Book Group Guide

What No One Tells the Mom

Discussion Guide for Mompools and Book Clubs

Use What No One Tells the Mom as a springboard! . . .

For discussion in a moms’ group, book club, parenting or parents-to-be class. 

My candor, and that of 100 moms I interviewed, will break the ice and help launch meaningful, non-competitive conversation in your living room or coffee shop gathering.  (If you’re using the book in a coed parenting group, or for a group of parents-to-be, see additional comments at the end of this discussion guide.)

First, a few ideas I have that set the tone for a comfortable mompool meeting:

1. Serve only store bought or from-a-box appetizers or desserts.  (This de-stresses the hostess and each subsequent hostess.)
2. Serve wine or champagne.  (It loosens shoulders and makes moms feel feted.)
3. Say upfront that everything said in the room stays in the room.
4. Pass a sachet, Barbie or some other object to the member who’s talking – to remind others that she has the floor.  Make it your mascot, a reminder that moms need nonjudgmental affirmation and support.

Discussion Guide:

Assign the reading of a chapter ahead of the meeting.  To start discussion, read the chapter summaries to the assembled—so that those too sleep deprived or stressed out to read will not be left out:

Introduction:  I’m A Mess, We’re A Mess, Happily Ever After

Chapter Summary:  Author Marg Stark, a mother of two boys under the age of seven, recalls her first harrowing years of motherhood.  Although Stark imagined having all the “right stuff “ for being a modern mom -- including intense joy at becoming parents, a happy marriage, two incomes and stable careers, and a writing career easily done from home – she and her husband foundered in the transition to parenthood.  As much as they loved their baby boys, their marital satisfaction plummeted, Stark’s career got sidelined, and they experienced a tumult that researchers tell us is common among new parents today.  Ultimately, Stark set out to learn, why are modern couples having such a hard adjustment to parenthood and how can we be good parents when we have mixed feelings about our new lives as parents?

Exercise One:  Best Parenting Trait

Hand out index cards to each member and have her write down the most essential quality an individual needs to have to be a good parent.  Then collect the cards and write the qualities on a flipchart or billboard, ranking the most important traits mentioned.

1.      If love or desire to parent is found to be the most important quality, ask the group to talk about this.  Love and desire to parent is something each of us in the room probably has.  So why do we beat ourselves up so much about being good parents if we have the most important quality in spades? 

Ask those group members who didn’t list love or desire as the most important quality to say why they think love is not enough, and why so many of us are naïve to think that love and desire are enough. 

With patience, sense of humor, a willingness to learn how to be a parent, and other traits that come up, talk about why each trait has turned out to be so crucial.  Encourage members to offer examples or illustrations about how those traits have helped them.

2.       Talk about how these traits were learned, or whether those traits were well exercised in the professional and personal life leading up to parenthood.  In other words, did you realty have the right stuff for parenthood or does are we mostly unprepared for the real job that parenthood is?  Does society clue us in beforehand as to what the nitty gritty of motherhood/parenthood feels like?

Exercise Two: Happily Ever After

Spend 5 minutes having the group go through an assortment of magazines, cutting out images in advertising or articles that contribute to the societal myth of “Happily Ever After.”  Then have each member draw with stick figures or with words, their vision of happily ever after for their lives.  Talk about how we arrive at our understandings of happiness.  And what qualities are really important to be satisfied and at peace with one’s life.

Chapter One:  Damn It, I’m Supposed to Be Serene!

Chapter Summary:  This chapter reveals the way in which women who are expecting/adopting become obsessive, and are overtaken by emotions, hormones, and some lunacy.  Even though you’re supposed to be blissful, parenthood may still seem surreal, and you’re likely to feel off-balance, not yourself.  In the end, the chapter suggests steps to stockpile comfort and support before the coming storm of new parenthood.  (See notes at the end for moms or parents-to-be)

Discussion Questions:

1. What obsessive qualities came out in you –and in your spouse or family members—during your pregnancy/anticipation of a new baby?  Or in the early months of the baby’s life?
2. What obsessive qualities remain?  Or developed since?
3. Looking back at those first weeks and months of parenthood, did you have enough help?  Did you have unrealistic expectations from day one?
4. Talk amongst yourselves about the morays around babysitters.  Some moms don’t feel comfortable leaving a young baby with a babysitter.  Others only feel comfortable leaving an infant with a relative or a professional nanny.  Still others feel find leaving babies with friends or babysitters they know.  How did you come to have the opinions you have about babysitting?  Do you have regrets about leaving or not leaving a baby with a sitter?
5. Talk about breastfeeding versus bottle feeding.  How much pressure did you feel to breastfeed?  Was your feeding experience, regardless or breast or formula, a positive experience and the right decision for you?  Do you harbor regrets or guilt, if you fed your baby formula?  Is there any way you could reach out to a new mom to help with regard to feeding?

