Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age

by Amanda Hess

As an internet culture critic for The New York Times, Amanda Hess had built a reputation among readers as a sharp observer of the seductions and manipulations of online life. But when she discovered she was pregnant with her first child, she found herself unexpectedly rattled by a digital identity crisis of her own.

In the summer of 2020 a routine ultrasound detected a mysterious abnormality in Hess’s baby. Without hesitation, she reached for her phone, looking for answers. But rather than allaying her anxieties, her search sucked her into the destabilizing morass of the internet, and she was vulnerable—more than ever—to conspiracy, myth, judgment, commerce, and obsession.

As Hess documents her escalating relationship with the digital world, she identifies how technologies act as portals to troubling ideologies, ethical conflicts, and existential questions, and she illuminates how the American traditions of eugenics, surveillance, and hyper-individualism are recycled through these shiny products for a new generation of parents and their children.

At once funny, heartbreaking, and surreal, Second Life is a journey that spans a network of fertility apps, prenatal genetic tests, gender-reveal videos, rare-disease Facebook groups, “freebirth” influencers, and hospital reality shows. Hess confronts technology’s distortions as they follow her through pregnancy and into her son’s early life. The result is a critical record of our digital age that reveals the unspoken ways technology fractures and reconstitutes our lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Parenting, Memoir, Audiobook, Science, Essays, Technology

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 6, 2025

Reviews

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

can't stop reading about how weird it is to have a kid.

this nailed that.

things it also nailed include but are not limited to: the balance between personal and researched topics; an overall readability that led me to finish this in a few sittings; a solid sense of humor.

the author uses her own (mostly first) pregnancy, childbirth, and early child-raising life experiences to explore the larger topic of what it's like to become a parent in the online age we live in. my main struggle with this book is that the chapters felt like they fell where they landed, not really building toward anything but an abrupt ending.

but it felt like reading a long, intelligent article, and i enjoyed it.

bottom line: life is crazy.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it is only fair that before I start critiquing a book on pregnancy and birth that I come clean. I know and admit full well that I would be terrible at having a baby. I would whine, complain, and you'd need to drug me up so much to get through the whole thing. In summary, if you need me to admit that the author, Amanda Hess, is tougher than me then no problem! She is. As the father of a daughter, I have other, less impressive skills like reaching the top shelf, hanging things, and sarcasm. I am okay with my lot in life.

Hess has written Second Life which is a chronicle of the birth of her first son and all the technology and social media around this momentous life change. I find with memoirs I need the author to establish early on that they know writing a memoir is an exercise in navel gazing. I connect best with authors who admit their own failings and don't take themselves too seriously. Life is not easy and pretty all the time and an idealized main character is an absolute bore. Luckily, Hess knows this and never misses a chance to let the reader know how she can be anxious, hyper critical, and hypocritical. My favorite example was her willingness to look back on an article she had read years ago about not having children and detailing just how badly it has aged. It doesn't make her look bad because who doesn't have something in their past they really wish they could forget?

The strongest sections are when Hess focuses on specific things which touch on her own experiences. The first chapter revolves around a health app called Flo (if you can't guess what it focuses on then head back to health class). Hess breaks down how this app burrowed into her psyche and at times made the process of getting pregnant and being pregnant feel like just another online activity. She also dives into other parenting trends like "freebirthing" with similar incisiveness.

My sole criticism is with sections where Hess tries to comment on wider issues related to scenarios outside her specific experience. For example, she introduces studies about the higher rate of c-sections among Black women in the U.S. Examples like this need much deeper analysis than what she gives and it wouldn't fit in the book stylistically if she did explore deeper. These sections are not numerous so don't let this critique deter you from reading it.

I might as well be blunt (something new for me!). I do not think this book will be very entertaining for people who don't want or have kids. That's not a failure on Hess's part, but merely my observation on the subject matter. Hess's point of view is obviously from her perspective as a mother, but I still found a lot to like as a dad reading it. However, anyone uninterested in parenting will not find enough to keep them interested in my opinion.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Doubleday Books.)

