Moms Blogs Discuss The Other Mother by Gwendolen Gross
"Why bother having children if you don't want to raise them?" asks Thea (the stay-at-home mom) of Amanda (the working mom) in Gwendolen Gross’ new novel The Other Mother (http://www.The-
Inspired by the release of the new motherhood novel The Other Mother, contributors to the Silicon Valley, Chicago, Washington DC Metro, and New York City Moms Blogs are currently engaging in an intense discussion about balancing work and family.
In many of the comments on the Chicago Moms Blog, moms relate their own lives to the main characters in the novel: Thea (the stay-at-home mom) and Amanda (the working mom). Moms are exploring the question of how we allow and trust other people to care for our children.
Jill Asher writes on the Chicago Moms Blog, “I could totally relate to both Thea and Amanda. At some points in the book, I kept yelling (to myself)... just talk to each other! Get your issues out on the table and you will both feel a lot better. At other parts, I wanted to give them each a big hug and tell them that they were doing a great job as a mom.”
Gwendolen Gross, the author of The Other Mother, comments, “I wrote this novel with one narrator who is a stay-at-home mom and the other a working mom to accomplish something I thought non-fiction couldn't. What I wanted was to be able to stand in shoes of both moms, in hopes of illustrating how we judge each other unnecessarily, and understanding, myself, how important it is to respect other people's methods and choices even if they don't match my own.”
The discussion continues and all blog readers are invited to participate at: http://svmomblog.typepad.com/
The four Moms Blogs are the brainchild of Jill Asher and Pamela Miller Hornik, and they have received national media attention for their coverage of parenting issues in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun Times and on ABC News.
The Other Mother is described by Booklist as "an electrifyingly complex and explosively gripping portrait of contemporary, have-it-all motherhood,"
Gwendolen Gross is the author of the novels Field Guide, Getting Out, and most recently, The Other Mother. She graduated from Oberlin College, received an MFA in fiction and poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and was selected for the PEN West Emerging Writers Fellowship. In addition to her novels, Ms. Gross has published poems and stories in dozens of literary magazines, as well as essays in collections including It's A Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons and It's A Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters. Ms. Gross lives in northern New Jersey with her family.
