Four mothers An intimate journey through the first year of parenthood in four countries

Washington, DC--based foreign news correspondent Leonard, the mother of three young children, started tracking the experiences in 2022 of four women about to give birth in different parts of the world: Japan, Finland, Kenya, and the U.S. She chose middle-class, urban subjects and followed them from the last weeks of their pregnancies through their infants' births and first year. These engaging case studies reveal evolving personal relationships and subjects' physical, emotional, financial, and social circumstances while considering how various societies support new mothers. Despite wide gaps and variances in the amounts of assistance offered by the four mothers' relatives, government programs, social agencies, employers, and insurance plans, similarities emerged. None of them had complete agency over their circumstances, such as birthing options, healthcare, parental leave, and returning to work. All, meanwhile, reported feelings of isolation and inadequacy and being overwhelmed by fatigue and onslaughts of medical directives and societal expectations. Their stories resonate and reflect current universal demographic trends: changing family structures, more women in the workplace, an increase in single moms. These intriguing, real-life examples provide strong testimony for the need to take better care of our newest and most vulnerable fellow humans.

"The way societies support families is critical to how women experience motherhood," journalist Leonard asserts in this by turns piercing and poignant debut. Through four profiles of mothers living in four different countries, Leonard provides a fine-grained look at the evolution of each woman's thoughts and feelings over the course of her first year of motherhood. Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations made while shadowing her subjects, she tracks how their day-to-day experiences of raising a newborn are impacted by the safety nets (or lack thereof) that encompass them on a "social, cultural, and state" level. In Finland, for example, Anna has access to multiple state services that ease the burden of motherhood--including a year of paid leave and subsidized day care--while Chelsea in Kenya, who theoretically has access to subsidized day care, struggles to find a provider. But state services are only part of the complex equation Leonard articulates. Each woman also contends with far more ephemeral forces in the cultural and interpersonal spheres--ranging from Tsukasa's wrestling with societal pressure in Japan to become a stay-at-home mom to Sarah's uncertainty in the U.S. about whether her polyamorous relationship will impact her child--all of which Leonard relays in lithe, captivating prose. ("Freed from the fuss of romance, she throws herself into the straightforward salve of scheduling," Leonard writes of Anna as she initiates custody proceedings with her estranged partner.) This is an enthralling and kaleidoscopic view of modern motherhood. (May)