If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother

by Julia Sweeney

Julia Sweeney, the delightful former cast member of Saturday Night Live, takes readers into the depths of her family in this hilarious and unique parenting book.Since her time on Saturday Night Live, where she created the infamous androgynous character “Pat,” Julia Sweeney has gone on to establish herself as a witty, captivating performer of one-woman shows, like God Said Ha!, In the Family Way, and Letting Go of God. She gave a TED talk sharing how she explained the birds and the bees to her eight-year-old daughter, Mulan, which ignited an incredible response. Now, when it comes to talking about motherhood, people want to hear what Julia has to say. If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother is her compilation of stories, revealing her painfully funny adventures and her poignant personal story of deciding to adopt as a single woman, her transition to traditional family after she married and took on the new role of at-home mother, and her insightful open-eyed wonder at the whole concept of motherhood for herself and others, too.



From being mistaken as her daughter’s grandmother to her theory that people who can’t make friends often resort to making children, Julia imparts a cutting edge, contemporary take on parenting, displaying a definite appreciation for the absurd. Poignant, provocative, and wise, Julia writes about parenting as only she can, laying out her mother-daughter experiences with religion, nannies, pets, schools, and much more.



A joy to read, this is one of the most amusing, and at times powerful, modern books on parenting.

Genres: Humor, Memoir, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Parenting, Adoption, Biography

246 pages, Hardcover

First published April 2, 2013

About the author

Julia Sweeney is an American actress, comedian and author best known for her Saturday Night Live career and autobiographical solo shows.

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, I would like to say thank you to the author and to Goodreads for my A.R.C. edition of "If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother" which I received through the Goodreads First-Reads giveaways.

I must say I had no idea what to expect when I picked up "If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother" and had decided to begin reading it (was even preparing myself to be highly bored and disappointed). Goodness was I in for a big surprise! I absolutely loved it! Not only because it is nothing like anything I would normally pick up to read (usually sci-fi, fantasy, dystopian, romance, post-apocalyptic, etc.), but because I thought it would be a book I would have to push myself to finish reading. Oh was I so utterly and completely (and happily I might add) wrong! I found myself speeding through it and losing track of time as I let myself fall into her story. I laughed with her, smiled with her, felt her sadness and happiness as if it were my own, and found myself experiencing her triumphs and downfalls as if I was there with her. I even caught myself reading aloud parts of it to my sister because it is such a wonderful story that I had the urge to share it right there and then.

Julia Sweeney did an amazing job sharing her life story and putting it into words. She'll make you feel as if you're sitting down with her, talking over brunch and coffee, instead of reading. I cannot give her book enough praise or recommend it more highly. Definitely needs to be put on everyone's To-Read list and I urge you to go out and buy it the day it comes out! I promise you'll never regret it! I'm already passing it on to my sister as we speak and will be saving a spot for it on my shelf of favorite books for when I get it back. If I get it back that is.

And yes, before you ask, I'm serious about the possibly not getting it back part. It's simply that good!

[Agatha · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Author is the “It’s Pat” androgynous character from SNL.) I picked up this book b/c I heard Scott Simon (father of two adopted girls form China) interview her on NPR one Saturday morning and I learned it was about her 12-year-old daughter from China. It was funny and entertaining, and a lot of things about her experience becoming an adoptive mother struck a familiar chord in me ( am also a mom by adoption). Furthermore, I identified with her Irish-Catholic upbringing as the oldest daughter in a large family, something which she talks about a lot and which seems to have been a pretty salient aspect in her self-identity. However, she is now an atheist (!?!?!) and one chapter came out of nowhere describing how she had an abortion in her 20's and interviewing her mother-in-law about an abortion she had had in the 1960's. Talk about being blindsided in the middle of a book I thought was from a fellow adoptive mom! I really don’t know why she threw this in here, beyond political prosthelytizing, and that one chapter turned me off. If I could have sliced out this chapter, I would have given this book more stars. Even if I agreed with the philosophy to begin with, I would have thought, editorially, that it was really misplaced. She, or some editor, must have agreed with this pretty strongly to have kept it in there. Unfortunate.

