Did you hear?! We’re recording our 100th episode LIVE in San Francisco on May 8th as part of a series with KALW (91.7 FM). Get tickets your here! We will be joined by Berkeley-based poet Rachel Richardson, and KALW will be airing excerpts from our show all week long leading up to the live event.

In this episode for our lovely paid subscribers (thank you…

A quick announcement: We will be recording our 100th episode LIVE in San Francisco on May 8th at 7pm. Poet Rachel Richardson will join us for a conversation about the legitimacy of motherhood as a serious topic for artists, academics and writers. We have room for 80 people, and we’d love to have you there. Click here to get your ticket!

In this episode, author Julia Cooke joins Sarah and Miranda to discuss her new book, Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World, and how it made us think differently about maternal ambivalence, the woman’s gaze, and the relationship between work, adventure, and motherhood, as well as bring us much-needed images of raising young children in a world that is rapidly descending into fascism.

Links:

* Starry and Restless by Julia Cooke

* Joan Crillo

* China To Me by Emily Hahn

* Rebecca West

* Martha Gellhorn

* Moms Gone Wild (The Cut)

* Nina McLaughlin Hammer Head

* How It Feels To Be Alive by Megan O’Grady

* Queen Mab by Emily McBride

If you love the work we do, please consider becoming a ✨paid subscriber✨ on substack. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. Or, support us by following, sharing or reviewing our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (thank you!).

You can follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall).

Sociologist Nina Bandelj, author of the new book Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting, joins us for a wonderful, perspective-altering converstation about how and why modern parenthood feels the way it feels. She unpacks for us how raising kids has become a project, how kids became ‘human capital,’ and what it means that parenthood is privatized, economized, and (a new word for us!) “emotionalized.” Turns out, “just wanting your kids to be happy” is a goal that’s perhaps not as laid-back as it seems.

Plus, tons of culture recs, including the new Robyn album, Sexistential, and Sarah’s recently upgraded nail game.

Links:

* Pricing the Priceless Child by Viviana A. Selizer

* Thinking Like an Economist by Elizabeth Popp Berman

* Lenore Skenazy

If you love the work we do, please consider becoming a ✨paid subscriber✨ on substack. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. Or, support us by following, sharing or reviewing our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (thank you!).

You can follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall).

Paid subscribers, this one’s for you! We explore the question of whether or not we do too many things from many angles. If you find yourself responding to PTA emails at 3 in the morning, does that mean you’re 100% for sure doing too many things? What if it doesn’t!? Should we consider switching to AI friendships in order to save time?

Also:

* Longing for …

Kaitlyn Teer joins us again! This time, she’s here to talk about her new book, Little Apocalypses; Essays on Motherhood, Climate Change, and Hope at the End of the World.

The book is kaleidoscopic and specific all at once, and we both loved it, even though it’s full of heavy stuff about climate grief and how much we’ve already lost. In this episode, there are so many moments of discovery, including a long chat about the powerful, fantastic phrases that Teer built the book of essays around. As a teaser, here are some of the ideas we explore:

* Muscular hope

* Maternal ecodistress

* Green third shift

* Maternal time

* Ecological compassion

* Apocalyptic mindfulness

And much more in this inspiring conversation about care, climate, activism and how we can show up for our children as we face a changed planet, together.

Links:

* Sarah on Jodeci’s Feenin’

* Your Local Epidemiologist

* Maternal Ecodistress

* Pre-order Kaitlyn’s book, Little Apocalypses

* Sunaura Taylor’s Disabled Ecologies

* Parents Guide to Climate Revolution

If you love the work we do, please consider becoming a ✨paid subscriber✨ on substack. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. Or, support us by following, sharing or reviewing our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (thank you!).

You can follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall).

We welcome Amil for her THIRD Mother of it All appearance, where she gives a moving eulogy for the career ambition that has died out for her as she’s gotten older and had more kids. We also talk shitty teenaged jobs, perimenopausal sex drive, what we think our kids are learning about money and work, and the new Muppets Show.

