The Good Mother Myth: A Women’s Ministry Book Event

The Women’s Ministry of St. Matthew invites everyone to a discussion of Nancy Reddy’s The Good Mother Myth Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, at 6 pm in the Cooke-Lawrence Room.

The jacket cover of this expose explains: “When Nancy Reddy had her first child, she found herself suddenly confronted with the ideal of a perfect mother - a woman who was constantly available, endlessly patient, and immediately invested in her child to the exclusion of all else. Reddy had been raised by a single working mother, considered herself a feminist, and was well on her way to a PhD. Why did doing mothering “right” feel so wrong?

For answers, Reddy turned to the mid-twentieth century social scientists and psychologists whose work still forms the basis of so much of what we believe about parenting. It seems ludicrous to imagine modern moms taking advice from midcentury researchers, and yet their bad ideas about so-called good motherhood have seeped pervasively into our cultural norms.

In The Good Mother Myth, Reddy debunks the biased lab studies, sloppy research, and straightforward misogyny of researchers, from Harry Harlow, who claimed to have discovered love by observing monkeys in his lab, to the famous Dr. Spock, whose bestselling parenting guide included just one (1!) illustration of a father interacting with his child.

This timely and thought-provoking book will make you laugh, cry, and want to scream (sometimes all at once). Blending the history of science, cultural criticism, and memoir, The Good Mother Myth pulls back the curtain on the flawed social science behind our contemporary understanding of what makes a good mom.”