I recently finished reading Sybil Lockhart's book, Mother in the Middle: A Biologist's Story of Caring for Parent and Child, a book I highly recommend. This memoir tells the story of one woman's balancing act as she mothers both her young children and her Alzheimer's stricken mother. It should be required reading for care-givers of all types. But here in the south, where it is common to find multiple generations in the same house, neighborhood, or town, I imagine this book will find a particularly receptive audience.

If you click on the link to the right in "categories" that says "Sandwich Generation," you will see that I was also a "mother in the middle" for three years, so when I speak about Sybil's book, I speak with the voice of experience. Of course, our situations were not the same, and no two caregiver situations can be the same. Regardless, I discovered echoes of my own experiences in the book that felt true and right and good, and I think many care-givers will find similar echoes of their own experiences.

Yet, this is not the only reason why I found the book remarkable.

The lyrical interweave of poetry and science, of the objective and the subjective, of the personal and the social stunned me. My grandmother had Alzheimer's, so I knew the symptoms, but I didn't know the causes, the way the brain changes as the disease progresses. I could have known, but the texts that described them were so dry, so lifeless that could never finish reading them. Mother in the Middle made the science real and living and fresh to me, and invited me see my grandmother's illness with new eyes. I understand what happened to her better now that I have read Mama in the Middle. For that I must thank Sybil -- what a great accomplishment!

The memoir is also simply a good story. Written with finesse and style, I read it in a few nights. The characters are believable in their struggles, the settings artfully described, and the plot carefully constructed. The book is a pure joy to read, beginning to end.

This review convinced me. I'm ordering this book today!

WHO WILL CARE FOR THIS CHILD?
Review By Sara Sklaroff
The Washington Post

CHILD CARE TODAY: Getting It Right for Everyone
By Penelope Leach
Alfred A. Knopf. 350 pp. $25.95

Penelope Leach, the British psychologist and author of "Your Baby and Child," the one book that's always on my bedside table, has published an exhaustive new study on the best way to take care of kids and how parents in Western nations are currently doing it. "Child Care Today: Getting it Right for Everyone" is as ambitious as its subtitle suggests. It also comes at a moment when the country seems more worried about the fate of the "octomom" and her 14 children than about how the rest of the nation's parents are able to manage their one or two or three. That's a shame, because what's clear from Leach's book is that the United States could be doing a lot better.

TO READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW

Once again, I am proud to be a part of the Mama, PhD community.

As I read the review The Ivory Ceiling by Jo Keroes over at Mommy Track'd, I thought back to when I left my tenure-track job because I couldn't get the maternity leave I requested. I considered the two years I later spent on the job market trying to find one of those mythical on ramps that would lead me back into a tenure-track job. I remembered choosing instead a job as a high school English teacher so that I could care for both my young daughter and my cancer-battling mother.

Don't get me wrong. I love my job, and I teach some of the best students imaginable. My work is rewarding, and I know that I made a good choice for both me and my family. However, when I started on the tenure-track at Marshall University in 1995, I was hired with two amazing women, who are still my friends. When they became full professors, I cried. And cried. While I gain much from my experience now, I also long for what might have been.

I see more women teachers than men teachers in my K-12 school -- because teaching younger children is traditionally considered women's work. When I go to a technical college, I see about half and half women and men. However, in larger universities, we start to see fewer women. Studies show that the number of tenured full professors who are women is going down rather than going up. And we can see why.

The review reminds us:

women who have at least one child within five years of getting their doctorate are less likely to achieve tenure than men who have children early in their careers. Climbing that ladder to tenure requires a full time commitment – not just to teaching, but to university service, scholarship and publication– that simply doesn’t leave much room for caring for a family, despite those summers “off,” often the only time faculty members can find any time at all to write. As anyone who has tried to study or write with young children around, this time is hardly one’s own. Academic women often feel compelled to choose between having a child and getting tenure.

So, this review, and this book, matters to me. I had the same experience reading the review that I had reading the book itself -- this happened to other mothers. I am not crazy. I am not lazy or a failure or someone not committed enough. I am not alone.

When I wrote about my experiences in my column, Mothering in the Ivory Tower, I broke the code. I talked about what had happened to me in public, and at that point in time, I had not heard any other academic mother do so. But now, years later, we have Mama, PhD. We have mothers in academia who report that the academy is becoming less unfriendly to mothers. We can see that our voices are having an effect. Hopefully, we are moving toward a change that will remind people that all academics are also part of family systems, and that they can be better professors if they can live full, rounded lives.

Continue reading this review . . .

You should check out "The Subject of Single Mothers," a book review by Judith Stadtman Tucker of the Mother's Movement Online. Judith Stadtman Tucker also co-edited (with Andrea O'Reilly) the forthcoming book Mothering a Movement.

She asks in the review: "Are single moms victims of bad luck or trendsetters? Self-determined survivors or sluts?" which, to me, is an interesting question. We're depicted in the media in these narrow terms -- but we know we're so much more. The authors of these books know, too.

