Product Description

Based on the premise that a mother is born psychologically in the months that precede and follow the birth of her baby, this book reveals women's experiences of motherhood and the powerful emotions and profound changes that accompany it in a series a case studies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #402234 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

Expected more from respected psychlgst. Sentimental rubbish
This book was so disappointing when I was looking for a book that really described the complex mixture of positive and negative emotions that accompany becoming a mother. As a psychologist myself, I knew of Daniel Stern, knew he was well respected and read one child development tome a while back. This book really made me cross. It sentimentalises and trivialises women's experiences, e.g. "Far away the most intense psychological impact of the birth for most women is the sense of accomplishment and completeness they feel after the event." "... most often a profound sense of being part of the fertile earth... of belonging to eternity". It's so far away from what the experience of women of the broad spectrum of women I know as to be laughable. It's wishful thinking, and perpetuates the terrible guilt that women feel around societal expectations of becoming a mother, e.g. "All mothers want to be better mothers...". I did not learn anything from this, except how unrealistic society (and this book) are about childbirth and motherhood. And Daniel Stern had two female co-authors. Shockingly bad.

How can a man write this book ?
interesting to read the review, being a relatively new mother the title caught my attention but as soon as I saw the auther was a man I was suspicious. With the greatest respect to men and fathers alike, I really don't see how they can understand and appreciate the change a women undergoes when she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a child.

Despite reading many books in my pregnancy and talking to friends with children, nothing could have prepared me for the huge emotional shift that the birth of my son precipitated. I've never experienced a flow of positive and negative emotions like those in the first 3 months of his life. It was like I'd been hit by a train at high speed !

will continue my search and implore men to stop judging women when they can't possibly know what this experience is really like. after all, their lives even as fathers' always retain an element of life before baby. A women's generally never returns to that place again.