[Aglaya · Rating 1 out of 5]

Humour ain’t therapy and this is why this comedian person’s book reads so sad. My eyes hurt. An awesome title though.

[Ana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this a lot. I've always enjoyed Julia Sweeney's work on SNL and thought this would be right up my alley.
But the whole thing felt a bit disconnected, even worse considering that it's set up as if it was all written within a month or so, rather than a collection of essays published elsewhere and gathered for this book.

There were a couple of really jarring inclusions, like the quasi-interview with her mother-in-law about abortion. I didn't have a problem with the story, it was actually quite interesting, but seeing as the whole rest of the book was about Sweeney's own experiences, it seemed odd to suddenly have some social history thrown in.

She also jumped around far too much, leaving us without a clue as to what happened in between Mulan being a toddler and then being a teen. There are a couple of small little mentions here and there, but it didn't feel like enough. I thought this would either be an account of Sweeney's relationship with her mother or that of her and Mulan, but it really was neither.

Having said that, it was very well written and I read it in only a couple of hours - you'll breeze through it. But I still can't bring myself to recommend it :o(

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

At times I thought I would assign this book five stars. At other times four, and three. So I finally settled on two stars. It lacked continuity and I had a hard time discerning just where the author wanted to go with her stories. I expected that a book written by "Pat" from Saturday Night Live would be funnier, but I appreciated that it was funny, deep, and poignant at times. A few chapters in particular were jarringly out of place, however. The subject matter (abortion, for example) may be important and worth reading, but the random insertion of a "transcript" of a conversation into the middle of the book was just strange. It sometimes seemed she was trying to fill up 250 pages so she could stop writing. Sweeny's experiences with adopting her daughter from southern China were fascinating, and her brother's death from alcoholism was touching and so very sad. The telephone conversations with the prison inmate left me scratching my head. So, parts of this book, rated separately, might receive five stars from me. But as a cohesive unit, I can only say, "it was okay."

[Kenzee · Rating 3 out of 5]

*I won this book in a GoodReads First Reads giveaway*

First off to be fair, I'd say this book was more like 3.5 stars. It was good, but not great. Sweeney does a great job in making her writing seem conversational and I thought the way she referred to all her ex-boyfriends as Joe 1 through 12 (give or take a few) was hysterical. That being said there were certain things she wrote about that I found irritating and judgmental (as I sit here and judge her judgments). Overall though, it was a quick pleasant read even if I'm note sure what her overall point in telling her story was.

[Ashlee Tominey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed Sweeney's take on motherhood and family coupled with humor yet a fair amount of poignancy.

[Jennifer Gibbons · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was lucky to get this through NetGalley, and enjoyed it. Julia Sweeney gets a gift from Heaven: A month off from her husband and preteen daughter. She loves them, but a month to write? Heaven! It picks up where God Says Ha left off: the relationship with "Carl" ends; she ends up going to China and adopting; meeting a new man and moving to a new state; and finding out that motherhood is an adventure, yet a worthwhile one. The most moving parts of the new memoir is the the death of a brother and a dialogue she had with her mother in law about abortion. The chapter about an enemy mother is a bit too much Anne Lamott, but still, you have to love a woman who is married by Guido Sarducci. A great bookend to God Says Ha.

[Stacey Schubert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book (3 from me = really like!) but it isn't something that's going to stick with me in the long run. I enjoyed the voice, and I laughed out loud a lot, but ultimately I couldn't relate to Julia Sweeney. Although I am also single in middle age, I guess that's where the similarities end and I could not connect with her experience. Definitely not universal! I was especially agog at her child rearing story. I kept thinking how damn easy she had it, and how there would be no story whatsoever if her daughter Mulan did not turn out to be a great fit for her style. So, overall, great laughs, breezy entertaining style, but not something meaty that's going to get digested for a long time.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of her three books, I think I liked this one best, and would suggest starting here if you've never read any of them.

Sweeney's strength is that, though she's been a Hollywood success, she's someone who's easy to identify with - I'm not a child person at all, finding her story of deciding to adopt, going through the process, raising a Chinese child, and then having to work at forming a family after later marrying. I will say I was tempted to believe that she exaggerated some of Mulan's scenes, but decided her daughter was just that precocious. Some later scenes may seem to pad out the essay collection, but they do relate to the concepts of motherhood and family.

