THE MOTHER CODE: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Myths That Shape Us, including the one you don't look at: Privilege

THE MOTHER CODE: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Myths That Shape Us
RUTHIE ACKERMAN
Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: In this propulsive memoir, an award-winning journalist blends history, science, and cultural criticism, to uncover whether motherhood outside of society's rigid rules and expectations is possible—and whether she fits the mold for what a mother should be.

For so long, Ruthie Ackerman believed that the decision not to have children was a radical act. She'd grown up being told that she came from a long line of women who had abandoned their children. Plus, Ruthie feared she would pass on her half-brother’s rare genetic disorder. Haunted by this generational inheritance, she goes searching in the twists and turns of her DNA to decide once and for all whether she should become a mother. When a geneticist leaves her at a dead end, she chooses to marry a man who doesn’t want children—only to realize that, despite everything, she desperately does. When Ruthie’s strained marriage ends, her quest for a new vision of motherhood begins.

She eventually finds an image of radical motherhood where women have an opportunity to see their role not just as fulfilling but as powerful. This new mother code goes beyond children and focuses on actively working towards stronger communities and happier, less-stressed parents. But by the time Ruthie meets the right partner and is ready to have the baby she so desperately desires, she learns she can't use her own eggs. Now, Ruthie has to evolve this new mother code as she navigates the scientific, philosophical, and intimate questions about what it means to both create–and nurture–a life.

The Mother Code unravels how we’ve come to understand the institution of motherhood, offering a groundbreaking a new a mother code that goes beyond our blood lines and genetics, and instead, pushes us to embrace inheritance as the legacy we want to leave behind for those we love.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: More Momaganda. "I changed my mind after most of my life is passed, and Became A Mother extremely expensively and in spite of thinking about it for decades and deciding against it" is a HUGE pile of privilege. It is unexamined in any critical way.

Adopt.

I was not well-treated by my mother, and as a direct result do not belong to the Cult of Mother. One does not dare to speak out about this pervasive cult because (like the Spoiler Stasi) there are great heaving seas of angry partisans who will NOT allow anyone to publicly question Their Choice.

Usually it's religious nuts to the fore, though not always. These people having the overlap in group membership that they do, I don't know how I'll escape another round of insulting nonsense for saying this, but here goes:

Your belief that something is good and right and necessary does not stop its being exploitive, manipulative, and wrong.