The Mother Of It All

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.comIt’s a just-the-two-of-us episode for our beautiful paid subscribers. We chat about the parenting books currently in our TBR piles (so many good books on motherhood lately, so little time) and the ones we’re most obsessed with, the pitfalls of comparing ourselves to Ursula K. LeGuin, making peace with not being a person who writes a slew of culture-chan…

Angela Garbes, author of 'Like a Mother' and 'Essential Labor', dives into the joys and challenges of middle age. She candidly discusses the need for better conversations about menopause, quirky facts like the sex lives of menopausal orcas, and Carl Jung's idea that aging can teach us to be more selfish. Angela advocates for a rebranding of the 'crone' stage, highlighting wisdom in aging, social acceptance, and the transformative journey of motherhood alongside personal growth. Her insights are both profound and uplifting.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.comDid you know that Sarah Wheeler is actually a real live professional educational psychologist and parent coach? Today, Miranda asks Sarah to put on her Dr. hat and give some professional advice about changing schools. When you start to think about sending your kid to a different school, how can you know that you’re making the right choice? What if the new school isn…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.comIt’s Friday and we’re taking it easy & talking it through! All of it. It’s just the two of us, Miranda and Sarah, checking in about our parenting lives and LIFE lives. We’re talking about everything that’s been going on for us lately, from teaching our kids tongue twisters, checking Reddit for each other, adventures in toddler asthma, motherhood and vig…

Journalist Frankie de la Cretaz joins us to talk women’s sports and all things WNBA! We dig into player and WAG fashion, the visibility of queer families on and off the court, the truth about trans athletes, and mother-athletes past, present and future. Links:* Frankie De La Cretaz on Substack* Frankie’s book, Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League* Molly Dickens’ the Maternal Stress Project* WNBA Documentaries 144 and The Power of the Dream* Basketball Wives* Angel Reese on Insta* Woxer * WNBA x Skims campaign* TBOY Wrestling* So You Think You Know A Lot About The Titanic by Janet Manley* Oh Mary!* No Taste Like Home * North of NorthIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

Helen Jukes, a British author known for her work 'Mother / Animal,' joins to explore the fascinating connections between motherhood in the animal kingdom and human experiences. They discuss the diversity of maternal practices among species, challenging traditional notions of 'natural' motherhood. From the brutal realities of animal birthing to the emotional complexities of parenting, Jukes illustrates how nature can illuminate our own struggles and expectations. This insightful conversation redefines motherhood as an interconnected journey, urging a broader understanding of nurturing.

MAHA (or “Make America Healthy Again”) motherhood is a bit of a mindf*uck. What, one asks oneself, unites “crunchy” hippie-leaning momfluencers (like Rudy Jude & her wannabes) of the world with someone as spray-tanned Marjorie Taylor Green? One looks like a sentient carcinogen, and one looks like she's never even heard of food dye! So how do we understand their alliance under the umbrella of Making American Healthy Again? For many of us, there are some points of connection with these MAHA moms, which where this conversation gets juicy and frankly a little disconcerting. As Sara Petersen wrote, most moms probably would agree with the MAHA moms in that we prefer that our kids’ treats came without red dye #6, a food dye associated with behavioral side effects. But, unlike a MAHA mom, we’re proud to be up-to-date on our Covid boosters instead of guzzling raw milk and curing our own cancer with red light therapy (or something, tbh we couldn’t bear to go too deep into that one). At the same time that motherhood taps us into our need to give and receive care, the conditions of modern millennial motherhood seem to have stoked a fear-driven and anxiety-ridden individualism. It’s a confusing time, and it’s getting more baffling by the minute. If MAHA mothers care so much about banning food additives like red dye, why have they aligned themselves with an administration that has effectively gutted the FDA? How did we get to a place where expertise is up for grabs and there is so much mistrust in our public health systems? Can we recover? OG motherhood writer and New York Times opinion columnist Jessica Grose joins us to talk through all this and more. LINKS:* Jessica Grose, The Kind of Moms Who Fall for ‘Make America Healthy Again’ (New York Times, Oct 2024)* Screaming on the Inside by Jessica Grose* Sara Petersen: “MAHA Moms Are Wrong About Wellness”* Necessary Losses by Judith Viorst* Ariana Hendrix * Katie Beck On Child-Friendly City Design* Eloise Rickman on Children’s Rights* Sprawl Is A Parenting Problem by Erin Sagan* Noah Wylie being hot again on The Pitt* John Early bitIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.comSome people have told us that this podcast is for “literary mom nerds” and we’re into that! So, today for our beloved die-hard paid subscribers we’re leaning into that! (Please consider becoming one of those, if you aren’t already!) We decided to make an episode about what we’re reading and loving right now, and what’s in our TBR piles. We’re still in t…

New York Times critic at large Amanda Hess joins us to talk about the convergence of parenthood and technology. We dig in to everything from freebirthers to prenatal testing, and from “complicated” pregnancies to the many anxieties (and joys, too) of raising a child in a world where a $1600 Snoo has become a newborn must-have and corporations know about our pregnancies before our immediate families do. Hess’s much anticipated memoir, Second Life: Having A Child In The Digital Age (which we both LOVED), is out May 6th. Links: * Prenatal Testing Offers Pregnant Women More Information Than Ever — But No Support To Deal With It (Romper) * Unfit Parent by Jessica Slice* Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert* Happiest Baby On The BlockIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes and if you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!). * Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

We reunite with author and parent Jessica's Slice ahead of the release of her tremendous book, Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World, to learn how her life with a second child has taught her to throw out the milestones and ask for help (even when it involves a dead possum!). Then, you get to listen to Sarah’s initial interview with Jessica, which remains one of our all time favorites and touches on parenting perfectionism, disability justice, and parenting neurodivergent kids. Links:* Order Unfit Parent * Jessica’s website and Substack newsletter:Jessica Slice writes about disability, poems, and waterfowl* Disability Visibility, edited by Alice Wong* Lucy Webster’s The View From Down Here* Andrew Leland’s The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight* We've Got This: Essays by Disabled Parents, edited by Eliza Hull This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe