Mama Needs a Minute

The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom / Nancy Reddy
This timely and thought-provoking book will make you laugh, cry, and want to scream (sometimes all at once). Blending science, cultural criticism, and memoir, The Good Mother Myth pulls back the curtain on the flawed social science behind our contemporary understanding of what makes a good mom.

Mama Needs a Minute: A Candid, Funny, All-Too-Relatable Comic Memoir About Surviving Motherhood / Mary Catherine Starr
Packed with humor, warmth, and all-too-relatable anecdotes, this comic memoir explores the (often invisible) labor of modern motherhood that leaves so many moms feeling like they are losing themselves–and their minds! “To overwhelmed moms everywhere, this book totally gets it.”—The Washington Post

Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward / Gemma Hartley
From Gemma Hartley, the journalist who ignited a national conversation on emotional labor, comes Fed Up, a bold dive into the unpaid, invisible work women have shouldered for too long—and an impassioned vision for creating a better future for us all.
Other format: audio (hoopla)

Essential Labor: Mothering As Social Change / Angela Garbes
“Essential Labor is a beautifully written, painstakingly researched, and courageously personal book. Garbes reveals the way systems exploit caregiving and shows us how the essential work of mothering can fix not just family life, but society. A timely and unforgettable book.”—Heather McGhee, New York Times bestselling author (The Sum of Us)
Other formats: audio (hoopla) and ebook (hoopla)

Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood / Jessica Grose
New York Times opinion writer Jessica Grose dismantles two hundred years of unrealistic parenting expectations and empowers today’s mothers to make choices that actually serve themselves, their children, and their communities.
Other formats: audio (hoopla & Libby) and ebook (hoopla & Libby)

Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood / Lucy Jones
“Award-winning journalist Jones (Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild) pens a scientific and poetic ode to motherhood. A fascinating and worthwhile read, this book for mothers is steeped in research that is both validating and illuminating.”—Library Journal

Touched Out: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, and Control / Amanda Montei
Drawing on classic feminist thinkers as well as on popular culture, a new mother, in this stunning blend of memoir, theory and culture criticism, makes connections between caregiving, consent, reproductive control and the sacrifices women are expected to make throughout their lives.

Doing It All: The Social Power of Single Motherhood / Ruby Russell
“A feisty new addition to feminist thinking…it mightily encourages dreams of a society where mothering is the most important activity of all.”—The Irish Independent

Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood / Minna Dubin
A frank, feminist examination of the hidden crisis of rage facing American mothers—and how we can fix it. “With an appendix of concrete tools . . . Mom Rage provides much-needed advice, company, and consolation. It also offers a timely reminder that we might use our voices for more than bedtime stories.”—Tanya Ward Goodman, Los Angeles Review of Books

I’ll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife & Motherhood / Jessi Klein
“Jessi Klein has yet again ‘delivered’ (and yes I’m using that in the messy motherhood-pun way—I’m not the writer) a collection of the most relatable, achingly raw, and stunningly human essays I have read about the mess of motherhood and this chapter of life since her last collection.”—Kathryn Hahn
Other formats: audio (hoopla) and ebook (hoopla)

The Book of Mothers: How Literature Can Help Us Reinvent Modern Motherhood / Carrie Mullins
“If our conceptions of motherhood—yes, conceptions—are shaped by the portrayals of mothers in literature, from Woolf to Walker, from Alcott to Atwood, then what possibilities, and what limitations, have we carried with us from these beloved books? How is each character’s narrative a lens through which we see our own lives, with either surprising clarity or frustrating distortion? In The Book of Mothers, Carrie Mullins unpacks these questions with rigor, empathy, and a down-to-earth delivery that invites us to do the same.” —Maggie Smith
Other formats: audio (hoopla)

Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse” / Emily Raboteau
“In a series of evocative and layered essays, Raboteau explores the crises of our time from the perspective of a mother trying to brace her children for the future. With searing observations and profound honesty, she gives voice to the distress that many of us have quietly felt across so many interlinking aspects of our lives.”—Rosanna Xia, Los Angeles Times

Women’s Work: A Reckoning with Home and Help / Megan K. Stack
“Stack is unflinching in her account. . .Her prose is beautiful as she shines a light on the contradictions of her position. . .A sharply observed, evocative reckoning with the ways her struggles intersect and diverge with those of the women she employs.”—The New York Times Book Review

Go to Sleep (I Miss You): Cartoons from the Fog of New Parenthood / Lucy Knisley
“‘These little sketchbook cartoons,’” she writes in her introduction, ‘are my effort to feel less alone and crazy at a time when most people feel alone and crazy.’ Her spare linework conveys both the agony of an infant’s scrunched-up wail and the wonder of his perfectly rounded fingertips. Such observations make for a charmingly honest and humorous account of raising babies.”—Publishers Weekly

Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words / Kimberly Harrington
“Kimberly Harrington deftly and hilariously uncovers all of the lies and bullshit women are told about motherhood. This book made me laugh, sure, but it also made me feel seen.”—Jennifer Romolini, chief content officer at Shondaland.com
Other format: audio (hoopla)

I Cannot Control Everything Forever: A Memoir of Motherhood, Science, and Art / Emily C Bloom
“Compelling, moving, and insightful. Bloom explores the frustrations of contemporary parenting in ways that will be instantly recognizable, as she writes with compassion and curiosity about pregnancy and mothering at the intersection of technology and love.”—Julie Phillips, author of The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Body Problem

Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America / Nefertiti Austin
“Austin challenges readers to question the ideal of motherhood as being synonymous with whiteness. Along the way, within the adoption system and the broader community…she tackles the inherent sexism, classism, and racism.… An essential addition to the literature about adoption, reflecting a viewpoint that is sorely lacking.”—Kirkus Reviews
Other format: audio (hoopla)

How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids / Jancee Dunn
“The book is steeped in sociological and scientific research on how men’s and women’s roles have changed (and not) in family life, and it’s also hilarious.”
—The Seattle Times
Other formats: audiobook (hoopla) and ebook (hoopla)

You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir / Maggie Smith
“In a series of short vignettes, Smith reveals her emotional acuity and quiet wisdom on love, trust, marriage and motherhood, as well as the nature of creativity and the ramifications of success. As a chronicle of a divorce and a meditation on parenthood, it’s unflinching, insightful and exquisitely written.”—The Guardian