Author Panel with Nancy Reddy and more!

Zibby's Bookshop is excited to host Nancy Reddy to celebrate the launch of THE GOOD MOTHER MYTH! Nancy will be joined by wonderful panelists Hannah Michell, Dr. Sarah Oreck, and Ruth Whippman.

About the book:

Timely and thought-provoking, Nancy Reddy unpacks and debunks the bad ideas that have for too long defined what it means to be a "good" mom.

When Nancy Reddy had her first child, she found herself suddenly confronted with the ideal of a perfect mother―a woman who was constantly available, endlessly patient, and immediately invested in her child to the exclusion of all else. Reddy had been raised by a single working mother, considered herself a feminist, and was well on her way to a PhD. Why did doing motherhood "right" feel so wrong?

For answers, Reddy turned to the mid-20th century social scientists and psychologists whose work still forms the basis of so much of what we believe about parenting. It seems ludicrous to imagine modern moms taking advice from midcentury researchers. Yet, their bad ideas about so-called “good” motherhood have seeped so pervasively into our cultural norms. In The Good Mother Myth, Reddy debunks the flawed lab studies, sloppy research, and straightforward misogyny of researchers from Harry Harlow, who claimed to have discovered love by observing monkeys in his lab, to the famous Dr. Spock, whose bestselling parenting guide included just one (1!) illustration of a father interacting with his child.

This timely and thought-provoking book will make you laugh, cry, and want to scream (sometimes all at once). Blending history of science, cultural criticism, and memoir, The Good Mother Myth pulls back the curtain on the flawed social science behind our contemporary understanding of what makes a good mom.

About the speakers:

Nancy Reddy is the author of The Good Mother Myth, published by St. Martin’s Press in January 2025. Her previous books include the poetry collections Pocket Universe and Double Jinx, a winner of the National Poetry Series. With Emily Pérez, she’s co-editor of The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. Her essays have appeared in Slate, Poets & Writers, Romper, The Millions, and elsewhere. She writes the newsletter Write More, Be Less Careful.

Hannah Michell was born in England and raised in Seoul. Her first novel, THE DEFECTIONS, was published in France and the United Kingdom in 2014 to wide acclaim. Her second novel, EXCAVATIONS (One World, 2023) was named one of the best crime novels of 2023 by LitHub and one of the top ten mysteries of 2023 by Publishers Weekly. When Hannah is not writing fiction, she teaches classes on K-pop and Asian American film at UC Berkeley.

Dr. Sarah Oreck, MD MS, is a Columbia University-trained psychiatrist with a fellowship in reproductive psychiatry and the co-founder and CEO of Mavida Health. Driven by a deep frustration with the shortcomings in maternal mental health care, Dr. Oreck envisioned Mavida Health as a platform to revolutionize access to high-quality mental health services throughout the path to parenthood. As a practicing therapist and prescriber, she combines cutting-edge medical treatments with a holistic, whole-body approach to mental health. She is the daughter of South American immigrants and grew up between Los Angeles and Colombia. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

Ruth Whippman is a British author, journalist and cultural critic living in the United States, and the author of BOYMOM, Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. A former BBC documentary film director, her writing appears in the New York Times, The Guardian, Time magazine and elsewhere. Fortune described her as "one of the sharpest minds” of the decade. Her first book America the Anxious, was a New York Post Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Editors' Choice. She lives in Northern California with her husband and three sons.

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