‘Pro­gress­ive mum lit’ is a bet­ter descrip­tion

In “‘Sad mum lit’ and the truth about par­ent­hood” (Opin­ion, Life & Arts, Janu­ary 27), your colum­nist Emma Jac­obs might want to rethink the term “sad mum lit” when ref­er­en­cing works by Ash­ley Audrain, Julia Fine, Sheila Heti, Lara Fei­gel, Rachel Cusk and Claire Kil­roy.

To describe them as “sad” risks eras­ing the import­ant cri­ti­cism some of these books make on pat­ri­archal struc­tures per­meat­ing the insti­tu­tion of moth­er­hood and its influ­ence over moth­er­ing exper­i­ences.

Per­haps “pro­gress­ive mum lit” would bet­ter hon­our such authors who mas­ter­fully cap­ture the unspoken, unglam­or­ous and unval­ued real­ity of early moth­er­hood while embody­ing in their works the cre­ativ­ity and love that stem from such exper­i­ences.

We need these raw accounts to col­lect­ively think about how best to empower moth­ers and care­givers at a wider soci­etal level and it begins by how we define that lit­er­ary genre.

Adri­ana Ryan
Duil­lier, Switzer­land