A Refreshingly Honest Approach for Modern Mothers

It’s a thoroughly modern book, “Mothers Who Think,” with its slightly ironic title (who are the ones who don’t think?) and footwear fetishistic cover photo (Mom as urban-chic knee-high black boot; daughter, classic saddle shoe), its portable size and high-tech genesis. Edited by Camille Peri and Kate Moses, who a scant year ago founded a column by the same name for the online magazine Salon, “Mothers Who Think” (Villard Books, 1999) is the first published collection of online works, a baby step, as it were, toward detente between electronic journalism and print media.

But what’s most modern about the book is not how it looks, but how it sounds. From this chorus of 37 women emerges harmony and dissonance, a symphony of emotion and thought, waddling now like the bucket-toting brooms in the “Magician’s Apprentice,” then soaring heavenward like a really good Whitney Houston key change.

Sort of like how moms--yours and mine, you and me--actually sound, on Those Kinds of Days, which are the only kinds of days you have after you become a mother.

Some of the voices are well-known--Anne Lamott, Jayne Ann Phillips, Sallie Tisdale, Susan Straight--and some are not, but none are really unfamiliar because even if you have never met this or that particular woman before, youhave heard her or echoes of her, from your best friend, your cousin, your sister-in-law.

It’s not as if there isn’t a deluge of words written specifically for mothers--there are shelves of books, rooms of books and magazines, and handouts all written Just For You Expecting Mom, Young Mom, Old Mom, Divorced Mom, Step-Mom, Adoptive Mom, Working Mom, Mom of Sons, of Daughters, of Sons Who Wish They Were Daughters and Daughters Who Wish They Were Horses.

It’s just that most of these books have not even the most remote relationship with what it really feels like, and sounds like, and smells like to be a mother.

A thoroughly modern mother.

The kind who yells and cries and snaps and apologizes, the kind who worships and clings and prays to be better, the kind who thinks too much and relaxes too little, the kind who finds the whole thing hilarious, the kind who is afraid all the time.

“We wanted to create a book that we wanted to read,” Peri says, “the kind that we could never find.”

“We wanted the pieces that the other magazines wouldn’t run,” Moses says. “We wanted the parts other editors wanted cut out, or toned down. We wanted it all.”

And apparently they are in the process of getting it. While this book by no means illuminates every aspect of motherhood--not even the Internet is capable of such a feat--it does light up a few previously darkened rooms. Sex, death and the truth about labor; saying no, saying yes, changing your mind; desertion, separation and the mixed blessing of public pools; abortion, adoption and finding beauty in the teenage boy--it is difficult to describe the “issues” the essays deal with because they are not so much issues as personal truths, spun out with equal parts observation, honesty and good humor. They are sad, and funny, and poignant and real.

The column, with its controversial name, was Peri’s brainchild and it had a thoroughly modern inception. Both Peri and Moses have children--Peri has two sons, 8 and 5; Moses a son, 10, and daughter, 2 1/2. Both work “part time” for Salon, which is run out of its San Francisco office by their respective husbands: David Talbot (founding editor) and Gary Kamiya (executive editor). They were able to pull the book together in a ridiculously short amount of time, they say, by pooling caregivers and carpools.

“Some people work at home,” Moses says.

“We home at work,” finishes Peri.

They do this a lot, they say, finish each other’s sentences, mind each other’s children, run each other’s errands.

“It’s just more efficient,” says Peri, laughing. “We haven’t bought each other underwear yet. . . . “

“But pantyhose,” says Moses, “we have bought each other pantyhose. We have the 50-50 relationship you’re supposed to have in marriage.”

Both have essays in the book. Peri’s is a journalistic essay about how parents cope with the loss of a child, Moses’ a personal discussion of the effect her second child had on her relationship with her first.

Motherhood Found

to Enhance Intellect

In person and in the book’s introduction, the Mamafesto, they attribute the column’s title, and to a certain extent its mandate, to an essay by novelist Jane Smiley in which she wondered if motherhood would cause her to put away the classics and turn instead to “family romps like ‘Please Don’t Eat the Daisies.’ ” (This mild disparagement leads one to wonder if Smiley, or Peri and Moses ever read the essays that were the basis of the Doris Day treaclefest; Jean Kerr, with her literate humor and honesty, would seem right at home in “Mothers Who Think.”) What Smiley, and the authors, found, of course, is that being a mother, by virtue of giving you more things to think about and less time to do it in, hones your intellectual prowess rather than eliminates it.

“It’s not like once you become a mother, you stop being a woman,” Peri says. “But motherhood was not being addressed as an emotional, intellectual experience.”

“You go into a bookstore and see a table with a sign reading ‘Perfect for Mother’s Day,’ ” says Moses, “and it’s covered with cookbooks! We consider everything--poverty, Kosovo, politics--a motherhood issue.”

“We don’t believe that after she has a baby all a woman thinks about is milestones and taking the weight off,” Peri says. “Do you know anyone like that? I don’t. But that seems to be what is written about most.”

“We loved it when Jennifer Reese wrote about how much she hated the ‘What to Expect’ books,” Moses says. “It’s what a lot of us had thought but didn’t want to say.”

To get the kind of pieces they were looking for, they started calling around. They talked to a lot of women who write for more traditional family publications--”they would say, ‘I’ve been wanting to write another way’ “--and put together a wish list of writers.

“It was amazing,” Peri says, “a lot of those women ended up coming to us.”

It’s not as if women have never before written in an honest, literate way about being a mother--many have, many do for venues other than “Mothers Who Think”--but most non-family magazines and journals would shy away from devoting an entire column to what is still considered a “domestic” subject.

And then there’s the reality of producing the thing.

“You’re dealing with mothers,” Peri says.

“There have been days when we have said we will never deal with another mother,” Moses says. “Especially putting the book together.”

“You have to coordinate with everyone, work schedules, child-care schedules, hormone fluctuations,” Peri says. “No one has enough time. And we were in final galleys just before Christmas--the absolute worst time for mothers. It was insane.”

For a Mom, Honesty’s

a Matter of Efficiency

Yet, as any mother knows, one benefit of schedule overload and exhaustion is that you simply do not have the wherewithal to be fake or phony or guileful. You find yourself resorting to honesty simply because it saves time.

And that would go far in explaining why the book has sold out of many bookstores, why it debuted on the Los Angeles Times bestsellers list a full week before its official publishing date in May.

Because a thoroughly modern mother may not need any more advice, but who couldn’t use a whole lot more honesty?

Mary McNamara can be reached by e-mail at socalliving@latimes.com.