Four Mothers

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What to expect

*A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025*

'Public interest journalism at its best - powerful human stories peppered with well-chosen facts ... A compelling case for a fairer society'
SUNDAY TIMES

'An absorbing, moving, and beautifully composed exploration of motherhood and mothering across the world . . . a gripping, vital, and utterly compelling book'
Elinor Cleghorn, author of Unwell Women

AS THE YEAR TURNS, FOUR WOMEN GIVE BIRTH.

In Japan, Tsukasa's government-funded hospital room overlooks the mountains and she spends seven days there, before resting at her mother's house for a month. The day after giving birth in Kenya, Chelsea returns to her flat in the city, far from her extended family, and her friends help her settle in. Anna, who has already been on maternity leave in Finland for a month, delivers her baby in a midwife-lead birth centre, a tradition dating back a century. In America, despite her insurance, Sarah pays $3,000 from her savings for an uncomplicated birth, before heading home, excited and overwhelmed.

Four Mothers follows these women over the next twelve months, through their first year of parenting. Through immersive storytelling and deep reporting, Abigail Leonard brings to life the policies that shape the experiences of both parents and children: access to healthcare and parental leave, community and workplace support.

Both intimate and international, we see what is and what could be.

'Eye-opening and cathartic. It is a love letter to parents and a clarion call for better policy'
Eve Rodsky, author of Fair Play

'Exquisitely reported and intensely readable ... Once I started Four Mothers I could not put it down'
Darcy Lockman, author of All the Rage

Critics Review

Powerful . . . Leonard is a masterly reporter. The four women share intimate details of their shifting post-baby lives, which read like gripping fiction . . . [Four Mothers is] public interest journalism at its best - powerful human stories peppered with well-chosen facts . . . elegantly makes a compelling case for a fairer society
Sunday Times
A deeply personal window into how policy shapes parents' lives
Guardian
Four Mothers is an absorbing, moving, and beautifully composed exploration of motherhood and mothering across the world. Through her intimate and tenderly observed portraits of the lives and emotions of four different mothers, Abigail Leonard positions motherhood as a lens through which to examine profound questions around gender, identity, community, and care. A gripping, vital, and utterly compelling book
Elinor Cleghorn, author of Unwell Women
With all the gifts of a novelist, reporter Abigail Leonard chronicles the lives of women around the world during their first year of motherhood, to make you feel their joy, their fear, their exhaustion, and their fierce love for their children. This is real motherhood on the page, bolstered by rigorous research to explain why our current systems have failed families and offer insights for a brighter future
Jo Piazza, author of HOW TO BE MARRIED
The exquisitely reported and intensely readable story of how women from four corners of the world navigate early parenthood . . . Once I started Four Mothers I could not put it down
Darcy Lockman, author of All the Rage
Four Mothers shows how trials of modern parenting are complicated by so much more than gender norms, familial expectations, or individual finances. This deeply personal look at women worldwide grappling with the best and worst moments of their first year is eye-opening and cathartic. It is a love letter to parents and a clarion call for better policy
Eve Rodsky, author of Fair Play
I could not put this book down. Four Mothers is a masterfully reported work of narrative nonfiction, tracing the journeys of four remarkable women. Abigail Leonard deftly weaves together these astonishing stories of heartbreak, hope, sacrifice, and love. Grounded in deep research and reporting, she skillfully reveals the hidden forces and systems that shape modern motherhood. This book will make you step back and consider your own experiences of mothering and being mothered, how similar or different it all may have been in another place, at another time, in another body
Erika Hayasaki, author of Somewhere Sisters
By turns piercing and poignant . . . This is an enthralling and kaleidoscopic view of modern motherhood
Publishers Weekly
Gradually, elegantly, [Leonard] exposes the cultural and political contexts that shape each woman's experience
Times Literary Supplement
Argues with vigour that women's experience of parenting is determined by national politics, from disparities in maternity pay to the demand for childcare, using case studies to illuminate dramatic statistics. It's a powerful manifesto for better state provision.
The Times

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