Mother's Chronicles

Download Mother's Chronicles PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9788185137728
Total Pages : 446 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (377 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Mother's Chronicles by : Mother

Download or read book Mother's Chronicles written by Mother and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles of an associate of Sri Aurobindo, 1872-1950, Indic philosopher.

The Mommy Chronicles

Download The Mommy Chronicles PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Hay House, Inc
ISBN 13 : 1401937373
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (19 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Mommy Chronicles by : Sara Ellington

Download or read book The Mommy Chronicles written by Sara Ellington and published by Hay House, Inc. This book was released on 2005-02-01 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When girlfriends Stephanie Triplett and Sara Ellington realized that they were both pregnant and their babies were due just weeks apart, they began e-mailing each other constantly. Throughout their individual journeys, both women discovered many aspects of pregnancy, childbirth, and especially motherhood that no one ever seemed to talk about. Stephanie and Sara had both read every book on these subjects they could find so why weren’t they prepared for the roller-coaster ride they were about to embark on? Why hadn’t anyone ever given then the real truth about being a Mommy before?! The Mommy Chronicles is a warm, candid, and sometimes irreverent view into the lives and emotions of these two new mothers. In intimate and often hilarious detail, the authors share their own diverse-and universal-experiences as they progress from being pregnant…to being parents. Listen in on their conversations as they laugh, cry, rage, and celebrate. Labor and delivery, postpartum depression, career choices, daycare dilemmas, husbands who don't get it - it's all here, presented in an entertaining, easy-to-read format.

And Now We Have Everything

Download And Now We Have Everything PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316393835
Total Pages : 169 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (163 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis And Now We Have Everything by : Meaghan O'Connell

Download or read book And Now We Have Everything written by Meaghan O'Connell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A raw, funny, and fiercely honest account of becoming a mother before feeling like a grown up. When Meaghan O'Connell got accidentally pregnant in her twenties and decided to keep the baby, she realized that the book she needed -- a brutally honest, agenda-free reckoning with the emotional and existential impact of motherhood -- didn't exist. So she decided to write it herself. And Now We Have Everything is O'Connell's exploration of the cataclysmic, impossible-to-prepare-for experience of becoming a mother. With her dark humor and hair-trigger B.S. detector, O'Connell addresses the pervasive imposter syndrome that comes with unplanned pregnancy, the fantasies of a "natural" birth experience that erode maternal self-esteem, post-partum body and sex issues, and the fascinating strangeness of stepping into a new, not-yet-comfortable identity. Channeling fears and anxieties that are still taboo and often unspoken, And Now We Have Everything is an unflinchingly frank, funny, and visceral motherhood story for our times, about having a baby and staying, for better or worse, exactly yourself. Smart, funny, and true in all the best ways, this book made me ache with recognition." -- Cheryl Strayed

Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother

Download Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Hachette Books
ISBN 13 : 0316415634
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (164 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother by : Barry Sonnenfeld

Download or read book Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother written by Barry Sonnenfeld and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **A New York Times Editor's Choice selection!** This outrageous and hilarious memoir follows a film and television director’s life, from his idiosyncratic upbringing to his unexpected career as the director behind such huge film franchises as The Addams Family and Men in Black. Barry Sonnenfeld's philosophy is, "Regret the Past. Fear the Present. Dread the Future." Told in his unmistakable voice, Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother is a laugh-out-loud memoir about coming of age. Constantly threatened with suicide by his over-protective mother, disillusioned by the father he worshiped, and abused by a demonic relative, Sonnenfeld somehow went on to become one of Hollywood's most successful producers and directors. Written with poignant insight and real-life irony, the book follows Sonnenfeld from childhood as a French horn player through graduate film school at NYU, where he developed his talent for cinematography. His first job after graduating was shooting nine feature length pornos in nine days. From that humble entrée, he went on to form a friendship with the Coen Brothers, launching his career shooting their first three films. Though Sonnenfeld had no ambition to direct, Scott Rudin convinced him to be the director of The Addams Family. It was a successful career move. He went on to direct many more films and television shows. Will Smith once joked that he wanted to take Sonnenfeld to Philadelphia public schools and say, "If this guy could end up as a successful film director on big budget films, anyone can." This book is a fascinating and hilarious roadmap for anyone who thinks they can't succeed in life because of a rough beginning.

