Sarah Menkedick’s new book, Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America is about fear, of course, and anxiety, but it’s also about community. The book, a mix of interviews, case studies, and memoir, is an examination of maternal fear and its history, causes, repercussions, and implications. In the conversations Menkedick has with new mothers, it becomes clear that the relationship between motherhood and fear is a cycle propelled by isolation and shame: shame about parenting decisions leads to isolation which leads to fear and often, then, to further isolation and shame. FOR MORE
in Ploughshares at Emerson College
