What No One Tells the Mom: Surviving the Early Years of Parenthood With Your Sanity, Your Sex Life and YourSense of Humor Intact
Stark follows upWhat No One Tells the Bride(2000) with an amusing look at the realities of motherhood. Drawing on her own experiences giving birth to her first child at the age of 33, as well as interviews with 100 women, therapists, marriage and sex researchers, child psychiatrists (and a few husbands), Stark offers survival tips to mothers. Her primary advice for them is to lower their personal expectations and resist the myth of the supermom. She takes aim at common myths--that the stomach will shrink right after the baby is born, that baby blues last only a few days, that fathers will share in the work--and advises women on how to deal with the stress and enormous work of becoming mothers. She focuses on the first five years of motherhood and the demands of balancing expectations of fathers and children and the woman's own need for personal time, advocating that women develop "mompools," or bands of supportive mothers. Good, sound advice.Vanessa BushCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved