Motherdom

Motherdom:Breaking Free from Bad Science and Good Mother Myths

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Blaming, shaming and flimsy evidence: 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 about being a bad mother. 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.

Reviews

  • Alex Bollen provides a meticulously researched critique of the evidence underpinning common parenting advice by exploring the history and science of motherhood and exposing the myths and pseudoscience that contribute to maternal anxiety and guilt across cultures. This powerful book will resonate with anyone who is navigating, or has navigated, the complexities of parenthood.

    Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and author of Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain
  • Unequivocally and emphatically, this is the book that all of us, mothers and motherhood researchers alike, have been waiting for! ...This transgressive and transformative book not only decisively and incisively takes on the oppressive institution of patriarchal motherhood to dismantle the good mother myths and bad science that underpin it, it also bequeaths to us a new and revolutionary way to live motherhood. Indeed, with her innovative and vital model of Motherdom, Alex Bollen has created for us a theory and practice of motherhood that will 'set mothers free' to realize the emancipatory potential of motherhood.

    Dr. Andrea O’Reilly, founder of motherhood studies, maternal theory, and matricentric feminism and author of In (M)otherwords: Writings on Mothering and Motherhood
  • Bollen’s excellent and much-needed book brilliantly exposes the flimsy foundations of the supposedly scientific evidence underpinning much of the received wisdom about motherhood

    Dr Kim Thomas, CEO of the Birth Trauma Association