Reading Recommendations for Motherhood & Mental Health
- Skinfood.care
- Dec 8
- 10 min read
In the last year, books became my mental refuge. A place where adult ideas and concepts proliferated and I felt I could make a conscious effort to focus on some sort of self development; in a bid to stop my brain from atrophying. Throughout this time, I read a blend of genres: fiction, fact, theory and everything in between. As this year draws to a close, I wanted to put together a short list of recommended reading on Motherhood and Mental Health. These are the books that produced a genuine "a-ha" moment in me, a time where you learn something new which feels revolutionary or your perspective has changed; never to be the same again.
Zoe Blaskey worked in corporate marketing prior to having her first daughter. The experience of motherhood, or as she often refers to the process of becoming a mother; matrescence, was one she found to be extremely challenging. The impetus for Motherkind was to debunk the myths surrounding motherhood, to lean into many of the more unpopular and difficult conversations regarding it and to help empower mothers to realise that their job is not easy. Throughout her work and her book she normalises the fact that things do feel messy, challenging and at times overwhelming throughout our parenting journeys. She has trained as a transformational coach, interviewed hundreds of parenting experts for her renowned Motherkind podcast and in 2024 penned her first book by the same namesake. One of her main motivations was to reframe the 'toxic narrative surrounding modern motherhood' one where women are expected to work like they aren't mothers, mother like they don't work and somehow have an immaculate appearance, home and thriving social life. The expectations are all too unrealistic, overwhelming and tend to leave women feeling burnt-out and like they are constantly failing in one way or another.
Motherkind - Key Takeaways
When I look back at my copy of Motherkind, I have folded countless dog ears but the excerpt I can recall from memory comes towards the end of the book in the chapter titled Past, Present and Future. Blaskey writes, "What a beautiful miracle it is to be parenting ourselves alongside our children. By doing this we become cycle breakers. We are all cycle breakers, because every single one of us wants to do at least one thing differently than we experienced growing up. Even if you had the most incredible childhood, there will still be some things you want to change as you create your own family...I believe that every generation wants to do better than the one before. The greatest gift we can give to our children is what we were never given." What this particular chapter made me realise was that our parenting styles are often driven by subconscious, learnt behaviours. Whether we agree with these behaviours fundamentally or not, can often be of little importance. By default, unless we work on ourselves to become more conscious and cognisant of how we act when we are with our child(ren), we will simply copy what we have experienced. Blaskey challenges us to look inside ourselves to understand what can be changed and how can things be made different; this time.
This chapter ends with a very thought-provoking exercise. "Imagine it's your eightieth birthday and your grown up children and perhaps grandchildren have gathered around you. Then your children make a speech, and it opens with I've learnt so much from my mother. I've learned what really matters in this life, and she's been an example to me of...What do they say next? What were the magic moments in your life? What did you teach them?..." By asking us to project way into the future, Blaskey reminds us of the importance of our parenting legacy, to step out of the micro back into the macro, to see the big picture of what we are really teaching our kids, how we want to make memories and what legacy we want to leave behind. This is a valuable and humbling reminder of the gravity of the work we are doing and the fact that our time here is finite.
Before children, Neha Rusch had all of the trimmings of a high-flying career woman: an MBA from Stanford, a six-figure salary and a Director level job in Marketing. Fast track to her having her first child in 2016 and the rapid pull to take her back to work was met with an inner resistance to want to stay home and be with her child. After making a decision to take a step back from work and go into what she defines as being a 'Stay at Home M[u]m', she was met with a lot of uneasiness. Her existing friends felt she had wasted her education and when it came to meeting new groups of women, she was unsure about how to introduce herself in a world where professional titles hold the keys to so many people's identity. In her own words, "The prospect of exploring this new version of myself as a mother and letting this sense of peace and belonging transform me was too enticing to ignore. But there was one wrinkle in my plan: leaving my career would make me a stay-at-home-mother and I knew just what my friends, colleagues, family and corporate America thought of those...I wanted to stay home but had no intention of being a martyr or giving up my friendships or interests. I also knew the best days of my career lay ahead of me, and I didn't see why pausing it should damage my prospects or change how others viewed me. I was determined to create a new motherhood narrative..." Rusch went into freelance consulting eventually at a reduced pace and later launched Mother Untitled, an online community for women navigating career pauses. In 2025, she combined her various experiences and efforts into writing The Power Pause.
