For those who want to engage with this topic in an entertaining way, I recommend two books:
"Courage for Two" by Julia Malchow
In her book, Julia Malchow reconsiders her beliefs, which stem from the general motherhood canon of our society. She embarked on a journey alone with her 10-month-old baby on the Trans-Siberian Railway and was able to liberate herself from them.
One of the beliefs was:
"Being a mother, being a family with a child, is the most natural thing in the world. Surely, it's easy to find role models for my personal lifestyle with a child."
"I didn't find any role models suitable for me in terms of my motherhood role," she writes. "As a mother (in Germany), I have to be even more confident and stronger than I already was before if I want to live individually and creatively. As a mother, you become to some extent public property, everyone interferes. And: As a mother, I suddenly felt open, vulnerable, less protected from the divergent opinions of others. As a mother, I wanted to get it right, and I didn't know what was right. Through the journey, I know that my intuition works, that the individual mother I am is okay. For Levi. And for me. No matter what others think."
Even if not everyone agrees with her ideas, it's a worthwhile book to read. Quote from a reader: "I finished Julia Malchow's book in two days and afterwards, I wanted to engage in a heated discussion with her about it for days because I almost never agreed with her. But that's what good books do."
An equally witty and insightful book on the same topic is by Ayelet Waldman: "Bad Mother."
"We always notice everything: The mother police are on constant duty. ... Mothers are under much more constant observation and social pressure than they would like to admit. And this doesn't make it easy, ...to go their own way, which they may have to discover. Of course, there are always fanatics, even if it's just about walls, but when it comes to parenting, there seem to be particularly many of them - and particularly loud ones too. Maybe because it's just so important. ... But we also have to admit that the tsk-tsk reflex is deeply ingrained in all parents."
