December 26, 2005

Tales From The Crib

Jennifer Margulis

“Read as much as you can,” my friend Patrick, who worked in a bookstore and had a 4-month-old son, admonished. “Because once the baby’s born you’ll never read a book again.”

Patrick’s warning scared me. Pregnant, I was working towards a Ph.D. in literature at Emory University and reading was both my job and my passion. I imagined my life would change a lot when the baby was born. But a life without reading was unfathomable.

Six years and three children later, I can safely say that Patrick was wrong.

You do shed some of your old self when you have a child but you also make time for what really matters to you. I want my children to love books. What better way to insure that they do than to read with them, read in front of them, and make books a priority for all of us?

It’s true that my taste in books has changed. For awhile I was more likely to pick up a copy of “Your One-Year-Old” than I was “Moby Dick,” and I found myself fascinated by writing — any writing — about parenthood. I was especially interested in first person accounts of motherhood and read Ann Lamott’s “Operating Instructions” (which I loved for its honesty but at the same time felt deeply saddened by) and Louise Erdrich’s “Blue Jay’s Dance” (which I wished had been a more honest, less self-conscious book).

Post-motherhood reading was so important to me that when a friend gave me “Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood” after the birth of my second child it was like finding an entire community of new friends. I ran to the bookstore to buy more anthologies like it. The selections were slim. I picked up a copy of Patricia Stevens’s “Between Mothers and Sons,” even though I did not have a son, because it was the only anthology on the shelves.

Since the birth of my second child, almost five years ago, there has been an explosion of literature about parenting, especially first-person accounts of the trials and tribulations of motherhood. Some people call this genre “momoir,” though I think that cutesy term does not do these books justice.

Rachel Cusk’s 2002 memoir “A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother,” Andrea Buchanan’s 2003 book, “Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It,” Cindy La Ferle’s new collection of personal essays, “Writing Home,” Catherine Newman’s 2005 “Waiting For Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family,” and Marrit Ingman’s haunting but humorous new book about postpartum depression, “Inconsolable,” are just a few examples of the plethora of recent books that make being a mom that which swings open the great flood-gates of the wonder-world, as Melville might put it.

In some ways all of us American writers who take motherhood as our subject are indebted to Shirley Jackson, who is most famous for her short story, “The Lottery” (required reading in high school or college) and who also wrote an honest and hilarious book about daily life with four children called “Life Among the Savages” (1953).

Reading a book is an experience. When you read about someone else’s parenting trials you share their experiences with them, however briefly. Instead of filling stockings with teeth-rotting treats and plastic toe-stubbing toes made in substandard factory conditions in China, consider giving your children the gift of an experience this holiday by buying them some new books. And while you’re at it, pick up some reading materials for the moms and dads in your life.

Jennifer Margulis is the author of “Toddler: Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love” and “Why Babies Do That: Baffling Baby Behavior Explained” (Willow Creek Press).