ABSTRACT

Many women write about their individual mothering, that is, about their road toward being a mother and their experiences of child-rearing within the broader context of the patriarchal institution of motherhood. This proliferating literary subgenre has been labeled ‘mommy lit’ with the special subcategory ‘mommy memoirs’. The core element of this genre is that a woman ‘tells it how it is,’ explores the ‘truth’ about being a mother and the challenges accompanying all practices of mothering. This chapter argues that motherhood memoirs present a double bind. On the one hand, written against normative understandings of motherhood by adding an intended parent and genetic mother to the mythologized mother-child bond, they contest or at least broaden both the definition of ‘mother’ and the practice of mothering. On the other hand, they reaffirm core tenets of patriarchal motherhood through depictions of ‘new momism.’ The inability to be pregnant is presented as a disappointing nonnormative, unhealthy state which causes deep identity insecurities.