Don't Mom Alone

Download Don't Mom Alone PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Revell
ISBN 13 : 1493431978
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (934 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Don't Mom Alone by : Heather MacFadyen

Download or read book Don't Mom Alone written by Heather MacFadyen and published by Revell. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Being a good mom isn't about doing everything right to create a set of perfect trophy children--though every mom has felt the pressure to do just that and to do it all on her own. To ask for help feels like defeat. Yet when we try to do it all by our own strength, we end up depleted, lonely, and ineffective. Heather MacFadyen wants you to know that you are not meant to go it alone. Sharing her most vulnerable, hard mom moments, she shows how moms can be empowered by God, supported by others, and connected with their children. With encouragement and insight, she helps you foster the key relationships you need to be the mom you want to be. Whether you work or stay home, whether you have teenagers or babes in arms, you'll find here a compassionate friend who wants the best--not just for your kids but for you.

A Room with a Darker View

Download A Room with a Darker View PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Doppelhouse Press
ISBN 13 : 9781733957908
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (579 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis A Room with a Darker View by : Claire Phillips

Download or read book A Room with a Darker View written by Claire Phillips and published by Doppelhouse Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I am going blind. I am going blind," my mother would proclaim whenever I would call her in the psychiatric hospital, from almost three thousand miles away in Los Angeles. "By tomorrow," my mother would shout into the phone, "I will be blind." For years she had coped on her own until her doctor reduced her Haldol in hopes of decreasing harmful neurological side effects. The results were cataclysmic. This would be one of many relapses after receiving a diagnosis for paranoid schizophrenia in her mid-forties, after a ten-year prolonged psychosis during which my mother worked as criminal public defense counsel on behalf of some of New York and New Jersey's most disadvantaged residents. A Room with a Darker View is an unflinching, feminist work that chronicles the author's troubled relationship with her mother, an Oxford-trained lawyer, whose severe illness -- marked by manic bouts of senseless laughter, persistent delusions, and florid hallucinations -- went unrecognized for decades by both her husband, a world-class British astrophysicist, and her father, a Jewish-Zimbabwean doctor knighted by Pope Paul VI. Told in fragments, flashbacks, and chronicling the most extreme but unfortunately common aspects of schizophrenia, this elegantly written memoir is a reflection on illness, shame, and the generation gaps that have defined mother-daughter relationships amid the evolution of feminism in the 20th century. Like Porochista Khakpour's lauded memoir, Sick (2018), A Room with a Darker View is not a linear tale of redemption or restitution. Rather, it challenges conceptions about mental illness, difficulties caring for an aging parent with a chronic disease, and how we frame contributions by outliers to society, while offering a scathing look at a broken medical system, the unwillingness of an elite educated family to reckon with its secrets, and finally, the universally-understood difficulty of caring for an aging parent with a chronic illness. Unsurprisingly, feminists have been at the forefront of writing illness narratives, from Virginia Woolf to Audre Lord and Susan Sontag. My family's inability to accommodate my mother's illness, the perniciousness of her particular subtype of schizophrenia, paranoia, and the story of women's fight for gender equality in both the workplace and at home are part of this chronicle. In 500-word vignettes A Room with a Darker View retrospectively examines the trauma of undiagnosed mental illness besieging a mother-daughter relationship from toddlerhood through college and into the author's adult life as a writer and lecturer. Of particular note, the author documents her mother's determination in trying to find a place for herself in the male dominated field of law in the 1970s, and her equal determination to recover some semblance of a life after a difficult diagnosis, as she becomes heavily medicated and impoverished by divorce. Only with her mother's final relapse at 73 did the author begin to tell this story, first in Black Clock, an essay for which she received a Pushcart nomination and notable mention in The Best American Essays 2015.

