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Mothers and Others
'When are you having children?' 'Why didn't you have another child?' 'Well, I guess that's your choice, but...'They are questions asked of women of a certain age all the time. Beneath them is the assumption that all women want to have children, and the judgment that if they don't, they'll be somehow incomplete. And that's only the beginning...Being a mother, or not being a mother, has never been so complicated. The list of rights and wrongs gets longer daily, with guilt-ridden mothers struggling to keep on top of it all, and non-mothers battling a culture that defines women by their wombs.In this collection of fiction and non-fiction stories, Australian women reflect on how it should be and how it really is. Their stories tackle everything from the decision not to have children to the so-called war between working and stay-at-home mums. Including special contributions by Rosie Batty and Deborra-Lee Furness, the stories explore every topic from infertility and IVF, to step-parenting and adoption, to miscarriage and breastfeeding, child meltdowns and marriage breakdowns, as well as giving a much-needed voice to those who won't ever be called 'Mum'.With its unflinching honesty and clear-eyed wisdom, Mothers & Others holds a mirror up to the most romanticised, demonised and complex roles women those of mother or non-mother, and daughter.
302 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 2015
15 people are currently reading
3879 people want to read
About the author
Miriam Sved
10 books8 followersMiriam Sved is a Melbourne-based writer who grew up in Sydney, where she was largely oblivious to football or sport of any kind. Game Day is her first published novel. Her fiction has appeared in journals and anthologies including Meanjin, Overland and Best Australian Stories, and she is a contributing co-editor of the anthologies Just Between Us: Australian writers tell the truth about female friendship and Mothers & Others: Australian writers on why not all women are mothers and not all mothers are the same. She has a PhD from Melbourne University, where she sometimes teaches creative writing. She also works as an academic editor and a parent.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 4, 2015
Mothers but not exactly the Others I was expecting. Don't get me wrong there is some very good writing in this book but as someone who does not want children and has had managed their life around that (dodging expectations, finding a partner who also does not want children, trying several times unsuccessfully to get steralised) it was disheartening to me that a book of womens voices surrounding motherhood and non motherhood basically confirmed the social ideology that most women are searching for motherhood in some way. The two stories in there that are about women who have chosen not to have children one was completely ambivalent (not really thought about it at all) and the second story was I absolutely do not want children BUT CHILDREN ARE EVERYTHING TO ME.
I think if you are a mother or would like to become one this is an interesting book filled with lots of different perspectives. If you are any kind of Other and hurting from that you may find this book triggering like I did.
I think if you are a mother or would like to become one this is an interesting book filled with lots of different perspectives. If you are any kind of Other and hurting from that you may find this book triggering like I did.
June 28, 2016
Wow, I really liked many short stories from this book, especially the ones when a writer shared such a personal things about her life I can't even imagine to be able to share with anyone, not writing about it openly. This book gave quite a wide spectrum of what it means to be a mother, choosing not to be a mother or dealing with the fact that you can't be a mother. For me personally this situation is still a bit farther away in the future, still it made me think about things I haven't thought before and made me see my own relationship with my mother a bit differently. I really recommmend it to any woman at any age or maybe even for men. :)
June 3, 2015
This is now one of my favourite essay collections. I really enjoyed almost all of the contributions included, especially the fictional ones. The pieces were original and compelling and I admire the honesty and rawness of the writers for telling the truth about topics that the media seems to find contentious and that people love to judge both mothers and others for. Another thing I loved about this collection was that all of the women write very well, and many write very beautifully indeed. All of the pieces were very personal and really resonant with the diverse experiences faced by women. Highly recommend this one.
February 1, 2016
‘Mothers & Others: Australian writers on why not all women are mothers and not all mothers are the same’ is the 2015 anthology collection of stories from editors Natalie Kon-yu, Christie Nieman, Maggie Scott, Miriam Sved and Maya Linden. This is the same writers group – turned editorial team – who put out one of my favourite 2013 books: ‘Just Between Us’, an anthology all about female friendships.
I adored ‘Just Between Us’, not only for the calibre of female authors assembled – but more for the honest explorations into dynamics, which are so often misconstrued and misunderstood or just missing from all forms of fiction and storytelling – the female friendship. I mean; there’s a reason the Disney musical ‘Frozen’ was seen as groundbreaking for being a film in which the sister’s friendship takes precedence above all else, and is the true heart of the story. For much the same reason, ‘Mothers & Others’ is a groundbreaking and heart-warming tribute to the many facets of motherhood, which – upon reading the offerings from 28 marvellous writers – you quickly realise, is often lazily presented elsewhere as nuclear, one-dimensional and untrue. This anthology absolutely delivers on its promise, as it; ‘holds a mirror up to the most romanticised, demonised and complex roles women play: those of mother or non-mother, and daughter.’
