The world is in the grip of a mental health crisis,
breeding a generation of depressed children and equally emotionally numb
parents. In her compelling and ground-breaking new book, Mama: Love, Motherhood
and Revolution, Antonella Gambotto-Burke explores how motherhood and love are
intrinsically linked to human well-being and how a lack of respect for maternal
love is at the root of widespread dissatisfaction with modern life.
Part-memoir, part-philosophical call to arms, this is a
brilliant, passionate and moving exploration of what it is to be a mother and
wife in the twenty-first century. What does it mean to be intimate with those
we love and what happens when we're not? How does motherhood tie into
femininity, sexuality, status? How does society judge mothers and how does this
influence them? How do working hours undermine our most important
relationships? Why is our value system now exclusively achievement-based rather
than based on intimacy? What is the future for our children and society in this
increasingly functional culture devoid of emotion?
Antonella not only explores this terrain with the great
visionaries of modern childcare, but reveals the joys, intimacies and elisions
that led to her own metamorphosis: among them, her "corrosive"
relationship with her own mother, her 32-year-old brother's suicide, the
emotional and philosophical revolution triggered by the birth of her daughter,
and the traumatic end of her ten-year marriage.
A beautifully eloquent and thought-provoking insight into
the cultural significance of love and motherhood, Mama is unique in its scope,
challenging our cultural capacity for intimacy. Why, Antonella asks, are we
willingly forfeiting happiness in the pursuit of an ultimately meaningless
ideal?