Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence [Mass Market Paperback]

Rebecca Walker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2008

From the international bestselling author of Black, White, and Jewish comes a "wonderfully insightful" (Associated Press) book that's destined to become a motherhood classic. Now in trade.

Like many women her age, thirty-four-year-old Rebecca Walker was brought up to be skeptical of motherhood. As an adult she longed for a baby but feared losing her independence. In this very smart memoir, Walker explores some of the larger sociological trends of her generation while delivering her own story about the emotional and intellectual transformation that led her to motherhood.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Black, White and Jewish gives voice to the uncertainty of her generation in a powerful new memoir. In journal format, beginning with the day her pregnancy is confirmed and ending as she and her partner bring their son home, Walker tells of her physical and emotional journey toward motherhood, poignantly reflecting on the ambivalence that has delayed her dream of having a child for years. Like many 20- and 30-somethings, she was raised to view partnership and parenthood as the least empowering choices in an infinite array of options. This tension comes to the fore as Walker's mother, Alice Walker, opposes her decision to have a baby and challenges her account of their relationship in Black, White and Jewish. Alice ends their relationship and removes Rebecca from her will, and Rebecca endures a tumultuous pregnancy, estranged from her mother as she prepares to become one herself. Elusive health complications arise, and she hops from doctor to doctor, ever wary of Western medicine. Through a lengthy litany of decisions (midwife versus M.D., stroller versus "travel system"), she Googles her way to information overload. At the end of this nine-month mental tug-of-war, she emerges changed: a meat eater, a committed partner with a renewed faith in intimacy, a new woman plus-one. Walker's story is accessible and richly textured, told with humor, wit and warmth. (Mar.)
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Review

"Thoughtful." -Entertainment Weekly "A powerful new memoir...Accessible and richly textured, told with humor, wit, and warmth." -Publishers Weekly "Moving, wise, and deeply honest, Baby Love has illuminated a crucial question for our times." -Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia "Shares the earthy, spontaneous form of Anne Lamott''s child-rearing classic, Operating Instructions." -The New York Times

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (March 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594482888
• ISBN-13: 978-1594482885
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #460,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Birdcage Lining, March 25, 2007

By 

Mother (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Baby Love (Hardcover)

The narcissim, banality and lack of intelligent thought in this book is simply stunning. I am a new mother, and I cannot fathom how this book would have been useful to me during pregnancy; certainly not in retrospect. Because I also share a lot of Walker's racial/sexual/class/political experience I bought this immediately. I was deeply offended by a lot of her claims about feminism and what she insinuates about lesbian vs. heterosexual parenting, but truly jaw-dropping is her assertion about biological vs. non-biological parenting. She is so unable to get past herself, and so unable to recognize that her first stab at "parenting" was more playing house with an immature rocker and less the stuff of intentional motherhood. Perhaps that is part of what undermines the bond with her son that she then goes on to universalize. The revelations about the breach with her mother are frankly embarassing, and again, feel self-serving--like a desperate stab to hook a readership that she can't otherwise win and hold.

52 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering...Narcissism, April 5, 2007

By 

cmcd (denver) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Baby Love (Hardcover)

What a stunning waste of twenty bucks. As a 36 year old woman contemplating motherhood I expected to find thoughtful musings and good company on the journey. Instead, a "dear diary" of jumbled confessions from an admittedly privileged but incredibly solipsistic narrator. Join her pity party as she boo-hoos her way through a hospital stay, a search for a physician/caregiver, the loss of her figure and sex appeal---never mind she indulges in more navel-gazing and food than any pregnant woman has a right to (explaining to her stepson, for example, that at 16 weeks there are just certain things she can't do, like climb stairs. Or focus on others. Or put her fork down--she gains 35 pounds in 20 weeks and claims her job is to sit around "rubbing her belly and glowing.") The few honest confessions and discussions are by far overshadowed by her need to indulge and reassure herself that she is a good and holy creature, that her exes and famous mother done her so horribly wrong, and that nothing on the planet--partners, careers, even longed-for adopted children--is so incredibly sublime worthy of exultation and love as giving birth to your "own" child. A supreme disappointment from a bright young scholar from whom I expected so much more.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars there's no "there" there, May 13, 2007

By 

L. Helw (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Baby Love (Hardcover)

I think the author seemed confused rather than ambivalent... the book offers no clear thinking through her own motives for this constant theme through her work: one-sided blaming. The writing is one dimensional and ascribes a lot of dark motives to many, except Rebecca.

Something cutting about her piecemeal narratives, esp her cold claim about the only kind of 'real' experience of being a mother is to give birth. She's a couple years shy of 40 years old and sees her body aging...well. What can be said about that. So much of the material here sounds like a 12 year old rather than a mature woman equal to her years.

For new mothers, I would recommend Ann Lamott's work, all of it. She is a very real mother who writes with deep love about various kinds of ambivilance and certitude regarding her precious son; she a single mother. Lamott has the gift of simple narrative that is literature without grunting with the effort to write litter-a-toor as Rebecca seems to try to do.

The thing is, there's a dearth of writings for new mothers, and mothers to be and adoptive mothers... fanning peacock writing like 'baby love' wont cut it for most.

If 'baby love' were a book by a person named Rebecca Smith, I think few people would look at it. Considering her tiresome writing m.o. of dissing her mother, (which also has this odd gloss to it; it just doesnt ring true... her examples of how badly she's been treated sound like a spoiled child complaining they only got everything except two things they wanted and they are really mad. Truly abused children carry an entirely different timbre) I wonder why she didnt keep her father's name instead.