There’s a quote from a Jodi Picoult book called ‘Vanishing Acts’ that has stayed with me, and I don’t know why; “There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its centre; it is the human condition.” But it revibrated with me while reading certain non-fiction stories from particular writers in this anthology, those especially who have long and illustrious careers writing about the topics of family, relationships and belonging. What fascinated me was their non-fiction writing about their changed circumstances, and how this has impacted on their writing or will inform their future stories, no doubt.
The book opens, for instance, with a non-fiction story from Alice Pung – an incredible Australian author known for her memoir writing, who has explored topics around her family’s fleeing the killing fields of Cambodia to settle in Australia in ‘Unpolished Gem’ and the heartstrings of family versus her need for independence in ‘Her Father's Daughter’. Her short story ‘The New Grandparents’ explores both familiar and new terrain as she moves into a new phase of her life as a first-time mother, suddenly bringing a sharper understanding perhaps, to all that she has written about in her memoirs;
Almost three and a half decades later, their firstborn – a child they named after the girl in Lewis Carroll’s book, because they thought Australia was a Wonderland – is having her firstborn. They didn’t know whether they would survive the war, let alone get to this lucky point in life.
— ‘The New Grandparents’ by Alice Pung
New York Times Bestselling author Liane Moriarty has been very open about the reasons so many of her female characters have tackled fertility issues and the crushing blows of miscarriage, IVF-treatment or faced the possibility of never having children. ‘Three Wishes’, ‘What Alice Forgot’, and ‘The Last Anniversary’ have all featured characters struggling to get pregnant, or worrying that it’s too late for them. 'The Hypnotist's Love Story' also featured an especially intriguing female character who had to come to terms with being dumped by her partner, and consequently losing the connection she had established with his young son, whom she’d helped raise for a time. Moriarty has spoken about how her own real-life struggles with these topics influenced her writing, and most recently I was listening to a Sydney Writers’ Festival podcast of her 2015 appearance, in which she talked about the many female readers who reach out to her with thanks or anger for hitting so close to home on these topics. In her non-fiction story ‘The Childless Side of the Room’, Moriarty reflects on a gym class in which a guileless female instructor (and new mum) asks her class to split the room according to parents and non-parents (to highlight how well the parents – battling busy schedules – still find time to fit in fitness, apparently). Moriarty, though now a mother of two, finds herself reflecting on how her past-self would have taken to such battle-line instruction when she was at her lowest point of infertility and struggles to conceive. It’s a gut-wrenching, open-bruise sort of short story – a confessional and an olive branch to any woman going through what Moriarty came out the other side of. And it’s a refined understanding of how these topics can still lay so close to her heart that they’re recurring themes and explorations in so many of her books, even years after she gave birth to her two children;
My main memory of that time is the way I always had to hold myself: stiffly, carefully, as if I were a tall glass of messy emotions that might break or spill at any moment. And still, the shame, the everlasting shame, because all this was my fault: because I was so old; because I’d taken too long to start trying; because I’d messed it up, buttercup.
— ‘The Childless Side of the Room’ by Liane Moriarty
Melina Marchetta returns to ‘Mothers & Others’, having contributed the brilliant fictional short story ‘The Centre’ to the first anthology – but this time Marchetta is offering up a non-fiction and very personal slice, in a story titled ‘Of a Lesser God’. Here, Marchetta writes a letter to her child – ‘B’ – whom she has recently adopted, as she details the first year of their lives together. Given that Marchetta has built a career writing groundbreaking YA books about identity and displacement – a recurring theme from her contemporary ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ to high fantasy and ‘Finnikin of the Rock’ – there’s something incredibly touching here, to read her sharp insights and understanding translating so preciously to this new life she’s building for herself and B.
Although I’m a bit greedy and want you all to myself, I also don’t want you to spend your life wondering where you came from, whether your birth parents loved you, who you look like. I understand the importance of identity. I’ve been writing about it most my life.
