These Are Not Your Typical
Parenting Books

When I was first pregnant, I had piles of books next to the bed – the Mayo Clinic Guide to a Health Pregnancy (for the basics), Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth (for when I felt earthy), The Birth of a Mother (for when I felt brainy), The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy (for … well, because someone gave it to me). Ever the good student, I steadily plowed through chapter upon chapter. But this was homework. Information retrieval. Study hall. I had answers to my questions but at no point, even hugely swollen and nearly two weeks overdue, did I get swept up in the notion – or fantasy – of being a mother.

Thinking back, that notion – the feeling that “Hey, I can do this motherhood thing” – came in random fits and starts. I remember, in the late ‘90s, thumbing through photographer Sally Mann’s Immediate Family and getting swept up in those gorgeous, primal children, and what the images meant about the relationship between them and their mother behind the camera.

I remember, back in 2007, married but actively not talking about kids, reading Jennifer Baumgardner’s essay “Breast Friends,” about breastfeeding her friend’s baby. It was just the type of writing that spoke to me – smart, familiar, feminine, chatty – but it was also about moms I might want to hang out with. Hmmmm … I thought. Maybe. These were the things that showed me that motherhood wasn’t just the smell of J&J Baby Powder and well-worn copies of Goodnight Moon. They made motherhood sound interesting and complicated and like something even someone as ambivalent as me could do.

When I started asking around, I found I wasn’t alone. It turns out many parents find inspiration in the most unexpected of literary places.

For Jenni Buchanan, a.k.a. the Reading Rainbow Mom and a mother of two, it was the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. At 23, she and her husband found themselves happily, but unexpectedly, pregnant. When her eldest was a toddler, she read Rebecca Wells’s runaway bestseller. “While not a traditional mothering inspiration by any means, it made me feel less guilty about not loving motherhood every second of the day. I read that and thought ‘If these characters can raise kids to adulthood, I certainly can!’”

Chandler McWilliams, an artist and adjunct professor at UCLA, was already the father of a baby and a preschooler when he read Karl Ove Knausgaard’s much-hailed memoir, My Struggle. “The crushing routine and repetition, the marvel at minuscule surprises, the possibly of being better for them by being better at being you …” that’s what spoke to him. “Being a very present, co-parenting father is still sadly an odd thing, and it was eye opening for me to read an account from an artist in a similar situation,” says McWilliams.

For digital media producer Shoshana Lewin, mother of one, it was Jennifer Weiner’s Little Earthquakes. Lewin started listening to the audiobook a year before she set off on the road of trying to get pregnant, seeking out fertility treatments and, finally, conceiving, but the various depictions of motherhood spoke to her immediately. “I still can picture hearing the part about Lia sitting in the park reflecting on having lost a child,” Lewin says. “And the whole concept of women (and new moms) helping each other is one I counted on a great deal — and still do.”

And for young adult author and mother of two Iva-Marie Palmer, it was William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, which she read during her first pregnancy. “I found myself so sad at Becky Sharp’s selfish neglect of her kid. Since most of my fears around parenthood were about what [or] how I’d be able to sacrifice and was I too selfish, seeing such a horrible example and thinking, ‘Just give your kid a hug, please’ assured me that I’d be okay.”

The thing is, there’s no one tome, no essay, no universal story because we each come to parenthood from such incredibly different places, with different concerns and insecurities. For some, the magic moment is when you think, “Oh, I see myself in that.” For others, it’s finding a depiction of parenting that isn’t so perfect, so precious. And for many of us, it’s, “That character is more messed up than I could ever be and, hey, the kids are all right!” So, in the bedside stack, make room for the chick lit or memoirs or whatever your normal, voracious appetite for the written word brings you. The picture of parenthood that you never knew you wanted or needed is often hiding where you least expect it.