Mother’s Day, a perfect day for the mother books of the moment

Before Lucy Jones became a mother in 2016, she thought early parenthood would be bathed in a soft, peaceful light. The reality was sobering for the British science journalist: “In reality it was hard, sharp and raw.” Like many mothers, Jones felt betrayed by society: why hadn’t anyone told her about how battered her body would be after giving birth, how chronic the sleep deprivation, how lonely and alone caring for a baby at home would be?

But her book Motherhood. About the metamorphosis of pregnancy, birth and motherhood is not only a testimony, it is also a scientifically informed political manifesto. The process of becoming a mother, just like puberty, is one of the most drastic periods in a human life with extreme physical, neurological, social and psychological changes. If we consider ‘motherhood’, matrescence in English, with the help of meaningful narratives and rites of passage, as well as practical help such as subsidized universal maternity care and baby-friendly public spaces, then motherhood would no longer pose such a threat to the mental health of so many women in our society. (Katrien Schaubroeck)

In ten interviews with policymakers, researchers and midwives, Dutch scientist and midwife Bahareh Goodarzi, together with journalist Daan Borrel, exposes the structural discrimination in maternity care in the Netherlands. Because not only in the United States, but also in the Netherlands, pregnant women with a migration background indicate that they more often experience discrimination during maternity care. They also have a higher risk of pregnancy complications and of a child being born too small or prematurely.

We think that care is equal for everyone, but Goodarzi shows us which factors determine the (after) care that women receive during and after pregnancy and childbirth. How pregnant and birthing women are treated is imbued with political assumptions about the way mothers (should) behave. Motherhood is political. Shares this principle Baren outside the box with Lucy Jones’ Motherhood. But Goodarzi is more critical of scientific studies of pregnancy and birth, because science is also often biased.

It is difficult for many people to face structural discrimination, but the many concrete examples and research cited help the reader to learn to look more closely. (ks)

CARO VAN THUYNE

Bloodsong

Koppernik, 2023, 428 pages, € 24.50 (€ 9.99)

The Belgian writer Caro Van Thuyne was longlisted for the Libris Literature Prize with her mother book Bloodsong. In searching, pulsating, rocking and broken paragraphs, she sketches life from the moment her mother suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Van Thuyne now looks for their shared mother tongue – all words that her fluent mother can no longer find because she has since suffered from aphasia – in writers such as Annie Dillard and Kate Zambreno, and in artists such as Frida Kahlo and Celia Paul.

The more the mother falters, the harder the daughter searches for something to hold on to. And the closer Van Thuyne is to her m’ma trying to come. By talking to her, watching over her, standing up for her with imaginary claws when she disagrees with the way she is being cared for.

At the same time, Van Thuyne oversees and feels the larger story that is motherhood, that centuries-long breath that is passed on from mother to mother to mother, a long wave of being born and saying goodbye. And of oppression, because the story has been told too one-sidedly for too long, she believes. Bloodsong is worldly and at the same time incredibly personal. “You taught me what fusion is and that that fusion is love. But you are also the one who teaches me what separation is, and being separate. (…) A Mother’s Day without a mother”. (usa)

ANDI GALDI VINKO

Sorry I gave birth I disappeared but now I’m back

Trolleybooks, 224 pages, €47.95.

“When I realized I was pregnant,” writes Hungarian photographer Andi Gáldi Vinkó in her photo book, “I had no idea what to expect. How messy and raw, how unpredictable and uncontrollable motherhood was compared to the images I had in my head from films, photographs and paintings made by men.”

So she made motherhood her subject Sorry I gave birth I disappeared but now I’m back. She makes beautiful visual rhymes: the gel of an ultrasound is linked to sparkles in the water, she shows red balloons next to bloody compresses. We get an intimate insight into young parenthood, into the beautiful moments – a toddler in the evening light on the beach – and the difficult ones. We see the imprint of a stocking in swollen ankles, a brush full of fallen hair, a baby that has just returned milk on its mother’s face. How can something so universal be so lonely, Vinkó wonders, just like Lucy Jones, in her own way.

For a long time, motherhood was taboo in the art world, which made it seem like you had to choose: child or career. Gáldi Vinkó proves with this beautiful book that they can go together perfectly. (Jozefien Van Beek)