Rethinking the institution of motherhood
DON’T FORGET TO SCREAM
Unspoken truths about motherhood
MARIANNE LEVY
240pp. Phoenix. £14.99.
MOTHERHOOD
Feminism’s unfinished business
ELIANE GLASER
320pp. Fourth Estate. Paperback, £9.99.
MOTHERLOAD
Modern motherhood and how to survive it
INGRID WASSENAAR
312pp. IPW. Paperback, £8.99.
THE BABY ON THE FIRE ESCAPE
Creativity, motherhood, and the mind-baby problem
JULIE PHILLIPS
336pp. Norton. £19.99 (US $27.95).
STILL BORN
GUADALUPE NETTEL
Translated by Rosalind Harvey 219pp. Fitzcarraldo. Paperback, £12.99.
ABOLISH THE FAMILY
A manifesto for care and liberation
SOPHIE LEWIS
128pp. Verso. Paperback, £8.99.
“THE INSTITUTION of motherhood finds all mothers more or less guilty”, wrote Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born (1976). For many women guilt is so much a part of mothering that, even if there is no immediate reason for it, one can quickly be found without looking further than the laundry basket or our children’s smartphones.
When does the guilt start, and why does it particularly afflict mothers? For Marianne Levy it began at the twelve-week scan, when she was told her hormone reading was “wrong”: she was already letting her baby down. Like so many women Levy had an idea in mind of the perfect mother, “a living re-enactment of all the picture books and adverts, the bustling women in the homes of my family and friends”. The unattainability of that ideal, at a time when most mothers also hope to pursue a career, doesn’t make it any less seductive. The reality depicted in Don’t Forget to Scream is more familiar, though. In merciless detail Levy describes the exhaustion and worry; the shit, the snot, the mysterious gunk down the side of the car seat; the panicking over rashes and fevers; the urge both to keep your child close and to get as far away as possible, “to stand alone on a windswept plain”.
Loss of control is the theme that connects these six books, five of which focus on mothers in heterosexual relationships. For Levy, “the moment I decided to have a baby, I lost control of my own narrative”. Googling “childbirth”, she developed tokophobia – an intense fear of childbirth, fomented by countless online horror stories. In childbirth preparation classes she was told to trust her body, but found she could not. It must be her fault, then, that a five-day labour and difficult birth left her injured, in pain and feeling like a failure: “every time I hear how proud someone is of themselves, after having pushed a baby out with just gas and air, or how proud they are of their wife for enduring such a long labour so bravely, I think, well, I didn’t manage, and I was
