a nonfiction deep dive into multibillion-dollar momfluencer culture, Sara Peterson’s Momfluenced examines how social media for and about moms can rock your world or rot your mind. Spoiler alert: At the book’s end, she deletes her Instagram app.
About the Author
Barbara Cornell is a Library Associate at the William O. Lockridge Bellevue Neighborhood Library. It took five years and several miscarriages before her first child was born, so she knows first-hand about Other's Day. She grew up in Michigan, where the public library across the street from her house was a first taste of independence. Since then, she has lived in five countries and always finds a home in books. She has two grown sons and lives with her husband in Washington, DC.