— ‘Of a Lesser God’ by Melina Marchetta
Deborra-Lee Furness – actress and ‘Adopt Change’ ambassador – also has a more academic and insightful non-fiction story in here about her path to motherhood. She cites the Convention of the Rights of the Child, United National treaty and the fact that 157 million children are without family (according to UNICEF) – in explaining why she’s campaigning so hard to make adoption easier in Australia and the rest of the world, for all families.
It’s important to note that these stories are not all non-fiction – five are fiction, and one in particular from Maxine Beneba Clarke titled ‘Paint’, will have you racing to pick up her phenomenal short story collection ‘Foreign Soil’ if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading it already. And not all these stories are about the mother-side of motherhood. Estelle Tang’s non-fiction piece ‘Motherland’ is about her being a child far away from home, having moved to New York – specifically examining ‘migrants mothers and children in the work of Colm Tóibín, Maxine Beneba Clarke and Roxane Gay.’
… the distance I put between us by moving overseas has shown me that we are not one entity, but two distinct individuals. Does that seem obvious to most people? It wasn’t to me, not for a long time. And now that I’m looking back at how in thrall I was to her, I’m surprised that I don’t feel more lost or damaged now that out relationship is attenuated. Many of my thoughts – casual or radical or laboured – are what my mother taught me.
— ‘Motherland’ by Estelle Tang
Coming into ‘Mothers & Others’ I’m one of the “others” (and that title is so tongue-in-cheek, I think, reflecting and perhaps criticising the way women who don’t fall neatly into the first are so often “othered” as a consequence) – regardless, I related hard to every single story within its pages. Sometimes rather viscerally – as YA author Simmone Howell writes about turning to books to discover “what kind of writer-mother would I be?” in her short story ‘Writing Gully’ (an allusion to her wonderful YA book ‘Girl Defective’, which features the memorable and sensitive young child character called Gully). In this, Howell was investigating the balancing of writing and motherhood. But it got me thinking of the ways books have educated me on the intricacies of this side to life, I’d only ever had experience with as a daughter.
I became a novelist because I had a child.
— ‘The Mother Lode’ by Geraldine Brooks
I find that I’m not so strange to think that it’s through art and books that my understanding of mothering and motherhood has also been shaped – and I find it so fitting that Geraldine Brooks is in here too, offering a non-fiction story called ‘The Mother Lode’ (like Howell, exploring the connection of art and motherhood). I had just shared Brooks’ ‘The Year of Wonders’ as my #StellaSpark, you see, and in particular I remember being a teenager reading that book and being made to feel such a visceral connection to Anna Frith grieving for her children. This line from the book still haunts me; “My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint.”
That is, I realise, the gift of ‘Mothers & Others’ too. True, everyone could come to ‘Just Between Us’ and see facets of themselves and their lives – after all, we’ve all had and been friends, surely? Men and women alike? But some may think ‘Mothers & Others’ is less accessible – again, I think of that room being split in Moriarty’s story, of parents and not. But it’s not the case, and not just because these writers are so accomplished and poetic, to have opened a vein and bled (as Ernest Hemingway would have applauded.) There is universality here – yes, partly because even if you’re not a parent you are somebody’s child – but it’s deeper than that. These stories delve into instinct and love, mistakes and do-over’s, fractured lines, family ties and a loss so awful but does not lessen love or title. There’s more universe here than you may think.
I adored ‘Just Between Us’, not only for the calibre of female authors assembled – but more for the honest explorations into dynamics, which are so often misconstrued and misunderstood or just missing from all forms of fiction and storytelling – the female friendship. I mean; there’s a reason the Disney musical ‘Frozen’ was seen as groundbreaking for being a film in which the sister’s friendship takes precedence above all else, and is the true heart of the story. For much the same reason, ‘Mothers & Others’ is a groundbreaking and heart-warming tribute to the many facets of motherhood, which – upon reading the offerings from 28 marvellous writers – you quickly realise, is often lazily presented elsewhere as nuclear, one-dimensional and untrue. This anthology absolutely delivers on its promise, as it; ‘holds a mirror up to the most romanticised, demonised and complex roles women play: those of mother or non-mother, and daughter.’
There’s a quote from a Jodi Picoult book called ‘Vanishing Acts’ that has stayed with me, and I don’t know why; “There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its centre; it is the human condition.” But it revibrated with me while reading certain non-fiction stories from particular writers in this anthology, those especially who have long and illustrious careers writing about the topics of family, relationships and belonging. What fascinated me was their non-fiction writing about their changed circumstances, and how this has impacted on their writing or will inform their future stories, no doubt.