The books reviewed:

Single Mother:
The Emergence of the Domestic Intellectual
By Jane Juffer, New York University Press, 2006

Unsung Heroines:
Single Mothers and the American Dream
By Ruth Sidel, University of California Press, 2006

Promises I Can Keep:
Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage
By Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, University of California Press, 2005

To continue reading this review...

I found Eat, Pray, Love to be a delightful read. As a woman who has also gone through a divorce and had to re-vision herself in the shambles afterwards, I understand this story. The author takes a year of her life to travel in three stages -- Italy, India, and Indonesia -- as means to recover from her divorce. I also love to travel, and often use a physical journey to help explore a psychological journey, as does this book. So, I found much to like here.

I found the most to like in the first section on Italy (focusing on food), and in the last section in Indonesia (focusing on love). The section on India (focusing on praying) was -- well -- not as enjoyable for me. Don't get me wrong. I am open to reading about spiritual experiences. I'm a big fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his discussion of the transcendental moment -- as well as plenty of other writers exploring spirituality. I simply found this section to not be as enjoyable. I didn't get lost in it, as I did the other part. I was often pulled out of the text, out of the story, by something I didn't understand or didn't get. When I could stay with it, I enjoyed it, but I longed for the ease of the other sections.

The last section spoke to me in an unexpected way. As a divorced woman who has not discovered lasting love again, I found Gilbert's developing love relationship fascinating. Like Gilbert, I have made bad relationship choices in the past -- so bad, in fact, that I feel incapable of making good ones now. She chooses a man who is older, who is experienced, who takes good care of her. She finally chooses a grown-up. I liked seeing how she rethinks the choices she has made in the past, and seems to learn from her mistakes. It gives me hope that if Gilbert can change, so can I. So can any of us.

A wonderful book, one I would recommend to any of my friends, but especially the ones who want to see the ways women can grow and change after a divorce.

I love historic fiction that gives me a new look at how women in the past lived. I love even more such fiction when it explores issues surrounding motherhood. The Miracles of Prato by novelist Laurie Albanese and art historian Laura Morowitz is such a book. At first, I didn’t think it focused on motherhood. The descriptions I had read centered on the love story between Italian Renaissance painter monk Fra Filippo Lippi and nun-in-training Lucrezia Buti, who modeled for his greatest paintings. But as I was reading the book, the centrality of motherhood stood out to me more than the love story. Written about real people who actually did live together as husband and wife, producing children in defiance of the church, the story is well worth reading.

The book begins with a labor and delivery in a convent with this line: “There’s always blood.” The delivery is hard, but when the child finally arrives, the midwife nun takes the baby away from the screaming mother. The chapters that follow take us into the past to find out why. We go back to see the meeting of the parents, Fra Filippo and Lucrezia, the trauma that causes Fra Filippo to protect Lucrezia, how their love develops, their secret marriage, and the conception of the child. Then, the “blood” of the opening line is repeated, coming back to the birth then separation of mother and child, and we move forward with the story of what happens next.

The key to the novel is the parallels drawn between Lucrezia and the Madonna. When Fra Filippo first meets Lucrezia, he sees the face of the Madonna in her, and she then becomes the faces of his Madonnas in all he paints. This face then takes on major significance in the novel when Lucrezia attends the wife of a wealthy merchant during a difficult labor, and the wife blends the two women – the Madonna and the nun-in-training, and begins to see Lucrezia as the Madonna. When Lucrezia eventually conceives as a unwed mother in the eyes of the world, like the Madonna herself, the confluence between the two is complete. Lucrezia becomes in the eyes of the mothers of the city – the Madonna.

So, the novel proposes the question: if Mary, the mother of Jesus, had lived later, in the church created by the teachings of her son, would her child be taken from her as Lucrezia’s child was? And the Madonna herself provides an interesting answer.

A new book that I just have to order: Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates, and Other Dispatches from the Dating World by Rachel Sarah. Rachel has written a fantastic column for Literary Mama for three years running -- on which she bases her book. You can read her column here. And it is well worth the visit. This is one girl who did her homework.

You may have noticed my recent reading interests have turned to single moms who date (check most recent blog posts). Being a single mom who has been flirting around the edges of a dating life for 3 years now, I find that I am still clinging to my most successful procrastation technique.

Research.

After 3 years of researching my dissertation topic (a 19th century woman writer), I got to the point where I had read everything she had written, bought every edition of every book she had published, read every letter she sent, tracked down all her living descendents, visited her grave and all the places she had lived, and even sat in her church. And still I wasn't writing.

When I decided I needed to fly to NY from SC to read all the newspapers in which her work had appeared (in their original paper format--no microfilm for me), a graduate school friend finally said to me --"Enough. Go write. Stop researching. Or I am going to graduate without you." So, I started writing, and I found it wasn't so bad.

I researched the durn thing for 3 years. It took me 6 months to write it.

Hmm. What does that say about my dating potential? I've been single now for 3 years. Maybe enough research?

