PANDORA SYKES' FAVOURITE BOOKS ON MOTHERHOOD FROM EVERY ANGLE

Every day is Mother's Day! (Hee haw, hee haw). But seriously - motherhood is a weighty old topic, as exhausting to wade into as the mothering itself. What does a mother look like? What does a mother feel like? These are questions as old as time; bound up in secrecy, judgement and fear. Motherhood is not redemptive, although the Madonna/whore binary would suggest otherwise. I am so grateful to be living at a time when we can read about and share in the multiplicity of motherhood. Here are some books that I adore, that celebrate the diversity of motherhood in all its tenderness and cruelty, its many bounties and tiny eviscerations.

Intimacies

by Lucy Caldwell

I vividly remember where I was when I started reading this collection of short stories: in a rapidly cooling bath, shortly after I had given birth to my son. I was immediately hooked. Not all the stories are about motherhood, but the ones that are, are my favourite. Caldwell’s prose is so perceptive and poetic, the stories meticulously crafted skeins of tension, love and fear. “The veil between worlds, the skin closing over” she writes evocatively of a mother’s life with a newborn and toddler. She also mixes fiction and non-fiction to brilliant effect - her chapter on Caroline Norton, the woman who reformed child custody law in 1839, is fascinating and heart-breaking. Buy it here.

A Life’s Work

by Rachel Cusk

Cusk is a bracingly honest memoirist and her 'mumoir', about the tangle of love and resentment she felt for her newborn daughter, caused quite the furore when it came out in 2008. "This is not a childcare manual, ladies" she wrote tartly for the paperback edition, in response to "the journalists who accused me of being an unfit or unloving mother [and...] the readers who find honesty akin to blasphemy when the religion is that of motherhood". But motherhood is not a monolith. Cusk's experience, like any parent's experience, is subjective - she writes uniquely about what she sees as the tragi-comedy of motherhood. For women struggling to carve out their identities after having children, her writing is a salve. "To be a mother I must leave the telephone unanswered, work undone, arrangements unmet," she writes. "To be myself I must let the baby cry, must forestall her hunger or leave her for evenings out. To succeed in being one means to fail at the others". I found this book fascinating, funny and, at times, uncomfortable. One thing I did not find it, was controversial. Buy it here.

The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (And Your Children Will be Glad You Did)

by Philippa Perry

This book is so incredibly helpful. It’s ostensibly about parenting and your relationship with your own parents, but actually, I think it has the power to transform any and all of the relationships in your life. Takeaways include: listening is not the same as agreeing; and distracting someone rather than engaging with them is always infuriating, whatever your age. It’s self-help, but not remotely self-helpy. In that it’s just a really insightful, interesting, readable book of non-fiction - stuffed full of insight and unpretentious wisdom. I didn’t align with all her parenting methods (such as her aversion to sleep training), but I found her guidance on validating the feelings of others to de-escalate conflict, enormously helpful - as much with the adults, as the toddler, in my life! Buy it here.

Hood Feminism

by Mikki Kendall

This is another searing book which challenges the cultural ideal of motherhood (amongst many other things). Kendall writes furiously and eloquently about how she was seen as ‘less’ of a mother because she was poor, and Black. At paediatrician appointments, for example, the doctor would address her white husband, rather than her, despite the fact that she was the primary carer. Like Candice Brathwaite’s memoir, I Am Not Your Baby Mother, this book is a really important text which, amongst other things, urges us to dismantle a middle-class white representation of motherhood, into something more diverse – both in experience and imagery. Buy it here.