LaFleur? (Hint: It ruled that the school acted unconstitutionally when it placed a teacher on mandatory maternity leave once she started showing because “her pregnant body would alternately disgust, concern, fascinate, and embarrass her students.”) How about the backstory of fetal alcohol syndrome? “We owe it to ourselves to learn, to demand science and evidence, to seek out the full spectrum of information as it exists now,” writes Garbes.

What do you know about the 1970 landmark court case Cleveland Board of Education vs. We are trying to reclaim a term that we’d be much better off abandoning.” The cultural standard is so well established that we even joke about it, proudly proclaiming ourselves ‘bad moms’ when we stray from these expectations. The sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes self-congratulatory label is just another way of reinforcing unrealistic expectations, says Garbes, “You are a ‘bad mom’ if you have the occasional glass of wine during pregnancy, experience anxiety or ambivalence about having a baby, look forward to having an epidural, feed your baby formula, or take a pull off a joint once the kids are in bed because children are exhausting. So, Garbes, a reporter by profession, set out to dig up more concrete information-a process that empowered her, informed her, and inspired her to write a book: Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy. So, what exactly is a so-called “feminist pregnancy?” We complied ten of our favorite takeaways from the book as a primer for embarking on your own totally empowered parenthood journey. “If you’ve ever leafed through the pages of a pregnancy guidebook, you know what I am talking about-the subtle (and not-so-subtle) finger-wagging implicit in even the most innocuous-seeming advice,” she muses.

But too often, the advice she found in books was at once inconclusive and admonishing. Like so many women, when Angela Garbes learned she was pregnant, she immediately started seeking information on how to make the healthiest choices for her unborn child.

Like a mother book angela garbes