Family & Relationships

Winner of the 2024 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology

How embryo adoption advances the Christian Right’s political goals for creating a Christian nation

In 1997, a group of white pro-life evangelical Christians in the United States created the nation’s first embryo adoption program to “save” the thousands of frozen human embryos remaining from assisted reproduction procedures, which they contend are unborn children. While a small part of US fertility services, embryo adoption has played an outsized role in conservative politics, from high-profile battles over public investment in human embryonic stem cell research to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Based on six years of ethnographic research with embryo adoption staff and participants, Risa Cromer uncovers how embryo adoption advances ambitious political goals for expanding the influence of conservative Christian values and power.

Conceiving Christian America is the first book on embryo adoption tracing how this powerful social movement draws on white saviorist tropes in their aims to reconceive personhood, with drastic consequences for reproductive rights and justice. Documenting the practices, narratives, and beliefs that move embryos from freezers to uteruses, this book wields anthropological wariness as a tool for confronting the multiple tactics of the Christian Right. Timely and provocative, Conceiving Christian America presents a bold and nuanced examination of a family-making process focused on conceiving a Christian nation.

How the power of peers and peer culture shapes individual behavior and future success

For decades, parents across America have asked their kids, “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” The answer is, “Duh, yes.” Peers, as parents well know, have a tremendous impact on who their kids are and what they will become. And even while they insist otherwise, parents know that they’re largely powerless to change this. But the effect of peers is not just a story about kids; peers can also affect adult behavior—they affect what we do and who we are well into old age. Noted sociologists Syed Ali and Margaret M. Chin call this “the peer effect.” In their book, they take readers on a tour of how our peers, and the peer cultures they create, shape our behavior in schools and the workplace. Ali and Chin begin their look at the peer effect at the high school from which they both graduated: New York City’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School, arguably the best public high school in the nation. Through a fascinating and often humorous narrative, they show how peers can influence each other—in this case, how highly motivated students can create a culture of influence to achieve success in learning and in admission to elite colleges. They also show the many other ways that peers can influence one another beyond school performance, from hookup culture to school bullying and youth suicide.

Ali and Chin are also interested in the extent to which the peer effect can last. Through interviews with adult graduates of Stuyvesant, they investigate the long-lasting effects of high school peer culture. They also examine the peer effect in post–high school settings, notably around workplace misconduct, including the steroid culture in baseball and the use of excessive force by the police. The Peer Effect ultimately offers ways to understand the power of peer influence and apply this understanding to resolving issues regarding schools, college graduation rates, workplace culture, and police violence. In the tradition of big idea books like The Tipping Point, The Peer Effect will forever change the way we look at the world of human behavior.

Praising God in the storm?

Faced with carrying a child who was ‘not compatible with life’, that was just one of the many challenges Cami faced as she walked her precious child home to Heaven. In Walking Her Home, readers will hear first-hand about the pregnancy, life, and death of her daughter as well as how God sustained their marriage and family when it was challenged.

Answers the question: Why are women freezing their eggs?

Why are women freezing their eggs in record numbers? Motherhood on Ice explores this question by drawing on the stories of more than 150 women who pursued fertility preservation technology. Moving between narratives of pain and empowerment, these nuanced personal stories reveal the complexity of women’s lives as they struggle to preserve and extend their fertility.

Contrary to popular belief, egg freezing is rarely about women postponing fertility for the sake of their careers. Rather, the most-educated women are increasingly forced to delay childbearing because they face a mating gap—a lack of eligible, educated, equal partners ready for marriage and parenthood. For these women, egg freezing is a reproductive backstop, a technological attempt to bridge the gap while waiting for the right partner. But it is not an easy choice for most. Their stories reveal the extent to which it is logistically complicated, physically taxing, financially demanding, emotionally draining, and uncertain in its effects.

In this powerful book, women share their reflections on their clinical encounters, as well as the immense hopes and investments they place in this high-tech fertility preservation strategy. Race, religion, and the role of men in the lives of single women pursuing this technology are also explored. A distinctly human portrait of an understudied and rapidly growing population, Motherhood on Ice examines what is at stake for women who take comfort in their frozen eggs while embarking on their quests for partnership, pregnancy, and parenting.

A compelling examination of the social and legal experiences of lesbian, bisexual, and queer stepparent families

Lesbian, bisexual, and queer families formed after the dissolution of a marriage face a range of obstacles. In Queer Stepfamilies, Katie L. Acosta offers a wealth of insight into their complex experiences as they negotiate parenting among multiple parents and family-building in a world not designed to meet their needs. Drawing on in-depth interviews, Acosta follows the journeys of more than forty families as they navigate a legal and social landscape that fails to recognize their existence.

Acosta contextualizes the legal realities of LGBTQ stepparent families and considers the actions these parents take to protect their families in the absence of comprehensive policies or laws geared to meet their needs. Queer Stepfamilies reveals the obstacles these families face in family courts during divorce proceedings and custody cases, and highlights their distrust of courts when it comes to acting in their children’s best interests, especially in the event of an origin parent’s death.

As LGBTQ families continue to make social and legal strides in acceptance and recognition, this important book shows how queer stepparents find ways to make their unconventional families work, despite the many social and legal obstacles they encounter. Acosta provides a fresh perspective, broadening our understanding about families in the twenty-first century.

An essential guide for navigating the challenges of fatherhood while building a foundation of faith, love, and values in your children.

Becoming a father is one of life's most profound joys and solemn duties. The path ahead will be filled with questions and self-doubt—am I ready for this? How do I nurture faith and values? Can I still pursue my dreams? What if I mess up? In The Spirit of Fatherhood, Larry Hagner provides fellow dads the wisdom and tools to navigate one of life's most epic and awe-inspiring adventures.

With insight forged from biblical study and over a decade of counseling experience, Hagner addresses nearly every aspect of engaged fatherhood. Discover guidance on building a warm, Godly home where children feel safe to grow. Learn how to correct with patience and grace. Find tips on instilling values that will serve your children for life. Hagner knows the struggles inherent to parenting and meets them with empathy, encouragement and practical solutions. While portraying this sacred calling, the founder of "The Dad Edge," the #1 podcast about fatherhood on Apple Podcasts, makes his lessons relatable through vulnerable stories, humorous anecdotes, and refreshing honesty. You'll come away feeling empowered, equipped and deeply connected.

Whether you're counting down to your first child or already have a full house, this book offers inspiration to deepen your faith and leadership. It's the perfect gift for dads aiming to ground their families in timeless wisdom and everlasting love.

Honorable Mention, 2020 Stirling Prize for Best Published Work in Psychological Anthropology, given by the Society for Psychological Anthropology

Honorable Mention, New Millennium Book Award, given by the Society for Medical Anthropology

How youth on the autism spectrum negotiate the contested meanings of neurodiversity

Autism is a deeply contested condition. To some, it is a devastating invader, harming children and isolating them. To others, it is an asset and a distinctive aspect of an individual’s identity. How do young people on the spectrum make sense of this conflict, in the context of their own developing identity?

While most of the research on Asperger’s and related autism conditions has been conducted with individuals or in settings in which people on the spectrum are in the minority, this book draws on two years of ethnographic work in communities that bring people with Asperger’s and related conditions together. It can thus begin to explore a form of autistic culture, through attending to how those on the spectrum make sense of their conditions through shared social practices.

Elizabeth Fein brings her many years of experience in both clinical psychology and psychological anthropology to analyze the connection between neuropsychological difference and culture. She argues that current medical models, which espouse a limited definition, are ill equipped to deal with the challenges of discussing autism-related conditions. Consequently, youths on the autism spectrum reach beyond medicine for their stories of difference and disorder, drawing instead on shared mythologies from popular culture and speculative fiction to conceptualize their experience of changing personhood.

In moving and persuasive prose, Living on the Spectrum illustrates that young people use these stories to pioneer more inclusive understandings of what makes us who we are.

Investigates social parents – people who function as parents but who may not be recognized as such
in the eyes of the law

What makes a person a parent? Around the world, same-sex couples are raising children; parents are separating and re-partnering, creating blended families; and children are living with grandparents, family friends, and other caregivers. In these situations, there is often an adult who acts like a parent but who is unconnected to the child through biogenetics, marriage, or adoption—the common paths for establishing legal parenthood. In many countries, this person is called a “social parent.” Psychologically, and especially from a child’s point of view, a social parent is a parent. But the legal status of a social parent is hotly debated.

