S2 Ep17: Alex Bollen: Good Mother Myths and Scientific Sexism

Update: 2025-10-15

Description

This month, I’ve been inundated with messages from folks who love the new pace of podcasts—weekly instead of every other week. I love making the podcast and love giving you what you want, but the podcast is a ton of work, and it underperforms in the algorithm. My data show that people listen to the podcast, but they don’t otherwise engage after or before listening, which pushes it down in the all-powerful algorithm.

So I’m asking for your help, and offering something in return: Please heart-react, leave a review, leave a substantive comment, like, share, etc. This is hugely beneficial. I believe with a bit more engagement we can get this podcast performing just as well as my written work. I will continue posting weekly episodes through the month of November. If, by the end of that period, the podcast can get to 50,000 monthly downloads (double the usual number), then I will continue weekly posting. Let’s do it.

In a patriarchy, motherhood is impossibly hard. That’s by design. Because if every woman struggles with motherhood, then every mother feels inadequate. This causes us to feel guilty, and to blame our challenges on our individual failings rather than correctly identifying the political forces that make motherhood feel so impossible.

Alex Bollen has worked with mothers, especially in the vulnerable postpartum period, for years. Her new book, Motherdom: Breaking Free from Bad Science and Good Mother Myths, explores the politics of motherhood and especially how myths about “good mothers” set all mothers up for failure.

In this podcast episode, we discuss a wide range of issues, including:

The critical importance of motherhood as a focus of feminist activism.

How the myth of the good mother (and its bad mother opposite) is used to control all women and all mothers.

How patriarchy weaponizes “science” to control and shame mothers.

The weaponization of attachment parenting.

Why we pretend that mothers are stupid, and that nothing mothers do is challenging or intellectual.

How disadvantaged mothers typically must accumulate more skills and ingenuity than other mothers, but are treated like they know and deserve less.

The concept of unmothering, and how we rob Black and other less-privileged mothers of their status as mothers.

How systems of oppression isolate women from other women and destroy systems of community.

Why we devote so much energy to telling mothers to “tough it out,” while robbing them of all resources that would make it possible for them to manage the challenges of motherhood.

About Alex Bollen

Alex Bollen is the author of Motherdom: Breaking Free from Bad Science and Good Mother Myths. She was a director of the research agency Ipsos and is now a freelance researcher. Alex is also a Postnatal Practitioner with the NCT, the UK’s largest parenting charity, and has run groups for new mothers in London for over a decade. Motherdom is Alex’s first book. She was inspired to write it because she felt incensed about all the guilt-inducing garbage which is peddled about motherhood.

You can find Alex’s book, as well as all other books recommended on the podcast, along with a detailed reading list, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.

Comments (1)

Cynthia Wood

This was such a fascinating podcast, and so many of the good mother myths were familiar from when my kids were little. They are often also contradictory, which translates to there being no way to be a mother without being shamed for it - while being told that the whole thing is supposed to be easy.

Oct 31st

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