[Cheryl Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's like Amanda Hess climbed inside my head (or my algorithm?), saw exactly how I felt about the Owlet baby monitor, and wrote it all down. This book resonates for many reasons, including how *feels* to become and be a parent when the internet and technology are characters in the room. Sometimes those characters are loud and judgy. Sometimes they're fake, fickle friends. Sometimes—in the case of genetic screening—they can be literal lifesavers that also happen to fan the flames of a new eugenics movement.

Part memoir of her own pregnancy and early parenthood (she gives her children pseudonyms; one is based on an erroneous internet bio of herself, and the other is "Brayden, because that is a name I would never give to a child"), Second Life journeys through the digital landscapes of freebirthers and tradwives, influencers and medical moms, reality shows and culty festivals. The book feels like a bit of a companion piece to Naomi Klein's Doppelganger (though I said that about another recent read; maybe I just really liked Doppelganger) in its depiction of wellness-to-eugenics pipelines and its critique of a culture that craves community while settling for consumer substitutes.

Hess is the subject of a battery of prenatal testing, a "highly medicalized" pregnancy, and the parent of a child with a serious but manageable medical condition. She has a personal stake in technology and anti-tech movements that alternately threaten and supplement his humanity. (Some freebirthers believe babies who can't survive unassisted birth should just die peacefully...to which I want to scream "Half the population would have died by the age of five if not for SOME type of intervention.") As a genetic mutant myself, with two wonderful adopted kids who are a genetic role of the dice, I experienced this book as a confirmation of my own humanity, and a rallying cry to find real community, however complicated "real" may be in this world.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship]

Read through page 120, which is almost halfway. The author’s style is very readable but I found myself confused about what she was trying to say. There are lots of observations and experiences but without analysis or reflection. And after the first chapter, focused on her relationship with a period-tracking app, it’s really more about her experience of being pregnant than her relationship with technology. It wasn’t doing enough for me to hang onto while others have holds at the library.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me realize that there is a whole world of pregnancy capitalism that I knew nothing about, but that is apparently being foisted on expecting and new mothers via social media and the broader internet.

Amanda Hess’s Second Life chronicles her first son’s gestation and birth (side note: she refers to her son as Alma throughout, the placeholder for his real name taken from an inaccurate AI biography of her life, which is a detail I love), from the apps that allegedly help you know when to conceive to the high-tech tests that will tell you every possible health detail, to the multitudes of Big Brother baby technology meant to monitor all aspects of your child’s life.

Hess also looks at the motherhood subcultures that have developed online, from crunchy free birthing to conservative tradwifery (and the overlap between those) to message boards full of compulsively obsessive expecting mothers fixating on the possibility of rare birth defects (such as BWS, which Hess’s son has).

I really enjoyed Hess’s writing style, which reminded me one one of my absolute favorite journalistic nonfiction writers, Naomi Klein (and I equally came away from her work feeling as fascinated as I did infuriated). The strongest moments of the book are when Hess focuses on her personal journey, her anxiety over and love for her children, but the cultural criticism elements offer important and interesting context and insight into the intersection of internet and technology in modern motherhood.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

RTC!

Thank you bunches to Doubleday & Amanda Hess for the gifted copy 🥰

[Bridget H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learned that the first person to popularize period tracking (for a western audience at least) was a Nazi botanist. So think of that next time you describe yourself as being in your “luteal phase.”

Not sure if I always like when non-fiction is a blend of memoir and research on a topic. Maybe because I am incredibly nosy and always want to hear more about the personal stuff.

[Madison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a quick read that touched on anxieties and preoccupations I definitely feel as a pregnant person in 2024. I found myself chuckling at a lot of shared experiences navigating the black hole of the parenting and pregnancy Internet, and it helped clarify some of my positions as I approach parenthood, like those around constant-vigilance type tech like Snoos and Owlet socks and whatnot. I think Hess is a lot more open-minded toward the more woo-woo side of birth culture than I am, but I still liked her perspective and found this to be a worthwhile memoir that got at a lot of my own feelings.