Social Parenthood in Comparative Perspective considers how the law does—and how it should—recognize social parenthood. The book begins with a psychological account of social parenthood, establishing the importance of a relationship between a child and a social parent and the harms of not protecting this relationship. It then turns to social scientists to identify and explore some circumstances when a child may have a social parent. And to compare legal responses to social parenthood, the book draws on the expertise of legal scholars in nine countries in North America and Europe. The legal contributors describe the existing laws governing social parents, critique their efficacy, and offer new insights. Though almost all of the countries analyzed have adapted to the new reality of family life by recognizing social parents in some manner, the nature and extent of the recognition varies widely.

The volume concludes by discussing some of the issues flowing from the decision to recognize social parents, including whether social parents should have the same legal rights and responsibilities as other legal parents, whether all social parents must be treated identically, whether the law should limit a child to two parents, and much more. Families are changing, and the law must adapt accordingly. Social Parenthood in Comparative Perspective charts a way forward by offering solutions to help policymakers consider options for addressing social parenthood.

A gritty, down-to-earth guide for real-life couples 

Conflict is a natural part of any intimate relationship. Yet most couples either avoid it or try to smooth over their differences. This often results in at least one partner compromising their integrity—and stunting their own growth.

Monsters in Love challenges the idea that conflict between partners is unhealthy or something to avoid. Instead, it encourages both people to stand by what they need and who they are—but to do so with compassion rather than competitiveness or vengefulness. 

This book is about the reality of committed, intimate relationships, which are designed to inspire both people to grow up. It challenges some common misperceptions about what makes for a successful partnership. It also rocks the boat of psychotherapy, calling out therapists who don't bring their best to their clients. 

Instead of comforting fantasies or false promises, Monsters in Love offers you and your partner a chance to make your relationship—and your lives—much bigger and more emergent. 

For the past half century, Maurice Blanchot has been an extraordinarily influential figure on the French literary and cultural scene. He is arguably the key figure after Sartre in exploring the relation between literature and philosophy.

This collection of 29 critical essays and reviews on art, politics, literature, and philosophy documents the wide range of Blanchot's interests, from the enigmatic paintings in the Lascaux caves to the atomic era. Essays are devoted to works of fiction (Louis-René des Forêts, Pierre Klossowski, Roger Laporte, Marguerite Duras), to autobiographies or testimonies (Michel Leiris, Robert Antelme, André Gorz, Franz Kafka), or to authors who are more than ever contemporary (Jean Paulhan, Albert Camus).

Several essays focus on questions of Judaism, as expressed in the works of Edmond Jabès, Emmanuel Levinas, and Martin Buber. Among the other topics covered are André Malraux's "imaginary museum," the Pléiade Encyclopedia project of Raymond Queneau, paperback publishing, the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Benjamin's "Task of the Translator," Marx and communism, writings on the Holocaust, and the difference between art and writing. The book concludes with an eloquent invocation to friendship on the occasion of the death of Georges Bataille.

A personal, intimate account of the extraordinary ways that today’s families are being created.

From adoption and assisted reproduction, to gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families, the stories in Modern Families explain how individuals make unconventional families by accessing a broad range of technological, medical and legal choices that expand our definitions of parenting and kinship. Joshua Gamson introduces us to a child with two mothers, made with one mother’s egg and the sperm of a man none of them has ever met; another born in Ethiopia, delivered by his natural grandmother to an orphanage after both his parents died in close succession, and then to the arms of his mother, who is raising him solo.

These tales are deeply personal and political. The process of forming these families involved jumping tremendous hurdles—social conventions, legal and medical institutions—with heightened intention and inventiveness, within and across multiple inequities and privileges. Yet each of these families, however they came to be, shares the same universal joys that all families share.

A companion for all those who choose to navigate the world of modern kinship, Modern Families provides a “fascinating look at the remarkable range of experiences that is broadening the very idea of family” (Booklist).

Transgender survivors of violence tell their stories

Transgender people face some of the highest rates of violence in the US and around the world, particularly within romantic relationships. In Transgressed, Xavier L. Guadalupe-Diaz offers a ground-breaking examination of intimate partner violence in the lives of transgender people.

Drawing on interviews and written accounts from transgender survivors of intimate partner violence, he sheds much-needed light on the dynamics of abuse that entrap trans partners in violent relationships. Transgressed shows how rigidly gendered discussions of violence have served to marginalize and silence stories of abuse. Ultimately, these stories of survival follow their unique journeys as they navigate—and break free—from the cycle of abuse, providing us with a better understanding of their experiences.

An emotionally compelling read, Transgressed offers new ways of understanding the complexities of intimate partner violence through the eyes of transgender survivors.

Answers the question: Why are women freezing their eggs?

Why are women freezing their eggs in record numbers? Motherhood on Ice explores this question by drawing on the stories of more than 150 women who pursued fertility preservation technology. Moving between narratives of pain and empowerment, these nuanced personal stories reveal the complexity of women’s lives as they struggle to preserve and extend their fertility.

Contrary to popular belief, egg freezing is rarely about women postponing fertility for the sake of their careers. Rather, the most-educated women are increasingly forced to delay childbearing because they face a mating gap—a lack of eligible, educated, equal partners ready for marriage and parenthood. For these women, egg freezing is a reproductive backstop, a technological attempt to bridge the gap while waiting for the right partner. But it is not an easy choice for most. Their stories reveal the extent to which it is logistically complicated, physically taxing, financially demanding, emotionally draining, and uncertain in its effects.

In this powerful book, women share their reflections on their clinical encounters, as well as the immense hopes and investments they place in this high-tech fertility preservation strategy. Race, religion, and the role of men in the lives of single women pursuing this technology are also explored. A distinctly human portrait of an understudied and rapidly growing population, Motherhood on Ice examines what is at stake for women who take comfort in their frozen eggs while embarking on their quests for partnership, pregnancy, and parenting.

A poignant look at empathetic encounters between staunch ideological rivals, all centered around our common need for food.

While America's new reality appears to be a deeply divided body politic, many are wondering how we can or should move forward from here. Can political or social divisiveness be healed? Is empathy among people with very little ideological common ground possible? In A Decent Meal, Michael Carolan finds answers to these fundamental questions in a series of unexpected places: around our dinner tables, along the aisles of our supermarkets, and in the fields growing our fruits and vegetables. What is more common, after all, than the simple fact that we all need to eat?

This book is the result of Carolan's career-long efforts to create simulations in which food could be used to build empathy, among even the staunchest of rivals. Though most people assume that presenting facts will sway the way the public behaves, time and again this assumption is proven wrong as we all selectively accept the facts that support our beliefs. Drawing on the data he has collected, Carolan argues that we must, instead, find places and practices where incivility—or worse, hate—is suspended and leverage those opportunities into tools for building social cohesion.

Each chapter follows the individuals who participated in a given experiment, ranging from strawberry-picking, attempting to subsist on SNAP benefits, or attending a dinner of wild game. By engaging with participants before, during, and after, Carolan is able to document their remarkable shifts in attitude and opinion. Though this book is framed around food, it is really about the spaces opened up by our need for food, in our communities, in our homes, and, ultimately, in our minds.

'A wonderfully optimistic and original book ... No doubt it will be extremely reassuring for readers and everyone will find some nuggets that are helpful to them' Professor Susan Golombok

'Helpful to anyone interested in learning more about their own families. I highly recommend it' Dr Joshua Coleman

Family researcher Lucy Blake pulls apart our expectations about family and shows us how to embrace the messy, beautiful reality. 

What makes a good parent?

Can sibling relationships survive to adulthood?

Should love within a family really be unconditional?

Wherever, whenever and however you learnt about family, it's likely that you have unshakeable answers to these questions. In this revelatory new book, family researcher Lucy Blake shows that, whatever your assumptions are, they are almost certainly wrong and probably doing damage to your closest relationships.

Blake looks at how the expectations we have affect and even hinder our interactions with parents, siblings, relatives and our children. Drawing on her experience of interviewing hundreds of family members – of all backgrounds – she explores these unrealistic ideas, exposes the truth of what a family really is and explains how we can better understand and appreciate the one we have.

No Family Is Perfect is a fascinating examination of the messy and beautiful reality of family life, and a look at how we can change our beliefs about family for the better and maybe even enjoy Christmas.

“Provides a fresh context for exploring issues that engage us throughout our lives … No Family is Perfect will change how we think and write about families.” Terri Apter, author of Difficult Mothers and The Sister Knot

'This is the book I really needed when I first became a working parent!' - Kathryn Bishop, CBE

Welcome to the world of working parenthood...