Inferno

Download Inferno PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
ISBN 13 : 1250623707
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (56 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Inferno by : Catherine Cho

Download or read book Inferno written by Catherine Cho and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice "Inferno is a disturbing and masterfully told memoir, but it’s also an important one that pushes back against powerful taboos. . ." --The New York Times Book Review "Explosive" --Good Morning America "Sublime" --Bookpage (starred review) When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip’s end, she develops psychosis, a complete break from reality, which causes her to lose all sense of time and place, including what is real and not real. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity. In this unwaveringly honest, insightful, and often shocking memoir Catherine reconstructs her sense of self, starting with her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants, moving through a traumatic past relationship, and on to the early years of her courtship with and marriage to her husband, James. She masterfully interweaves these parts of her past with a vivid, immediate recounting of the days she spent in the ward. The result is a powerful exploration of psychosis and motherhood, at once intensely personal, yet holding within it a universal experience – of how we love, live and understand ourselves in relation to each other.

Unbroken Homes

Download Unbroken Homes PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317720075
Total Pages : 438 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (177 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Unbroken Homes by : J Dianne Garner

Download or read book Unbroken Homes written by J Dianne Garner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the real-life triumphs and tragedies of single-parent mothers! Unbroken Homes is a “story quilt” of personal narratives constructed from in-depth, case study interviews of five single-parent mothers. The book chronicles their journeys as mothers, daughters, and women, in relationships and in solitude, displaying their stories in their own words like the squares of a multicolored quilt. Unbroken Homes breaks through the stigma associated with “broken homes” and provides a new perspective on the reorganization of American families. Unbroken Homes encourages you to rethink some damaging stereotypical assumptions about children from single-mother headed homes. Drawing information from family research, counseling, and a cross-section of social sciences, this book is pertinent to any professional who works with single parents or their children. Unbroken Homes does not deal with what is “typical” in the single-parenting experience, nor does it give advice or proselytize. Rather, its purpose is to discover the meaning that single-parent mothers bring to their own lives, helping you to understand the dynamics of single-parent families from a uniquely personal perspective. In Unbroken Homes you will witness the ways that these women: experience the ill effects of gender role socialization work to overcome stigma redefine ideals for family life and gender expectations balance responsibilities in and outside of their homes stretch finances to meet the needs of their families regain strength and self-confidence encourage their children's development affirm the strength of their families cope with depression develop networks of support This intensely personal collection of women's stories and reflections is a must read for everyone who seeks a better understanding of divorce, single-parenting, and being alone, from an insider's perspective.

A Place to Belong

Download A Place to Belong PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 059342185X
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (934 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis A Place to Belong by : Amber O'Neal Johnston

Download or read book A Place to Belong written by Amber O'Neal Johnston and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide for families of all backgrounds to celebrate cultural heritage and embrace inclusivity in the home and beyond. Gone are the days when socially conscious parents felt comfortable teaching their children to merely tolerate others. Instead, they are looking for a way to authentically embrace the fullness of their diverse communities. A Place to Belong offers a path forward for families to honor their cultural heritage and champion diversity in the context of daily family life by: • Fostering open dialogue around discrimination, race, gender, disability, and class • Teaching “hard history” in an age-appropriate way • Curating a diverse selection of books and media choices in which children see themselves and people who are different • Celebrating cultural heritage through art, music, and poetry • Modeling activism and engaging in community service projects as a family Amber O’Neal Johnston, a homeschooling mother of four, shows parents of all backgrounds how to create a home environment where children feel secure in their own personhood and culture, enabling them to better understand and appreciate people who are racially and culturally different. A Place to Belong gives parents the tools to empower children to embrace their unique identities while feeling beautifully tethered to their global community.

