Blessing of Unicorns: Mother’s Day edition

Behold this week’s herd! But instead of doing the usual roundup, I’m rounding up some reading recommendations of articles and books, some very recent and others from a while back, which (to my mind at least) present the complexity of motherhood in a fallen world.

***

Leah Libresco Sargeant, “Designing Woman.” I’ve repeatedly recommended this fabulous essay to way too many people over the past year. It analyzes the problematic nature of the breast pump and how it “designs” the modern woman as worker first (rather than a mother).

***

Ivana Greco, “Protecting the Home Front: Why We Need a ‘G. I. Bill’ For Homemakers.” The work of homemaking (which often although not always means mothering in the home) is, as Ivana has argued in multiple essays, including this review for Current, the hidden foundation of a healthy and flourishing society.

***

Over at her Substack, Dixie Dillon Lane, whose own essay last year about losing her mother as a teenager is truly powerful and moving, brought together several writers to talk about motherhood.

***

In a moving short essay last year, Beatrice Scudeler wrote about “The Good War of Motherhood.”

***

Some women who wished for motherhood did not get to experience it—this is the focus of my reflections on Dorothy Sayers’ lost motherhood.

***

Some women today who wish to be mothers resort to reproductive technology. Lately, however, some fairly horrific news have brought to public consciousness more clearly than ever the complications involved in such technology. Here are three stories that go mournfully well side-by-side:

This news story in The Guardian: “IVF patients ‘devastated’ after US clinic destroyed but still implanted embryos, suit says”

On a related note, read Leah Libresco Sargeant’s essay “Embryos as Schrödinger’s Persons”

Finally, Katy Faust’s essay on the harm that the soon-likely technology of artificial wombs is likely to inflict is chilling but necessary.

***

Finally, I would like to recommend just a few books on motherhood:

Erika Bachiochi, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

Natalie Carnes, Motherhood: A Confession

Agnes Howard, Showing: What Pregnancy Tells Us About Being Human

Speaking of Agnes Howard, don’t miss her review of Catherine Pakaluk’s Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth, today at Current.

Anna Starobinets, Look At Him

And we’re reviewed (and will continue to review) a LOT of great books on parenting and motherhood here at Current! Give our Reviews section a look.