• Wondering how you’ll still do your job as well as being a parent?
• Want to have a conversation about changing your working pattern but not sure how to approach it?
• Don’t really know where to start with creating a return-to-work plan?

This how-to guide is designed to help you every step of the way on your journey to becoming a working parent – from before you head off on parental leave to while you’re away and on your return. Catherine Oliver has not only been there and done that but has supported many thousands who have chosen to take on the dual roles of parent and employee.

It will also be invaluable if your partner is taking a longer period of parental leave, or if you’re a manager worried about doing or saying the wrong thing. In the past this support has only been available to employees of big corporates: now you’re holding it in your hands.

Catherine Oliver is a Diversity and Inclusion Advisor who specializes in helping organizations from start-ups to the largest listed companies support working parents and their managers. She became a parent herself during her 20-year corporate career and founded Sky’s parenting network.

'An excellent practical guide to working through the many challenges of becoming a working parent.' Colin Jones, ex-COO, Sky

'As a first-time expectant parent this book was a game-changer.' Emma McKinley, Mum-to-be & Finance Director, Haleon PLC

A compassionate guide to raising resilient, authentic, well-rounded children.

The Good Enough Parent is a compendium of life lessons, including how to say 'No', how to look beneath the surface of "bad" behavior to find the root of what is going on, how to encourage a child to be genuinely kind, and how to handle the moodiness of adolescence. 

Rather than striving for perfection, the book argues, the job of any parent is in fact to guide a child gently into the imperfect nature of everything. 

Encouraging, wry, and steeped in years of experience, The Good Enough Parent is an intelligent guide to raising a child who will one day look back on their childhood with just the right mixture of gratitude, humor, and love.

• COMPASSIONATE ADVICE: for raising content toddlers into resourceful teens.
• FOR BUSY PARENTS: includes digestible, accessible lessons in parenting.
• ACTIONABLE TIPS: for balancing parental instinct with the acquisition of new skills.
• EMOTIONAL CURRICULUM: with lessons in curiosity, listening, manners, and adolescence.

Full of colorful original photographs, The Joys and Sorrows of Parenting promises us a gentle way of staying calm around one of the most arduous yet deeply fulfilling jobs in the world. 

This playful adult board book distills 2,000 years of philosophy into 26 consoling mini essays that shed light on trials and pleasures of parenting. 

• A PLAYFUL BOARD BOOK FOR ADULTS illustrated with full color, original photographs throughout. 

• 26 DIGESTIBLE MINI ESSAYS to reassure and entertain the modern parent. 

• PRACTICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL parenting advice that doesn't shy away from the imperfections of family life. 

• THE IDEAL GIFT for parents at all stages of their family journey.

Raise calmer, happier, healthier children with these fun, hands-on nature activities for parents and kids to enjoy together.

Gold Winner, Nonfiction Authors Association Book Awards

Are your kids stressed? Are they feeling a bit down? Do your children—and you—need a break from screens? Nature can help. What we all suspected intuitively for generations, science has now confirmed: spending time connecting to nature is a safe, effective tool to help improve our health and happiness.

In Finding Ecohappiness, author Sandi Schwartz guides families in building regular habits of experiencing nature to reduce stress and boost mood. She explores key positive psychology tools from a nature-loving perspective. You will learn simple, practical tips for incorporating these tools—awe and gratitude, mindfulness, creative arts, outdoor play and adventure, volunteering, food, and animals—into your daily routine to help your children thrive and live a happy, balanced life.

Finding Ecohappiness will introduce you to all kinds of engaging nature activities you can do with your kids, from hiking and bike rides to visiting nature centers and science museums to volunteering outdoors to embarking on ecotourism adventures. In addition, you will discover unique nature relaxation activities like cow cuddling, animal yoga, forest bathing, float therapy, and earthing. Nature isn’t just for kids, either—doing these activities with your children will tremendously improve your own well-being, too.

A must-read for all families, Finding Ecohappiness will help you protect your children from feeling stressed and overwhelmed; manage your children’s current issues regarding stress, anxiety, and mood; and improve family togetherness.

Have you ever been told that raising your child to speak multiple languages will harm their development? Are teachers or other professionals suspicious of your efforts? Are you sometimes unsure if you are helping your child’s language development, or are you uncertain where to start? It is increasingly recognised among researchers that, far from harming a child’s development, being exposed to multiple languages from birth or early childhood can result in linguistic, creative and social advantages. The authors, all multilinguals themselves, parents of multilingual children, and researchers on language and multilingualism, aim to provide advice and inspiration for multilingual families across the world. The latest research on multilingualism and the authors’ own experiences are used to provide a friendly, accessible guide to raising and nurturing happy multilingual children.

The key ingredients to contented love—quintessential advice on relationships from The School of Life, with an approachable tone

It can sometimes seem a mystery why some couples stay together and thrive – while many more split up or drag on scratchily. While we might think happy love is left to chance, there are some identifiable secrets that underpin good relationships that we can learn and put into practice.

The first title of a new series, The Secrets of Successful Relationships draws upon the expertise of The School of Life therapists to teach us the key ingredients of contented love. Chapters such as “Learning to Love Oneself”, “Knowing What to Overlook”, “Good Listening” and “The Importance of Bad Dates” prompt us to think about how we can achieve success in love. In a tone that’s warm, encouraging and funny, we learn: how to communicate effectively, how to manage differences, what to do when sexual problems arise, how to air grievances, the best way to share a home and – when things grow truly problematic – how to judge whether or not we should stay or leave.

This handbook shows us how to take the necessary, careful, intelligent steps towards the contented love we deserve.

A guided questionnaire to help understand ourselves and our romantic relationships more clearly.

Most questionnaires are happy to be a bit of fun; this one sets out to be both entertaining and, more importantly, useful – offering us nothing less than a guide to the comforting and supportive relationships we long for.

With online apps taking over the dating game, it has never been more crucial to know the rules.

Through a series of pertinent questions, it reveals our distinctive style of loving, what our strengths and weaknesses are with partners and how we might secure genuine fulfillment going forward.

As we work through the questionnaire and its accompanying essays, writing the answers in a notebook, we discover the many reasons why relationships go wrong – and how they might do so far less often in the future. The book considers the role of self-hatred, the influence of childhood, the importance of vulnerability, the appeal of unavailable people and the best way to overcome patterns of self-doubt and unhealthy attachment.

Our minds are such confusing places, even the most thoughtful among us can fail to know central things about how we behave in relationships. This questionnaire will help us to understand ourselves more clearly – and so set us free to discover the love we deserve.

52 Parenting Principles outlines simple strategies to help parents prepare their kids with important life skills for when they leave home. The 52 principles are bite-sized nuggets that parents can learn, understand, and apply weekly or as they choose. With enough theory for context, it emphasizes applications parents can make immediately. Most of the principles can be adopted to fit children of all ages. By reading 52 Parenting Principles, parents feel empowered to make changes they can master and witness relational transformation. Each principle is followed by discussion questions and action steps to help parents understand and integrate what they have learned.

Everyone experiences heartbreak at some point in their life. Advice can be heard to receive with a broken heart, and it tends to focus on letting time do the healing. This consoling and encouraging guide from The School of Life presents a refreshing perspective on heartbreak, arguing that a more nuanced understanding of our pain can help us along the path to healing. 

Through history, psychology, and a little philosophy, Heartbreak teaches us how our responses to abandonment are formed, what the best way to think about an ex might be, and how to envision future relationships when we are in the midst of despair. We come away feeling less alone, consoled that our suffering will have an end, and intrigued by the endless subtleties of relationships. 

• A PRACTICAL GUIDE: to understanding and overcoming heartbreak. 
• PART OF THE SCHOOL OF LIFE'S 'LOVE' SERIES: focusing on the joys and sorrows of relationships. 
• A PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH: to life's innumerable heartbreaks. 

Winner of the 2024 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology

How embryo adoption advances the Christian Right’s political goals for creating a Christian nation

In 1997, a group of white pro-life evangelical Christians in the United States created the nation’s first embryo adoption program to “save” the thousands of frozen human embryos remaining from assisted reproduction procedures, which they contend are unborn children. While a small part of US fertility services, embryo adoption has played an outsized role in conservative politics, from high-profile battles over public investment in human embryonic stem cell research to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Based on six years of ethnographic research with embryo adoption staff and participants, Risa Cromer uncovers how embryo adoption advances ambitious political goals for expanding the influence of conservative Christian values and power.

