motherhood
The shame of being an alcoholic mother
Julia Hamilton and her daughter Arabella Byrne share their experiences of an addiction that seemed ‘baked into them like a curse’, and the special stigma they felt attached to them
Childcare is mothercare
When I was a small child, my mother left me in the charge of an elderly neighbour so that she…
Why Mummy smokes
It’s 7.02 p.m. and I’m standing outside my house by the bins smoking a fag. Upstairs, I can hear that…
Murder in the dark: The Eighth House, by Linda Segtnan, reviewed
Motherhood prompts Segtnan to research the cold case of Birgitta Sivander, a nine-year-old found murdered in a Swedish forest in 1948
British families deserve a tax break
I am delighted to report that some £800,000 of taxpayers’ money is to be spent ‘remediating’ the works of Robert…
A mother-daughter love story
In her latest memoir, Leslie Jamison describes her pregnancy, experience of childbirth and devotion to her baby, returning repeatedly to the dilemmas of a working mother
Refugee lives: The Singularity, by Balsam Karam, reviewed
The stories of two tragic mothers are interwoven in a haunting novel revolving around war, displacement, despair and the loss of children
The parent snatchers: The School for Good Mothers, by Jessamine Chan, reviewed
Frida Liu, the 39-year-old mother of a toddler named Harriet, has a very bad day which will haunt her for…
Parallel lives: Violets, by Alex Hyde, reviewed
When Violet wakes up in Birmingham Women’s Hospital at the start of Alex Hyde’s debut novel her first thought is…
Entirely gripping: The Lost Daughter reviewed
The Lost Daughter is an adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel about motherhood that says, quite ferociously: it’s complicated. And:…
The cure becomes the problem: The Seduction, by Joanna Briscoe, reviewed
Beth, the protagonist of Joanna Briscoe’s The Seduction, reminded me of Clare in Tessa Hadley’s debut, Accidents in the Home.…
It’s impossible to live up to the expectations of motherhood
In a 1974 interview celebrating the quarter century since the publication of her classic The Second Sex (1949), Simone de…
What stops women from having it all
Don’t even ask, says Anne-Marie Slaughter, law professor and former adviser to Hillary Clinton. Motherhood still means sacrifice
Breast-feeding isn't always best
New mothers who can’t keep to the breast-feeding orthodoxy face needless misery and shame
Driving test advice from 80 years ago
First test The driving test celebrated its 80th anniversary. The first person to take the test, R.E.L. Beene of Kensington,…
Sex and squalor in San Francisco
Frog Music begins with a crime against a young mother, committed in a tiny space. Unlike Emma Donoghue’s bestselling novel…
