The essential guide for mothers and potential mothers who want to share childrearing responsibilities with men.

Read Amy Tiemann's posts on the Penguin Blog. MOJO MOM helps you answer the question, "Who Am I Now that I'm A Mom?" What is Mommy Mojo? It's the feeling you get when you're a parent at the top of your game, juggling the kids and the many facets of life, and keeping your own needs in balance. Motherhood is a tremendous gift, but it's also a huge identity shift. Becoming a Mojo Mom means bringing your self and your dreams back into focus, while still giving your family the loving attention it needs. It may sound like a fantasy, but it can be done. Mojo Mom shows women practical ways to: *Prepare to become a Mom without losing your identity *Survive and enjoy the intense early years *Save some of your best energy and creativity for your own ideas and dreams *Reenter the workplace or take on a new path with confidence and ease *Learn the key elements to the long-term success of your marriage *Become a Naptime Activist-and change the world in just an hour a week *Rise above the "Mommy Wars" between stay-at-home and working moms *Use motherhood as an opportunity for reinvention Getting your mojo back is not just another item for your to-do list-it's your right. Amy Tiemann, MomsRising.org executive team member and founder of MojoMom.com, will help every woman explore her true self.

Many working mothers today face great tension between their families and careers. They are more likely than men to feel pressed for time and conflicted about being away from young children while working. They are also more likely to seek out help or guidance. Mastering the Mommy Track tells the stories of everyday working mothers, the challenges they have faced, and lessons learned. It also offers solutions from experts on how mothers can overcome current issues in order to lead happy, healthy lives at home and work. ,

No one told you motherhood would be like this: Pressure, worry, exhaustion...not exactly what you signed up for. In The Happy Mom Mindset, you'll learn to recognize the "Mom Traps" that keep you from experiencing the joy and fulfillment you'd hoped for. You'll understand why you feel frustrated, rather than fulfilled, so much of the time. This simple and practical approach will help you build your mom confidence, eliminate power struggles, and create more joy in your life so you can (finally) show up as the mom you really want to be. Based on Molly Claire's work with her clients, The Happy Mom Mindset will show you how to: * Eliminate ineffective (and exhausting) patterns of worry and guilt * Create more calm within the chaos of family life * Be your own person and a great mom at the same time It's time for you to think, feel and be happy! "This book contains the answer for women wanting a better experience of motherhood. Molly has taken life-changing tools and concepts and applied them in a personal way specific to moms. The stories she shares of her own clients will make it easy for you to make the same personal shifts on your own. I've seen first-hand the work Molly does with her clients and I'm thrilled to see this work in print." -Brooke Castillo, founder The Life Coach School

From the bestselling Bridget Jones's Diary that started the trend to the television sensation Sex and the Citythat captured it on screen, "chick lit" has become a major pop culture phenomenon. Banking on female audiences' identification with single, urban characters who struggle with the same life challenges, publishers have earned millions and even created separate imprints dedicated to the genre. Not surprisingly, some highbrow critics have dismissed chick lit as trashy fiction, but fans have argued that it is as empowering as it is entertaining. This is the first volume of its kind to examine the chick lit phenomenon from a variety of angles, accounting for both its popularity and the intense reactions-positive and negative-it has provoked. The contributors explore the characteristics that cause readers to attach the moniker "chick" to a particular book and what, if anything, distinguishes the category of chick lit from the works of Jane Austen on one end and Harlequin romance novels on the other. They critique the genre from a range of critical perspectives, considering its conflicted relationship with feminism and postfeminism, heterosexual romance, body image, and consumerism. The fourteen original essays gathered here also explore such trends and subgenres as "Sistah Lit," "Mommy Lit," and "Chick Lit Jr.," as well as regional variations. As the first book to consider the genre seriously, Chick Lit offers real insight into a new generation of women's fiction.

A lively and provocative look at the modern culture of motherhood and at the social, economic, and political forces that shaped current ideas about parenting What is wrong with this picture? That's the question Judith Warner asks in this national bestseller after taking a good, hard look at the world of modern parenting--at anxious women at work and at home and in bed with unhappy husbands. When Warner had her first child, she was living in Paris, where parents routinely left their children home, with state-subsidized nannies, to join friends in the evening for dinner or to go on dates with their husbands. When she returned to the States, she was stunned by the cultural differences she found toward how people think about effective parenting--in particular, assumptions about motherhood. None of the mothers she met seemed happy; instead, they worried about the possibility of not having the perfect child, panicking as each developmental benchmark approached. Combining close readings of mainstream magazines, TV shows, and pop culture with a thorough command of dominant ideas in recent psychological, social, and economic theory, Perfect Madness addresses our cultural assumptions, and examines the forces that have shaped them. Working in the tradition of classics like Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism, and with an awareness of a readership that turned recent hits like The Bitch in the House and Allison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It into bestsellers, Warner offers a context in which to understand parenting culture and the way we live, as well as ways of imagining alternatives--actual concrete changes--that might better our lives.

The 2nd edition includes a new preface that considers how matricentric feminism in positioning mothering as a verb affords a gender-neutral understanding of motherwork and allows for an appreciation of how motherwork is deeply gendered and how this may be challenged and changed through empowered mothering The book argues that the category of mother is distinct from the category of woman, and that many of the problems mothers face are specific to women's role and identity as mothers. Indeed, mothers are oppressed under patriarchy as women and as mothers. Consequently, mothers need a feminism of their own, one that positions mothers' concerns as the starting point for a theory and politic of empowerment. O'Reilly terms this new mode of feminism matricentic feminism and the book explores how it is represented and experienced in theory, activism, and practice.