[Jes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of this really, really resonated. I need to gather my thoughts before I can say anything intelligent about it but mostly just like: yeah, consumer culture + internet culture around pregnancy and parenting will make you insane.

I also really appreciated and was moved by the memoir aspects. I loved this passage especially: “For so long I had wondered about what caused Alma’s condition. I worried over what I had done to trigger it, over the dark secret of my body that had determined his suffering. But the more I cared for him, the longer I spent as his mother, the less this seemed to matter. I realized my great luck now: I had no outside entity to blame, no corporation to fight to make us whole again. If this was ‘like Frankenstein,’ that would make Alma a monster and me a tragic figure. I did not believe this about us or anyone else. We were just made this way. And each day, we were remaking each other.”

[Bridget Krupa · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s like she was in my own head and eloquently narrating my reactions to what it’s like to have and raise babies right now. Would recommend!

[Jimbo · Rating 5 out of 5]

sooooooooooooooooo good

[Lauren Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soooooo damn good. 10/10. Smashed through this book during my 3 month olds day naps lol. Unsure what this genre is - pregnancy/early motherhood memoir intertwined w historical, cultural and political content - but I love it and would like to read more. Presumably I loved this book in part because it was highly relatable, but the relatable part aside the book is extremely well written - beautiful, v crack up, and heartbreaking is hard to bundle together seamlessly tbh.

[Pat | _chaoticbooknook · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my adult life, I have long been ambivalent about having children, a consequence of my constant side-eyeing of expectations foisted upon me (ask me about my thoughts on marriage, homeownership, and other markers of success - I have many!) and the excessive performance of motherhood thanks to social media. Books that explore modern day motherhood vis a vis technology are a specific brand of catnip for me, and this one did not disappoint.

This book explores what it means to be a mother in an age of constant performance + optimization and anxiety; in an age where there is this alleged promise of technology to provide more complete information at every stage of mothering. It’s told through Hess’ own experience, but layers in investigative reporting.

What I loved most was how Hess shines a light into areas not often publicly discusses nor critiqued enough (imo). Is technology and the ability to constantly monitor and gather data just feeding our (the parents’) anxiety? Is more information truly better, and do we even know what to do with all the information we receive? Is the justification for constantly surveilling our child - from embryo to baby to toddler and beyond - worth the lack of privacy to the child? This is most salient in the discussions around baby monitoring devices to monitor whether a child is sleeping, if they’re still breathing, etc.

Hess’ discussion on pre-natal screening was a particular standout. It touches on so many themes: disability and able-bodiedness (i.e. the parents’ intense desire to have a “normal” screening so they can feel relief that their baby is “healthy” aka able-bodied); the imperfectness of these tests - but the real consequences of choices made from these results; the fact that a screening is not a guarantee that the baby does not have some other condition that is not detectable until birth.

I have two tiny critiques of the book. One is that I felt that the through line was inconsistent. This book starts off anchored on Hess’ journey to being a mother and then giving birth, but we lose this in the latter half of the book. Second is that I didn’t love listening to the audio - I found Hess’ voice somewhat annoying.

Despite these critiques, this was a good read if you are soon to be pregnant for the first time and/or have any interest in books examining accepted norms around motherhood and technology. Definitely worth your time!

PS. This book is often compared to I Cannot Control Everything Forever: A Memoir of Motherhood, Science, and Art, another book on modern day motherhood and technology. I see the comparisons, but do not think they are fair because Bloom and Hess are approaching this topic from two distinct lenses.

Bloom is looking at motherhood and technology through the lens of mothering a medically complex child, and focuses more on the ethics. Hess touches a bit on this, but is more focused on technology feeding into modern day parental anxieties in general - even vis a vis an able-bodied child.

Bloom’s errs more philosophical, while Hess’ is more grounded and is more of a commentary of how distorted we have allowed our views around parenting to become as we yearn to optimize.

There is merit to both books, but it is a disservice to compare to the two!

[Ashlee · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incisive, of-the-moment look at how our digital life shapes pregnancy and motherhood, from preconception to postpartum. Hess uses her keen journalistic eye to examine how the internet stokes the anxieties of birthing people, then exploits the user data they so willingly give up to apps like Flo, genetic testing companies like Natera, and baby monitoring devices like Hatch, for financial gain.