Conceiving Christian America is the first book on embryo adoption tracing how this powerful social movement draws on white saviorist tropes in their aims to reconceive personhood, with drastic consequences for reproductive rights and justice. Documenting the practices, narratives, and beliefs that move embryos from freezers to uteruses, this book wields anthropological wariness as a tool for confronting the multiple tactics of the Christian Right. Timely and provocative, Conceiving Christian America presents a bold and nuanced examination of a family-making process focused on conceiving a Christian nation.

BFFs shows us that friendships can be the most important, loving, expansive, and emancipatory relationships in our lives—all with the help of our favorite TV, movie, and book besties.

Friendship can be the foundation of our earliest memories and the source of our most formative moments. So why is it often seen as secondary to romantic or familial connection, something we age out of and sacrifice to other relationships? In BFFs, Anahit Behrooz considers female friendship not as something lesser, but as a site of radical intimacy.

From the joys of shared coming-of-age stories and sisterhood, through the pain of break-ups and parting of ways, the vast significance and intensity of feeling within our friendships is explored through depictions in the work of Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, Booksmart and Grey's Anatomy, Insecure, The Virgin Suicides and beyond.

Building Families Through Science and Love

Allie and Sam, widely recognized as "Mommy and Other Mommy," share their emotional and transformative journey to parenthood in Science & Love: Everything LGBTQ+ Families Need to Know About IVF. This inspiring guide is a must-read for LGBTQ+ families navigating artificial insemination, IVF, and other fertility options.

Growing a family as a same-sex couple comes with unique challenges. For Allie and Sam, the path to parenthood was anything but easy. Their story reveals the highs and lows of a three-year journey, involving IUIs, a home insemination, IVF cycles, frozen embryo transfers, and significant financial and emotional investments.

From heartbreak to hope, their journey offers a beacon of guidance. Navigating heteronormative fertility clinics, answering questions about their family dynamic, and overcoming countless obstacles, Allie and Sam show that with determination and love, it’s possible to create the family you’ve dreamed of.

Inside, you’ll find:

• A comprehensive guide to fertility treatments like artificial insemination, IVF, and frozen embryo transfers, specifically for LGBTQ+ families.

• Valuable insights into the emotional, societal, and financial challenges of the fertility journey, including IVF costs and clinic experiences.

• Hopeful, practical advice to support your unique path to parenthood and create a more inclusive understanding of lesbian couples and their families.

If you liked It Starts with the Egg, You Got This - IVF Planner and Journal, or Oh Sis, You’re Pregnant!, you’ll love Science & Love.

Married Ever After is a guide through the marriage process based on 20 timeless Qur'anic principles, insightful Prophetic examples and contemporary research on maintaining successful relationships. We know all relationships involve struggle, and challenges are an inevitable part of a believer's life. Married Ever After teaches us how to pick the struggles that are worthy, rewarding and lead to the greatest pleasure.  

Whether you are preparing for marriage, already in a marriage or contemplating ending one, Married Ever After is your companion, reminder and compass back to Divine pleasure at every stage.  

Rooted in Islamic principles, we learn how our spiritual health impacts the wellbeing of our human relationships. The goal of Married Ever After is more important than ever. Learn how to revive the contentment at home, because successful thriving families are at the heart of a successful thriving Ummah.  

Cómo callar el eco de las heridas de tu infancia en la vida adulta

El trauma es como un eco, es revivir constantemente en la vida adulta una herida que no escuchamos cuando éramos niños. ¿Te cuesta trabajo establecer vínculos profundos con quienes te rodean? ¿No puedes ser sincero sobre las emociones que afrontas día con día? ¿Te sientes agotado porque la ansiedad no te deja dormir?

Léelo las veces que sean necesarias. No estás solo y, de hecho, deberías dejar de culparte.

Esto no es tu culpa te ayudará a identificar las cuatro etapas que moldearon tu trauma: el evento, el contexto, el cambio homeostático y los resultados en tu presente. Con ello, aprenderás a reiniciar tu sistema nervioso para conectar tu cerebro con tus emociones, procesarlas de manera correcta y resignificar tu herida.

Lo que aprendimos en la infancia es un factor clave que determina cómo respondemos a los golpes de la vida adulta. Está en ti silenciar los ecos del pasado para escucharte ahora y emprender un camino en el que no sufras por algo que no fue tu culpa.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

How to Silence the Echo of Your Childhood Wounds in Adulthood

Trauma is like an echo—it’s the constant replaying of a wound in adulthood that we didn’t recognize as children. Do you struggle to form deep connections with those around you? Are you unable to be honest about the emotions you face daily? Do you feel exhausted because anxiety keeps you up at night?

Read this as many times as you need. You are not alone, and, in fact, you should stop blaming yourself.

This Is Not Your Fault will help you identify the four stages that shaped your trauma: the event, the context, the homeostatic shift, and its effects on your present. Through this, you will learn how to reset your nervous system to reconnect your brain with your emotions, process them correctly, and redefine your wounds.

What we learn in childhood plays a key role in determining how we respond to life’s struggles in adulthood. It is up to you to silence the echoes of the past, listen to yourself in the present, and begin a journey where you no longer suffer for something that was never your fault.

Una guía clara y práctica para sanar el trauma generacional heredado de nuestra relación con nuestra madre, dirigida principalmente a latinos.

El trauma generacional se hereda principalmente de nuestra relación con nuestra madre. La Dra. García nos ayuda a reconocerlo y ofrece una guía clara de 5 pasos para sanar las heridas profundas del pasado. Sana tu herida a través de ejercicios de autorreflexión y sugerencias de autoayuda. A través de los conceptos generales de trauma y constelaciones familiares, te adentrarás en el territorio de los traumas ancestrales.

También se abordan las energías femenina y masculina con el propósito de restaurar una visión favorable de las cualidades de la energía femenina “sagrada”: cómo recibir, descansar, fluir, crear, nutrir, entre otras, y la energía masculina “sagrada”: cómo actuar, dar, hacer, proteger, aportar fuerza y estructura, para lograr el equilibrio. Detecta tu herida materna, abrázala, aprende a sanarla y, sobre todo, rompe el ciclo para no repetirlo.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

A clear and actionable guide to heal generational trauma inherited from our relationship with our mother, addressed mostly to Latinos.

Generational trauma is mainly inherited from our relationship with our mother. Dr. García helps us recognize the trauma and offers a clear guide of 5 steps to heal deep pain from the past. Heal your wound through self-reflection exercises and self-help suggestions. Through the general concepts of trauma and family constellations, you will enter the territory of ancestral traumas.

The feminine and masculine energies are also addressed in order to help us restore a favorable view of the qualities of the “sacred” feminine energy: how to receive, rest, flow, create, nurture, among other things, and masculine “sacred”: how to act, give, do, protect, give strength and structure, in order to balance them. Detect your maternal wound, embrace it, learn to heal, and, mainly, break the cycle so as not to replicate it.

Uncovers the class and race dimensions of the "cupcake wars"

In the wake of school-lunch reform debates, heated classroom cupcake wars, and concerns over childhood obesity, the diet of American children has become a “crisis” and the cause of much anxiety among parents.

Many food-conscious parents are well educated, progressive and white, and while they may explicitly value race and class diversity, they also worry about less educated or less well-off parents offering their children food that is unhealthy. Jennifer Patico embedded herself in an urban Atlanta charter school community, spending time at school events, after-school meetings, school lunchrooms, and private homes. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic observation, she details the dilemma for parents stuck between a commitment to social inclusion and a desire for control of their children’s eating. Ultimately, Patico argues that the attitudes of middle-class parents toward food reflect an underlying neoliberal capitalist ethic, in which their need to cultivate proper food consumption for their children can actually work to reinforce class privilege and exclusion.

Listening closely to adults' and children's food concerns, The Trouble with Snack Time explores those unintended effects and suggests how the "crisis" of children’s food might be reimagined toward different ends.

Honorable Mention, 2020 Stirling Prize for Best Published Work in Psychological Anthropology, given by the Society for Psychological Anthropology

Honorable Mention, New Millennium Book Award, given by the Society for Medical Anthropology

How youth on the autism spectrum negotiate the contested meanings of neurodiversity

Autism is a deeply contested condition. To some, it is a devastating invader, harming children and isolating them. To others, it is an asset and a distinctive aspect of an individual’s identity. How do young people on the spectrum make sense of this conflict, in the context of their own developing identity?

