What if the societal expectations about motherhood weren't just unrealistic, but based on fundamental misrepresentations of science?
Almost all parenting advice is wrong. Parenting "experts" peddle claims about how parenting styles impact a child's development and terrifying new parents about getting it wrong.
When Alex Bollen had her first baby, she found herself feeling guilty and anxious about being a bad mother. A researcher with twenty years’ experience, she went in search of answers about what was the right way to care for her children. But when she started digging into studies about mothers and babies, she was surprised by how flimsy the evidence was, and how it was so often exaggerated and misrepresented.
Incensed by the way that mothers were being shamed by bad science, Alex Bollen decided to set the record straight. With meticulous research and keen insight, Motherdom assesses the evidence for claims about "good parenting" and systematically dismantles the faulty science and magical thinking that underpin pervasive "Good Mother" myths used to shame and frighten new parents. Alex Bollen is a researcher with over twenty years of experience, including as the former director of the research agency Ipsos MORI. She is a Postnatal Practitioner with the NCT, the UK's largest parenting charity, and has been running postnatal groups for new mothers in South West London for over a decade. She is the mother of two children.
