Precious children, poor mothers

Review of Anna Shadrina’s book “Precious children: The fall in fertility and the rise in the price of motherhood in the 21st century”

Abstract

The new book by Anna Shadrina, “Precious Children: The fall in fertility and the rise in the price of motherhood in the 21st century,” published by the New Literary Observer in May 2018, won the “LibMissiya” Prize for Analytics. While not, strictly speaking, an academic book, it is based on a broad theoretical foundation and the author is well versed in current research. But the book is not journalistic either, although it will be of interest to large audiences. As in her previous book, Anna Shadrina tries here to make sense of her personal experience - in this case, of the complex relationship with her mother and her reflections on whether she wants to become a mother herself. This review analyses the book’s main ideas: how great are the demands made on mothers by modern society, how mothers experience this pressure, and how “responsible motherhood” is understood today. Anna Shadrina focuses particularly on the interrelation between the biological and the social aspects of motherhood. In addition to scientific literature, she uses the method of introspection and illustrates her ideas using movies, TV series, and fiction. Not all chapters are equally convincing, yet “Precious Children” is of significant interest for sociologists, psychologists, demographers, and scholars in gender studies.