Definitely recommended, enough so that I plan to get a copy as a gift for my mom.

[Tracy Miller · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up this book to read on a pleasant day, sitting outside. I should have been doing about 50 different things, but I like Julia Sweeney and I just wanted to read and enjoy the day. Instead, I ended up annoyed - annoyed that these random thoughts, with no craftmanship or editing, were packaged into a book and sold. Annoyed that, by my reading, I was telling Julia Sweeney that it was ok to slap together a book of random thoughts, that people will buy it. Annoyed that Julia Sweeney doesn't have to use any of that skill that I know she has. She can just do stream-of-consciousness and people will apparently buy it, and support her living in her faux small-town and doing...not much.

This was supposed to be an escape book for me, but bad writing makes me angry.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have seen a couple of Julia Sweeney's specials on cable and found her very amusing. This book is part memoir, part humor. some of the book has some more serious chapters such as the death of her brother.she gives tidbits of her life. she adopted a girl from China who was almost 13 now as of the writing of this book. Julia Sweeney wrote about motherhood with her daughter "Mulan" such as preschool, grammar school. and just raising a kid in general. one chapter was about her former boyfriends that she dubbed as "Joe"{ eight, nine ten etc} she has a wonderful sense of humor so parts of this book is funny. other parts more serious. but a good read. I enjoyed reading this book myself.

[Jenni V. · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://readingatrandom.blogspot.com/2...

4.5 stars. Julia is a natural storyteller, and this book was an absolute delight to read. I would describe this book as deeply funny - the perfect blend of depth and humor. Although her stories were light enough to read quickly (and I did; this book was completed in one sitting), they were also revealing, personal, and touching. Highly recommended.

Note: I would like to thank NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the opportunity to read this book.

[Ayelet Waldman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious. I want her to be my BFF.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Very funny.

[Kelley · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[LG · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book. Goes beyond the surface to share important stories.

[Whistler's Mom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charmed in spite of myself.

I bought this book because the title is funny. I'm probably the only non-Amish person in America who doesn't recognize the name "Julia Sweeny." I vaguely knew there was a SNL character called Pat, but not who played her. I don't watch SNL and don't like stand-up comics.

From my point of view, the book has some problems. She writes in a breathless, slangy style that sounds like a middle-school-girl-on-a-sugar-high. Is it too much to expect a woman in her fifties to talk like an adult? Apparently so.

She grew up in Washington state in a large Catholic family with a loving father and an unloving mother. One brother died young of cancer. Cancer left her infertile. Her relationships with men all ended badly. (Inevitable, given her manic neediness.) She threw herself into her career and complained to her therapist. In L.A. are you allowed NOT to have a therapist?

There's too much psycho-babble and introspection to suit me. But when she stops sounding like she's delivering a comic monologue and tells her story, it's an entertaining one.

I enjoyed her witty take on trendy, chi-chi parenting on the West Coast. My! Will those little darlings have plenty to tell THEIR therapists! And I agree with her about those Hummer-sized strollers and the kids who ride in them until they're old enough to get a drivers license.

I think it's fine for people to adopt children and I don't care if they adopt in America or from overseas. Giving a home to a child who needs one is a noble thing and not to be criticized. Her story of her experiences in China are mind-blowing and hilarious.

Like many new parents, she thought she was getting a lump of clay to mold into the kid of her dreams. She discovered she was getting a human being with a factory-installed personality. Mulan turned out to be a hoot. Yes, she's strong minded and overbearing, but her mother is an airhead. Someone in the family has to have their feet on the ground and Mulan is up to the job.

I loved the story of how she met her husband (AFTER acquiring a daughter) and how they decided to move to the mid-west. As she says, it's counter-intuitive to put a family together that way. Still, all through history, war and disease and other circumstances have created partial families looking for an additional parent. In many cases, it works out just fine.

Overall, it's a surprisingly good book. If you're a lot younger than I am, you probably won't be surprised.

