Tick Tock
Essays on Becoming a Parent After 40
Will be published approx. on 2. December 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-1-948340-45-8 (ISBN)
Description
**AS SEEN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, BITCH MAGAZINE, THE LA REVIEW OF BOOKS, LIT HUB, AND MORE**
In this groundbreaking collection of essays, poems, and creative nonfiction, more than twenty-nine writers offer witty and incisive insight into the unique experience of being or having an older parent in today's world.
By turns raw, funny, tender, and wise, these stories reshape our understanding of the social factors that impact later parenthood, honor the strength and resilience required to overcome countless challenges posed in healthcare and adoption settings, and relish in the many joys of a parent-child relationship, no matter what age. Writers, child development experts, and older parents themselves Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin have curated a collection that truly affirms and destigmatizes the act of becoming a parent over 40, whether by choice or by chance.
Contributors include New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award winner Elizabeth Acevedo; award-winning author Adam Berlin; writer and editor Laura Broadwell; author and editor Salma Abdelnour Gilman; professor and institute director Elizabeth Gregory; podcast producer and host Barbara Herel; author and research scholar Elline Lipkin; retired journalist Linda Wright Moore; founder and executive director of The Democracy Center Jim Shultz; and more.
Tick Tock is a document, a community, a manual, a help line, a chorus of voices expressing the gamut of complicated emotions that accompany a person of a certain age contemplating the leap into parenthood. I wish this important book existed when I was at that crossroads, and am grateful for it today. -Michelle Tea, Against Memoir
Tick Tock reads like a wide-ranging chat with friends who ask 'What's your story?' These are human, lived tales that describe life-changing and interconnected issues-political, social, and personal. What a gift. -Judy Norsigian and Jane Pincus, Our Bodies, Ourselves
Tick Tock is an exquisite, understanding, and inclusive examination of the unique challenges and joys faced by older parents. An unforgettable book-undeniably important and a pleasure to read. -Beverly Gologorsky, Can You See the Wind?
In this groundbreaking collection of essays, poems, and creative nonfiction, more than twenty-nine writers offer witty and incisive insight into the unique experience of being or having an older parent in today's world.
By turns raw, funny, tender, and wise, these stories reshape our understanding of the social factors that impact later parenthood, honor the strength and resilience required to overcome countless challenges posed in healthcare and adoption settings, and relish in the many joys of a parent-child relationship, no matter what age. Writers, child development experts, and older parents themselves Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin have curated a collection that truly affirms and destigmatizes the act of becoming a parent over 40, whether by choice or by chance.
Contributors include New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award winner Elizabeth Acevedo; award-winning author Adam Berlin; writer and editor Laura Broadwell; author and editor Salma Abdelnour Gilman; professor and institute director Elizabeth Gregory; podcast producer and host Barbara Herel; author and research scholar Elline Lipkin; retired journalist Linda Wright Moore; founder and executive director of The Democracy Center Jim Shultz; and more.
Tick Tock is a document, a community, a manual, a help line, a chorus of voices expressing the gamut of complicated emotions that accompany a person of a certain age contemplating the leap into parenthood. I wish this important book existed when I was at that crossroads, and am grateful for it today. -Michelle Tea, Against Memoir
Tick Tock reads like a wide-ranging chat with friends who ask 'What's your story?' These are human, lived tales that describe life-changing and interconnected issues-political, social, and personal. What a gift. -Judy Norsigian and Jane Pincus, Our Bodies, Ourselves
Tick Tock is an exquisite, understanding, and inclusive examination of the unique challenges and joys faced by older parents. An unforgettable book-undeniably important and a pleasure to read. -Beverly Gologorsky, Can You See the Wind?
