The Other Mother: A Lesbian'S Fight For Her Daughter (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) [Paperback]

Nancy Abrams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 20, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0299164942 | ISBN-13: 978-0299164942

On a spring day in 1993, Nancy Abrams helped her daughter dress for day care, packed her lunch, and said good-bye. Next she drove to court, where she learned that in the eyes of the law she was nothing more than “a biological stranger” to the child she helped bring into the world and raise. That was the last time she would see her daughter or hear her voice for five years.
    The Other Mother begins as Abrams and her female lover decide to start a family together. With giddy anticipation, they search for a sperm donor, shop for baby clothes and crib, and attend childbirth classes. But despite their high hopes, the relationship begins to fall apart, and they separate when their daughter is a toddler. Problems between the two intensify until, shortly before her daughter’s fifth birthday, Abrams loses custody.
    In unprecedented depth, Abrams’s compelling narrative examines the social, legal, and political implications of gay and lesbian parenting. Her haunting memoir asks the question, “What makes a mother?” It is a question that biological parents, co-parents, adoptive parents, step-parents, and divorced parents must each answer in their own way. In telling one woman’s story, The Other Mother makes a solid case for legal protections, including marriage, for lesbian and gay families.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The lesbian baby boom of the 1980s has, unfortunately, spawned child custody battles in the '90s, as partners have uncoupled and biological mothers have refused to cede custody to non-biological mothers. Abrams became one such "other mother" when she and her partner, Norma, broke up. Although Abrams contends that she continued to support their three-year-old daughter, Amelia, over the next year and a half, Norma retained custody and eventually denied Abrams access to the child. In a narrative that's part memoir and part reportage based on interviews with other lesbian mothers undergoing custody battles, Abrams tells a harrowing tale of love, loss and reclamation. After reluctantly accepting the role of co-parent when the two women were in their early 20s and had been together for only a year, she grew to revel in the position, only to suffer the pain of losing Amelia. Abrams launched a legal fight to get her back and, just as she had given up all hope of being reunited with her daughter, made contact again, nearly five years after losing her. According to Abrams, Norma had suffered powerful depressions and suicidal feelings before they got together, which she portrays as influencing Norma's decision to bar Abrams from Amelia's life. Equally irrationally, according to Abrams, Norma called five years later to apologize. The downside of lesbian and gay parenting has gotten little play: Abrams's bookAunevenly written though it isAprovides one woman's perspective on what can happen when the law lags behind social change. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

A foreword addressed to the daughter Abrams has not seen since June_ 1993 prefaces the painful story behind why she can no longer be a mother to the child. In the beginning, when she met and fell in love with Norma, and during their early months together, it was easy to dismiss Norma's shifting moods and desire to have a baby. After a year, Nancy deferred, against her misgivings, to Norma's insistence that they remain a couple and began to assist in preparing for a baby, even comparing the firing power of a syringe and a turkey baster for artificial insemination purposes. The pair shopped for baby things and attended childbirth classes, but their union foundered. They separated when their daughter was a toddler. Eventually the adults' differences multiply, and Abrams, judged by the courts "a biological stranger" to four-and-a-half-year-old Amelia, loses custody of her in a wrenchingly told, heartfelt tale examining the societal and legal implications of gay/lesbian parenting. Whitney Scott --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: The University of Wisconsin Press (July 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299164942
• ISBN-13: 978-0299164942
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,695,626 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Abrams: Another look at lesbian motherhood, April 21, 2000

By 

Amy Beth Brochu (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Mother: A Lesbian's Fight for Her Daughter (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiog) (Hardcover)

This book let me look at this woman as a woman first, then a lesbian, and lastly a mother. Abrams has a unique way of letting the reader in on her most intimate feelings, she does this by very often sharing journal entries taken from the time she was fighting for her daughter. On page three, I knew I was in for it, I was already crying. For me, this book gave me more a sense of myself as a lesbian. I have struggled in the past to find myself in the gay culture only to be left out in the cold. Nancy's book, not only details her life events that came to be, but she surrounds her story with other parts of her life. Her relationship, her work, her self. You really get a sense of her as a woman, just a person trying to make it in the world. The journey Abrams takes you through will make you angry. The way the system works for gays and lesbian parents is horrendous. Abrams and many others have to prove their relationships to their children, usually in a long drawn out court battle. I loved this book because I finally feel a connection, with a lesbian. Abrams pours her life out on these pages, leaving her readers to pick up their own piecies. She is not alone in her situation, she has just been brave enough to share it with the world. I am thankful she did. It left me with a better sense of what our community is fighting for, and why we need civil unions and other legal protections. It is easy to forget in the midst of the politics of it all, that this is about the love between a woman and her child. Yes, it is heartwrenching, but in the end reedeeming. Reminding all of us, gay or straight that the ties of family are beyond blood.

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read, February 5, 2005

By 

Louise (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Mother: A Lesbian'S Fight For Her Daughter (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) (Paperback)

Given the current debates about gay marriage and gay rights, this book is a must-read. By telling one woman's story, Nancy Abrams makes a case for why it is imperative to make the legal benefits of marriage available to all people. But this is not just a political work by any means. It is a moving and well-told narrative.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars badly written, but an important book, October 8, 2003

By 

J. M. (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Mother: A Lesbian'S Fight For Her Daughter (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) (Paperback)

Her writing style is ridiculous, flowery and forced-sounding. But the story Abrams has to tell is an important one. The book did get to me, although throughout most of it I kept cringing at the horrible decisions both Abrams and her ex-lover make as they try to work things out outside of the court. Still, it was worth reading, just to make myself aware that these things do happen. Until a more well-written book on the subject comes along, we'll have to make do with this.