Exercise One:    Friend or foe?

On index cards, have each member describe the mom on the playground who would be the best confidante for her.  Name the qualities that would make her a good friend of yours, given the stage of life you are in now.  Would she live nearby or in another community?  Would she be a “act-together” mom or a mom with less confidence?  Would she be a fan of the family bed?  Would she work outside the home?  Would she talk a lot or a little about being a mom?  Then share your thoughts and have each mom keep in mind the qualities that best match her needs.

Exercise Two:  The Real Baby Registry

On a flipchart, have moms or parents shout out items they can think of to put on a real-world baby registry.  Encourage them to think big and not to judge themselves for adding things on, such as a gigantic bank account to pay for sitters and vacations, or earplugs so you can drown out a baby’s screams.  Talk about why it is that we prepare materially but less so emotionally for a baby’s arrival.

Chapter Two:  The Bunk about Birth and Bonding

Summary:  Unclear definitions and unrealistic expectations set many parents up to feel like failures in the first months of parenthood.  Birth can open up a floodgate of emotions you don’t necessarily expect.  And bonding between a parent and new child happens in many different ways and at different speeds—none of them necessarily better or healthier than others.

Exercise One:  Failure & Success

Ask each member of the group to share something they feel they have failed at, what they learned from the failure, and whether the failure subsequently doomed or inspired them for success.

Talk about what it feels like to be a failure as a new mom or parent.  What do we think of as failure and if hormones and pressure were removed, would we still see the same situation as failure?

Talk about how making mistakes contributes to learning.  Can the members of the group reframe their experiences with parenthood so that they think of mistakes and setbacks as natural steps in a learning curve rather than as failures in a crucial life phase?

Discussion Questions: 

1. Do you harbor regrets about the way you gave birth?  If there was something you could magically change about the experience, what would you change?
2. Do you remember hearing your mom or dad talk about mistakes and fumbles they made as new parents?
3. Share when you first knew that you had bonded with your child.  Give an example within the last week of a time you knew you were bonded with your child or children.
4. Why do you think that many moms/new parents today are being diagnosed with adjustment disorders?  (An adjustment disorder is a term used by mental health professionals to describe difficulties an individual has making room in his or her life for change.
5. Is it okay for a mom with a young baby to put herself first?  When and why?  If not, how did you learn that it was not okay to put mom first?
6. What are some warning signs that you have consistently put yourself last in the scheme of family life?

Extra credit:  Have moms pick a “mistake buddy” –to whom they will report by email or phone their perceived missteps over the two weeks or month.  By having an objective friend with whom to share their perceived failures, hopefully you can help each other:  ease up on the self-battering most of us do;  come to see mistakes as natural steps in a learning process; and laugh together about the ridiculous demands of modern motherhood.

Chapter Three:  I’m Deprived and Verging on Deranged

Chapter Summary:  Sleep deprived, hormonally imbalanced and baby-besotted new mothers often start to come unglued after the first few months of parenthood.  Dramatic physical, emotional and mental changes are often to blame.  In this chapter, the author and her veteran mom cohorts give moms permission to feel blue and to entertain regrets amid the difficulties of taking care of a newborn or new adoptee.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why is it so hard for women and mothers to ask for help from others?  What does it say about you if you ask for help?
2. What does parenthood deprive you of?  Is this something you would have considered a basic need before you had children?  Talk about what it feels like to be deprived of basic needs as a parent, and how long and how well you can manage as a parent, if you are deprived of these needs. 

Exercise One:  Play to Your Strengths

On index cards, have moms write down a difficulty they have currently in parenting.  Is it getting dinner on the table without yelling at everyone during the tired and hectic evening hours?  Is it having stamina in battles with a defiant three year old?  Is it feeling guilt about leaving a baby when going to work?

On the opposite side of the card, have moms brainstorm about how they could alleviate the difficulty by playing to strengths in themselves, in their family lives or neighborhood resources, or by being creative in the midst of the problem.  Share the difficulties and have members brainstorm ways in which each mom could play to her strengths and downplay difficulties, weaknesses or other preferences.

Exercise Two:  Eye Candy for Mommies

Read the section on eye candy on page 55.  On an index card, write down two soul-boosting things you would do if you had a spare half hour this next week.  Then write down two soul-boosting things you would do with a spare two hours this week.  Repeat idea with a spare afternoon or spare weekend.  Share some of your findings and encourage the members to keep the card in a glove compartment or purse and come back to the next gathering with one soul-quenching activity crossed off.