Book
Title : Confession of a
bad mother
Author
: Stephanie Calman
Publisher
: Macmillan
Date
Published : 2005
Number
of pages: 306
Genre
: Parenting
Confession of
a Bad Mother by Stephanie Calman basically tells
the story of how a mother raised a children from real mom’s
experience point of view. If parenting book usually shows the
manual of how to be an ideal
mother to raise children, this one is the reverse. It shows the reality of mother raising children, how Stephanie as a mother
of two thinks She was never quite right to raise her children. It started from
pre-motherhood, how she thought not wanted to be pregnant, the journey
of how her children taking over her life, until she was grateful to have them
on her life.
As this novel tells about parenting, Stephanie Calman,
the main character as the imperfect mother dominated the whole story. The way
she expreesed her feeling about her journey of being a mother is very
interesting because it was full of honesty rather than cliche. She confessed many
things, one of them was that she didn’t want to have children and felt terrified
and wondering whether she would be able to raise the child properly after she
had her first son, Lawrence. Her
husband, Peter, always
has such a great loyalty and
patience to her, to encourage and to stand beside her. The character
of Stephanie Calman was developed well in the story until she had the second
child, a daughter named Lydia, and until both children growing up.
People
tend to make mistake on their life, not exception for a mother like Stephanie.
She done many things wrong at first, but she learned naturally how to treat
their children, even make them to enter a child care also a form of her
attention to their children. I wish I could be someone like her for her
bravery. Even though she did worst to her children, but she was brave to
confess to acknowledge what she had done wrong.
Stephanie
confessions are the most interesting part from the whole story. What she had
confessed can be easily related especially by mothers in the world. The first
confession that I notice relatable even though I haven’t being a mother is she sit
the babies in front of the TV to make them still and quiet. The second
confession is she fed the babies with chips and biscuit because they love them
even though she knew it contained MSG which is bad for children. There are
still many confessions that are unusual confessed by moms in the novel, but
those 2 are the funniest part.
However, I still
can’t understand Stephanie behavior when she was pregnant of the first
son. I know that she didn’t really want to have a baby, but
that doesn’t mean she could do something harm to her fetus. She consumed a kind
of drink that contained alcohol in ithe evening even though she knew that is
bad for the fetus. I think what she had done is beyond the limits. The time
when she still couldn’t accept the pregnant was the worst part of this story.
The plot
will be better if i can see the point of view from Peter, Stephanie husband. I am
curious about what her husband thoughts of the way she raised the kid. He also
took part on raising their children, but in this novel it is very little the
role that he really took as a father, most of them as a husband. I predict that
it is going to be more interesting because in one side, we knew how Stephanie
struggling raising the child, and in the other we can observed how devastated
Peter towards his wife and raising the children. We can compare the thoughts
between a mother and a father.
I believe moms
over the world will love this book. The humor of each confession can entertain
and encourage them at the same time. It gives them joys because, rarely a
parenting book can relate really well to the reality of a mother. The
confessions are a bit rough and sometimes can’t be expressed loudly by moms in
reality. It becomes encouragement because moms could learn from this novel
because in some way it reflects how they raise children can goes so wrong.
As an unmarried
person, i have never experienced such things, but one thing for sure, I learned
much from reading this novel. Moms over the world had through so many hardships
even long before we born. I don’t know if
such anxiety of become a mother ever happened to a mother. I also don’t know if
a mother have so many things to say but she can hold it up and hide it from
their children. In spite of the rough confession of Stephanie as the mother, in
the end she realized how much she loves her children.
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