When Andrea Buchanan gave birth to her first child in 1999, she realized that becoming a mother is a lot like moving to a new country. Her whole life had changed, and she was going through a kind of culture shock she named "Mother Shock." Her book about the first year of motherhood, Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It, was published in 2003. This October, I asked Andi a few questions about her views on motherhood six years into it, as well as about a mothers' movement, Mother Talk, how to deal with unsolicited parenting advice, and her current projects.
—Amy

mamazine.com: How did Mother Shock become a reality? I'm interested in the nitty-gritty details—when you wrote, where, how long it took you—and what motivated you to write this very frank account of early motherhood at a time in your life when finding a moment to just take a shower could be a challenge?

Andi: Basically, becoming a mother was an incredible identity shift for me. It made me burn to write—for one thing because I couldn't believe that no one was talking about the stuff I personally found so challenging/mind-blowing/life-altering; and for another, because I'd been longing to write about something compelling. Becoming a mother was high drama. What could be more compelling, more primal, more basic and vital than being responsible for the life of another human being? having that human being grow inside your body and emerge from it and change your life? Once I did start writing about the identity shift of that first year of motherhood that I came to call "mother shock," I was surprised and gratified to hear from other mothers saying that what I'd written had struck a chord.

As for the nitty-gritty details...I first had the idea for Mother Shock in 2001, but it wasn't much more than a title. I envisioned an anthology, actuallya collection of writing by famous writers, who happened to also be mothers, on the "dark side" of mothering. I was lucky enough to find an agent, and we were lucky enough to shop my proposal to Seal Press—who liked it enough to suggest that I forget the anthology idea and write the book myself. This was in about April 2002. I agreed to rework my concept of the book to make it a single-author memoir instead of an anthology, and we agreed upon a deadline: October 1, 2002, for a Spring 2003 publication date. Small complication: I was due with my second baby October 1, 2002. And I only had childcare for my daughter three hours a day, five mornings a week. So, over 8 or 9 weeks during the summer of 2002, I wrote the manuscript that became Mother Shock, in three-hour increments, Monday through Friday. I'd drop off 3-year-old Emi at her playschool, run my pregnant self over to a nearby cafe, sit down and obsess about how terrible the book was going to be for roughly five minutes, and then set aside that doubting mean-spirited inner critic for the next two hours and 45 minutes or so before I had to rush back to pick her up from school. Some days that was enough time to get down one or two essays; other days, I would just edit and revise; still other days, I'd read through what I had so far and wonder if I was crazy to think I could actually accomplish this. But my living deadline—the baby—would literally urge me on, kicking and squirming and otherwise reminding me that I didn't have time to freak out or ruminate: I only had time to write.

I turned in the mansucript to my editor in late August. By late September we'd gone through the copyedits. And October 2, my second baby was born.

mamazine.com: You write in "Motherly Advice" about trying to see what might lie underneath the unsolicited parenting advice both strangers and friends give you, and you give this example of the "creative listening" you practiced: "A woman helpfully pointing out that my baby would be spoiled by my holding her all the time had subtitles that read, 'I am so afraid that I have failed my children.'" I've tried to incorporate that approach into my own daily life, with varying degrees of success. Since your children are older now, can you give some examples of the ways you use creative listening with the advice given to parents of school-age kids?

Andi: It's a constant struggle to not bristle at unsolicited judgments, or to not take personally the random comments of strangers. But I've been trying out a new concept, where I just pretend as though other people are normal and well-intentioned and not mean-spirited, even if they are. It's difficult, but it's true that I'm more likely to take something more seriously, or give something more consideration, or just hear something more clearly, when it comes from someone I know to be geniune and kind. So if I pretend that the mean person who made that smart remark about children needing to be seen and not heard is actually not mean and is in fact normal, and possibly even kind, it's easier for me to respond without having my hot-button pushed. You know? That way I can either respond with complete non-judgment, or I can choose not to respond at all, all without fuming or perseverating on the exchange for hours afterwards. Also, I've found that responding to unwanted advice by saying something like, "That's interesting! I'll have to think about that!" is a disarming way to both make the advisee feel like they've been heard—and to effectively end the conversation.

mamazine.com: So now that you've become acculturated to mamahood, is there anything you'd add to Mother Shock, such as a new stage of motherhood beyond Mother Land, or other examples of struggles parents of school-age children face?