The Mama Chronicles

Download The Mama Chronicles PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496835271
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Mama Chronicles by : Teresa Nicholas

Download or read book The Mama Chronicles written by Teresa Nicholas and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Life Writing Growing up in the Delta town of Yazoo City, Mississippi, Teresa Nicholas believed that she and her country-born and -bred mother weren’t close. She knew little of her mother’s early life as a sharecropper during the Great Depression, but whenever she brought up the subject, her taciturn mother would snap, “You ask too many questions, young’un.” Nicholas left Mississippi to attend college, then settled in New York to work in the hard-driving world of commercial book publishing. Twenty-five years later, eager for a change, she and her husband decided to shift careers to writing, trading their home in the New York suburbs for a casita in the Mexican Highlands. But as her mother’s health deteriorated, Nicholas found herself spending more time in the small town she thought she had left behind. Over long afternoons in front of Turner Classic Movies, she grew closer to her mother, coaxing stories from her about her hardscrabble past—until a major stroke threatened to silence her mother's newfound voice. Torn between her new home in Mexico and her old home in Mississippi, Nicholas struggled to find her place in the world. She discovered that the past isn’t always the way we remember it, and as the years ticked by, that she and her mother could grow closer still. The Mama Chronicles: A Memoir is a funny and poignant account of a mother-daughter relationship and, ultimately, a meditation on acceptance and what it means to call a place home.

Infinity Chronicles Book Two

Download Infinity Chronicles Book Two PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Independently Published
ISBN 13 : 9781093521689
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (216 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Infinity Chronicles Book Two by : Albany Walker

Download or read book Infinity Chronicles Book Two written by Albany Walker and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-04-26 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I'm learning to accept that my entire life has been a lie, and that with my mother's disappearance there are mysteries I may never uncover. Not to mention, my abilities are manifesting and I'm just beginning to understand what being part of an Infinity really means. As my relationship with each guy grows, so does the Infinity bond between us. Living with four moody guys-who give me butterflies with a simple look-can be slightly overwhelming. Still, I need answers, and moving forward is the only way to get them. But there is a problem-each revelation provokes new questions, and secrets I may not be ready for are rising to the surface.Slow Burn Reverse Harem MMFM

On Becoming Baby Wise

Download On Becoming Baby Wise PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Parent-Wise Solutions, Incorporated
ISBN 13 : 9780971453203
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (532 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis On Becoming Baby Wise by : Gary Ezzo

Download or read book On Becoming Baby Wise written by Gary Ezzo and published by Parent-Wise Solutions, Incorporated. This book was released on 2001 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Discover the positive prescription for curing sleepless nights and fussy babies. Recommended by doctors across the country." - Back cover.

O Mother, Where Art Thou?

Download O Mother, Where Art Thou? PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 131749072X
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis O Mother, Where Art Thou? by : Julie Kelso

Download or read book O Mother, Where Art Thou? written by Julie Kelso and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Kelso, the Book of Chronicles silences women in specific ways, most radically through their association with maternity. Drawing on the work of two feminist philosophers, Luce Irigaray and Michelle Boulous Walker, she argues that we may discern two principal strategies of silencing women in Chronicles: disavowal and repression of the maternal body. In its simplest form, the silencing of women takes place through both an explicit and implicit strategy of excluding them from the central action. Largely banished from the central action, they are hardly able to contribute to the production of Israel s past. On a more complex level, however, women are most effectively silenced through their association with maternity, because the maternal body is both disavowed and repressed in Chronicles. The association of women with maternity, along with the disavowal and repression of the maternal body as origin of the masculine subject, effects and guarantees the silence of the feminine, enabling man to imagine himself as sole producer of his world. These strategies of silencing the feminine need to be understood in relation to the relative absence of women from the narrative world of Chronicles. Kelso argues that Chronicles depends on the absence and silence of women for its imaginary coherence. This argument is enabled by Irigarayan theory. But more importantly, Kelso suggests that Irigaray also offers us a viable mode (not method) of reading, writing, listening, and speaking as woman (whatever that might mean), in relation to the so-called origins of western culture, specifically the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. She argues that Irigaray enables a not only rigorous, feminist critique of patriarchy and its many texts, but also, somewhat more charitably, a mode of reading that enables women to read the past differently, seeking out what remains to be discovered, especially the forgotten future in the past.

