Historians of Australia, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden and the United States provide a sweeping view of the scope of women's work and make comparisons across societies and over time.

From the author of How Should a Person Be? (“one of the most talked-about books of the year”—Time Magazine) and the New York Times Bestseller Women in Clothes comes a daring novel about whether to have children. In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor that have won Heti international acclaim and made How Should A Person Be? required reading for a generation. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti’s intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home. Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.

Who was your mother before she was a mother? Essays and photos from Brit Bennett, Jennifer Egan, Danzy Senna, Laura Lippman, Jia Tolentino, and many more. In this remarkable collection, New York Times–bestselling novelist Edan Lepucki gathers more than sixty original essays and favorite photographs to explore this question. The daughters in Mothers Before are writers and poets, artists and teachers, and the images and stories they share reveal the lives of women in ways that are vulnerable and true, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always moving. Contributors include: Brit Bennett * Jennine Capó Crucet * Jennifer Egan * Angela Garbes * Annabeth Gish * Alison Roman * Lisa See * Danzy Senna * Dana Spiotta * Lan Samantha Chang * Laura Lippman * Jia Tolentino * Tiffany Nguyen * Charmaine Craig * Maya Ramakrishnan * Eirene Donohue * and many others

The compelling story of heroic women across the country who, despite personal trauma, found grace in difficult times and transformed their personal adversity into pay-it-forward wins by founding nonprofits that help and sustain others, mother to mother. In the midst of environmental chaos, economic uncertainly, and an endless array of health issues, mothers remain the backbone of our families and exponentially impact their communities. Such is the case of the brave women featured in A Mother’s Grace: Healing the World One Woman at a Time. Author Michelle Moore is founder and executive director of Mother’s Grace, an award-winning nonprofit organization that supports thousands of mothers and their children in crisis each year. She endured overwhelming trauma as a young girl when her mother died suddenly, and later struggled with divorce, cancer, and a son with juvenile diabetes. She begins by recounting how women in her circle of mom friends helped heal her childhood wounds and empowered her to claim victories in adulthood. Along the way, through divine intervention, she meets the ten remarkable women featured here whose personal tragedy-to-victory stories changed her forever. Readers seeking guidance during the challenging times we all face in life will find inspiration and hope as they meet mothers who have lived through dire poverty, the death of a child, a spouse’s suicide, terminal childhood cancer, and devastating natural disaster. The poignant and powerful stories of how each found the grit and grace to not only defeat these challenges but also turn them around to impact the world is enlightening and motivating. Finally, Moore calls readers to rise from the depths of their challenges and gives them the tools to do so. Lessons from the moms in this book provide specific life strategies anyone can use to improve her situation and the world around her—one woman at a time.

A unique and emotive celebration of the different facets of motherhood with striking portraits by an award-winning illustrator.

Early in the twentieth century, maternal and child welfare evolved from a private family responsibility into a matter of national policy. Molly Ladd-Taylor explores both the private and public aspects of child-rearing, using the relationship between them to cast new light on the histories of motherhood, the welfare state, and women's activism in the United States. Ladd-Taylor argues that mother-work, "women's unpaid work of reproduction and caregiving," motivated women's public activism and "maternalist" ideology. Mothering experiences led women to become active in the development of public health, education, and welfare services. In turn, the advent of these services altered mothering in many ways, including the reduction of the infant mortality rate.

Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to rear their young differently than their Great Ape ancestors. From this new form of care came new ways of engaging and understanding each other. How such singular human capacities evolved, and how they have kept us alive for thousands of generations, is the mystery revealed in this bold and wide-ranging new vision of human emotional evolution. Mothers and Others finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. If the young were to survive in a world of scarce food, they needed to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, aunts, fathers, friends—and, with any luck, grandmothers. Out of this complicated and contingent form of childrearing, Sarah Hrdy argues, came the human capacity for understanding others. Mothers and others teach us who will care, and who will not. From its opening vision of “apes on a plane”; to descriptions of baby care among marmosets, chimpanzees, wolves, and lions; to explanations about why men in hunter-gatherer societies hunt together, Mothers and Others is compellingly readable. But it is also an intricately knit argument that ever since the Pleistocene, it has taken a village to raise children—and how that gave our ancient ancestors the first push on the path toward becoming emotionally modern human beings.

A former New York Times reporter tackles the difficult issue of gender economic equality, confronting the financial penalties levied on motherhood.

Becoming a mother is filled with the extremes of emotion --the highest highs and the lowest lows. But women are often reluctant to talk honestly about the experience for fear they'll be seen as bad mothers. With wit and candor, The Mask of Motherhood takes on the myths and the misinformation, helping women to prepare and deal with the depth of feeling that comes with the experience and perhaps most important, it lets them know that many, if not most, new mothers are feeling the same way.Susan Maushart, sociologist and mother of three, explores how motherhood affects our marriages and friendships, our relationships with parents, our sex lives, and our self-esteem. In The Mask of Motherhood, mothers will find the comfort and reassurance they are looking for, and confirmation that, indeed, motherhood is the toughest job in the world, but can also be the most rewarding.