(M)otherhood

Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural and data scientist, Visiting Honorary Professor of Social Inequities and injustice in the UK, and founder of research think-tank 'The 50 Percent Project'. She was selected as a 'creative thinker' for innovative and interdisciplinary research by NESTA and given a Diverse Wisdom award by Hay House Publishing. Pragya has also held the Leverhulme Fellowship and other academic positions and fellowships at University College London, Johns Hopkins University and University of Melbourne. Pragya has written for the Guardian, Forbes, Scientific American and New Scientist as well as acclaimed peer-reviewed scholarly articles, and her creative non-fiction writing also appears in Literary Hub and AEON. She is the author of Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias, Wish We Knew What To Say: Talking With Children about Race, (M)otherhood: On the Choices of Being a Woman and Standing Up to Racism, her first book for children. She lives in the north-west of England. @DrPragyaAgarwal | drpragyaagarwal.comExtremely open in its honesty and meticulously researched, (M)otherhood probes themes of infertility, childbirth and reproductive justice, and makes a powerful and urgent argument for the need to tackle society's obsession with women's bodies and fertility.Part memoir and reflective analysis, Pragya Agarwal examines motherhood and fertility and how it shapes all our livesAn exhilarating, genre-defying read . . . seamlessly interwoven with statistics, quotes and scientific evidence to clever narrative effect . . . reminiscent of Olivia Laing's writing on loneliness or the body . . . The whole thing adds up to the most thoughtful, empathic and inspiring science of the selfAbsolutely sensational. Revelatory and of its time, challenging myths and ingrained perceptions. I could not put it down. Everyone should read thisBrilliant, brave, beautiful . . . such an inspiring bookRiveting. Agarwal writes with searing honesty and tenderness about the joys and agonies of becoming a mother, of trying and failing to conceive again, and then of pursuing a route to motherhood that's widely seen as taboo . . . Agarwal writes beautifully about her own complicated experienceIntimate and insightful, Pragya Agarwal expands the meaning of the word motherhood in this brilliant book. This is urgent, essential reading for everyoneA wide-ranging, searingly honest and timely intervention into the framing of a fundamental and fraught choice, as well as an impassioned defence of ambivalence as part of the human condition(M)otherhood is a valuable step towards a literature that acknowledges the breadth and variety of the parenting experience and its cultural meanings. It is touchingly personal and bravePowerful and compelling . . . Agarwal is a precise, elegant writer who seeks answers by embracing complexityA book about the disparate forces of duty, stereotypes, pressure, double standards and expectations forced upon women, Agarwal cuts through all of it to examine the multiplicity and complexity of motherhood in all its myriad forms. A moving, urgent and necessary read, ultimately it is a book about loveCourageous, tender, painfully resonant and beautifully written - this is such a wise and generous exploration of womanhood and identity, and deserves to be read as widely as possible