BELABORED

In America, writes Lenz, “to be a mother is to become a myth”—a white woman of purity and perfection, placed atop a pedestal, selflessly devoted to procreation and child care. Absent from this myth are obese, incarcerated, black, brown, Native, or queer mothers, whose images do not fit with “the canonization of a certain type of femininity.” Drawing on stories by and about a diversity of mothers, medical and sociological research, women’s history, feminist theory, and her own vividly rendered experiences, Lenz offers a shrewd debunking of the myth of motherhood and a perceptive examination of “the violence of the term mother.” Raised in an Evangelical family and, until recently, married to a religious spouse, Lenz had imbibed the message that pregnancy offered “the promise of fulfillment.” No one intimated that if she miscarried, she would be deemed culpable; that while pregnant, everything she did, ate, or drank would be scrutinized; that she might feel depressed during and after pregnancy; that the birth itself would be highly medicalized. To be a mother, she came to realize, “is to occupy a political space where your body is fought over and you feel powerless to control the conversation that rages around you.” That conversation has been dominated by men—politicians who make laws regulating abortion and family leave and doctors who outlawed midwives, urging women to give birth in hospitals, where, in the early 20th century, “infections raged” and doctors ruled. “The history of birth,” writes the author, “is the story of men and medicine slowly taking over control of the female body” with episiotomies, sedatives, forceps, and C-sections. Working on this book, Lenz admits, changed how she sees herself as a mother and made her realize “how alone we all are.”

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