She’s a narcissistic mother, and she’s in good company. Mother, Mother’s Josephine Hurst isn’t just a critical or controlling mom. Other mothers can’t consider their children at all. They left their newborns to freeze to death on the side of the barn.” Some mothers, no matter how well intentioned, just can’t see their kids as anything other than tools, hindrances or extensions of themselves. “The ewes gave birth last night,” she said, darkly. Last lambing season, I was in a New Paltz knitting supply shop, surrounded by beautiful, hand-dyed yarn, when the farmer clomped inside in rubber overalls and announced her sad morning. I’d always suspected that as a kid, but I learned it for certain when I moved from Brooklyn to the Catskills. Here’s the sick truth: Some mothers aren’t naturals.

It discounts experiences by those of us who were raised by women whose genetics and early life traumas permanently altered their brains and made them incapable of empathy. This idea that all mothers are naturally patient, forgiving and self-sacrificing isn’t just sappy-sweet, it’s callous. But the word “mother” isn’t synonymous with Mother Theresa, and having a child doesn’t make a woman a mom any more than owning a paintbrush makes her Frida Kahlo. Read an Angelina Jolie profile or watch TLC and you’d think women enter delivery rooms as laboring heffalumps and exit as Battista Salvi’s Madonna and Child. We’re living in an era of baby-bump obsession, in a don’t-speak-badly-of-your-momma culture. I really wanted to challenge the cultural assumption that all mothers are inherently selfless. Where did you get the idea for this distressing mother figure? She recently tweeted: “33 with 3 books and 3 kids.

Koren Zailckas is the author of two memoirs, Smashed and Fury, and lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband and three children. This is the full interview.įollowing Monday’s review of Mother, Mother, then, here’s the lovely Koren Zailckas! This interview was published by Shelf Awareness here in an abridged format due to space constraints.

Mother mother by koren zailckas