[morowa · Rating 2 out of 5]

SUMMARY:

Julia Sweeney, the delightful former cast member of Saturday Night Live, takes readers into the depths of her family in this hilarious and unique parenting book.Since her time on Saturday Night Live, where she created the infamous androgynous character “Pat,” Julia Sweeney has gone on to establish herself as a witty, captivating performer of one-woman shows, like God Said Ha!, In the Family Way, and Letting Go of God. She gave a TED talk sharing how she explained the birds and the bees to her eight-year-old daughter, Mulan, which ignited an incredible response. Now, when it comes to talking about motherhood, people want to hear what Julia has to say. If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother is her compilation of stories, revealing her painfully funny adventures and her poignant personal story of deciding to adopt as a single woman, her transition to traditional family after she married and took on the new role of at-home mother, and her insightful open-eyed wonder at the whole concept of motherhood for herself and others, too.
From being mistaken as her daughter’s grandmother to her theory that people who can’t make friends often resort to making children, Julia imparts a cutting edge, contemporary take on parenting, displaying a definite appreciation for the absurd. Poignant, provocative, and wise, Julia writes about parenting as only she can, laying out her mother-daughter experiences with religion, nannies, pets, schools, and much more.
A joy to read, this is one of the most amusing, and at times powerful, modern books on parenting.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

After watching Letting Go of God and reading God Says "Ha!" and loving them both I was diappointed in this book. Some of it is funny but it seemed like a disjointed collection of essays loosely based on the theme of motherhood.

The abortion chapter was poorly done and made me want to shake the author and ask how she could possibly compare her unpleasant but easy experience with the horrors that her mother-in-law faced. While I can't argue with her conclusions about the politics of the subject, they really had no place here.

I also fould myself horrified by the way she insisted on forcing her daughter to experience Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Even I, who have never met Mulan, realized pretty quickly that she would be terrified by her mother's explanations. How could she persist in telling her daughter this was fun, not just once, but twice?

That said, I believe Julia Sweeney loves her daughter and is proud of her. I was also moved by her stories about her brother, Bill, and amused by the wacky tale of how she met her husband.

I hope her next book is better.

[Bhavna Kapoor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. Each chapter deals with a particular aspect of her personal life and is a story unto itself. Some of these stories were heartfelt, extremely relatable and with her characteristic style of humour. Then there were those which were just there and did not really capture my attention.

In her prologue she summarises her journey as a mother, how she loves more than anything else despite her wish that her family would disappear. The joy and the frustrations are true. Each mom reading these pages is sure to find herself in Julia Sweeney.

A few of my favourite parts are where she describes how she came to adopt her baby girl Mulan from China, her talks with Mulan about sex and then about race. They are subtle, complex and real. We put ourselves in her shoes and wonder how we would react in similar situations?

Her conversations with her mother-in-law on abortion and Mulan's essay for school are gems too.

[Anthony Colozza · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is Ok, it had its moments. But in general it's just not that interesting. It gets a little preachy at times but there are also times when her sense of humor comes through making some segments are fun and lighthearted. The biggest issue I had with the book was that at times you start to question if the events being described actually did occur as presented. Usually I give the author the benefit of the doubt and really don't question the truthfulness of what is written, especially in a memoir. But in this case a few things stood out as questionable. For example she goes through, in significant detail, the surprise and confusion of her daughter when she describe Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy to her. The interaction is humorous but seems completely made up. At that point in the book her daughter would have lived in the US for 3 or 4 years and to never have been exposed to Christmas or Santa Clause, to the point where she has no idea of what those things are, is hard to believe. Even is she never celebrated Christmas, you would have to be completely sheltered to not have any idea that those things exist. My guess is that those interactions were put in to add some comedy and drama to the book which at times was lacking.

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ll admit that I had never heard of Julia Sweeney before; I was just wandering the shelves of the library in an effort to delay going to my kids’ football game, picked this book up, read a couple of pages, and thought it seemed marginally interesting.

It wasn’t terrible. There were some funny bits and some sad ones, and I chuckled here and there, but I mostly just felt meh when I finished it.