Mom & Me & Mom

Download Mom & Me & Mom PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0679645470
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (796 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Mom & Me & Mom by : Maya Angelou

Download or read book Mom & Me & Mom written by Maya Angelou and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A moving memoir about the legendary author’s relationship with her own mother. Emma Watson’s Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick! The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother. For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence—a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them. Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, Mom & Me & Mom explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights. Praise for Mom & Me & Mom “Mom & Me & Mom is delivered with Angelou’s trademark good humor and fierce optimism. If any resentments linger between these lines, if lives are partially revealed without all the bitter details exposed, well, that is part of Angelou’s forgiving design. As an account of reconciliation, this little book is just revealing enough, and pretty irresistible.”—The Washington Post “Moving . . . a remarkable portrait of two courageous souls.”—People “[The] latest, and most potent, of her serial autobiographies . . . [a] tough-minded, tenderhearted addition to Angelou’s spectacular canon.”—Elle “Mesmerizing . . . Angelou has a way with words that can still dazzle us, and with her mother as a subject, Angelou has a near-perfect muse and mystery woman.”—Essence

Bad Mother

Download Bad Mother PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0767932161
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (679 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Bad Mother by : Ayelet Waldman

Download or read book Bad Mother written by Ayelet Waldman and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “hilarious, heartbreaking, and edgy” (Newsweek) memoir on modern motherhood. In our mothers’ day there were good mothers, indifferent mothers, and occasionally, great mothers. Today we have only Bad Mothers: If you work, you’re neglectful; if you stay home, you’re smothering. If you discipline, you’re buying them a spot on the shrink’s couch; if you let them run wild, they will be into drugs by seventh grade. Is it any wonder so many women refer to themselves at one time or another as a “bad mother”? Writing with remarkable candor, and dispensing much hilarious and helpful advice along the way—Is breast best? What should you do when your daughter dresses up as a “ho” for Halloween?—Ayelet Waldman says it's time for women to get over it and get on with it in this wry, unflinchingly honest, and always insightful memoir on motherhood in today's world.

Women's Bible Commentary

Download Women's Bible Commentary PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN 13 : 9780664257811
Total Pages : 532 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (578 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women's Bible Commentary by : Carol Ann Newsom

Download or read book Women's Bible Commentary written by Carol Ann Newsom and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the critically acclaimed best-seller,Women's Bible Commentary, an outstanding group of women scholars introduced and summarized each book of the Bible and commented on those sections of each book that have particular relevence to women, focusing on female charecters, symbols, life situations such as marriage and family, the legal status of women, and religious principles that affect relationships of women and men. Now, this expanded edition provides similar insights on the Apocrypha, presenting a significant view of the lives and religious experiences of women as well as attitudes toward women in the Second Temple period. This expanded edition sets a new standard for women's and biblical studies.

Mothers and Children

Download Mothers and Children PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400849268
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Mothers and Children by : Elisheva Baumgarten

Download or read book Mothers and Children written by Elisheva Baumgarten and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a synthetic history of the family--the most basic building block of medieval Jewish communities--in Germany and northern France during the High Middle Ages. Concentrating on the special roles of mothers and children, it also advances recent efforts to write a comparative Jewish-Christian social history. Elisheva Baumgarten draws on a rich trove of primary sources to give a full portrait of medieval Jewish family life during the period of childhood from birth to the beginning of formal education at age seven. Illustrating the importance of understanding Jewish practice in the context of Christian society and recognizing the shared foundations in both societies, Baumgarten's examination of Jewish and Christian practices and attitudes is explicitly comparative. Her analysis is also wideranging, covering nearly every aspect of home life and childrearing, including pregnancy, midwifery, birth and initiation rituals, nursing, sterility, infanticide, remarriage, attitudes toward mothers and fathers, gender hierarchies, divorce, widowhood, early education, and the place of children in the home, synagogue, and community. A richly detailed and deeply researched contribution to our understanding of the relationship between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors, Mothers and Children provides a key analysis of the history of Jewish families in medieval Ashkenaz.