Hess grounds her cultural critique in her own experience of giving birth to a medically fragile baby during the pandemic, blending the personal with the political, journalistic distance with the raw emotions of parenthood. My favourite moments include her takedown of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse as “an insipid CGI program in which a flatly emotionless Mickey Mouse rules over a technocratic fantasyland” and her descriptions of visiting r/antinatalism and ruminating over the burden of consciousness during late-night feedings, a thing I thought only I did haha. Ultimately Hess pinpoints the problem with parenting under late capitalism: the wisdom and communal childrearing practices that were once imparted through multigenerational communities have been supplanted and replaced by assistive technologies that surveil and isolate. She’s not the first to make this critique, but boy does she name names.

Anyway, modern parenting is kind of my Roman Empire so Amanda Hess, if you’re reading this, let’s be mom-friends. If you’ve ever hate-listened to a freebirth podcast, been personally victimized by a Snoo, or had a complicated relationship with Dr Becky, this book is for you.

[Marisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm exactly the target audience for this book in so many ways, it's completely unsurprising that I loved it and couldn't put it down. I do think Hess is a great writer, and I would love to read her future work. Her blend of personal and journalism was well balanced to me, and I do think she brought something fresh to the post-pandemic progressive political parenting book genre emerging ('What Are Children For?' and 'Essential Labor' coming to mind, 5-P genre if you will) by talking about her older son's BWH diagnosis and care. This especially made her discussion of baby surveillance tech more complicated and interesting. The toe dipping in free birthing, gentle parenting, maternity brands and 'mama' influencers scratches an itch I'm sure most of us feel.

Overall, all of her worries and concerns were very relatable, and yes I did cry a little at the end ("every day I seemed to unbecome her and become her again"), and also still after every chapter I did find myself thinking that the obvious solution to all of this is (generally) to get off the Internet and social media. Confirmation bias of course, but how much longer will we let this go on, you know?

[Eva Shellabarger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating stuff. Such personal, intimate, spiritual experiences that are surveilled and critiqued at every possible stage. Appreciate her being so vulnerable about these experiences because they teach me how to approach other people and imagine the experience myself.

[alexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nailed it on the head.

[Dominic · Rating 5 out of 5]

just finished second life by Amanda Hess and this book covers my favorite topic of how digital tools shape our most personal moments under the disguise of empowerment and “optimization,” when really, companies are just selling us back to ourselves. This is a deeply personal book about pregnancy and early motherhood in the age of surveillance capitalism.

some of my favorite parts include Hess on predictive targeted ads, where new parents are framed as the “holy grail” of retail because they’re “exhausted and overwhelmed and their shopping patterns and brand loyalties are up for grabs.” the way the internet doesn’t need to guess you’re pregnant, you tell it through apps, search engines, symptom trackers, and suddenly every part of her online experience is optimized to sell her something. when she searches “what to do when you get pregnant,” 74 companies track her, facebook gets notified, she’s categorized by 33Across into audience segments like “expecting parents.” pregnancy becomes a form of data collection.

i loved her take on the app Flo’s anonymous forums, this weirdly intimate, corporate-managed space where women share fear, excitement, and symptoms in real time. but some phrases are censored, and other features are locked behind a paywall requiring money to access community and information. also loved her writing on gender reveal parties, tradwife content, and the pressure to present birth and parenting as hyper-curated experiences.

the book also tracks her experience through pregnancy and birth of a child with a rare genetic disorder, and what it means to be a “medical mom” as someone navigating their child’s condition in real life while witnessing how others perform that identity online.

this book is so good and i can’t wait to read more from her

[Shannon Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amanda Hess’s memoir is the type of book I wish I wrote but since I did not/have not, I’m glad someone else did. The only thing it was missing was a mention of the baby tracking app Huckleberry (nothing but respect for MY president) which ran my life for about 6 months and I still have flashbacks. I was surprised by my visceral reaction to a lot of things in here and it made me feel so seen while giving me a lot to think about. Feels like I have so much more to say but this is just extremely my thing, I loovve an examination of how our lives are shaped by internet culture. 4.5 rounded up!

