The book also signals a way out of a prominent contemporary narrative in which women—usually white women—are portrayed as intellectually and creatively stifled by childbearing, and motherhood is characterized as an inherent threat to individual possibility. This narrative isn’t wrong; during the past nineteen months, I’ve had less time to work, hav... See more

She wonders, “How can mothering be a way that we resist and combat the loneliness, the feeling of being burdened by our caring?” Motherhood doesn’t have to be a site of acquiescence to a broken structure, she argues; mothering can be a vehicle of rebellion.