Wow, I’m feeling very validated right now. Redeemed even.

This book is part autobiography and part exploration of the science of mothering through the ages. She not only explores the findings from scientists and the theories they come upon, but also what was going on in their (and their spouses’ or former spouses’) lives contemporaneously.

However, the gripping honesty and darkness and confusion and, yes, hilarity (only in hindsight) of the early days of mothering is what really gets me. Like our postpartum nipples, it’s raw.

Does she find the answers? Idk, did you?

Nancy Reddy pulls back the curtain on the flawed social science behind our contemporary understanding of what makes a good mom and debunks the notion of becoming a "perfect mother." The book is both timely and thought-provoking and brings in so many interesting perspectives on parenting.

This is a mixture of memoir, social/cultural critique, and scientific research. I think this is a really important book with a fantastic message. I wanted a little less focus on personal anecdotes and historical context, and a little more focus on present-day discussions. But, overall, I really enjoyed what this book had to say and it was very thought-provoking.

Thank you to Netgalley for the e-ARC 🫶🏻

“We’re traveling through time. The love we’ve made together carries us.”

What a beautifully written blend of memoir and research.

Nancy Reddy unlocked the key to understanding so many of my internal battles since becoming a mom. From the constant need for “perfection” to the rumination of why exactly I feel the way I feel, I can understand now that society has created (and continues to uphold) an impossible set of expectations for women and mothers.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for giving me early access to this book! All opinions are my own.

This is a great breakdown of how motherhood evolved into what we see today. I think it’s especially poignant in this day and age with the revival of “tradwife” ideals to see how we got to that point, and the science to dispute if it even works. On top of that, this can be especially beneficial to read for any mom who has thought that they weren’t doing a good enough job; it’s extremely validating. 4⭐️

As a new mom, this was exactly what I needed to read! I feel heard and understood, while learning more about what makes a good mother. I felt this book was so relatable to the stage of life I’m in right now with her personal stories and just small bits of humor on something I may not have found funny prior to having my son.

I really liked the author’s writing and found it easy to keep turning the page. Sometimes books like this can get boring after awhile, but it was just long enough I felt like I read something and didn’t think “let’s wrap it up” halfway through.

This book strikes a nice balance between memoir and social science, though I found myself preferring the memoir sections. Some parts felt dense, with long tangents into academic studies that didn’t quite hold my interest. That said, there were some fascinating tidbits about how advice has evolved over the decades—it really made me think!

Thank you, NetGalley, for the advanced reader copy!

As a mother this was raw, real, and a fantastic and intelligent mix of memoir and cultural critique of the burdens faced and placed on mothers to be more than 'good enough.'

As someone who doesn’t plan on having children for at least a decade and a half, I approached *The Good Mother Myth* with some hesitation. I worried it might feel irrelevant to my life or preachy about motherhood, but Nancy Reddy quickly proved me wrong. This isn’t just a book about mothers; it’s a book about women—the expectations, pressures, and contradictions they face.

Reddy explores the psychological theories that shaped dominant Western notions of motherhood, particularly the belief that children in their early years need the constant presence of one person, usually their mother. This idea has roots in psychological experiments and theories I remembered from AP Psychology: Harlow’s monkeys, Ainsworth’s attachment theory, Spock’s pocketbook advice. Yet Reddy unpacks these sacred cows of psychology to reveal their shaky foundations.

Harlow’s monkeys, for instance, may have preferred warm cloth "mothers" to cold wire ones, but monkeys raised by peers—without any "mother" at all—were better adjusted socially and psychologically. The Strange Situation, Ainsworth’s widely cited attachment theory study, was based on just 23 middle-class white women and lacked rigorous methodology. And Spock? His teachings were hardly evidence-based. Reddy argues that the convenience of laboratory research often superseded the real-world complexities of motherhood and caregiving, shaping policies and expectations that don’t reflect actual human experiences.