While most of the research on Asperger’s and related autism conditions has been conducted with individuals or in settings in which people on the spectrum are in the minority, this book draws on two years of ethnographic work in communities that bring people with Asperger’s and related conditions together. It can thus begin to explore a form of autistic culture, through attending to how those on the spectrum make sense of their conditions through shared social practices.

Elizabeth Fein brings her many years of experience in both clinical psychology and psychological anthropology to analyze the connection between neuropsychological difference and culture. She argues that current medical models, which espouse a limited definition, are ill equipped to deal with the challenges of discussing autism-related conditions. Consequently, youths on the autism spectrum reach beyond medicine for their stories of difference and disorder, drawing instead on shared mythologies from popular culture and speculative fiction to conceptualize their experience of changing personhood.

In moving and persuasive prose, Living on the Spectrum illustrates that young people use these stories to pioneer more inclusive understandings of what makes us who we are.

“Family stories grow to be bigger than the experiences themselves,” writes Judy Goldman in her memoir, Losing My Sister. “They become home to us, tell us who we are, who we want to be. Over the years, they take on more and more embellishments and adornments until they eclipse the actual memory. They become our past—just as a snapshot will, at first, enhance a memory, then replace it.” As she remembers it now, Goldman’s was an idyllic childhood, charmed even, filled with parental love and sisterly confidences. Growing up in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Judy and her older sister, Brenda, did everything together. Though it was clear from an early age that their personalities were very different (Judy was the “sweet” one, Brenda, the "strong" one), they continued to be fairly inseparable into adulthood. But the love between sisters is complex. Though Judy and Brenda remained close, Goldman recalls struggling to break free of her prescribed role as the agreeable little sister and to assert herself even as she built her own life and started a family. The sisters’ relationship became further strained by the illnesses and deaths of their parents, and later, by the discovery that each had tumors in their breasts—Judy’s benign, Brenda’s malignant. The two sisters came back together shortly before the possibility of permanent loss became very real. In her uniquely lyrical and poignant style, Goldman deftly navigates past events and present emotions, drawing readers in as she explores the joys and sorrows of family, friendship, and sisterhood.

Judy Goldman is the author of two novels, Early Leaving and The Slow Way Back, and two books of poetry. Her work has been published in Real Simple magazine, and in many literary journals—including Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Ohio Review, Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner—as well as in numerous anthologies. Her commentaries have aired on public radio and she teaches at writers’ conferences throughout the country. She received the Fortner Writer and Community Award for "outstanding generosity to other writers and the larger community." She’s also the recipient of the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, the Mary Ruffin Poole Award for First Fiction, the Gerald Cable Poetry Prize, the Roanoke-Chowan Prize for Poetry, the Oscar Arnold Young Prize for Poetry, and the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for Poetry. The Slow Way Back was shortlisted for the Southeastern Independent Bookseller Alliance’s Novel of the Year. Judy lives with her husband in Charlotte, North Carolina.

A classic work describing personality traits affected by birth order

'There can be no doubt that special traits of character and mental make-up are found in children and adults who belong to the different ranks in the order of birth.'

In this classic work, Karl König attempts to explain the various characteristics of first-, second- and third-born people, without losing sight of the tremendous individuality of the human being.

Just as our environment shapes our language, social behavior and mannerisms, so our place in the family also determines how we encounter life.

This book is a fascinating handbook for parents, teachers and caregivers. Over the years it has become a definitive reference on the subject of child development.

This newest edition in the Karl König Archive series includes a new introduction by series editor Richard Steel; an extended introduction by Karl König; two new essays: 'The Two Sisters', and 'Brother and Sister' ; some of Karl König's lecture notes and transcriptions, and an essay by A. Limbrunner about the significance of König's work on family order for today.

They go by many names: helicopter parents, hovercrafts, PFHs (Parents from Hell). The news media is filled with stories of well-intentioned parents going to ridiculous extremes to remove all obstacles from their child’s path to greatness . . . or at least to an ivy league school. From cradle to college, they remain intimately enmeshed in their children’s lives, stifling their development and creating infantilized, spoiled, immature adults unprepared to make the decisions necessary for the real world. Or so the story goes.
Drawing on a wealth of eye-opening interviews with parents across the country, Margaret K. Nelson cuts through the stereotypes and hyperbole to examine the realities of what she terms “parenting out of control.” Situating this phenomenon within a broad sociological context, she finds several striking explanations for why today’s prosperous and well-educated parents are unable to set realistic boundaries when it comes to raising their children. Analyzing the goals and aspirations parents have for their children as well as the strategies they use to reach them, Nelson discovers fundamental differences among American parenting styles that expose class fault lines, both within the elite and between the elite and the middle and working classes.
Nelson goes on to explore the new ways technology shapes modern parenting. From baby monitors to cell phones (often referred to as the world’s longest umbilical cord), to social networking sites, and even GPS devices, parents have more tools at their disposal than ever before to communicate with, supervise, and even spy on their children. These play important and often surprising roles in the phenomenon of parenting out of control. Yet the technologies parents choose, and those they refuse to use, often seem counterintuitive. Nelson shows that these choices make sense when viewed in the light of class expectations.
Today’s parents are faced with unprecedented opportunities and dangers for their children, and are evolving novel strategies to adapt to these changes. Nelson’s lucid and insightful work provides an authoritative examination of what happens when these new strategies go too far.

As seen on BABYLIST

Mom's Choice Award Winner

From the CEO of Mommy’s Bliss comes a book for new moms that’s not about the baby. It’s about you, mama.

You might be just a few days out of the hospital or months into your sleep-deprived postpartum journey when the realization hits you: life as you know it—your whole identity—will never be the same. Mom Your Way will guide you through this fundamental shift into new motherhood. With a healthy dose of humor and comforting best-friend energy, Yasmin Kaderali shares judgment-free wisdom for navigating your postpartum life.

Based on Yasmin’s years serving moms at the helm of the wellness brand Mommy’s Bliss—and her own experience as the mom of two little boys—Mom Your Way dishes the dirt on what to expect in your postpartum months and offers useful advice on caring for your new self, from managing sleep and emotions to dealing with body changes that no one really talks about. You’ll learn about building your support network, setting boundaries with family and friends, resisting labels, and banishing mom guilt. Throughout, Yasmin offers relatable anecdotes, simple tips, trusted product recommendations, and journaling prompts to help you thrive in the fourth trimester and beyond.

Although single fathers as primary carers are on the rise, most single-parent households in the United States are headed by women. These women are a lucrative market for parenting books and most of such books are aimed at single mothers raising sons. This intersectional study analyses a broad range of material: books written by female and male authors, African-American and white, health professionals as well as lay people, outspokenly feminist or traditionally conservative, addressing a middle-class or a working-class readership. This allows for a comprehensive analysis of normative attitudes towards parenting, showing how class and ethnicity interact with traditional assumptions of gender and biology to produce a genre of literature that is quite restrictive, perpetuating ideas of ‘intensive mothering’.

Situating these advice books within the context of parenting experts, the US fatherhood movement, the so-called ‘boy crisis’, cultural prejudice towards single mothers and what has been termed ‘neurosexism’ and ‘neuroparenting’, this study analyses the way in which the books draw on mother-blame language, misconceptions of neuropsychological research and traditional conceptualisations of masculinity and femininity to convince the mother readers that they are unable to raise a son to be a man. Using prescriptive and often alarmist language, the authors privilege traditional assumptions of gender, hegemonic masculinity and heteronormative family structures over single parent families, same-sex parenting and single mothers by choice (via adoption or ART). In doing so, the books afford very narrow parenting roles, for fathers as well as mothers, as well as a very limited range of masculine identities for young boys. Presented as common sense advice, these books are widely read by women seeking support and it is thus vital that they be interrogated for the way they continue to construct, shape and influence expectations on parenting, as well as the identities of young boys.

Answers the question: Why are women freezing their eggs?

Why are women freezing their eggs in record numbers? Motherhood on Ice explores this question by drawing on the stories of more than 150 women who pursued fertility preservation technology. Moving between narratives of pain and empowerment, these nuanced personal stories reveal the complexity of women’s lives as they struggle to preserve and extend their fertility.

Contrary to popular belief, egg freezing is rarely about women postponing fertility for the sake of their careers. Rather, the most-educated women are increasingly forced to delay childbearing because they face a mating gap—a lack of eligible, educated, equal partners ready for marriage and parenthood. For these women, egg freezing is a reproductive backstop, a technological attempt to bridge the gap while waiting for the right partner. But it is not an easy choice for most. Their stories reveal the extent to which it is logistically complicated, physically taxing, financially demanding, emotionally draining, and uncertain in its effects.