The book opens, for instance, with a non-fiction story from Alice Pung – an incredible Australian author known for her memoir writing, who has explored topics around her family’s fleeing the killing fields of Cambodia to settle in Australia in ‘Unpolished Gem’ and the heartstrings of family versus her need for independence in ‘Her Father's Daughter’. Her short story ‘The New Grandparents’ explores both familiar and new terrain as she moves into a new phase of her life as a first-time mother, suddenly bringing a sharper understanding perhaps, to all that she has written about in her memoirs;
Almost three and a half decades later, their firstborn – a child they named after the girl in Lewis Carroll’s book, because they thought Australia was a Wonderland – is having her firstborn. They didn’t know whether they would survive the war, let alone get to this lucky point in life.
— ‘The New Grandparents’ by Alice Pung
New York Times Bestselling author Liane Moriarty has been very open about the reasons so many of her female characters have tackled fertility issues and the crushing blows of miscarriage, IVF-treatment or faced the possibility of never having children. ‘Three Wishes’, ‘What Alice Forgot’, and ‘The Last Anniversary’ have all featured characters struggling to get pregnant, or worrying that it’s too late for them. 'The Hypnotist's Love Story' also featured an especially intriguing female character who had to come to terms with being dumped by her partner, and consequently losing the connection she had established with his young son, whom she’d helped raise for a time. Moriarty has spoken about how her own real-life struggles with these topics influenced her writing, and most recently I was listening to a Sydney Writers’ Festival podcast of her 2015 appearance, in which she talked about the many female readers who reach out to her with thanks or anger for hitting so close to home on these topics. In her non-fiction story ‘The Childless Side of the Room’, Moriarty reflects on a gym class in which a guileless female instructor (and new mum) asks her class to split the room according to parents and non-parents (to highlight how well the parents – battling busy schedules – still find time to fit in fitness, apparently). Moriarty, though now a mother of two, finds herself reflecting on how her past-self would have taken to such battle-line instruction when she was at her lowest point of infertility and struggles to conceive. It’s a gut-wrenching, open-bruise sort of short story – a confessional and an olive branch to any woman going through what Moriarty came out the other side of. And it’s a refined understanding of how these topics can still lay so close to her heart that they’re recurring themes and explorations in so many of her books, even years after she gave birth to her two children;
My main memory of that time is the way I always had to hold myself: stiffly, carefully, as if I were a tall glass of messy emotions that might break or spill at any moment. And still, the shame, the everlasting shame, because all this was my fault: because I was so old; because I’d taken too long to start trying; because I’d messed it up, buttercup.
— ‘The Childless Side of the Room’ by Liane Moriarty
Melina Marchetta returns to ‘Mothers & Others’, having contributed the brilliant fictional short story ‘The Centre’ to the first anthology – but this time Marchetta is offering up a non-fiction and very personal slice, in a story titled ‘Of a Lesser God’. Here, Marchetta writes a letter to her child – ‘B’ – whom she has recently adopted, as she details the first year of their lives together. Given that Marchetta has built a career writing groundbreaking YA books about identity and displacement – a recurring theme from her contemporary ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ to high fantasy and ‘Finnikin of the Rock’ – there’s something incredibly touching here, to read her sharp insights and understanding translating so preciously to this new life she’s building for herself and B.
Although I’m a bit greedy and want you all to myself, I also don’t want you to spend your life wondering where you came from, whether your birth parents loved you, who you look like. I understand the importance of identity. I’ve been writing about it most my life.
— ‘Of a Lesser God’ by Melina Marchetta
Deborra-Lee Furness – actress and ‘Adopt Change’ ambassador – also has a more academic and insightful non-fiction story in here about her path to motherhood. She cites the Convention of the Rights of the Child, United National treaty and the fact that 157 million children are without family (according to UNICEF) – in explaining why she’s campaigning so hard to make adoption easier in Australia and the rest of the world, for all families.
It’s important to note that these stories are not all non-fiction – five are fiction, and one in particular from Maxine Beneba Clarke titled ‘Paint’, will have you racing to pick up her phenomenal short story collection ‘Foreign Soil’ if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading it already. And not all these stories are about the mother-side of motherhood. Estelle Tang’s non-fiction piece ‘Motherland’ is about her being a child far away from home, having moved to New York – specifically examining ‘migrants mothers and children in the work of Colm Tóibín, Maxine Beneba Clarke and Roxane Gay.’
