Exploring Family Challenges With Australian Financial Review

I was excited to join fellow parenting authors in a fascinating article about family challenges in one of my favourite newspapers, the Weekend Australian Financial Review.

I spoke about the complexity and challenges of mothering, something we are all familiar with in our own way.

Author Theo Chapman described my book The Maternal Experience as this:

“It also encourages self-reflection, but she wants professionals, as well as parents, to think about ambivalence: those love-hate feelings humans have about people and things.”

“Her book is part of a growing body of academic study that shows motherhood as the complex interplay of often conflicting emotions that it is, rather than the simplified ideal portrayed in popular culture,” Chapman wrote.

“In western cultures, mothering is presented as a joyous surrendering of self with a child’s benefit as the only focus of a woman’s activity. This is a source of pain for many women who find that children trigger lots of negative emotions: resentment, rage, anger and even hatred.”

“It’s that capacity to feel love and hate towards one’s children that became an area of intellectual interest for Lowy, and one informed by her own experiences raising three children.”

Thank you Theo for such insightful comments about my first book in the Weekend Australian Financial Review.