Top Ten Tuesday – Motherhood

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday with the girls at The Broke and the Bookish has a motherhood theme, for obvious reasons. I don’t know about anyone else, but my Facebook feed over the weekend made it clear that Mother’s Day is a day of conflicting emotions for many. For many of us, it is a day of celebration—and at its core, motherhood is a precious gift that should be celebrated—but in this fallen world, it often brings pain as well.

So for today’s Top Ten Tuesday, I’m going to share books that feature motherhood in its different shades.

The Meddlesome Matchmaker

She’s one of the most memorable mothers in literature—at least, in my mind. How can I not mention Mrs Bennet and her famous nerves, not to mention her never-ending efforts to get her daughters married off well?

The Single Mother

Married parenting is challenging enough. My hat goes off to single mothers. <3

The New Mother

Babies are wonderful, but they change everything and add a new dynamic to marriage! And then we have to face questions like, ‘Will I go back to work?’ ‘How do I have an adult conversation again?’ ‘

The Mother Who Has Lost

Loss comes in different forms in motherhood. Miscarriage, abortion, giving up for adoption, inability to conceive, and even kidnapping.

The Adoptive Mother

Let’s not forget adoptive mothers, whatever their age.

The Mother Who’s Gone Too Soon

How does a young family move forward when their wife and mother is taken away from them?

The Absent Mother

These two books present two different perspectives: the first is the absent mother who has returned to make a better go of it; the second is from the perspective of children whose mother has left them.

A Mother Too Soon

These books provide two different perspectives. In Justified, it is the young mother herself. In The Dandelion Field it is the perspective of the soon-to-be grandmother.

A Mother Figure

They might not actually be our mothers, but some women are always happy to take lost chick under their wing. Like Elizabeth Cooley in the Last Chance series by Cathleen Armstrong.

The Matriarch

Then there are the matriarchs; the women who don’t always play a big role in the story, but are always there in the background holding their families together. Like Nancy Porter and Ingrid Christiansen.

Do you have a favourite bookish mother?