… the distance I put between us by moving overseas has shown me that we are not one entity, but two distinct individuals. Does that seem obvious to most people? It wasn’t to me, not for a long time. And now that I’m looking back at how in thrall I was to her, I’m surprised that I don’t feel more lost or damaged now that out relationship is attenuated. Many of my thoughts – casual or radical or laboured – are what my mother taught me.
— ‘Motherland’ by Estelle Tang
Coming into ‘Mothers & Others’ I’m one of the “others” (and that title is so tongue-in-cheek, I think, reflecting and perhaps criticising the way women who don’t fall neatly into the first are so often “othered” as a consequence) – regardless, I related hard to every single story within its pages. Sometimes rather viscerally – as YA author Simmone Howell writes about turning to books to discover “what kind of writer-mother would I be?” in her short story ‘Writing Gully’ (an allusion to her wonderful YA book ‘Girl Defective’, which features the memorable and sensitive young child character called Gully). In this, Howell was investigating the balancing of writing and motherhood. But it got me thinking of the ways books have educated me on the intricacies of this side to life, I’d only ever had experience with as a daughter.
I became a novelist because I had a child.
— ‘The Mother Lode’ by Geraldine Brooks
I find that I’m not so strange to think that it’s through art and books that my understanding of mothering and motherhood has also been shaped – and I find it so fitting that Geraldine Brooks is in here too, offering a non-fiction story called ‘The Mother Lode’ (like Howell, exploring the connection of art and motherhood). I had just shared Brooks’ ‘The Year of Wonders’ as my #StellaSpark, you see, and in particular I remember being a teenager reading that book and being made to feel such a visceral connection to Anna Frith grieving for her children. This line from the book still haunts me; “My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint.”
That is, I realise, the gift of ‘Mothers & Others’ too. True, everyone could come to ‘Just Between Us’ and see facets of themselves and their lives – after all, we’ve all had and been friends, surely? Men and women alike? But some may think ‘Mothers & Others’ is less accessible – again, I think of that room being split in Moriarty’s story, of parents and not. But it’s not the case, and not just because these writers are so accomplished and poetic, to have opened a vein and bled (as Ernest Hemingway would have applauded.) There is universality here – yes, partly because even if you’re not a parent you are somebody’s child – but it’s deeper than that. These stories delve into instinct and love, mistakes and do-over’s, fractured lines, family ties and a loss so awful but does not lessen love or title. There’s more universe here than you may think.
January 14, 2018
I came across this book as part of my ongoing exploration of the reasons behind my ambivalence about having children. I started reading it with the expectation of finding more voices of “childfree” women. Although that expectation wasn’t quite met and the book was dominated more by mothers than by “others”, I still enjoyed reading about the various viewpoints and experiences shared in the form of fiction and non-fiction short stories. There was humour, depth, pain, loss (of identity and of child) and grief, all shared by skillful storytelling, and except for Debra Lee Furness's piece, this anthology contains some very good writing.
Maggie Scott’s ‘ON THE BUS’ was my favourite. Her writing touched me on a profound level.
I found Brooke Davis’ piece, ‘FUTURE BROOKE’, humorous and delightful:
“They’re everywhere, kids. Have you noticed? People are having them all the time, whether they mean to or not. They’re even starting to appear in the wombs of my friends. We go to cafes that are kid-friendly now and I stare at all the children. I’m in awe of them. They vomit, cry, scream, laugh and shit whenever the hell they want. They walk around the place, moving like tiny zombies and they suddenly see their hands, and they just can’t believe it. Hands? Attached to me? They’re surprised every time. If their friend sits where they want to sit, they punch them in the face. Their friend cries, they hand them some of their sandwich – look! All better. They don’t care if you’re the CEO of a company or have three dollars to your name: you will sing ‘Dorothy the Dinosaur’ with them. They’re congratulated for sleeping, eating and waving to people. How wonderful life must be when nothing is assumed of you, when absolutely anything you do exceeds expectations.”
Similarly hilarious is Cate Kennedy’s ‘INTERIOR. KITCHEN TABLE. 10.45 AM’, which is her attempt at having a conversation with her friend while constantly being interrupted by her children. The story humorously paints a picture of an intelligent and caring mother, unable to finish a thought or a sentence because of her children’s constant demands.
