Rebecca Walker's motherhood memoir, Baby Love, takes the reader through her decision to try to have a child all the way through to the birth of her son Tenzin, now nearly three years old. Along the way, Walker writes with stark honesty about the ambivalence, doubt, and joy she experiences, including her changing relationship with her own body, with her partner, with her stepson from a previous relationship, and with her own mother, writer Alice Walker.

mamazine: One of the themes running through Baby Love is your realization of how large a role biology plays in your life. "But what if [men and women] are fundamentally different? Before I got pregnant I would have vehemently rejected that idea. Now I'm not so sure."

Elsewhere, you wonder, "Am I turning into a baby supremacist? One of those people who thinks a woman without a baby is like a fish without an ocean?"

For many women born in the 1970s and raised on "Free to Be You and Me," becoming a mother often means biology suddenly begins to matter in ways it didn't seem to before—we're the ones who carry babies in our bodies, the ones who give birth, the ones who breastfeed. I know I was really shocked by how unequal parenting seemed early on; even though my husband wanted to be taking care of our newborn, he couldn't feed him in those early weeks, and in the beginning, feeding seemed to take up about 23 hours of each day. Adjusting to the reality of those biological differences took a lot of energy that I can't help thinking could have been used more productively during that time.

As you raise your son, what possible changes in how we think about men and women and biological differences do you see coming for our children's generation?

Rebecca Walker: I think it will become clearer to people in the future that both ideas—biology is everything and biology is nothing—are extreme and inherently conflictive. My hope is that our children will understand that these ideas have historically been used politically in a struggle for power, resources and dominance. The ideas are usually introduced to children as truth at a time when they cannot make a critical assessment of their own, and have no experience whatsoever of the biological realities of the reproductive process.

Because the political arena is inherently divisive, I don't want it to be the location of my son's ideas about his deepest experiences as a human being. I want him to be free to use the information available to come to a unique awareness of his biological and cultural inheritances. I expect there will be as great a leap in information in his generation as there was in our generation from the one before us.

There is also a larger discussion to be had about the future and what kinds of ideas the machinations of Empire are going to insist we have about biological differences. We can predict that global conflict, communication networks, and commerce are going to have a big impact, in addition to further space exploration. We don't know what it will be exactly, but we can pretty much count on there being a status quo concept of the role of biology for us to either buy into or reject.

My hope is that in the future there will be as much attention paid to the nuances of birth and reproduction as is currently paid to war and destruction. Perhaps in the future children's books won't just say, He was born in this place, they will say he was born in this place and his parents came from this place and they had these features and characteristics, and so on, providing us with a more complex view of ourselves and others.

In light of all of the above, in Baby Love I tried to exhibit traits I want to see in all children, male or female, no matter what the state of the world: I want them to be honest with themselves about what is going on in their relationships, wary of orthodoxy that disallows them to reject or question its truths, and fearless in their determination to maintain their intellectual freedom.

mamazine: The part of your book which provoked the most controversy is arguably this line: "I don't care how close you are to your adopted son or beloved stepdaughter, the love you have for your nonbiological child isn't the same as the love you have for your own flesh and blood."

As a stepmother of ten years and a biological daughter in a family with seven adopted children, this seems like a no-brainer to me—different doesn't mean less, after all—but I know from experience how difficult it can be to broach this topic. My stepson has a biological mom, for instance, so when people ask me why he doesn't call me "Mom" or if I feel uncomfortable using the word "stepson" instead of "son," I tell them that denying the reality of the situation doesn't seem like a good idea to me, that in fact it feels like trying to erase the truth of his life. Our relationship is different than my relationship with my biological son and daughter because of the basic biological facts. He has a mom and dad and a stepmom; we all work together to parent him, but ultimately his biological parents have final say. He and I have our own unique relationship that is parent-like—he's my first kid, while my son was my first baby—and it's undeniably different.

But I also thought, as I read Baby Love, that this is very much a book written in the immediate months before and after becoming a biological mother for the first time. How has your thinking about biological and non-biological children evolved as your infant son has grown older?

Rebecca Walker: Is adopting a child the same as giving birth to a child? I don't think so. Does it need to be the same in order to be valid and profound? Of course not.

In the larger discussion of how to approach this question, I think the better idea is to become more comfortable talking about different kinds of emotional bonds.

As I wrote in Baby Love and still feel today, all parent-child relationships, be they step, adoptive or biological, are not the same and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The challenge is to be able to discuss this without individuals politicizing the issue in a way that makes real communication impossible.

The vitriolic response to a few sentences in Baby Love about biological vs. non-biological children included vicious attacks in the blogosphere, threats of a boycott, and letters to editors all over the country demanding the book not be reviewed. This is a good example of how difficult it is to have this conversation.

A more open conversation must be had in order for children to see themselves as whole, healthy, loved human beings regardless of their parents' issues. The conversation has to begin with parents agreeing to be civil and supportive of one another despite their differing opinions.

mamazine: Some of the most painful parts of this book to read—and, I imagine, to write—concern your mother, with whom you have a difficult and complicated relationship. You write of worrying, before becoming pregnant, about your mother's reaction: "What if, instead of joy and excitement, my mother felt threatened by the baby, and pushed even further into the margins of my life?" As you see versions of your ownmother-daughter relationship around you, you note, "The mother kept the reality of her own mortality at bay by thwarting her daughter's every attempt to psychologically leave the nest."

Do you really think women in your mother's generation have more trouble passing the torch then in previous times, and if so, why might that be? What lessons have you taken from your relationship with your mother as you grow and learn as a mother yourself?

Rebecca Walker: My relationship with my mother, who is also one of the mothers of the women's movement of the seventies, is very simple. She refuses to do the work in her own life that she encourages women throughout the world to do in their lives. It's a very common problem.

There is no immunity granted in one's personal life based on the credit gained helping other people, no matter how extensive the work. The fact is there are millions of women in my generation who have been emotionally abandoned by their mothers for any number of reasons. Sometimes that abandonment has to do with their mothers emulating what role models from the women's movement have done to their own children.

Whether intentional or unintentional, the result is the same. People listen to the rhetoric of movement leaders and emulate the way they live their lives. The only thing complex is the systems developed by women from the seventies that avoid taking accountability for this and other problematic outcomes of the women's movement.

The prognosis for Second Wave leadership to have a metamorphosis around this need for change is bleak. It is simply too late and they are too committed to the status quo they have created for themselves. The fact is we will inherit a movement that is undone, and we don't have to wait until the reality of the work that needs to be done becomes conspicuous after this generation is gone.

I feel my role is to use my unique position to give voice to the concerns that many in our generation have but are unable to express. To Be Real, Black, White, and Jewish, What Makes a Man, and Baby Love are all attempts to contribute to the women's movement now and in the future. I appreciate the positive support so many women and men are giving to this work.