I Am A Mother

by Jane Clayson Johnson

I loved this book! It is written to an LDS audience though it is perfectly fine for any female audience or male for that matter. Affirmation of the uniquely feminine quality of motherhood for those with or without children. All of those who have meekly responded, "Oh I'm just a mom." This is the empowering book for you. This is not a man-hater book but a memoir of one lady's choice to give up the fast life of television journalism for a less glamorized but more meaningful life as a mother. As she said, “I left one wonderful thing for another incredibly wonderful thing.”

Her expressions, however, are not sugar-coated. She acknowledges just how tough the job can be, the moments of self-searching and wondering. It is not just the middle-of-the-night feedings and the never being off duty. She has a chapter in her book called, “Can I quit now?”

“Sometimes, the challenges of mothering, the daily physical and emotional exhaustion and occasional self-doubts causes us to devalue what we do and to devalue it in the eyes of our children. The day-in-and-day-out of daily mothering is invisible, because so much of what we do doesn’t last, and we do it within the walls of our own home where it is not noticed. I traded in fancy lunches and fancy restaurants for something better. Still, there is no one to tap me or any mother on the back and say, ‘terrific diaper change.’ There’s no praise or recognition for the day in and day out of mothering.

We pay a lot of lip service to motherhood. We give mothers awards and we occasionally say, aren’t they great, but we don’t extend them the same respect in reality. I have experienced that first hand. When I told one executive that I was leaving New York and moving to Boston, he said, ‘What are you going to do?’ I told him, ‘I have the opportunity and privilege to be a mother.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but what are you going to do?’

“We have to change that paradigm,” said Jane, and she hopes her book will play a role in that shift. “I want every woman to feel for herself that mothering matters, that nurturing matters, that we have to start valuing these skills in our society and really most importantly in our selves.”