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    Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence
    Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence
    Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence
    Audiobook5 hours

    Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence

    Written by Rebecca Walker

    Narrated by Rebecca Walker

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    From the international bestselling author of Black, White, and Jewish comes a "wonderfully insightful" (Associated Press) book that's destined to become a motherhood classic. Now in trade.

    Like many women her age, thirty-four-year-old Rebecca Walker was brought up to be skeptical of motherhood. As an adult she longed for a baby but feared losing her independence. In this very smart memoir, Walker explores some of the larger sociological trends of her generation while delivering her own story about the emotional and intellectual transformation that led her to motherhood.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Audio
    Release dateAug 10, 2021
    ISBN9780593501603
    Author

    Rebecca Walker

    Rebecca Walker has contributed to the global conversation about race, gender, power, and the evolution of the human family for three decades. Since graduating from Yale, she has authored and edited seven bestselling books. Walker has written, developed, and produced film and television projects with Warner Brothers, NBC Universal, Amazon, HBO, and Paramount, and spoken at over four hundred universities and corporate campuses internationally, including Harvard, The Whitney Museum, and TEDx Lund. Walker cofounded the Third Wave Fund, which makes grants to women and transgender youth working for social justice. Walker has won many awards, including the Women Who Could Be President Award from the League of Women Voters, was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential leaders of her generation, and continues to teach her masterclass, The Art of Memoir.

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    Reviews for Baby Love

    3.5/5

    43 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5

      Feb 24, 2010

      I love Alice Walker's writing more than my dog loves eating my rubber earplugs...and my dog is an earplug addict. So I was fascinated by this pregnancy journal written by Alice's daughter Rebecca, who is also a pretty good writer. Rebecca serves up a hot mess of unpleasant family detail - I was not happy to discover that one of my favorite authors is a pretty lousy mother who, at one point, threatens to destroy her daughter's career and reputation. Not very nice - but very, very interesting. It was also sort of creepily fascinating to read all Rebecca's peculiar ideas about childbirth, and how much of her New Age-y nuttiness went flying out the window once serious labor pains began. Hahaha, SPOILER: she LOVED that epidural in the end! Oh, I could certainly relate to that!
    • 4/5

      Sep 4, 2009

      I had seen this book while I was at a Powell's books in Portland and had made a mental note that I wanted to eventually read it. The title drew me in because after 20 plus years of saying I did not want children I find myself, now, playing with the idea of eventually becoming a mother.

      I decided to pick up the book, now instead of later, after reading a Bitch magazine article about how few women of color are writing many of the new mommy memoirs that are coming out ( Ain't I A Mommy? Issue No. 40).

      I had read one other book on the subject of whether or not to have children (an anthology called Maybe Baby) and I have to say that Walker's book might have pushed me more towards the idea of having children. On the other hand, Maybe Baby just left me as ambivalent as ever.

      Walker brought up a very interesting point in her book. While talking to a friend who was telling the author of her fears of getting married because she did not want to sell out her feminist roots Walker says "I told her that the only way I've been able to do it has been to choose my persistent, irrational, very human yearnings for closeness with other human beings over admittedly valuable feminist ideology that wasn't born of my own experience. I asked, If the relationship is healthy, is there ever a reason to let ideology keep us from committing more deeply to the person we love?" The fear of selling out my feminist roots resonates inside myself.

      I've seen a few reviews on the book and some people have accused her of being narcissistic. Well of course, it is her autobiography of having a child which I am sure is such an intense experience that I am sure you can not even be helped to not be a little self centered.

      The author also angered a few people when she said that the love for one's biological children is more intense then love for an adopted child. I'm not well versed in biology but that makes sense. Don't we have this innate thing inside of us that makes us want to spread our genes on to future generations? So I think Walker's point is completely valid.
    • 2/5

      Aug 12, 2007

      I couldn't wait to read this book but now that I am reading it I am a bit disappointed. Walker comes off sounding arrogant and full of herself. The book is about her fears of childbirth so I can some what forgive her but it still comes off sounding full of herself. She makes a comment about a city hosiptal that I found annoyed at. She obviously comes from a place of privilage and it is shown throughout the book. I wondered if she knew she has so much privilage that many women just don't have. Most women don't have the option to give birth in a private hospital or go to Tibetan doctors, homopathic doctors, and have a midwife.

      She writes about some pretty intimate details about her life such as her realtionship with her famous mother. It made me wonder if her mother approved of the book. Rebecca Walker also makes mention, in an indirect manner, about the bitterness she holds about growing up in the shadow of a famous mother.

      Lastly, I don't know if this is me but there were a few errors in the book that made me stop long enough to scratch my head and feel confused. She talks about her birthing teacher (who comes to her home) and she introduces the teacher as Sasha but then in later paragraphs calls her Sarah and then Sasha again. I read the section over and over again to see if I missed something.

      There were also some tense confusion. But that could just be me. I think the format she chooses to write in could have caused some tense confusion.