This book is not a guide. It won’t give advice on birth, breastfeeding, or bonding. And it’s not aimed solely at parents. Dangerous Ideas about Mothers is a book about motherhood as a cultural construct. 

Mothers are a topic on which almost everybody has an opinion, and always have. Now, however, those opinions are funnelled into and amplified on social media, where conversations turn ugly and advice is commercialised (read: the rise of the Mumpreneurs). Often, social media is understood as a place where mothers can either show off or shut up. 

It is from this idea of heightened scrutiny that Dangerous Ideas About Mothers takes its leave. This book confronts the issues that do not appear in many discussions of mothering, from divorce and over-burdened court systems, parenting children with a disability, to the big business of mummy-dom, to shifting ideas about fathers, to the increasing numbers of women who choose not to have children. It opens up a space where the taboo and unspoken can be voiced, and makes room for those marginalised by regular conversations around mothers and motherhood. 

Contributors include Anne Manne, Catharine Lumby, Danielle Wood, Maria Tumarkin, Josephine Wilson, Quinn Eades, and Timmah Ball.