Pregnant Pause by Carrie Friedman – Book Review
Witty Memoir Comments on Birth, Parenting and Pre-Partum Depression
Jun 8, 2009
Carrie Friedman explains in the introduction to her book, Pregnant Pause: My Journey Through Obnoxious Questions, Baby Lust, Meddling Relatives, and Pre-Partum Depression, that she has written it "for anyone who had or has had reservations about parenthood and its culture and is reaching out for solidarity."
Readers will find that reading Pregnant Pause is like hanging out with their funniest, most smart-mouthed girlfriend, the one with the guts to say everything they were thinking about motherhood and parenting, but were too afraid – or too polite – to say out loud.
About Carrie Friedman and Her Work
Friedman is a Los Angeles freelance writer whose 2007 Newsweek essay "Stop Setting Alarms on My Biological Clock" elicited many responses from readers and inspired her to write Pregnant Pause. Friedman's other credits include a humorous monthly web column, "Discount Therapy."
Pregnant Pause, like the author's other work, is dripping with delightful sarcasm and laugh-out-loud social commentary. For example, her handy list of suggested responses to the "When are you going to have babies?" question includes the retort: "Well, we had one. You must not have read about it." And she writes about inconsiderate friends, ill-mannered children, the unfairness of the baby doll dress trend, and many other topics, with a similarly dry wit.
Thoughts on Motherhood
Amid the humor, Pregnant Pause is a touching and honest personal story, expressing the anxiety and conflicting feelings many women feel about the idea of motherhood. For example, she writes about having baby lust while also having doubts about her ability to keep a four-legged "practice kid," a beagle named Bowie, alive. She also admits she never learned to cook for fear of ending up "relegated to the kitchen" the way she saw her mother, a nurse, pull a second shift caring for the family at home.
Friedman also describes friends whose lives, passions, and goals change after they become mothers, and who are alternately condescending and wistful about life without children. It's no wonder Friedman has some reservations about becoming a mother. Many women in their twenties and thirties, both those who have children and those who don't, may recognize a bit of themselves in her personal reflections
Women's Choices and Parenting Styles
Some of Friedman's observations about other women's choices come across as a bit smug. She does, after all, discuss parenting from an armchair perspective. And her critiques of birth and parenting methods, such as attachment parenting, Waldorf schools and the "maternal narcissism" of home birthing do not include any statistics or other concrete information about the safety or effectiveness of such trends.
Friedman's anxieties about parenting have to do, in part, with fear about becoming like her friends – one of whom created a registry of designer gifts for her two-year-old son's birthday party – whose choices and parenting styles she discusses in the book. If, as she claims in her Newsweek essay, Friedman is in need of better maternal role models, she might try looking outside of Hollywood. Still, readers will find themselves laughing out loud at many of Friedman's anecdotes about her friends' new parenting obsessions.
Entertaining Nonfiction
This book is a clever response to cultural attitudes about childbearing and child rearing, and a convincing argument for common sense parenting techniques. And Friedman has certainly accomplished what she set out to do: provide a voice for the many women (and men) who experience the mixed feelings she describes about having children. And she has managed to do it in such an entertaining way! Pregnant Pause is thought-provoking nonfiction that is enjoyable enough to read on a beach – or an airplane, if the obnoxious kid in the next seat is not too distracting.
Pregnant Pause: My Journey Through Obnoxious Questions, Baby Lust, Meddling Relatives, and Pre-Partum Depression by Carrie Friedman, Citadel Press, 2009. Price: $14.95 US/$17.95 CAN. ISBN - 13: 978-0-8065-3116-8
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