[Danielle T · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this and will be recommending it to my online mom friends (you know who you are...!) though I do also feel it's a very personal account, and definitely specifically for pregnancy and early parenthood in the United States in the 2020s (Hess's first son was born in 2020 with a rare genetic disorder, her second in 2022).

It resonated with me because motherhood and connection have been VERY digital for me- unlike Hess I didn't use a period tracker app like Flo but I did spend time in subreddits and most especially my bump group discord (again, shoutout to my mumies) and like Hess, I find it interesting to look at how our fears get converted into currency for clicks or to buy stuff ("surely if I buy THIS bassinet baby will sleep statistically more than their peers! if I eat/drink/sleep a certain way, maybe I can avoid THAT developmental issue!"). Hess's pregnancy happening during initial pandemic restrictions heightens that sense of aloneness and leaning on Dr. Google to make sense of what's going on in your body.

Her personal first pregnancy story is also a means to compare the medicalization of birth to the free birthing community, whom she watches via podcast and social media feeds even though due to various factors it's not something she would actually do, and in the chapter on Work she briefly goes into how the tradwife aesthetic is still the work of glamorizing an idealized feminine motherhood.

I think this could be too autobiographical for some readers, but for me in this season of life, it's an A+ read (even if she is a privileged white lady lol)

[OG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didn’t care much about having babies or the internet and yet this prose is so beautiful and seamless that it carries you along without you even realizing you’re learning and thinking— but learn and think you will!! It gave me such a deep new appreciation for the specificity of parenting and the broadness of grasping for cultural meaning. I checked this out from the library but bought a new copy because I think I will refer back to it throughout my life. The vision of collectivity and community in child rearing (vs ownership and individualizing ) will really stay with me. At many times throughout the books I thought I was just sitting there watching Amanda as if watching a movie. The level of detail is that brilliant. Will be giving this to everyone who has kids or wants to have kids or knows someone with a kid or has been a kid themselves.

[Kelsey Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think about this topic often- the role of tech in our child rearing. I find it particularly interesting because it’s such a different landscape than my own experience as a child and I’m sure my parents nowadays. This book was the author’s experience, and the personal story was gripping and detailed. I’ll be thinking about this topic for some time and probably.. years to come as the digital world evolves.

[Hannah Schumacher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t do a ton of social media but I do a TON of googling and looking at my phone. I’ve definitely done a lot of lurking on What To Expect app forum threads and scrolling through Reddit to see if someone has had the same experiences as me.

I wrote down what she said at one point: “my relationship with my baby was supplanted by my relationship with his information.” That was crazy to think about.

I loved reading about this millennial experience and thought she was really relatable. Maybe more importantly though I am thinking more about how I interact with my tech and with my kids.

[Emily Krueger · Rating 5 out of 5]

i listened to this as an audiobook! overall, it was a very informative and delicate book. it touched on so many intricacies and intersections of pregnancy, birth, parenting, and technology. would highly recommend!

[Shanereads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Second Life was interesting book. Its not quite what I would have expected, and I didn't necessarily agree with all of the political view expressed. However, I really did appreciate understanding the fertility apps. That was incredibly enlightening for me.

This finished copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Huge thanks to Double Day for my review copy!

[megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an interesting and thought provoking book, I wish more people would read this.

[Samantha Hafner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought that the fact that I had essentially had my first child around the same time that the author had her first child, related to much of her pregnancy experience, familiar with all of the advertising and social media personalities, etc, I would have enjoyed this book more. I understood much of her critiques, but I felt maybe like this book fixated more on negative aspects of "having a child in the digital age" and less on the potential benefits that technology and access to information have also provided parents. There were a lot of chapters that felt like the point was corporations who peddle baby gear to anxiety-riddled parents are evil and social media parenting influencers are hacks... is this new? and couldn't this apply to basically 90% of corporations and influencers? Is it more evil and disingenuous because they're targeting parents? I don't know. The book was interesting most of the time, but I'm not sure what I gained from it in the end.

