Novel Critical Review - Confession of A Bad Mother by Stephanie Calman

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.