Reviews / Votes
Engaging, thoughtful, and provocative. -LA Review of BooksFor anyone considering parenthood at a later age, scholars Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin have put together an expansive collection of stories from 30 writers on the beauty and difficulty of being a 40-plus parent. -Bitch magazine
Tick Tock reads like a wide-ranging chat with friends who ask 'What's your story?' These are human, lived tales that describe life-changing and interconnected issues-political, social, and personal. What a gift. -JUDY NORSIGIAN and JANE PINCUS, OUR BODIES OURSELVES
Tick Tock is a document, a community, a manual, a help line, a chorus of voices expressing the gamut of complicated emotions that accompany a person of a certain age contemplating the leap into parenthood. I wish this important book existed when I was at that crossroads, and am grateful for it today. -MICHELLE TEA, AGAINST MEMOIR
Tick Tock challenges readers to rethink what parenting means in this time in America from a wide variety of vantage points and through voices that are, in all their great diversity, eloquent, sharp, and deeply engaging...Brilliantly framed and beautifully written. -ROSALIND PETCHESKY, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Political Science, Hunter College & the Graduate Center, City University of New York
Honest, personal, and often downright funny, these brave parents provide insight, solidarity, and hope for any over 40 who are ready to love a child...and laugh and cry and wonder upon the universe every day for the rest of their lives. May it always be so. -JESS P. SHATKIN, professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Pediatrics, NYU School of Medicine
As an over-40 mother myself, I appreciate how this groundbreaking collection marks momentous changes in gender roles, child-rearing patterns, and family composition. -JOYCE ANTLER, Professor Emerita of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University and author of YOU NEVER CALL! YOU NEVER WRITE! A HISTORY OF THE JEWISH MOTHER
Tick Tock is an exquisite, understanding, and inclusive examination of the unique challenges and joys faced by older parents. An unforgettable book-undeniably important and a pleasure to read. -BEVERLY GOLOGORSKY, CAN YOU SEE THE WIND?
Brave, honest and moving...most important are the truths, both personal and political, that will resonate, no matter your age or parental status. -MARLENE FRIED, faculty director of Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 201 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
386 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-948340-45-8 (9781948340458)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2021
Dottir Press
€19.49
Available for download
Persons
Vicki Breitbart holds an MSW from NYU, an MS from Bank Street, and an EdD from Teachers College, and has been a writer and educator for more than forty years. Throughout her career, she has worked extensively with young children, parents, and other educators. She is the author of The Day Care Book and Open for Children, as well as numerous academic articles on women's issues, and the producer of documentaries Sugar and Spice and Open for Children. She is the parent to a 43-year-old son and a 19-year-old daughter, who she adopted when she was 53.
Nan Bauer-Maglin worked at City University of New York for almost forty years as a professor and administrator. She is the editor of Widows' Words: Women Write on the Experience of Grief, the First Year, the Long Haul, and Everything in Between. She is the editor of Cut Loose: (Mostly) Older Women Talk about the End of (Mostly) Long-term Relationships and the coeditor of Women and Stepfamilies: Voices of Anger and Love; "Bad Girls/Good Girls": Women, Sex, and Power in the Nineties; Women Confronting Retirement: A Nontraditional Guide; and Final Acts: Death, Dying and the Choices We Make. In 1977, she adopted a baby when she was 35 (which was considered old then).
Nan Bauer-Maglin worked at City University of New York for almost forty years as a professor and administrator. She is the editor of Widows' Words: Women Write on the Experience of Grief, the First Year, the Long Haul, and Everything in Between. She is the editor of Cut Loose: (Mostly) Older Women Talk about the End of (Mostly) Long-term Relationships and the coeditor of Women and Stepfamilies: Voices of Anger and Love; "Bad Girls/Good Girls": Women, Sex, and Power in the Nineties; Women Confronting Retirement: A Nontraditional Guide; and Final Acts: Death, Dying and the Choices We Make. In 1977, she adopted a baby when she was 35 (which was considered old then).
Content
Introduction
PART I. Why Did It Take So Long?
