This book attempts to present a history of Anglo motherhood, personal anecdotes from the author, and a "manifesto," which is supposed to be a call for specific policies. Because all three are attempted, all three in turn are failures. The author is clearly a fan of psychoanalysis, and she inserts dozens of psychoanalysts' opinions without any acknowledgment that psychoanalysis is an extremely controversial sub-field of psychology.

She presents a lot of her ideas in the idea that authority bodies' recommendations are based in little data. While this is true, she fails to acknowledge why this is the case, claiming that researchers are "disinclined" to do research on pregnancy and even goes so far as claiming that researchers do not want to research drug safety to avoid a scandal. She goes on and on about the flaws about observational studies, which is true but doesn't have the capacity to discuss this with nuance. She wants to have the data from randomized control trials (the best form of evidence) and claims that the "excuses" of these studies being unethical is "bunk." So essentially, she is saying that as a society we should randomize pregnant women into two groups: drinking alcohol vs. not; smoking vs. not; taking a drug vs. not, etc. and then have high-quality evidence to know which of these things are harmful. She does not present any solutions as to how to find pregnant women willing to participate in this research. As a prenatal health researcher, I can tell you a few of the ways this has been done in the past: incentivizing poor women to participate by providing healthcare, food, or money; lying to women about the real risks; using prison populations who do not have a choice. Which of these methods does Glaser suggest we use as researchers, hmm? Or does she demand the results of high-quality research without being willing to put her and her child's body on the line...all so she can be really sure that it's okay to have a glass of wine in the first trimester?

She frequently discusses a specific recommendation by saying "gotcha!" to the authority body that has published a recommendation. For example, she decries the NHS for saying that formula can contain bacteria, because it's not the FORMULA that contains bacteria, but rather unsanitary bottles/nipples....how else would she propose you get the formula into the baby's body? The two go together and it seems quite ridiculous to claim that a lack of full clarification on the exact source of the bacteria is problematic.

This brings up my main gripe. In the conclusion, Glaser does all she can to ensure us she hasn't let motherhood turn her away from feminism, which I find odd that anyone would accuse her of. I am quite sure she is a feminist, a white affluent feminist who is mostly concerned with the societal issues that affect her personally. She will occasionally acknowledge that poor mothers or mothers of color may have it worse but never goes beyond two sentences discussing it. Her brief treatsie on screen time conveniently leaves out the unfortunate reality that many children live in dangerous neighborhoods where they cannot be out with an adult, let alone alone. She describes the reality that white, affluent women are pressured to breastfeed by hospital staff, while Black mothers aren't given sufficient information or support, because staff use population demographics and pre-judge who will be willing to breastfeed. Two infuriating realities that she equates with equal levels of outrage, if not more outrage for the pressure to breastfeed. This demonstrates how self-centered this work is, since it happens to people like her, and induces guilt/shame (something she clearly has had to deal with a lot) it is worse. Somehow it seems impossible to acknowledge that withholding care and information about breastfeeding because the patient is Black is 1000% times worse than pushing it on another patient.

Rest of review is in the comments