[Laura Winnick · Rating 5 out of 5]

will read any take of hers on the internet and/or parenting, ideally both (but probably never again while pregnant)

[Celeste · Rating 5 out of 5]

A page turner. In this book, Hess explores what it is like to be pregnant in the digital age. But rather than it being a parenting book, I found it a thoughtful meditation on our relationship with social media, how we form parasocial bonds online and the love-hate relationship with information overload. Hess’ neuroticism and reflections were very relatable (every girlie in New York amirite?) and I appreciated her digging into history and covering how pregnancy in the media is always centered on a white woman, and how women of colour disproportionately encounter the healthcare system.

An excellent relevant book for our times. Hess is thoughtful, creative, nuanced and sympathetic. Oddly some of her monologues remind me of my friend May.

Excerpts

The errors I made during my pregnancy knocked at the door of my mind. I drank a glass and a half of wine on Marc’s birthday, before I knew I was pregnant. I swallowed a tablet of Ativan, for acute anxiety, after I knew. I took a long hot bath that crinkled my fingertips. I got sick with a fever and fell asleep without thinking about it. I waited until I was almost thirty-five years old to get pregnant. I wanted to solve the question of myself before bringing another person into the world, but the answer had not come. Now my pregnancy was, in the language of obstetrics, geriatric.

In my panic, it felt incontrovertible: if I searched it smart and fast enough, the internet would save us. I had constructed my life through its screens, mapped the world along its circuits. Now I would make a second life there, too. As I write this, four years later, I see my hour on the table as the moment that my relationship with technology turned, its shadows shifting around me. I reached for a sense of control and gripped tightly to my phone. It would not give me the answers I was looking for, but it would feed me wrong answers from its endless supply. It would serve me facts and conspiracies, gadgets and idols, judgments and tips.

Flo was for women who could not run to a doctor, and it was also for women who raced between their doctors and their phones, pounding on an accelerating treadmill of information. The sickest thing about my relationship with Flo was that I ignored all her advice. […] Still my fingers led me back to the app, where I thumbed through her updates without even reading them. Her offerings scratched at a deeper itch.

I imagined my test’s pink dye spreading across Instagram, Facebook, Amazon. All around me, a techno-corporate infrastructure was locking into place. I could sense the advertising algorithms recalibrating and the branded newsletters assembling in their queues. Pregnant exercise instructors beckoned to me from YouTube thumbnails. Digital clothing companies offered confusing bras. More brands knew about my pregnancy than people did. They all called me mama.

It had felt like Flo was coaxing me into a costume of womanhood, and now the costume was literal. My feed cleared into a runway of bump-friendly styles.

Once I had thought of pregnancy as a time when you were allowed to eat whatever you wanted, but now I could see that it was the Tour de France of restrictive eating. Strict diet and exercise during pregnancy were cast not just as aesthetic practices but moral achievements, conflated with the health of the pregnancy and the expression of superior mothering. Hatch asked its mom crushes about their relationship with movement, their vision of wellness, and their self-care rituals—gentle rebrands of the punishing diets once advised by the maternity industry.

It was the work of enslaved Black women, raising and wet-nursing white children, that enabled wealthy white women to spend their time cultivating the image of the ideal mother. “The valorization of White motherhood is reproduced for every generation and taught through television, movies, magazines, websites, Internet searches, and pregnancy literature […] the vaunted image of the ethereal white mother—“thin, beautiful, well dressed, and middle class”

I asked the doctor to write the name of the syndrome on a slip of paper so I would not forget. “Don’t google it,” he said. […] Even as I submitted my body to advanced scientific protocols, my mind belonged now to the realm of judgment, superstition, and myth. Soon the internet would feed me from its bank of dark materials. Coincidences would string together to form patterns and theories. With the light of my phone to guide me, I descended into the pregnant underworld.

The woman with the ultrasonic waves saw something, but the man with the magnet saw nothing, and his nothing beat her something. With one diagnostic instrument, my baby was condemned. With another, he was saved.