We Can Wait, But Are We Paying Too High a Price? by Salma Abdelnour Gilman
Out of the Closet and Out of Time by Laura Davis
OTM (Old, Tired Mommy): Not What I Planned by Linda Wright Moore
PART II. Pregnancy and Birth After 40
My Road Trip to Fertility by Martine Guay
Old Mom by Sarah Dougher
The Terrible Math by Elline Lipkin
Mourning the Loss of Fertility by Linda Corman
A Phantasmagoria of Pregnancy and Birth beyond Forty by Julia Henderson
Giving Birth after Fifty by Phyllis Cox
PART III. Does Age Matter If I Adopt?
Growing Roots by Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
"La Llapa": A Father Again at Forty-Five by Jim Shultz
States of Mind by Judith Ugelow Blak
25% Pure Gold by Barbara Herel
Too Old for Cartwheels: Reflections from an At-Risk Family by Julie Buckner Armstrong
From Grief to Joy by Vicki Breitbart
Twins? Are You Crazy? by Pamela Pitman Brown
Life in Balance by Laura Broadwell
PART IV. Parenting After Forty
Never Too Old to Be a Father-Again by Robert Bence
"Who Is That?" Becoming a Bonus Mom at Age 45 by Paige Averett
Old Life, New Life, and Parenting in the In-Between by Erik Malewski
My Grandmother, My Mother, Myself, and My Son by Jean Y. Leung
His Old Man by Adam Berlin
If I Don't Laugh, I'll Cry by Elizabeth Newman
What Is Hard? by Catherine Arnst
Being All the Things by Katherine C. Rand
Better Late Than Never by Daniel E. Hood
Two Poems by Elizabeth Acevedo
Opening Up by Oliver Ardill-Young
PART V. Building Community and Changing the Narrative
Finding Our Way Together by Sara Elinoff Acker
The Single, Most Important Community by Alia R. Tyner-Mullings
Reparation by Susan Ardill
Late-Onset Motherhood: Many Stories, One Radical Plot Change by Elizabeth Gregory
Acknowledgments
About the Contributors
Notes
PART I. Why Did It Take So Long?
We Can Wait, But Are We Paying Too High a Price? by Salma Abdelnour Gilman
Out of the Closet and Out of Time by Laura Davis
OTM (Old, Tired Mommy): Not What I Planned by Linda Wright Moore
PART II. Pregnancy and Birth After 40
My Road Trip to Fertility by Martine Guay
Old Mom by Sarah Dougher
The Terrible Math by Elline Lipkin
Mourning the Loss of Fertility by Linda Corman
A Phantasmagoria of Pregnancy and Birth beyond Forty by Julia Henderson
Giving Birth after Fifty by Phyllis Cox
PART III. Does Age Matter If I Adopt?
Growing Roots by Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
"La Llapa": A Father Again at Forty-Five by Jim Shultz
States of Mind by Judith Ugelow Blak
25% Pure Gold by Barbara Herel
Too Old for Cartwheels: Reflections from an At-Risk Family by Julie Buckner Armstrong
From Grief to Joy by Vicki Breitbart
Twins? Are You Crazy? by Pamela Pitman Brown
Life in Balance by Laura Broadwell
PART IV. Parenting After Forty
Never Too Old to Be a Father-Again by Robert Bence
"Who Is That?" Becoming a Bonus Mom at Age 45 by Paige Averett
Old Life, New Life, and Parenting in the In-Between by Erik Malewski
My Grandmother, My Mother, Myself, and My Son by Jean Y. Leung
His Old Man by Adam Berlin
If I Don't Laugh, I'll Cry by Elizabeth Newman
What Is Hard? by Catherine Arnst
Being All the Things by Katherine C. Rand
Better Late Than Never by Daniel E. Hood
Two Poems by Elizabeth Acevedo
Opening Up by Oliver Ardill-Young
PART V. Building Community and Changing the Narrative
Finding Our Way Together by Sara Elinoff Acker
The Single, Most Important Community by Alia R. Tyner-Mullings
Reparation by Susan Ardill
Late-Onset Motherhood: Many Stories, One Radical Plot Change by Elizabeth Gregory
Acknowledgments
About the Contributors
Notes