Mothers

Winner of the PEN Pinter Prize 2026 'The brilliance of her literary insight, the lucidity of her prose, and the subtlety of her analyses are simply breathtaking' Edward Said 'A model of what a public intellectual should be' Slavoj Zizek From one of the most important contemporary thinkers, a compelling, forceful tract about women and motherhood that demands immediate attention. Moving commandingly between pop cultural references such as Roald Dahl's 'Matilda' to observations about motherhood in the ancient world and thoughts about the stigmatization of single mothers in the UK, Mothers delivers a groundbreaking report into this often flattened and overlooked figure.

A daring and provocative book-length essay on why we both romanticize and vilify mothers A simple argument guides this book: motherhood is the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts. By making mothers the objects of both licensed idealization and cruelty, we blind ourselves to the world's iniquities and shut down the portals of the heart. Mothers are the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world, which becomes their task (unrealizable, of course) to repair. Moving commandingly between pop cultural references such as Roald Dahl's Matilda to insights on motherhood in the ancient world and the contemporary stigmatization of single mothers, Jacqueline Rose delivers a groundbreaking report into something so prevalent we hardly notice. Mothers is an incisive, rousing call to action from one of our most important contemporary thinkers.

A daring and provocative book-length essay on why we both romanticize and vilify mothers A simple argument guides this book: motherhood is the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts. By making mothers the objects of both licensed idealization and cruelty, we blind ourselves to the world's iniquities and shut down the portals of the heart. Mothers are the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world, which becomes their task (unrealizable, of course) to repair. Moving commandingly between pop cultural references such as Roald Dahl's Matilda to insights on motherhood in the ancient world and the contemporary stigmatization of single mothers, Jacqueline Rose delivers a groundbreaking report into something so prevalent we hardly notice. Mothers is an incisive, rousing call to action from one of our most important contemporary thinkers.