Motherdom: Breaking Free of Bad Science and Good Mother Myths

by Alex Bollen

Blaming, shaming and flimsy welcome to the ugly world of Good Mother myths

When Alex Bollen had her first baby, the fear of being a bad mother made her guilty and anxious. A researcher with twenty years’ experience, she went looking for answers. To her surprise the studies she looked at were exaggerated and misrepresented in the media, forming the foundation for what she calls Good Mother myths. These myths are an assortment of narratives, ideologies and stereotypes, deployed to censure mothers and blame them for every societal ill.

Incensed by the way bad science is used to shame mothers, Alex Bollen decided to set the record straight. With meticulous research and keen insight, Motherdom exposes both the shaky science and unjustified prescriptions about how mothers should ‘naturally’ behave. Competing visions of birth – ‘natural’ versus ‘medical’ – mean women can be criticised whatever happens, raising the odds that birth will be a damaging, even deadly, experience. Mothers are judged and belittled whether they breast- or bottle-feed their babies. Bogus claims about brain development and dodgy attachment theories mean that whatever mothers do, it is never enough.

This has to stop. We must replace Good Mother myths with a realistic approach to parenting. Alex Bollen proposes ‘motherdom’, a more expansive conception of motherhood, which values and respects the different ways people raise their children. Instead of finding fault with mothers, Motherdom shifts our focus to the relationships and resources children need to flourish.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction

305 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 4, 2025

Reviews

[Hestia Istiviani · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Motherdom, Alex Bollen explains how Good Mother Myth is being constructed under white male pov and actually it harms many children, not only in the US, but also the rest of the world.
What Bollen writes has reminded me with "medical research" which just swept women's pains under the rug and told us that we're just being too dramatic. In fact, the pain is real and need to be observed immadiately.

Really a good book ✨

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this is far more research based than the anecdotal non-fiction I usually read, it was an absolute godsend for me. It debunks ridiculous but promenant parenting myths and calls out the bullshit. Could make all the difference to my happiness as a mother.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alex Bollen’s Motherdom dispels some of the myths and shaky science that have been used to shame and alarm mothers. Now that I know the real story behind the origin of attachment theory, for example, I feel angry that I and so many other moms have been misled about such a tiny and unreplicated study. It makes me wish every mom had a copy of this book.

The book would have been more approachable for busy moms if it had been a bit shorter and more focused in places. Its strength lies in dispelling pseudoscience. Given the book’s assertion to support research-based information, I was disappointed by a couple of claims that were not scientific. I feel Bollen reaches too far in some claims.

Overall however, this book is a great resource; moms just may need to take a couple of claims with a grain of salt. Bollen is absolutely right to provide mothers with encouragement and appreciation - and to urge that they be provided with more support (e.g., affordable childcare) instead of more guilt.

Thank you to NetGalley and Verso Books for the free eARC. I post this review with my honest opinions.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished reading this a week ago but I forgot to log it on here.

This book wasn’t at all what I expected and I really struggled to get into it as first, but once I’d got past the first 100 pages I started to really enjoy it.

This book is doing a couple of things, it’s exposing terrible research and little tricks think tanks use to skew data (for example using studies only done on animals to make some point about human behaviour), it’s a consideration of the very real harm that good mother myths perpetuate, and it’s proposing an alternative to the established idea of motherhood that good mother myths have fuelled (Bollen entitles this alternative Motherdom). It’s also, in part, somewhat of a personal essay.

I thought this book would just be an explanation of current good mother myths and a debunking of them - I’m glad that I was wrong. This book was so much better than what I was expecting.

[Dysha Cole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Motherhood is hard and mom guilt is real and never ending. I was excited to see this book, as a Black mother and a social worker with an OB background, i have had many conversations with patients reassuring them of the choices they were making for themselves and their babies. I DEFINITELY appreciate how race is discussed often; the motherhood experience is vastly different when you are BIPOC. I do feel, however that this book is all over the place, extremely worried and repetitive in its points.

Writings like this make me worry that they will only be read in academic spaces and not actually reach the target audience - your everyday mother.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to access this title in exchange for an honest review.