Andi: I do think the most intense adjustment period is the early months and first years of motherhood, so I think that's the most "shocking" part, in terms of "mother shock." The basic issues of parenting evolve as kids get older, but the identity of the mother isn't as much in transition as it is in the beginning. So I don't think I'd add a stage after Mother Land. (Though recently I wrote about deciding not to have another child, and I think that shift—from new-mom to no-longer-reproducing mom—is another definite change in the landscape.) As for struggling with issues with school-aged children, I think those kinds of problems are more openly talked about in our culture—the mainstream parenting magazines are all about how to problem-solve and address issues. It's the early stuff, the intense and personal mother stuff—the adjustment of women to motherhood—that's more hush-hush and harder to discuss. Possibly because it's scary, and less easy to quantify. Think about it—it's much easier to have an article giving advice on "Ten Ways to Get Your Kids to Like Homework!" than it is to print something called "Do You Want To Throw Yourself Under A Truck? Ten Warning Signs You May Not Be Adjusting To Motherhood As Easily As You Thought!" There is still more shame about feeling overwhelmed by new motherhood than there is about dealing with the more practical, logistical aspects of parenting older children.

mamazine.com: There's a growing sense that a mothers' movement is a-brewin' these days. What are some of the issues you'd like to see the mothers' movement address?

Andi: Gosh, where to start. I'm intrigued by the platform being pushed by Mothers Ought To Have Equal Rights, which includes mothers receiving Social Security benefits for their work in the home. I think flexible, well-compensated part-time work for parents of young children is an important thing. I'd love to see a mothers' movement that managed to embrace the political and the personal, and was able to not just talk about issues that polarize us, but explore why it is that some things are more polarizing than others.

mamazine.com: Can you tell us a little about MotherTalk, the reading/discussion series you and Miriam Peskowitz have started?

Andi: Sure. Mother Talk (which Miriam and I started up in partnership with LiteraryMama.com, where I'm managing editor) is kind of a cross between a literary salon and a good old-fashioned 70s consciousness-raising group. A Mother Talk evening usually features a group of women coming together in someone's home to eat food, drink wine, and talk with a local or visiting mother-writer. I've done Mother Talks featuring myself and Faulkner Fox (Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life), Miriam Peskowitz (The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars), Catherine Newman (Waiting For Birdy), Jennifer Lauck (Blackbird, Still Water, Show Me the Way), and Jennifer Margulis (Toddler, Why Babies Do That); there are two more coming up in November: one in Philadelphia on November 17 featuring myself and Marion Winik (Above Us Only Sky is her newest memoir; she also has an essay in my collection It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons, out next month); and one in New York City on November 19 featuring myself and several NYC-area contributors to It's a Boy.

These are fun, wide-ranging, sometimes intense, always compelling evenings, and the really thrilling thing for me is that no matter who the audience is—women who have grown children, women who have newborns, women who have teenagers, women who aren't sure if they want to have children—the conversation is incredible. Women just seem hungry to talk about this stuff—and we've covered everything at these Mother Talks from mom-on-mom judgment to feminism to the invisibility of part-time work to how to use humor to cope to parenting as a spiritual path. It's really amazing. Miriam and I recently started a blog for it, and we're hoping to eventually have instructions up there on how people can host their own Mother Talk events, with various texts to download for use as discussion-starters if people are interested and other info.

mamazine.com: What are you working on now?

Andi: Well, I have three anthologies coming out between now and April, so I'm working on everything from going over page proofs to gearing up for a book tour. It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons is the first one to come out (it'll be published this November), and to promote that I'm doing a web-based "Blog Book Tour," with 50 parenting bloggers participating in writing about the book. Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined comes out in January, and It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters comes out in April next year. Now that the anthologies are done, I'm hoping to devote my writing time to a novel I'm working on, which was excerpted in the literary magazine Verb Sap this summer. I have a bunch of other projects I'd love to do, but they're going to have to wait—my youngest is only in preschool three hours a day, and that's all the time I've got!

mamazine.com: What are you reading these days?

Andi: I just read a wonderful book called A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher—I just absolutely loved it. And the best book I read this summer was Dan Chaon's You Remind Me of Me. Just incredible.

Check out Andi's speech from the Association for Research on Mothering's October 2004 conference, "The Secret Life of Mothers: Maternal Narrative, Momoirs, and the Rise of the Blog."