The Power Pause - Key Takeaways
Rusch's ability to so accurately express the loss of identity which comes with the transition out of paid work into full-time parenting, was something which deeply resonated with me. But what I found so empowering in her book, was the idea that stay-at-home parenting does not need to follow the limited and lacklustre template which most of us have imagined for it. One such example is goal setting; "self-concordant goals" otherwise known as "want to goals" - "even though want-to goals may require serious effort, we typically perceive them as having inherent ease, which makes us more likely to stick with the process. Perhaps more importantly, when you deliberately set goals, you respect your choice and your time. Goals are a reminder that your growth at home is just as significant as your growth in your paid career, and that your family's future merits as much consideration as the future of your former organization." Rusch shrewdly divides these goals into different categories, her "Northern Star" (a mantra which guides her life on a day to day basis) and family and personal goals lists. Her Northern Star is one that I love, "I want to be present through each day with my family and be the calmest and most content version of myself that I can be." By setting goals and having a clear mantra, it enables you to align your actions more seamlessly with what you want to call in.
The title of the book itself, is a reclamation of sorts, reminding, mainly mothers, that this time is valuable, precious, it does indeed constitute real and productive work and will not stop you from finding your way back into the work force one day, should you feel it is right to re-join. In Rusch's world there is no one-size-fits-all solution, rather each family is a special case with its own unique circumstances which need to be considered; all women are equal regardless of their choices. This makes for a meaningful narrative, particularly in the wake of Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In movement. "There is a vast grey area between the black and white ideas of "stay-at-home" and "working mother". If we abandon the binary, we can dial up or dial down for seasons with less shame and more possibility."
Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. He earned his Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania in1992 and taught psychology at the University of Virgina for a further16 years. His recent best-selling book offers a chilling and data-backed insight into the realities of social media, smartphones and the epidemic of depression and anxiety it has wreaked on Generation Z. Haidt dives into the latest research, dissecting the tipping point in this rapid decline in mental health: 2010-2015. He argues that as a result of this migration towards digital interaction versus in-person experiences, childhood and adolescence were effectively 're-wired.' He calls on parents to remember the golden years of childhood where young people could meet with friends, neighbours and enjoy freedom outside, away from adult supervision. He asks for us to stop overprotecting our children in the real world where over millennia we have been naturally hard-wired to survive, and instead, use this protection to safeguard them from the perilous and unregulated landmine that exists online.
The Anxious Generation - Key Takeaways
According to Haidt's research; play is an essential part of mammals' evolutionary journey. The move from what he dubs as a 'play-based' childhood to a 'screen-based' childhood plays an important role in his diagnosis. "Play is the work of childhood, and all young mammals have the same job: Wire up your brain by playing vigorously and often. Hundreds of studies..show that young mammals want to play, need to play, and come out socially, cognitively, and emotionally impaired when they are deprived of play. In play, young mammals learn the skills they will need to be successful as adults, and they learn in the way that neurons like best: from repeated activity with feedback from success and failure in a low stakes environment."
