When Nancy Reddy had her first child, she approached the situation like the overachieving PhD student she was at the time: She went to find the best research on parenting, studied it, and then tried to apply it so that everything would work out perfectly. The problem is, a lot of that research about caregiving and attachment turned out to be based on flawed lab studies, sloppy research, and so much misogyny.

Nancy joins us to talk about the problems she found and to offer alternatives that can benefit parents today. Her new book is called The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas about How to Be a Good Mom.

Nancy Reddy is the author of The Good Mother Myth. Her previous books include the poetry collections Pocket Universe and Double Jinx, a winner of the National Poetry Series. With Emily Pérez, she’s co-editor of The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. Her essays have appeared in Slate, Poets & Writers, Romper, The Millions, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Stockton University and writes the newsletter Write More, Be Less Careful.

Full transcript available here at relationscapes.org.