Reviews

Every year, millions of women have their lives turned inside out by the experience of pregnancy. A contemporary woman find herself caught in an absurd paradox: while in the grip of one of the most primal, lonely, sensual and in some ways, psychologically debilitating and physically dangerous experience, she is overwhelmed by invasive, trivialising and infantilising cultural messages about what is happening to her -and who really owns the experience. Wolf takes a critical look at the powerful vested interests in the pregnancy 'business' and at the social message coming at women: an amalgam of sentimentality, psychologically dangerous half-truths and conflicting ideologies. She discusses with devastating honesty her own two pregnancies and those of other women, from the physical and emotional effects of having your body taken over, through the elation and the fear, to the choice of delivery method (where mother-friendly childbirth is often in conflict with hospital-friendly practice) and the effects of post-par turn depression. Misconceptions is a moving, provocative and unusually candid account of pregnancy and childbirth which for the first time tells the truth about women's conflicting emotions and society's hypocritical attitudes to women's experience.

Part of this book is a cautionary tale for working women who think having a baby won't change their lives.