In this powerful book, women share their reflections on their clinical encounters, as well as the immense hopes and investments they place in this high-tech fertility preservation strategy. Race, religion, and the role of men in the lives of single women pursuing this technology are also explored. A distinctly human portrait of an understudied and rapidly growing population, Motherhood on Ice examines what is at stake for women who take comfort in their frozen eggs while embarking on their quests for partnership, pregnancy, and parenting.

In the car one day, Jennifer Tiras’ recently potty-trained toddler, Avery, informed her that he had to poop. (Yikes; please, not in the new vehicle!) Thinking fast, she responded, “Sweetie … squeeze your cheeks together, and hold on just a few minutes!” When Jennifer looked in the rearview mirror, he was holding his face and squishing his cheeks like a determined little fish. This hilarious “wrong cheek” incident inspired her to document the special moments in her family life.

Jennifer graduated from the University of Houston in 1994, magna cum laude, with a degree in Early Childhood Development. With a good grasp on “how to handle children” she eagerly embraced motherhood … and quickly learned an eye-opening life truth: Nothing could have fully prepared her to be a mom! Nevertheless, she blended her educational knowledge with her heart for children and developed tips and strategies for every stage of motherhood!

Having trouble with an infant’s sleep habits? You, the parent, are in control! Let Jennifer show you some practical steps for sleep time. Does potty-training seem like you are entering a blind tunnel with no guidance? Simplify it with eight clear and achievable steps to potty-training success. How about the really big issues, like when to talk about sex, earning their own money, and keeping them close in the older stages when they want to drift away? Jenn has thought of it all, and she’s got you covered!

By weaving together detailed experiences from her teenage years to today, Jennifer tells story after story about every stage of motherhood and how it all comes back full circle. It is truth. It is emotion. And it’s told in a priceless, entertaining way that keeps the reader eagerly flipping the page to see what Jennifer might say next.

Motherhood doesn’t come with a manual, but it does indeed come with a mother.

Stepmothers often battle with a range of negative myths and stereotypes, with Cinderella’s wicked stepmother being the most infamous.

Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with British stepmothers, this book reimagines the expectations, practices and position of stepmothers through a feminist sociological lens. Combining firsthand accounts, including the author’s own experiences, the book reveals the complexities of stepfamily dynamics and how stepmothers navigate them.

By examining the interplay between personal experiences and broader gendered, historical and social structures, the author offers a fresh perspective on contemporary stepmothers and stepfamilies.

The Muslim mum is the most fertile political symbol of our times – heralded as both the solution and cause to many of the issues that erroneously come to define Muslim communities in our now globalised world. Muslim mums who are continuously spoken down to, at, or for, and very rarely conversed with in a language that sees and understands us beneath the suffocating extraneous layers of media sensationalism and political discourse. 

In the first of its kind, The Muslim (M)other looks at the blessed and fraught experience of mothering when Muslim in contemporary political times. Amidst the textures of an accelerating digital age, ubiquitous Islamophobia and an increasingly commercialised cultural climate that impacts us in ways obvious and untold. 

Childhood & the Enneagram serves as an innovative guide for parents and caregivers, offering invaluable insights into raising resilient, self-aware, and compassionate children.

Drawing from a blend of attachment theory, childhood development, and the transformative power of the Enneagram, Susan Parker Jones shares a philosophy and approach rooted in her experience as a psychotherapist specializing in childhood trauma and loss.

In a world where parenting advice often feels overwhelming and one-size-fits-all, Susan offers a refreshing approach that blends ancient wisdom with modern insights.

Inviting parents and guardians on a transformative journey of self-discovery and compassionate parenting, she empowers caregivers to understand their children’s unique personalities and needs on a deeper level, fostering authentic connections and resilience from an early age.

Susan emphasizes the importance of nurturing children’s three centers of intelligence—head (IQ), heart (EQ), and body (GQ)—to cultivate “wholehearted connection” while instilling the truth that every child is brave and worthy of love and belonging.

Caregivers are invited to embark on a journey of self-discovery, exploring their own childhood narratives alongside practical strategies for guiding their children.

Ultimately, this helpful guide equips caregivers with the tools and insights needed to navigate the complexities of childhood development, fostering deeper connections with their children while prioritizing their own well-being.

By embracing this journey, caregivers can aspire to raise resilient, empathetic individuals prepared to face the world with courage, wisdom, and compassion.

Lara Bazelon presenta un nuevo enfoque para dejar de perseguir esta idea de crianza inalcanzable: construir una «maternidad ambiciosa» en la que sus metas profesionales se conviertan en prioridad. Que una madre acepte el desequilibrio para no romperse a sí misma en mil partes y conquiste así sus sueños puede ser beneficioso no solo para ella, sino también para la educación de sus hijos. De esta manera no les heredará culpas, por el contrario, les inculcará el valor de la resiliencia, la plenitud y el amor propio.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Dear Mother… brings together mothers of all ages and backgrounds in a compendium of fictional letters, written from the heart. Great challenges and responsibilities, hopes and disappointments are explored without apology. As one mother prepares for a new-born, another shares her experience of being a single parent. Why is a mother at the primary school gate feeling burnt out by 9 am and what advice does a grandmother pass down to her granddaughter? Whether she’s sitting in the ante-natal clinic, on a bus or in the masjid, these letters reveal a variety of mothers’ inner dialogue – one which is rarely heard in society.

Bottled explains the perils moms face with drinking and chronicles the author’s path to recovery, from hitting bottom to the months of early sobriety—a blur of pain and chaos—to her now (in)frequent moments of peace. 

Recover. Rinse. Repeat.

Dana Bowman can’t escape the lure of perfectionism, trying to be a flawless wife, mother, and person in recovery. When Dana experiences a short-lived relapse during the Christmas holiday, she has the startling realization that recovery is more than just giving up alcohol.

In this funny and revealing follow-up to her best-selling book Bottled, Dana reflects on how we live in a society of excess, always pushing ourselves to do and be better. However, it doesn’t take her long to realize that self-care and getting over herself is the key to happiness.

Although single fathers as primary carers are on the rise, most single-parent households in the United States are headed by women. These women are a lucrative market for parenting books and most of such books are aimed at single mothers raising sons. This intersectional study analyses a broad range of material: books written by female and male authors, African-American and white, health professionals as well as lay people, outspokenly feminist or traditionally conservative, addressing a middle-class or a working-class readership. This allows for a comprehensive analysis of normative attitudes towards parenting, showing how class and ethnicity interact with traditional assumptions of gender and biology to produce a genre of literature that is quite restrictive, perpetuating ideas of ‘intensive mothering’.

Situating these advice books within the context of parenting experts, the US fatherhood movement, the so-called ‘boy crisis’, cultural prejudice towards single mothers and what has been termed ‘neurosexism’ and ‘neuroparenting’, this study analyses the way in which the books draw on mother-blame language, misconceptions of neuropsychological research and traditional conceptualisations of masculinity and femininity to convince the mother readers that they are unable to raise a son to be a man. Using prescriptive and often alarmist language, the authors privilege traditional assumptions of gender, hegemonic masculinity and heteronormative family structures over single parent families, same-sex parenting and single mothers by choice (via adoption or ART). In doing so, the books afford very narrow parenting roles, for fathers as well as mothers, as well as a very limited range of masculine identities for young boys. Presented as common sense advice, these books are widely read by women seeking support and it is thus vital that they be interrogated for the way they continue to construct, shape and influence expectations on parenting, as well as the identities of young boys.

As seen on BABYLIST

Mom's Choice Award Winner

From the CEO of Mommy’s Bliss comes a book for new moms that’s not about the baby. It’s about you, mama.

You might be just a few days out of the hospital or months into your sleep-deprived postpartum journey when the realization hits you: life as you know it—your whole identity—will never be the same. Mom Your Way will guide you through this fundamental shift into new motherhood. With a healthy dose of humor and comforting best-friend energy, Yasmin Kaderali shares judgment-free wisdom for navigating your postpartum life.

Based on Yasmin’s years serving moms at the helm of the wellness brand Mommy’s Bliss—and her own experience as the mom of two little boys—Mom Your Way dishes the dirt on what to expect in your postpartum months and offers useful advice on caring for your new self, from managing sleep and emotions to dealing with body changes that no one really talks about. You’ll learn about building your support network, setting boundaries with family and friends, resisting labels, and banishing mom guilt. Throughout, Yasmin offers relatable anecdotes, simple tips, trusted product recommendations, and journaling prompts to help you thrive in the fourth trimester and beyond.