I found a shared experience in ‘WHY I CHOOSE TO NOT HAVE TO MAKE A CHOICE’ by Celeste Liddle:
“Far from hearing the insistent ticking of some mythical ‘biological clock’ warning me that my fertility is waning, the older I get, the more ambivalent I become. This is probably because I am more comfortable in my own skin than I was ten or fifteen years ago, and don’t feel that my life will be incomplete if I don’t have children.”
What I like about this book is that the writers who were or went on to become mothers don’t fail to see society’s flawed view of the role of women:
“Because a man has children; but a woman becomes a mother.
A man does, or does not.
A woman is, or is not.”
- from ‘AS A MUM’ by Christie Nieman
This voice is also heard in Natalie Kon-Yu’s ‘THE DISAPPEARING WOMAN’, where she critique’s society’s view of a pregnant woman as a vessel for the fetus and not as an independent individual whose health and mental well-being should be prioritised because she is a person in herself, not because she is an incubator for another person.
Overall, I would recommend reading this book to anyone who enjoys reading a good short story.
Maggie Scott’s ‘ON THE BUS’ was my favourite. Her writing touched me on a profound level.
I found Brooke Davis’ piece, ‘FUTURE BROOKE’, humorous and delightful:
“They’re everywhere, kids. Have you noticed? People are having them all the time, whether they mean to or not. They’re even starting to appear in the wombs of my friends. We go to cafes that are kid-friendly now and I stare at all the children. I’m in awe of them. They vomit, cry, scream, laugh and shit whenever the hell they want. They walk around the place, moving like tiny zombies and they suddenly see their hands, and they just can’t believe it. Hands? Attached to me? They’re surprised every time. If their friend sits where they want to sit, they punch them in the face. Their friend cries, they hand them some of their sandwich – look! All better. They don’t care if you’re the CEO of a company or have three dollars to your name: you will sing ‘Dorothy the Dinosaur’ with them. They’re congratulated for sleeping, eating and waving to people. How wonderful life must be when nothing is assumed of you, when absolutely anything you do exceeds expectations.”
Similarly hilarious is Cate Kennedy’s ‘INTERIOR. KITCHEN TABLE. 10.45 AM’, which is her attempt at having a conversation with her friend while constantly being interrupted by her children. The story humorously paints a picture of an intelligent and caring mother, unable to finish a thought or a sentence because of her children’s constant demands.
I found a shared experience in ‘WHY I CHOOSE TO NOT HAVE TO MAKE A CHOICE’ by Celeste Liddle:
“Far from hearing the insistent ticking of some mythical ‘biological clock’ warning me that my fertility is waning, the older I get, the more ambivalent I become. This is probably because I am more comfortable in my own skin than I was ten or fifteen years ago, and don’t feel that my life will be incomplete if I don’t have children.”
What I like about this book is that the writers who were or went on to become mothers don’t fail to see society’s flawed view of the role of women:
“Because a man has children; but a woman becomes a mother.
A man does, or does not.
A woman is, or is not.”
- from ‘AS A MUM’ by Christie Nieman
This voice is also heard in Natalie Kon-Yu’s ‘THE DISAPPEARING WOMAN’, where she critique’s society’s view of a pregnant woman as a vessel for the fetus and not as an independent individual whose health and mental well-being should be prioritised because she is a person in herself, not because she is an incubator for another person.
Overall, I would recommend reading this book to anyone who enjoys reading a good short story.
March 29, 2016
Some good stories, but only three that really had an impact on me. Poorly edited, too. Debra Lee Furness's in particular was very bad, I think perhaps it was a speech she may have presented somewhere and they just plonked it in, to add weight to the list of authors with mothering causes. And why is Liane Moriarty listed with the editors, when technically she's not? More weight. Not needed. Some great stories in here and I've discovered some authors I would like to follow up. That's one of the beauties of a collection of short stories.
February 12, 2018
This book was a mixed bag. What it says about human parenting is interesting, especially new focus and studies on grandmothering and alloparenting as an evolutionary advantage for offspring. More care-givers multiplies the child's opportunities for learning from various life experiences, and also provides back-up and respite for biological parents who may be lacking or become absent. Interestingly, these parenting patterns also allow biological parents more freedom. The author successfully lays out lifespans and patterns of fertility and menopause to demonstrate that the prime directive of our biology is not only reproduction, but also successful child-rearing. "It takes a village" takes on new meaning.
