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The poetry behind parenting
The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom, by Nancy Reddy
Jill Brooke
Babies don’t come with instructions. As a professional nanny, I’ve worked with countless couples trying to be good parents—it’s a challenging endeavor. I remember my mother consulting her Dr Spock book when I was growing up. My girlfriends consult mommy blogs and Main Line Parenting Facebook groups. A local Montessori school has a Parenting Book Club. In a time of exhaustion, stress, and major life upheaval, it’s hard to trust your instincts or even think clearly. No wonder so many parents look for advice and counsel. But what do you do if all you read contradicts your lived experience? Nancy Reddy, who teaches Creative Writing at Stockton University, struggled with that problem.
New lessons to be learned
“I prepared for motherhood with the same discipline I’d used for every other hard thing in my life,” starts an excerpt from Nancy Reddy’s The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom, a book that celebrates modern motherhood with humor, clarity and yes, research. The Good Mother Myth launches January 21, 2025.
When Reddy, an award-winning poet, had her first child, she discovered that she wasn’t the “perfect mother”. Working on her Ph.D., how was she supposed to have endless patience, make herself constantly available to provide nurturing, and still have time to be herself? Having published two poetry collections, Pocket Universe and Double Jinx, Reddy began to explore her experience through her writing. With Emily Pérez, she co-edited The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. This book brings it all together.
“I believed that I could handle any challenge if I worked hard enough, read the right books, consulted the experts and followed their advice,” the excerpt in The Good Mother Myth continues. “This was one of the myths I had absorbed from the mommy blogs and the parenting advice books I consumed alongside my prenatal vitamins and leafy greens throughout my pregnancy: that motherhood was an individual pursuit at which I could excel, in the same way that I had excelled in school, in my chosen profession of academia, in the creation of a picture-perfect life for myself—one in which I believed a child would fit perfectly, by dint of my careful planning and preparation.”
Confronting her own false expectations that motherhood would bless her with automatic selfless love for her baby, Reddy researched where the myths of motherhood started. Why were these notions of mothering still holding sway? I asked her how a poet birthed a book that combines research into social science and a critical look at flawed parenting guides with personal memoir. Turns out, it was a long gestation. “It was both a long time and a short push’, Reddy said. “From an outline of an idea at a 2018 writer’s retreat, to finding a buyer, to an intense 8-month focus of writing and revision.”
Reddy believes in the power of storytelling and used her experience in research to amass data to back up her myth-busting. Now Reddy can offer a balm to other mothers who might be struggling to match the Instagram-ready images of perfect mother and child moments. Reddy and The Good Mother Myth look to give us a more realistic approach to motherhood.
Join her for her book launch with an art exhibition featuring works inspired by motherhood on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at Small Works Gallery.
What, When, Where
The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom. By Nancy Reddy. New York City: St. Martin's Press, January 21, 2025. 256 pages, hardcover; available now in audiobook. Get it here.
The Good Mother Myths Special Exhibition and book launch. Pay-what-you-wish. Saturday, January 25 at 6pm at Small Works Gallery, 1609 N. Delaware Avenue, Philadelphia. philadelphiasmallworks.com.
The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom reading with Heather Bowlan. Free. Thursday, February 27, 2025 at Char & Stave, 21 Rittenhouse Place, Ardmore, PA. charandstave.com.
Featured image: Nancy Reddy’s new book dispels old ways in parenting. (Image courtesy of St. Martin’s Press.)
Image description: Book cover. Title written over teal background with a vintage commercial pop art illustration of a mother and daughter walking, looking at each other.
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