These women had crafted their pregnancies into epics and cast themselves as conquering heroes, and I consumed their stories like they were streaming on Bravo.

“Birth was not just the “delivery of her child” but “the making of a mother,” he wrote. “Childbirth is the perfection of womanhood, and the beautifying of the maternal conscience is one of its most acceptable rewards.” In place of anesthesia, laboring women would receive an apex life experience: a “physical, spiritual and emotional achievement” that promised to be “vivid and interesting” as long as the woman capably executed her role. Dick-Read coached her in natural birth’s new performance style. He invited white women of the middle and upper classes to put on a fantasy of primitive painlessness, to wear it like a laboring gown. Natural birth was a kind of safari, and when it was over, its participants could return home to idealized and compliant family lives.

United States was legislating midwives out of existence. Black midwives were targeted with racist campaigns that slandered them as “witches,” “savage,” and “unclean” and worked to reform them into a medical model of birth. Midwives were supplanted by white male physicians in hospitals, many of whom had no obstetrical training.

The politics of natural birth had taken many shapes, and now it had fused with a hyperindividualistic entrepreneurial drive […] content strategy, in how it styled itself as a premium experience even as it aestheticized risk. In its fully commodified form, freebirth was pitched as the origin story for the ultimate self-made woman, the one who could deliver her own baby and start a business, too.

Who was the person that motherhood had swept away? I wasn’t sure how to answer that myself, but I felt a tinge of relief about her sudden departure. My old blogger self would have found this pathetic, but I liked the person I saw reflected in my son’s eyes, his competent and joyful caretaker.

The tradwives taught me that there was a form of work I disliked more than isolated mothering: the virtual staging of isolated mothering for social media. Replicating oneself in front of an online audience was now a job requirement for a range of professions, one that I struggled to perform. I had always lacked proficiency in playing myself.

When I interrogated my own relationship with the Snoo, I realized that its subhuman status was part of its appeal. I was frustrated that my baby would not stop screaming in the middle of the night. I was insecure about my own capability to soothe him. I hurled all those feelings at the Snoo’s unfeeling frame. “Goddamn you,” I told it on multiple occasions. “Goddamn you, you fucking piece of shit!”

The real tragedy, these interactions seemed to say, was having a baby with traits that you did not personally select. The obsession with choice, Dave said, was a symptom of a class of professional strivers who needed to control and optimize every aspect of life. Babies don’t work like that, and that’s part of what makes parenting meaningful: you do not get to choose. But that did not stop people from trying.

“Photographs “help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure,” she writes. I realized that I was trying to use my phone in both ways at once, to build our family story while putting myself at ease.

For an isolated parent, TikTok could be a site of connection, a seed for growing an intimate community. But when a video went viral, the audience transformed. A mother could submit her child’s image to the internet’s awareness-raising machine only to watch an audience tear greedily through the pictures, performing repulsion and accusing the parents of seeking clout.

The prototypical medical mom was a mom who executed at the highest levels. Simultaneously a long-suffering caretaker and a fearless combatant, she meticulously managed her child’s complex medical needs, documented her family’s challenges, and fused her identity with her child’s condition. Her central struggle was fighting the medical establishment to get it to accept her unique form of expertise and reward her family with adequate care. Through grief, rage, and financial insecurity, she endured. […] Even as the medical mom sought acceptance for her disabled child, her performance glorified the able-bodied mother and her sacrificial drive.

The idea of good parenting was a myth, Gopnik suggested in her 2016 book, because “parenting,” as a careerist program schooling parents on raising children, was itself bad. The accumulation of expertise was no substitute for what she called “wisdom and competence,” multigenerational communities, and traditions of mutual care between neighbors and friends. “In the past 30 years, the concept of parenting and the multibillion-dollar industry surrounding it have transformed child care into obsessive, controlling, and goal-oriented labor intended to create a particular kind of child and therefore a particular kind of adult.”

[Rachel E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know it’s niche but this book should be much much more widely marketed! I was enthralled by her journey of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood through technology. I’m working on some body image research currently with my bestie and this book has lit a fire under me for future research ideas. 💡