"If this book feels like it's sounding the alarm on the state
of American motherhood, well, that's because it is." -- San
Francisco Chronicle
In this timely
and necessary book, 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
Close your eyes and
picture the perfect mother. She is usually blonde and thin. Her roots
are never showing and she installed that gleaming kitchen backsplash
herself (watch her TikTok for DIY tips). She seamlessly melds work,
wellness and home; and during the depths of the pandemic, she also
ran remote school and woke up at 5 a.m. to meditate.
You may read this
and think it's bananas; you have probably internalized much of it.
Journalist Jessica
Grose sure had. After she failed to meet every one of her own
expectations for her first pregnancy, she devoted her career to
revealing how morally bankrupt so many of these ideas and pressures
are. Now, in Screaming on the Inside, Grose weaves together
her personal journey with scientific, historical, and contemporary
reporting to be the voice for American parents she wishes she'd had a
decade ago.
The truth is that
parenting cannot follow a recipe; there's no foolproof set of rules
that will result in a perfectly adjusted child. Every parent has
different values, and we will have different ideas about how to pass
those values along to our children. What successful parenting has in
common, regardless of culture or community, is close observation of
the kind of unique humans our children are. In thoughtful and
revelatory chapters about pregnancy, identity, work, social media,
and the crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grose explains how we got to
this moment, why the current state of expectations on mothers is
wholly unsustainable, and how we can move towards something better.