Links:

* Life After Ambition by Amil Niazi

* Want to Change Careers? Three People Share Their Success Stories (via Big Salad)

* Find a perimenopause-aware practitioner via The Menopause Society

* Mark Rober Crunch Labs box

* The new Muppet Show (Disney)

If you love the work we do, please consider becoming a ✨paid subscriber✨ on substack. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. Or, support us by following, sharing or reviewing our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (thank you!).

You can follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall).

Dr. Megan Prior is a parent and a board-certified pediatrician in DC who serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Early Childhood. A lot of us know her from her popular social media account, Itty Bitty Revolution, where she describes herself as a pediatrician and mom with a policy obsession.

We love her work and were thrilled to have her on the show to chat about the real, massive impacts that federal policies have on American families. From recent changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, to age-old issues around paid parental leave and childcare costs, Prior helps us think about where we are right now and what parents today can and should be focused on and fighting for to make family life better for all.

Links:

* Dr. Megan Prior on Instagram

* Raising a Nation: 10 Reasons Every American Has a Stake in Child Care for All by Elliot Haspel

* Biden’s Build Better Back bill

* The Economics of Early Childhood : “Nobel Laureate economist James Heckman estimated that every dollar invested in early childhood programs yields a return of $7 to $13 in economic benefits long term.”

* Adultism and children’s rights with Eloise Rickman

* Courtney Martin on right-sizing

* Bridgerton

* Live-action Cinderella

* the Just Tell Your Kids What To Do essay

If you love the work we do, please consider becoming a ✨paid subscriber✨ on substack. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. Or, support us by following, sharing or reviewing our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (thank you!).

You can follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall).

In this subscriber-only episode (you can become a paid subscriber by clicking here), we explore something we’ve been wondering about for a while: Why do we care so much about what other parents do? Why are we inclined to examine other parents choices? What should each of our b****y, judgy alter-egos be named? Does it tame them to name them, like they sa…

We sit down with the whip-smart UK-based American journalist Stephanie H. Murray (a contributing writer for The Atlantic) to talk about the flawed baseline logic of American parenthood, freedom, control and the sacrifices we make to be part of a community. Murray explains that finding community may mean that we can’t “overindex” every little parenting decision, why ‘freedom’ as parents and kids might be more complex than it seems, why she wishes her neighbors would yell at her kids more often, and more. Plus: Book recommendations, parenthood and vigilance, Fanta in the UK vs. US, and Sarah demands permission to give your child the trashiest birthday present she can find.

Links:

* Stephanie H. Murray newsletter, Family Stuff

* The Isolation of Intensive Parenting

* Bring Back Communal Kid Discipline

* “No gifts” or “Yes gifts?” Edith Zimmerman and I hash out who is superior (from Evil Witches Newsletter )

* What’s On Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life by Alison Daminger

If you love the work we do, please consider becoming a ✨paid subscriber✨ on substack. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. Or, support us by following, sharing or reviewing our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (thank you!).

You can follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall).

Dr. Jack Schneider, Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor at UMass Amherst and and host of the Have You Heard podcast about education policy, joins us to break down the recent “schools are bad” media bonanza (links below). Dr. Schneider digs in to what’s flawed about the panic-inducing articles about the state of American public education, and shares tips on what to say to the person next to us at a dinner party who starts to s**t on our kids’ public school. Also, the questions to ask your kid if you really want to know if they’re school is good, and a thought-provoking take on Little Free Libraries.

Links:

* America’s Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem? From A.D.H.D. to anxiety, disorders have risen as the expectations of childhood have changed. By Jia Lynn Yang (New York Times)

* The Big Fail Student achievement has fallen off a cliff. And neither Trump nor the pandemic is to blame. By Andrew Rice (New York Magazine)

* Jack Schneider, educational historian and professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

* The Education Wars (Jack Schneider)

* Beyond Test Scores (Jack Schneider)

* Jack Schneider in The Nation

* r/Teachers: “What does this generation of students do better than others?” (via Evil Witches Newsletter )

* Scopes Monkey Trial

* Arizona Education Debit Card

* Teachers Have It Easy

* California Healthy Kids Survey

* The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

* The City & The City by China Miéville

If you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. And it’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).

Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.

Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social)