But Reddy’s critique extends beyond psychology to the broader societal structures that fail mothers. If attachment theory were truly taken seriously, she argues, we’d have paid parental leave and universal healthcare to support families. Instead, it’s easier—and cheaper—to place the impossible weight of child-rearing solely on women and shame them when they struggle.

One of Reddy’s most compelling points is the historical link between women’s expanding freedoms and the tightening expectations of motherhood. “Our expectations of the 'good mother' have tended to expand at just the moment when women began to take up space formerly granted to men,” she writes, pointing to the post-WWII era and the 1980s as key examples.

For someone like me, who isn’t yet grappling with these questions in my own life, *The Good Mother Myth* was an eye-opener. It challenges the cultural narratives surrounding motherhood and shows how those narratives reflect broader struggles for gender equality. Whether or not you ever plan to have children, Reddy’s insights into how society constructs and restricts women’s roles are essential reading.

Enjoyable, thought-provoking, and well-written - the author weaves together her own experience with broader sociocultural observations, scientific research, and historical data. The context - some of it questionable - around parenting norms we take for granted was quite illuminating. That said, I felt there were times when the author came off as dismissive or condescending, or rejected the potential value of (admittedly flawed) studies more vehemently than necessary. Overall, interesting and extremely readable, but sometimes struck an odd chord and felt a bit repetitive by the end. Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my ARC.

I finished this book a few months ago and just cannot stop thinking about it! I thought it expertly addressed so many common pain points that modern families experience. It had me thinking about how my own "good mother" vision has impacted my life and the choices I've made. I recommended this to all my Mom friends!

DNF @ 34%

This book is written by an expert, Reddy has experience first hand as a mother as well as educational experience that has fueled this book. Unforrauntely, I found the writing to be very much like a dissertation and it's just not the type of book that I read for leisure. I did think Reddy made some excellent points about motherhood and society, and I think this book has the potential to reach a wide array of aduiences.

*The Good Mother Myth* by Nancy Reddy is a thought-provoking collection of essays that challenges the unrealistic expectations placed on mothers. Reddy explores how the ideal of "perfect" motherhood often clashes with real-life experiences, offering a candid and nuanced perspective. Her writing is honest and empowering, though some essays can feel repetitive. This book provides a relatable and insightful critique of the cultural pressures surrounding modern motherhood.

The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom by Nancy Reddy is a compelling exploration of the societal expectations placed on mothers and the complex realities of navigating motherhood. Blending personal narrative with academic research, the author provides an honest and deeply human perspective on balancing parenthood with professional and personal aspirations.

Through her experiences of pursuing a PhD while raising children, Reddy candidly examines feelings of inadequacy and the pressures to meet often unrealistic standards of “good” mothering. Interwoven with these reflections are insights from psychological and historical studies, adding depth and context to the challenges many mothers face today.

This book is both relatable and thought-provoking, offering a mix of emotional resonance and intellectual critique. While the research-focused sections might appeal more to readers interested in an academic lens, the overall message is one of understanding, growth, and the importance of redefining what it means to be a good mother in today’s world. A must-read for those seeking to better understand the intersection of motherhood, identity, and societal expectation.

Knowing how I felt when I was a new mom, struggling to nurse and to find any support or village, I appreciate this book. I appreciate Reddy normalizing the myth of the good mother. And I really appreciated tracing it back through the years to see how the good mother Myth was - of course - created by men In an attempt to keep them out of the workforce.
If you like the history behind why our society thinks and acts the way it does, this book is a good addition to that.

United States Publication: January 21, 2025

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this advanced reader's copy. In exchange, I am providing an honest review.

