Four Mothers: One year in Motherhood Around the World

(Paperback)

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Description

After giving birth to three children in Japan, journalist Abigail Leonard was shocked to return home to the US and understand American motherhood from a new perspective.

Fascinated to learn more about the ways that culture around the world impacts the experience of birth and parenting, especially for women, she starts reporting. Identifying four new mothers - from the US, Japan, Finland and Kenya - she follows them closely through birth and the first year of their children's lives. Their intimate stories shed a light on national history, policy and gender relations; what is universal and what we can learn from other cultures.

Sarah, Tsukasa, Anna and Chelsea negotiate hospital and healthcare settings; daycare, professional ambitions and religion; complicated relationships with partners, family and friends. Abigail Leonard captures the love and complexity of their experiences in careful detail and compelling prose. Her rich storytelling draws an insightful and international portrait of modern mothering.

Author Bio

Abigail Leonard is an award-winning international reporter and news producer, currently based in Washington D.C. and before that in Tokyo, where she was a frequent contributor to NPR, Time Magazine, and New York Times video. Her stories have also appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Vox. Before she moved to Japan, she wrote and produced long-form news documentaries as a staff producer for PBS, ABC and Al Jazeera America, and was a lead writer for "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" and "The War Room with Jennifer Granholm." Stories she reported have earned a national Emmy Award, an Overseas Press Club Award, an Association of Health Care Journalists Award, a National Headliner Award, and a James Beard Foundation Media Award Nomination.