Part 2 in a 3-part series on parenting
Quizzes abound: What Disney princess are you? Which Downton Abbey character are you? These questionnaires are found everywhere. This new fad of quizzes tells me that we yearn for rules and definition the more we feel unclear. Books on mothering and motherhood are everywhere. As an academic (lapsed) and a haunter of libraries, there’s no better way to master a situation, I thought, than research. So, when I realized I was going to be a mother, I started reading.
I started out with What to Expect When You’re Expecting. In about 10 weeks, that book was obsolete. I was on bed rest and nothing went as “expected.” My reading also went far off the beaten path. I roamed about in fiction, poetry and mass market self-help. I have emerged 11 years now, with 5 books that are my guides. I turn to them and recommend them to others with the eagerness of a zealot or a convert:
1. Perfect Madness, by Judith Warner
2. I Don’t know How She Does It, by Allison Pearson
3. Operating Instructions, by Anne Lamott
4. The Bitch In The House, by Cathi Hanauer
5. Mothers Who Think, by Camille Peri
None of them, in fact, are self-help books. These are decidedly anti-selfhelp books. I prefer books which repeat passionately that predictable rules just won’t help in this sort of situation. These authors are the women who “get it,” get me, get the whole “wow I’ve really got this thing down … whoops, I have no idea what I’m doing” feeling, and shore me up. Thank goodness that women who write and reflect are as baffled as I was by the strange careerist role of being a mother in this time.