Haidt's narrative further reminds us of something that I believe the modern world has completely forgotten; children are in fact 'anti-fragile' (a term originally coined by esteemed author Naseem Taleb). What this means is that healthy levels of stress, challenges and hardship are key to their development. Haidt argues that the current trend of overprotecting our children in the real-world from conflict and disappointment is not serving them as this is what helps them to develop emotional and social resilience. He advocates for more independent play and for parents to instil age appropriate levels of autonomy and responsibility sooner, rather than later. "When we make children's safety a quasi-sacred value and don't allow them to take any risks, we block them from overcoming anxiety, learning to manage risk, and learning to be self-governing, all of which are essential for becoming healthy and competent adults." Instead, what he believes, is that we are underprotecting them online where pedophiles as well as other types of unsavoury characters and activities are at their fingertips, and parental controls can easily be circumvented.
There is too much of value to distill in such a short analysis of Haidt's meaningful and disturbing narrative to cover it all in this piece. Nevertheless, another moment I found to be particularly meaningful is when Haidt asks us to stop and think what the opportunity costs of giving a young person a smart phone/social media are. Haidt hypothesises, "so when that salesman tells you that the product is free, you ask about the opportunity cost. How much time does the average child spend using this product? Around 40 hours a week for pre-teens, he says. For teens aged 13 to 18, it's closer to 50 hours per week. At that point, wouldn't you walk out of the store?" I most definitely would. Due to their still under-developed frontal cortices, smartphones and their relative applications are specifically addictive and harmful to children and adolescents. The mental hijacking that takes place gradually sucks young people away from in-person play and socialisation which is where they are hard-wired to form meaningful, long-lasting friendship and connections.
TJ Power is a young neuroscientist. At the ripe age of just 27, he is considered a part of Generation Z. What is so helpful about Power's book, is that he has lived two distinctly different lives until now. His early years were spent in a haze of substance abuse, de-motivated and addicted to both social media and pornography. Since his turning point, he has developed a formula for how to live in a world where digital media dominates and how to develop healthy habits and constraints which limit the damaging effects it has on us. DOSE is an acronym for the four hormones and chemicals which Power believes control our overall mood and motivation levels on a day-to-day basis: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins.
The DOSE Effect - Key Takeaways
Smartphones are freakishly addictive. It is difficult to argue otherwise. In our minds, there is always some justifiable reason for us to reach out and pick up our phones. A concept which Power introduces in his book is what he refers to as 'phone fasting'. In his own words, "there is a very specific reason that I chose this route in order to alter your relationship with your phone. What you may have discovered is that if your phone is near you, no matter how hard you try, you inevitably pick it up...In order to significantly reduce your phone usage, there must be windows of time in your day when your phone is not near you." I can attest to having tried this and the feeling is totally liberating. You no longer feel obligated to take photos, check your notifications or answer calls when you simply want to focus your mind and attention on being present in the moment. We have never in the history of time have had this level of contactibility or access to as much information as we currently do. We are not neurologically wired to receive this much stimulus on a daily basis. In order to help create more balance, we must create some healthy boundaries to invite space and separation between us and our devices.
The anti-thesis to technology is nature. Under the chapter dedicated to serotonin and how to optimise our levels of it, Power reminds us of a very simple exercise: walking in nature. He takes things a step further by asking us to immerse our senses fully, with his nature checklist "1.Sight: count how many different colours you can see. 2. Sound: listen closely to the different sounds you can hear all around you. 3. Smell: Breathe in deeply as you walk and think about what you smell." He encourages us to make these walks completely distraction-free, meaning: no music, podcasts or looking at our screens, truly just slowing down and being present. Power credits this single daily habit with a great deal of his success and ability to perform and execute in his work effectively. Power's research showed that "in the early 2000s, the Japanese noted a significant alteration in people's mental health and coined a term called 'karoshi', which referred to an individual who was working extreme hours and spending too much time in city environments. Upon exploring a range of solutions, they considered their vast forests...Individuals [who enaged in 'forest bathing'] saw significant benefit to their natural stress levels, anxiety, depression, anger and sleep." Having tried such nature walks myself, it is amazing to feel the body's response to the natural environment, how we slow down and tune into a different pace; this is a small and relatively easy habit to maintain which can dramatically improve how we feel within ourselves.
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