Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness

Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety

Judith Warner · 336 pages

The paradigm-shattering bestseller that investigates how women have fallen into the trap of "total motherhood," and how that mind-set damages them and their relationships with their husbands and children. Manic cookie-baking at midnight. Play dates as complicated as peace summits. Mother-of-the-birthday-boy meltdown. Ambien nights and Ritalin days. No sex. No nights out. No sleep. Ever. It's madne

Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families

Leslie Morgan Steiner · 346 pages

With motherhood comes one of the toughest decisions of a woman's life: Stay at home or pursue a career? The dilemma not only divides mothers into hostile, defensive camps but pits individual mothers against themselves. Leslie Morgan Steiner has been there. As an executive at The Washington Post, a writer, and mother of three, she has lived and breathed every side of the "mommy wars." Rather than j

Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids

Meghan Daum · 282 pages

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes

Sharon Lamb, Lyn Mikel Brown · 336 pages

Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (And More Life to Live)

Eve Rodsky · 352 pages

Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change

Angela Garbes · 256 pages

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture

Peggy Orenstein · 252 pages

The author explores her own conflicting feelings as a mother as she protects her offspring and probes the roots and tendrils of the girlie-girl movement and concludes that parents who think through their values early on and set reasonable limits, encourage dialogue and skepticism, and are canny about the consumer culture can combat the 24/7 "media machine" aimed at girls and hold off the focus on

Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace

Ayelet Waldman · 213 pages

In the tradition of recent hits like The Bitch in the House and Perfect Madness comes a hilarious and controversial book that every woman will have an opinion about, written by America's most outrageous writer. In our mothers' day there were good mothers, neglectful mothers, and occasionally great mothers.Today we have only Bad Mothers.If you work, you're neglectful; if you stay home, you're smoth

The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women

Elisabeth Badinter · 212 pages

Today, to be pregnant seems not far from entering into a religious order. There is an expectation that mothers will fit the bill of breastfeeding, nappy-washing, home-cooking supermums. So are mums who rely on formula, childcare and disposable nappies lazy or liberated? The conflict between a woman's individual identity and her identity as a mother is not unique to our time. In the 18th century, F

Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family

Anne-Marie Slaughter · 352 pages

"When Anne-Marie Slaughter accepted her dream job as the first female director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department in 2009, she was confident she could juggle the demands of her position in Washington, D.C., with the responsibilities of her family life in suburban New Jersey. Her husband and two young sons encouraged her to pursue the job; she had a tremendously supportive boss, Secret

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman · 352 pages

In a world of modern, involved, caring parents, why are so many kids aggressive and cruel?  Where is intelligence hidden in the brain, and why does that matter?  Why do cross-racial friendships decrease in schools that are more integrated?  If 98% of kids think lying is morally wrong, then why do 98% of kids lie?  What's the single most important thing that helps infants learn language?  NurtureSh

Mothers Who Think: Tales Of Real-Life Parenthood

Camille Peri, Kate Moses · 293 pages

Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry

Lenore Skenazy · 304 pages

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 66 pages

Receiving a letter from a friend asking her how to raise her baby girl to be a feminist, Adichie responded with fifteen suggestions for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. Her suggestions ranged from options for non-stereotyped toy options, to debunking myths that women are somehow biologically programmed to be in the kitchen instead of having a career. Adichie's lette

The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued

Ann Crittenden · 329 pages

"The price of motherhood is everywhere apparent. College-educated women pay a "mommy tax" of more than a million dollars in lost income when they have a child. Family law deprives mothers of financial equality in marriage. Most child care is excluded from the gross domestic product, at-home mothers are not counted in the labor force, and the social safety net simply leaves them out. With passion a

The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage

Cathi Hanauer · 306 pages

The Wife Drought

Annabel Crabb · 293 pages

The Wife Drought is about women, men, family and work. Written in Annabel Crabb's inimitable style, it's full of candid and funny stories from the author's work in and around politics and the media, historical nuggets about the role of 'The Wife' in Australia, and intriguing research about the attitudes that pulse beneath the surface of egalitarian Australia.

I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood

Trisha Ashworth, Amy Nobile · 206 pages

Like A Queen

Constance Hall

The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home

Arlie Russell Hochschild, Anne Machung · 318 pages

"When The Second Shift was first published in 1989, it was hailed as "a scream in the dark" and "a brilliant, urgently needed analysis ... of the working woman who has it all". Now, in the twenty-first century, The Second Shift remains as important and relevant as when it was first published. As the majority of women entered the workforce, sociologist and Berkeley professor Arlic Hochschild was on

Good Girls Don't Get Fat

Robyn Silverman · 213 pages

Based on Dr. Robyn Silverman's groundbreaking research at Tufts University, and filled with searingly honest young voices, Good Girls Don't Get Fat: – Decodes the ripple effects of actions that damage our girls—and provides tools to help stop them. – Shines light on the positive influence of women who embrace body types of any size—and explains how to model the right behavior. – Shows how girls, w

The Way We Never Were: American Families & the Nostalgia Trap

Stephanie Coontz · 391 pages

"The Way We Never Were is an examination of two centuries of family life that shatter the myths that burden modern families and make them long for the past." "In a new introduction, Coontz examines key cultural events since the original 1992 publication - from Bill Clinton's sexual transgressions to high school shootings across the nation - and reexamines the myths that continue to compel the Amer

Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink

Katrina Alcorn · 385 pages

"Katrina Alcorn was a 37-year-old mother with a happy marriage and a thriving career when one day, on the way to Target to buy diapers, she had a breakdown. Her carefully built career shuddered to a halt, and her journey through depression, anxiety, and insomnia--followed by medication, meditation, and therapy--began. Alcorn began to question how a woman like herself, with a loving husband, a supp

Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within

Elif Shafak · 267 pages

The author recounts her effort to balance her writing career and her parenting responsibilities, describing her battle with postpartum depression, her views on prominent women authors, and the many roles she embraced throughout her journey.