Aww, nahhh. I still haven't read Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates, and Other Dispatches from the Dating World. Maybe then....

Diane Mapes' new book Single State of the Union: Single Women Speak Out on Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com. I have an essay in the book, "What Daughters Do," and I can't wait to see the rest of them! Diane Mapes is also the author of the wonderful How to Date in a Post Dating World. You can read all about it at her website.

New book: Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After by Bella DePaulo

People who are single are changing the face of America. Did you know that:

* More than 40 percent of the nation’s adults---over 87 million people---are divorced, widowed, or have always been single.
* There are more households comprised of single people living alone than of married parents and their children.
* Americans now spend more of their adult years single than married.

Many of today’s single people have engaging jobs, homes that they own, and a network of friends. This is not the 1950s---singles can have sex without marrying, and they can raise smart, successful, and happy children. It should be a great time to be single. Yet too often single people are still asked to defend their single status by an onslaught of judgmental peers and fretful relatives.

Prominent people in politics, the popular press, and the intelligentsia have all taken turns peddling myths about marriage and singlehood. Marry, they promise, and you will live a long, happy, and healthy life, and you will never be lonely again.

Drawing from decades of scientific research and stacks of stories from the front lines of singlehood, Bella DePaulo debunks the myths of singledom---and shows that just about everything you’ve heard about the benefits of getting married and the perils of staying single are grossly exaggerated or just plain wrong. Although singles are singled out for unfair treatment by the workplace, the marketplace, and the federal tax structure, they are not simply victims of this singlism. Single people really are living happily ever after.

Filled with bracing bursts of truth and dazzling dashes of humor, Singled Out is a spirited and provocative read for the single, the married, and everyone in between.

You will never think about singlehood or marriage the same way again.

Singled Out debunks the Ten Myths of Singlehood, including:

Myth #1: The Wonder of Couples: Marrieds know best.

Myth #3: The Dark Aura of Singlehood: You are miserable and lonely and your life is tragic.

Myth #5: Attention, Single Women: Your work won’t love you back and your eggs will dry up. Also, you don’t get any and you’re promiscuous.

Myth #6: Attention, Single Men: You are horny, slovenly, and irresponsible, and you are the scary criminals. Or you are sexy, fastidious, frivolous, and gay.

Myth #7: Attention, Single Parents: Your kids are doomed.

Myth #9: Poor Soul: You will grow old alone and you will die in a room by yourself where no one will find you for weeks.

Myth #10: Family Values: Let’s give all of the perks, benefits, gifts, and cash to couples and call it family values.

“With elegant analysis, wonderfully detailed examples, and clear and witty prose, DePaulo lays out the many, often subtle denigrations and discriminations faced by single adults in the U.S. She addresses, too, the resilience of single women and men in the face of such singlism. A must-read for all single adults, their friends and families, as well as social scientists and policy advocates.”
---E. Kay Trimberger, author of The New Single Woman

The Academy of American Poets is talking about motherhood and the heritage of feminism in “Going for Motherlode: on Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born” by Miranda Field. From the essay:

Adrienne Rich’s manifesto—almost three decades old and never out of print—looks long and hard into the chasm separating women’s actual (or at least potential) link to maternity, and the "theories, ideals, archetypes, descriptions" patriarchal culture substitutes for this real relationship. All of us—mothers and non-mothers—are born of women, therefore all have a connection to motherhood "more fundamental than tribalism or nationalism," Rich says. But patriarchal culture "has created images of the archetypal Mother which reinforce the conservatism of motherhood and convert it to an energy for the renewal of male power." Art rarely touches the institution of motherhood critically, in full consciousness, and, Rich insists, it must—lest we forget how much of our lived experience is "not of our creation."

At times I’ve felt as grateful toward Rich’s book as a bone marrow recipient might feel toward a donor, but how have I honored this indebtedness? My own poems might be accused of side-stepping the work of women’s poetry as Rich defines it in Of Woman Born. "Rape and its aftermath. . . marriage as economic dependence . . .the theft of childbirth from women . . . laws regulating contraception and abortion . . .the absence of social benefits for mothers," these are among the core social issues Rich believes art must evoke. Crucial matters, close to my heart, and to my ballot-casting and prose-writing hand, but not confronted head on in my poems. Though my life is fed by my political consciousness—by feminism in particular—it informs my poems only in oblique or submerged ways. Feminism—the feminism of Rich’s generation—is my intellectual mother. But she might not approve of all I do (particularly in my poems). Is this a feminist/post-feminist divide?

Miranda Field raises an important question in this passage. What do we, mothers of this generation, “owe” the mothers of previous generations? Anything? Everything? Something in between? As someone who has been accused of having an obsession with history, I can say that I often look to the past to know where to go in the future. But what, really, is my relationship with those mothers? Adrienne Rich, Betty Friedan and my own mother – feminist thinker in her own right – do I honor them? Or am I still trying too hard to “do it better” and “not make the same mistakes” that I can’t clearly see what they did right?