While the book attempts a scientific, biological approach, there's a species-centric bias. The examples of animal parenting rely heavily upon the uniqueness of humans, ignoring much science, especially recent science about animals' cognitive abilities and social complexity. But even very dated examples exist that contradict her thesis, as that of a chimp hiding his wandering gaze toward a banana cache by intentionally sitting with a tree blocking his line of sight so as not to give away to the other/more dominant chimps where the cache was. So, it seems she's cherry-picking. There's also a gender bias; fathers of any species are almost completely missing, and this absence also shows the author's approach to be outdated or under-informed.
I don't make this criticism lightly - I think feminist scholarship is important. It would have been interesting to see included some analysis on why parenting patterns haven't changed that much, even though women have expanded 'their' child care circles to commonly include grandmothers so that they can participate more actively in the economic gathering of calories for the growing young, and yet there has been no corresponding change in male behavior.
Similarly, the relationship of food sources and the technology of food gathering, production and storage have been linked to human evolutionary possibilities for brain development. The biological cost of the evolution of large brains and their upkeep had not been seen as key to the intellectual evolution of our species. Previously, there was a focus on helpless infants and long childhoods. Now nutrition has entered into the paleontology discussion, it's an interesting thesis, that our species has the ability to expand and contract based on the availability of nutrients.
But Moriarty is not a scientist, so her reliance on anecdotes about science rather than real science is understandable. Besides, she wrote Big Little Lies, which just swept the awards season, so her astuteness in social observation is well established. As a grandmother, I applaud the acknowledgement of the evolutionary advantage to my long post-menopausal lifespan!
While the book attempts a scientific, biological approach, there's a species-centric bias. The examples of animal parenting rely heavily upon the uniqueness of humans, ignoring much science, especially recent science about animals' cognitive abilities and social complexity. But even very dated examples exist that contradict her thesis, as that of a chimp hiding his wandering gaze toward a banana cache by intentionally sitting with a tree blocking his line of sight so as not to give away to the other/more dominant chimps where the cache was. So, it seems she's cherry-picking. There's also a gender bias; fathers of any species are almost completely missing, and this absence also shows the author's approach to be outdated or under-informed.
I don't make this criticism lightly - I think feminist scholarship is important. It would have been interesting to see included some analysis on why parenting patterns haven't changed that much, even though women have expanded 'their' child care circles to commonly include grandmothers so that they can participate more actively in the economic gathering of calories for the growing young, and yet there has been no corresponding change in male behavior.
Similarly, the relationship of food sources and the technology of food gathering, production and storage have been linked to human evolutionary possibilities for brain development. The biological cost of the evolution of large brains and their upkeep had not been seen as key to the intellectual evolution of our species. Previously, there was a focus on helpless infants and long childhoods. Now nutrition has entered into the paleontology discussion, it's an interesting thesis, that our species has the ability to expand and contract based on the availability of nutrients.
But Moriarty is not a scientist, so her reliance on anecdotes about science rather than real science is understandable. Besides, she wrote Big Little Lies, which just swept the awards season, so her astuteness in social observation is well established. As a grandmother, I applaud the acknowledgement of the evolutionary advantage to my long post-menopausal lifespan!
April 27, 2022
What a truly amazing collection of short stories, the majority are non-fiction with a smattering of fiction found in between.
I can not think of a woman that I would not strongly recommend this collection to. Neither age nor status as mother or other nor sexual identification nor life interest would restrict my recommendation.
The majority of stories are deeply thought provoking as you are granted a glimpse into another’s life and circumstances, and each has a core that made me reflect on my own life lived thus far.
Three stories really stood out for me
- The Motherhood Penalty- nonfiction by Dianne Blacklock - I think a massive number of women within my age range who made parenting choices similar to mine will understand this story deeply
-The Disappearing Woman -nonfiction by Natalie Kon-Yu - show me a woman who has carried a child who has not reflected on how you suddenly cease to exist as a separate entirety (but I in no way imply many have experienced the trauma the author did)
No Fixed Position - nonfiction by Enza Gandolfo - gave me so many thought points
All the stories highlighted to me the absolute power of the language we use as we talk together on these issues of being mothers and others and what intentionally or unintentionally comes through as judgement of situations we can truly have no real experience.
I can not think of a woman that I would not strongly recommend this collection to. Neither age nor status as mother or other nor sexual identification nor life interest would restrict my recommendation.
The majority of stories are deeply thought provoking as you are granted a glimpse into another’s life and circumstances, and each has a core that made me reflect on my own life lived thus far.
