Natural Christian Parenting

Title: The Other Mother

Author: Gwendolen Cross

Summary (from Publishers Weekly):
Gross’s third novel (following Getting Out) documents the front lines of the Mommy Wars, but its real strength lies in exposing the complex inner battlefields motherhood can open up. Eight months pregnant Amanda, a successful children’s book editor and dedicated New Yorker, picks up with her lawyer husband and moves to suburban Teaneck, N.J. Her new neighbor, Thea Caldwell, is a full-time mother of three who still lives in her childhood home and who arrives bearing brownies. When the newcomers take extended shelter in the Caldwells’ basement following a damaging storm and, later, when Amanda hires Thea as her newborn’s nanny, the growing intimacy between the two breeds resentment, bitterness and misunderstandings. The series of external crises designed to create tension and suspense are, in the end, less compelling than the women’s own inner demons, revealed through alternating, and overlapping, first-person narration. Jersey resident Gross shows the strife between SAHMs (Stay at Home Moms) and WOTHs (moms who Work Outside the Home) to be a lot more nuanced than it’s often portrayed. (Aug.)
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Positive Elements: The author takes the reader into the well defined lives of a stay-at-home mom and a work-outside-the-home mom. Many books on the subject tend to favor one position over the other. This story presents both sides of the story with a compassion and understanding. Each mom faces complex and challenging situations unique to her chosen walk of life. However, the author also links together the common bonds all moms have regardless of work and home status — the love of our children. This book is an easy read and a good story. The chapters are told from the point of view of the main characters alternately. This enables the readers to understand the opposing viewpoints of both moms, while never really favoring one over the other.

Sexual Content: None

Violent Content: None

Profanity: There were a few instances of strong language. Unfortunately, it wasn’t essential to the story of the book.

Drug Content: None

Conclusion: This is not just another book about the so-called mommy wars. I enjoyed this book in part because it explores the issues we moms face on a daily basis ( guilt, vulnerablity, time for ourselves, parenting mistakes, family choices). Women are always comparing ourselves to each other. We do it with husbands, houses, dinners, etc.. It gets worse when we have children. Amanda and Thea both take on judgemental attitudes to each other and in turn take moments to question their own respective positions as as working mom and a stay at home mom. One particular moment in the book turned me off. During an emotional and heated moment between the two women, they kiss. Its hard to determine the author’s intent with that scene. It is not described as coming from anything sexual but more from need of being comforted. It was a strange scene and should have been left out. This book would be very good for dicsussion in a book club.