A modern mothering handbook – with none of the answers and all of the encouragement.

Everyone tells you that having children is life-changing (and we're not just talking about your new habit of binge-watching Bluey episodes), but you don't really believe them until you're there in the trenches, dealing with yet another toddler tantrum in the middle of the street, after realising you forgot to buy milk, all on four hours of (broken) sleep. Parenting is one of the hardest jobs in the world, and yet everyone assumes you should be enjoying it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, which is funny because that pretty much describes your working hours. Oh, and did we mention that there are no toilet breaks, or holidays, or dare we say it... wages?

This book will be a handy companion as you deal with the ups and downs of motherhood. From making your way through those first few months of the newborn haze right through to sending them off into the world as (almost) proper adults, it contains a treasure trove of advice and words of wisdom from parents who have done it and got the (vomit-covered) T-shirt to prove it. While motherhood is undoubtedly special, it's not without it's challenges... and anyone who says otherwise is either a saint or has a really good nanny.

"Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy." Tina Fey

"There's no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one." Jill Churchill

Laugh & Reconnect With Those Who Matter Most

The idea of family lies close to the meaning of life, but in practice, families do not always come together, or chat about what matters, or laugh as much or as often as they should.

The Family Game is the solution; this is a game expressly designed to help family gatherings live up to our highest hopes. It consists of a host of questions (chosen randomly with a dice) that kick-start the best sorts of conversations: ones in which we reconnect, say things we always meant to, laugh warmly together – and remember why family counts. The cards cover five categories: Gentle Teasing, Gratitude, Self, Memories, and Regret.

A glimpse into the lives of children raised by their grandparents

Raising Grandkids focuses on “skipped generation” families or grandparent-headed households. Collecting together stories from grandparents and reflecting on his own experience as an older caregiver to his stepchildren, Gary Garrison paints a compassionate yet compelling picture of the joys, fears, and passions that drive some grandparents to put their later lives on hold to raise their children’s children. Grandparents in this situation have particular challenges, as they often have to battle their own children for custody, deal with pressures from caseworkers, negotiate their own health and financial issues, and address the guilt and resentment they may feel towards the missing son or daughter who conceived the children in their care. Many grandparents, as well, find themselves overlooked or under resourced by social services, and others may struggle with additional factors such as racism. No matter their background, grandparents looking for comfort, guidance, and wisdom will find meaning in this brave and clear-eyed book.

Release the Generational Trauma of Shame

“Karen is the wise voice you want whispering in your ear when shame knocks on your door, reminding you that you are so much more than your relationship with your mother.” —Maggie Reyes, master certified marriage coach & bestselling author of The Questions for Couples Journal

#1 New Release in Adult Children of Alcoholics and Parent & Adult Child Relationships

What is your relationship to shame? How can you overcome it and live an intentional life of vulnerability? You Are Not Your Mother guides readers on how to see shame, and live separately from it. 

Shift away from shame and turn to radical forgiveness. Grow your internal self acceptance and resilience with this guide for women. Packed with meditative prompts to help you explore your relationship to shame. You are Not Your Mother caters to your inner desires to be seen, heard, and known. The toxic generational trauma and unhealthy relationships stop with you!

Explore your personal roots to shame with an expert. As a top authority on recovering from growing up in toxic families, Karen C.L. Anderson walks you through her shame story, her relationship with her narcissistic mother, and the simple practices she has developed to alleviate guilt from unhealthy relationships. Author of bestselling Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters with over 150,000 copies sold, Karen offers tools to process, understand and move beyond childhood trauma so you can not only survive, but thrive.

Inside, you’ll find:

• Karen’s story on dealing with a narcissistic mother and how she overcame her shame
• Journal prompts, mind-body practices, and simple exercises to release shame and toxic habits
• A guide on how to finally identify shame, and how to embrace living free from it

If you enjoy therapy books and content on emotion management, then this book is for you! If you liked I’m Glad My Mom Died, Mother Hunger, or Uprooting Shame And Guilt, you’ll love You Are Not Your Mother.

Motherlode provides a canvas on which to explore the vast spectrum of emotions and experiences that accompany the birth of a child. Honest and funny, it illuminates the universality of the physical indignities, the anxieties and euphorias and the silent, toxic societal expectations that are impossible to live up to. Beautiful illustrations by Georgina McAusland run alongside inspirational quotes and thought-provoking activities for new moms. 

With people staying healthier for longer, grandparents are increasingly involved in raising their grandchildren. Grandparenting Grandchildren is the first guide of its kind written specifically for grandparents, and aims to help you raise well-rounded, ready-to-learn, happy grandchildren, even if you only look after them for a few hours a week. By explaining the latest neuro-developmental and neuro-educational research in accessible, applicable ways, it will reaffirm what you instinctively know, while providing new tools to build your grandchild's imagination, creativity and curiosity.

Combining the authors' practical experience as childhood development professionals with international research, this book helps grandparents understand the key influences on healthy development in the first 5 years: movement, music, sleep and food. Grandparenting Grandchildren gives practical advice on how to integrate these & super brain foods' best in your grandchild's life. This has been proven to have many positive benefits, including improving the ability to think creatively, building speech and language skills, promoting social skills, and driving curiosity.

Learn to build a loving, supportive relationship that helps grandchildren feel positive about their future, while constructing essential life skills that ensure they are well-rounded, happy and capable, confident learners.

Motherhood in Mexico is profoundly shaped by the legacy of colonialism. This ethnography situates motherhood in a critical global health analysis of maternal health inequalities and interventions in the southeast state of Chiapas. Using a transitional life course framework, it demonstrates how the transition to motherhood is never complete. Once a good mother is defined, she becomes undefined, the goal posts moved, and the rules confronted.

“The tumultuous feelings that accompany pregnancy loss are hard to describe, and women who experience this often feel terribly alone in their grief. But All the Love, written by three wise and compassionate women, offers much-needed understanding, consolation, wisdom, and hope. Its heartfelt and caring message will provide solace and guidance to those who have lost babies as well as those who seek to support them.” –Christine Gross-Loh Author, Parenting Without Borders and co-author, The Path

All the Love: Healing Your Heart and Finding Meaning After Pregnancy Loss is a book dedicated to supporting and empowering women and their partners through miscarriage, stillbirth, and other types of pregnancy loss.

The book is part memoir, part therapy session; combining the personal story of Kim Hooper, who endured four losses, with therapeutic insights from Meredith Resnick (a licensed social worker) and Dr. Huong Diep (a board-certified psychologist). It is our hope that reading this book feels like sitting and chatting with someone about their experience, while therapist-friends listen in to provide clarity and comfort.

All the Love is the most in-depth book available to console women and partners in the wake of pregnancy loss. Topics include how to navigate the medical part of pregnancy loss, the emotional rollercoaster of grief, connecting with your partner, returning to “normal” life, rediscovering yourself, deciding whether to try again and having a baby after a loss. The book touches on considerations for LGBTQ+ couples and people facing racial, cultural, or socioeconomic issues that compound their grief.

For a loss that is so common, each woman’s story is beautifully unique. We want each woman to feel seen in this book. We want her to feel validated and hopeful as she steps into what’s next on her journey.

“The tumultuous feelings that accompany pregnancy loss are hard to describe, and women who experience this often feel terribly alone in their grief. But All the Love, written by three wise and compassionate women, offers much-needed understanding, consolation, wisdom, and hope. Its heartfelt and caring message will provide solace and guidance to those who have lost babies as well as those who seek to support them.” –Christine Gross-Loh Author, Parenting Without Borders and co-author, The Path

All the Love: Healing Your Heart and Finding Meaning After Pregnancy Loss is a book dedicated to supporting and empowering women and their partners through miscarriage, stillbirth, and other types of pregnancy loss.

The book is part memoir, part therapy session; combining the personal story of Kim Hooper, who endured four losses, with therapeutic insights from Meredith Resnick (a licensed social worker) and Dr. Huong Diep (a board-certified psychologist). It is our hope that reading this book feels like sitting and chatting with someone about their experience, while therapist-friends listen in to provide clarity and comfort.

All the Love is the most in-depth book available to console women and partners in the wake of pregnancy loss. Topics include how to navigate the medical part of pregnancy loss, the emotional rollercoaster of grief, connecting with your partner, returning to “normal” life, rediscovering yourself, deciding whether to try again and having a baby after a loss. The book touches on considerations for LGBTQ+ couples and people facing racial, cultural, or socioeconomic issues that compound their grief.