Three stories really stood out for me
- The Motherhood Penalty- nonfiction by Dianne Blacklock - I think a massive number of women within my age range who made parenting choices similar to mine will understand this story deeply
-The Disappearing Woman -nonfiction by Natalie Kon-Yu - show me a woman who has carried a child who has not reflected on how you suddenly cease to exist as a separate entirety (but I in no way imply many have experienced the trauma the author did)
No Fixed Position - nonfiction by Enza Gandolfo - gave me so many thought points
All the stories highlighted to me the absolute power of the language we use as we talk together on these issues of being mothers and others and what intentionally or unintentionally comes through as judgement of situations we can truly have no real experience.
March 31, 2019
An interesting range of essays and stories.
Read
December 24, 2018A variable collection of writing. Some brought me to tears, others left me unmoved.
September 9, 2016
I was so disappointed by this book, though largely because of the misleading title and synopsis. Where were the 'others', the reason I picked up this book? The synopsis includes "... the assumption that all women want to have children, and the judgement that if they don't, they'll be somehow incomplete." However, the majority of the stories were about women who were mothers or who desperately wanted to become mothers - what about those who are childless by choice? As Carla said in her review, the book turned out to be yet another confirmation of society's view that all women eventually DO want to have children and regret it if they don't. It just seems such a wasted opportunity to explore the views of those who choose not to have children and are happy with this choice.
Having said all that, my low rating is probably slightly unfair as I did enjoy many of the stories. Some were better written than others, but they were all interesting and covered a wide spectrum of experiences of motherhood and other related issues such as infertility. I think that if you are a mother who does not identify with/conform to society's idealised view of motherhood, or someone who is struggling with childlessness through infertility or circumstance, then this could be an interesting and even uplifting read. However, if you are not this target audience, but are instead one of the 'deliberately barren' women that society seems to either ignore or dislike, then this is not for you.
Having said all that, my low rating is probably slightly unfair as I did enjoy many of the stories. Some were better written than others, but they were all interesting and covered a wide spectrum of experiences of motherhood and other related issues such as infertility. I think that if you are a mother who does not identify with/conform to society's idealised view of motherhood, or someone who is struggling with childlessness through infertility or circumstance, then this could be an interesting and even uplifting read. However, if you are not this target audience, but are instead one of the 'deliberately barren' women that society seems to either ignore or dislike, then this is not for you.
July 4, 2015
As with all anthologies, this book contained stories that I enjoyed, some that I felt ambivalent about, and some that I think needed more work. Most of the stories were well written, and I like how the editors have ensured that there is a range of experiences documented. Although I felt a couple of stories needed more work to be up to standard, this book is well worth a read and contains important narratives.
June 14, 2015
A great array of writers and I loved the mix of fiction and non-fiction. I particularly enjoyed the contributions of Brooke Davis, Alice Pung, Geraldine Brooks, Frances Whiting, Kathleen Mary Fallon, Emily Maguire, Melinda Marchetta and Maggie Scott. This would make a great gift.
August 11, 2015
The contributions were very up and down. I loved the stories from Maxine Beneba-Clarke, Natalie Kon-Yu, though.
January 9, 2026
- Stopped reading this one. Borrowed for Liane Moriarty but couldn't really get into the different short stories too much.
March 28, 2017
An easy one to dip in and out of when you haven't got much time for reading. Unlike my usual preference, I found the non-fiction stories way more interesting than the fiction.
April 25, 2017
Mixed bag, as you would expect.
December 26, 2017
I found this read in searching for books about "alternative" types of motherhood and was really interested in reading about the perspectives of blended families. While I did find a lot of the stories interesting and could relate to the few about being a (for lack of a better word) "childless" woman, I did not find the point of difference I was looking for about blended families. There was only one story addressing "step families" at all and it was exactly the cliche I was trying to avoid. The "real" mum and "step" mum don't get along, the "real" mum is an idiot according to the "step" mum, the "step" mum has to deal with a child that isn't hers but she kind of loves, but seems to resent a bit also, etc. Good thing she has since had her own child with her step daughter's father to make up for it. What about blended families that actually like each other? And not just for the sake of the child (or because of that!), but because they recognise good in one another and are supporting the same cause. What about the unique relationship between "step" children and their "step" parents? I was looking for an alternative to the image of separate families and evil step mums but this book unfortunately did not have it. I'll keep looking for that one and hoping it exists for the benefit of blended families and a change in the traditional views towards them.
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