Ah, motherhood. Nobody can quite understand it until they have first-hand experience with it. That's proven by Reddy's examination of mostly old, white men who told women what a good mother did and said and shaped the modern culture of motherhood. It's infuriating. As Reddy says in the introduction, "This is....a story about the scientists and social scientists who made our myths about goodness. They're mostly men, their own children raised somewhere off-stage, their examples of parents ones we mostly wouldn't want to follow. Some, like Dr. Spock, remain household names, while the fame of others, like the British psychoanalyst and psychologist John Bowlby and the Canadian American psychologist Mary Ainsworth, has faded a bit, even as their core ideas about what babies need and what it means to be a good mother haunt us still." And the word "haunt" is an accurate adjective. The purpose of Reddy's book is, "to tell the history of our bad ideas about motherhood so we can begin untangle ourselves from their grip. Nothing about our current culture around motherhood is natural or inevitable or unchangeable. When we understand how the structures and policies and culture that constrain us came to be, we can see our way into changing them."

Reddy dedicates each chapter to a myth of good mothering. First, how she saw herself in it while raising her first child, the actual scientist behind the myth - including the personal history of that scientist, which is essential, and how the conclusions that scientist came to impacted mothering both then and now. (Hint: why in the actual hell are we heeding anything old white men - for the most part - have to say about mothering - then or still now?!) In the book's final chapter, she concludes, "The science beneath our ideals for mothers is just so bad. The studies are riddled with errors and bias, sloppy sampling and methodological shortcomings. And even knowing that, it's still so hard sometimes to set those bad ideas aside."

Reddy received her PhD in poetry and considers herself a poet, first and foremost. However, she can really write a thorough non-fiction. Her writing was engaging and almost storytelling in nature. Relating all the social science could have been dry, but through her lens, it wasn't. My rating for the book is slightly lowered because, while it has excellent information and content, it got a bit long and, at points, felt tedious to read. The editing could have been a wee bit tighter in parts. Despite that minor criticism, this is a valuable book, and I will recommend it to every woman/mother I know.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.
This was a very interesting and informative story of the author's becoming a mother, feeling absolutely like a failure, and also studying the ways in which society and social science have told us how to be "good mothers" and why this idea is toxic. The author was nearly finished with her PhD when she had her first baby, and it did not at first feel like the magic and stars it is supposed to feel like, and also her baby was not the easiest and she struggled with breastfeeding, crying, sleep deprivation, frustration at her partner that it all fell on her, guilt for liking time to write and work--isn't all this the opposite of how motherhood is supposed to feel? Clearly she was doing it wrong . . .
Well, I definitely recognized the signs of struggle and possibly depression, as I felt much of this myself with my babies. Oh, I did love them! But I have to confess I hated the newborn period most of the time.
This was woven into the history of the men, and a few women, who did the science that "showed" that mothers--and only mothers--were solely made to be sacrificial selfless baby satisfying machines, and if they messed it up their kids were screwed for life--and it could only be their fault. Very interesting to see the author learning about and dealing with this information. If you've ever felt like babies are great but you still want to feel like a person, or work, and have doubts that you are the only person who can love and care for your child properly--this is a great read for you.

I really liked how this book tackled motherhood and its many diverse experiences and expectations. It was a mix of narrative elements and also study data that mixed really well together. I really enjoy reading research and have a psychology background myself so I enjoyed all aspects of this book, but it is research heavy for those who may not often read that type of work.

I loved this book! I could relate to many of the author's experiences with her newborn: the unexpected difficulty of adjusting to the loss of my freedom, the resentment towards my partner because he had less of a caregiving load in the early days, the guilt because I wasn't as happy as society thought I should be. I enjoyed reading about the lives and work of different child care "experts" and I thought the juxtaposition of those sections with the author's personal experience was very effective. Well written and engaging nonfiction.

There has been considerable discussion in society about the nature of mothering and the criteria for being a good mother. The author of this work aims to illuminate the process of mothering and the diverse experiences of mothers. Drawing from her personal journey through motherhood while navigating a PhD program, she offers a candid look at her triumphs and challenges. Alongside sharing her narrative, she delves into the psychological research on maternal interactions, referencing notable figures such as Dr. Spock and Harry Harlow. This dual approach of integrating scholarly research with personal experience provides a comprehensive exploration of the topic. For readers with a keen interest in academic research and historical data on motherhood, this book offers valuable insights. However, those less inclined towards research findings might find it less engaging.