For a loss that is so common, each woman’s story is beautifully unique. We want each woman to feel seen in this book. We want her to feel validated and hopeful as she steps into what’s next on her journey.

In this brave and devastatingly beautiful anthology, the illustrious poet and editor Aracelis Girmay gathers complex and intimate pieces that illuminate the nuances of personal and collective histories, analyses, practices, and choices surrounding pregnancy. 

Featuring the brilliant voices of writers such as Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Patricia Smith, Elizabeth Alexander, and more, this book is a lighthouse—a tool and companion—for those navigating pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, birth, loss, grief, and love.

In So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, pieces range from essays to poems to interviews, with a broad entanglement of various themes, from many different perspectives including Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and more. At a time when people are becoming more and more limited in their choices surrounding pregnancy and abortion, this record is increasingly urgent and indispensable.

In this brave and devastatingly beautiful anthology, the illustrious poet and editor Aracelis Girmay gathers complex and intimate pieces that illuminate the nuances of personal and collective histories, analyses, practices, and choices surrounding pregnancy. 

Featuring the brilliant voices of writers such as Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Patricia Smith, Elizabeth Alexander, and more, this book is a lighthouse—a tool and companion—for those navigating pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, birth, loss, grief, and love.

In So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth, pieces range from essays to poems to interviews, with a broad entanglement of various themes, from many different perspectives including Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and more. At a time when people are becoming more and more limited in their choices surrounding pregnancy and abortion, this record is increasingly urgent and indispensable.

A sentimental celebration of the power of a mother's love.

Brimming with messages of love, practical tips, inspiring quotes, heartfelt reflections and funny anecdotes, The Little Book of Mom is the ultimate ode to the highs and lows of motherhood. Mum, mom, mama, - whatever you call yours she'll love this little guide, designed to bring reassurance to mothers looking for a pocket of peace amongst the chaos.

While practicing medicine in the NICU full time for over thirty years, Susan Landers, MD met and managed many trials raising her three children, trials typical for many working mothers, such as breastfeeding, sibling rivalry, bedwetting, dyslexia, a gifted child, ADHD, a dog bite, and an adolescent eating disorder. The challenges of a full time practice and many twenty-four-hour shifts in the high-stress NICU always complicated issues with Susan’s children, but also provided her the privilege of caring for thousands of critically ill newborn infants.

Susan always felt that her career and accomplishments in medicine were equally as rewarding as raising three children. It was the constant attempt to balance these two worlds – physician and mother - that was so daunting a task. Susan believes that most, if not all, working mothers are similarly challenged as they attempt to manage their work and being a good mother. So Many Babies describes Susan’s experiences of finding resilience and endurance throughout her career as a physician and mother. It is an entertaining and reassuring story for working mothers.

Tanya Trevett is a mental health coach, teacher, and certified Reiki and IET® Practitioner, as well as the mother of three daughters with mental illnesses. In Help, I’m Failing as a Mom!, she guides mothers through the eight-step WELLNESS Process that teaches them how to handle their child's mood disorder without feeling as if they are failing. Written for parents who want to learn how to live with their child's mood disorder in a healthier way, Tanya shares what she has learned in her fifteen-year journey to help mothers:

Amie Eyre Newhouse combines her 24 years as a Registered Nurse helping patients make extraordinarily difficult medical decisions with her personal experience of surviving breast cancer and childhood trauma along with her own journey from full-time parent to empty nester together in order to help parents find their life’s purpose beyond parenting. Throughout The End Is Near, parents learn:

Megan Day, a certified career coach and mom of two, is a wise and trusted friend guiding women throughout New Mom, New Job on what their next step is. Within New Mom, New Job she takes women through the process she has used with dozens of her clients. Throughout its pages, women learn:

In Contribute!, Tatiana Amico, a successful entrepreneur and mom of two, shares her secrets on how to build a successful business that supports one’s family, all while being there for their kids' milestones. Within Contribute!, she shows women how to:

Women seek time, peace, happiness, and fulfillment but often cannot find it because they don’t think it’s possible, don’t believe they deserve it, or don’t know how to make it happen. Emerging from the other-focused world of raising young children, now struggling to figure out what they want to do and how they can actually make it happen, mothers are busier, more stressed, and less healthy than ever and many are seeking realistic answers they can implement into their frenetic lives. What makes these women miserable on the inside when it looks like they have everything they’ve always wanted on the outside? It is often the disconnect between what is truly most important to them, and how they use their time, resources and energy. Stretch Marks serve as emotional, visual, and psychological metaphors representing growth and pushing past one’s limits. Amber Trueblood addresses the challenges mothers face in a funny, entertaining, supportive, and judgement-free environment. Using The A.M.B.E.R. Mindsets, readers learn the tricks and tools necessary to stop living the life they are told they should be living, and start living freely.

It is not uncommon in today’s society to see adult children living in their parents’ home far beyond graduation. Many of these adult children are unemployed and unwilling to become independent and to move forward with their futures. Many parents struggle to find the right solution to help their children leave the nest. For these parents, it is time to get a new prescription and look at the situation from a completely new set of lenses. In New Lenses, Pam Reid shows readers how to help their adult child take steps towards being financially self-sufficient, recognize and take advantage of door-opening opportunities, and so much more. For those who wish to impact change and make a significant difference in the lives of others including their own, New Lenses is the ideal resource to help kickstart the transformation to becoming the person who will create a positive ripple of change.

Balancing the demands of modern motherhood is a tough job. Between kids, work obligations, social commitments, and household duties, trying to fit in a little me time (let alone a date night), balance can seem practically impossible. When moms do well at work, they feel like they’re failing at home, and when they focus on their family, they feel like they’re falling behind at work. The Possibility Mom provides readers solutions to trim the to-do list, clarify their priorities, get more done in less time, and ensure they are living a life they love—one that they design. Interior designer and lifestyle expert Lisa Canning shows moms not only what is possible, but how to design those possibilities themselves.

Your child was born to be an amazing gift to the world! As a mother of four children, Neisha Hernandez knows the joys, struggles, and hopes mothers have for their daughters. Through her thirty-year career of coaching children in the classroom, Neisha shares the proven tools for helping your kids navigate life and stay focused. Shine shows mothers how to connect with their daughters on a deeper level; how to unlock their hidden potential and gifts; own and know their own worthiness; and find their Purpose in Life. With the ability to be read and applied in bite-sized chunks for busy moms, SHINE teaches mothers how to lead their daughters into a life of great love, great service, and great purpose.

Ever feel bad for losing control and screaming, only to contend with the guilt of being mean and the madness of a child who still won't listen? After working with moms who wished life as a parent wasn’t so stressful, Mary Tan shows moms how to raise a child while staying cool, calm, and collected so they can be the moms they've always wanted to be: patient, loving, and in control.

The Empowered Child is an eye-opening guide detailing the way out of parenting stress, so moms can take their power back without losing their cool. It reveals how to effectively coach children through life’s challenges with greater ease and confidence, including the Empower Method, which takes a wholistic approach to helping moms deal with a child that is hypersensitive yet strong-willed. Ultimately, moms regain their confidence and truly enjoy being a mom again!

Stephanie McAuliffe shares her journey of growing up in a family where cocktails started by 5:00 p.m. She reveals her marriages to two alcoholics, and shows how she navigated life being surrounded by alcohol and alcoholics—and broke an unhealthy family cycle that went back at least four generations. Full of stories of survival, The Message in the Bottle is packed with support to help children and spouses of alcoholics find peace amidst the chaos.

If your daughter just rattled your world with the words, “Mom, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m pregnant…” you may be wondering, “How are we going to get through this and be OK?” There are so many books written about teenage pregnancy, but none that understand what’s in the heads and hearts of the moms who are now guiding their daughters through this very difficult season of their lives. Help! My Teen Is Pregnant will restore your personal power when you feel like your whole world just blew up!

Motherhood doesn’t have to mean losing yourself...

Most moms are grateful they make the choice to be a stay-at-home mom (SAHM), but after a couple of years, they may feel like they’re losing their mind. The alternative is going back to work, but that doesn’t seem right either.

Flex mom is for mothers who want a third model of motherhood, somewhere between stay-at-home mom and working mom. This third way is to be the primary caregiver for their children while deliberately creating a path that fuels their passions – leaving them fulfilled and confident.

Described as a melting pot of positive psychology and coaching, with the humor and honesty of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Flex Mom helps moms make the fleeting childrearing years their best yet.