I did really relate to the stories she told about trying to teach her daughter and having all these good intentions to do it different from/better than her own mother and realizing in the moment that you have messed up despite expecting you wouldn’t. Hopefully you haven’t messed up terribly, but life as a human interacting with other humans is just messy so there’s something to be said for giving yourself and others a bit of grace.

And I liked her off-leash dog Nemesis. I too have encountered such people and they are also my nemeses.

[Jamie Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t know Julia Sweeney before I read this book and I have a very vague idea of who she is after. But I don’t believe that matters at all when choosing to read this book. I chose it because I stumbled upon it somewhere and the title made me laugh because for me it couldn’t be more true.

That being said I’m not entirely sure where the title came into play for this book. We don’t really ever talk about her mother so it couldn’t be that so are we talking about her as a mother and this is Mulan’s perspective? If so, shouldn’t she have been the one to write the book?

If we don’t ponder that the title doesn’t make sense to me, the book was a pleasant light read. There were moments when I giggled and more than a few that I commiserated with her as a mother. I’m sure you would too if you read the book. Worth the time.

[Elizabeth Schlatter · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my next life, can I please be related to Julia Sweeney in her own next life?? She's so freaking funny, relatable, flawed, and insightful. This collection of musings are framed by 4 summer weeks in which her husband and daughter were out of town. So the reader can imagine Sweeney pondering her life, being a mom, being a wife, being a sister and daughter, and just being. And she shares delightful nuggets like this...

"There should be a Food Network show just for people who've gone through excruciating breakups. The host would be a woman like Aunt Bea from the Andy Griffith Show. Every day she's make slight variations of the same thing: mashed potatoes. And she would say things like, "And what did he say to that?" And "Well, any man with half a brain would be crazy to let you get away! Well I never!" (p.27)

I love Julia Sweeney.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this and found it engaging. It was mostly about how she adopted her daughter from China and her post SNL personal life. She sounds smart and level headed. Definitely seems to be the most normal person out of the SNL cast memoirs I’ve read but perhaps it’s because she wasn’t talking about her career. She says that she thought of herself as a high energy person and she sounded confident in her ability to get things done. However, when she talked about the exhaustion she experienced as a result of parenting it sounds so relatable that I just thought she was normal because she just mentioned her work in passing so maybe I thought of it more as a hobby rather than a demanding and uncertain job. I was interested to learn that she grew up in Spokane, attended UW, and vacations in the San Juan Islands.

[Authorjen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was actually a 4 star read for me. So why did I give it 3 stars? Because it is probably a 3 star read for you. I'll explain.

This book is really funny and relatable if you:
have adopted a child (check)
from another country (check)
while single (check)
and have or will soon have to explain sex to a pre-teen girl (check)
and are mortified about doing so (check)

See? Those are all really funny to me. But if you haven't done those things, this might be a pretty dry read. Julia Sweeny (of SNL's "Pat" fame) is genuinely funny and a talented writer, but sometimes the stories need to be relatable too.

Thanks to my friend Maria who recommended this book to me for all of the reasons I mentioned above. :)

[Caleb Hoyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a big fan of Julia Sweeney’s work. Her monologue "God Said Ha" is a terrific blend of humor and heart, and "Letting Go Of God" is one of my favorite pieces of writing in any format or genre ever. This book of essays about the formation of her family, from adoption to marriage to moving to the suburbs, is another great blend of humor and insightful intelligence, with a big dose of heart that somehow never veers into overly sentimental. Five stars may be generous, but her writing feels like a great late night chat with a close friend, and a vacation is the perfect time to enjoy it. I had a blast reading it, and I think it may actually be the funniest of her works that I’ve read. I really enjoyed it!

[Leslie Castro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like I just finished an intimate podcast with Julia Sweeney. Or...maybe it's like when you're on the phone with your best friend, and you have so much to catch up on and she word vomits all over the place but it's okay because she needed to tell you her stories.

I cried during and after The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody chapter. I laughed, out loud like an insane person in the comfort of my own home (because where else would I be in the middle of the pandemic), I grimaced my way through The Color of Skin chapter and I smiled when I finished.

My boyfriend asked me if I picked this book up because I knew who Julia Sweeney was, but didn't. It was because I thought the title was hilarious. You'll have to read for yourself to find out if Julia felt the same way.