Close your eyes and picture the perfect mother. She is usually blonde and thin. She seamlessly melds work, wellness and home;and during the depths of the pandemic, she also ran remote school and woke up at 5 a.m. to meditate. You may read this and think it’s bananas; you have probably internalized much of it. Journalist Jessica Grose weaves together her personal journey with scientific, historical, and contemporary reporting to be the voice for American parents she wishes she’d had a decade ago. What successful parenting has in common, regardless of culture or community, is close observation of the kind of unique humans our children are. In thoughtful and revelatory chapters, Grose explains how we got to this moment, why the current state of expectations on mothers is wholly unsustainable, and how we can move towards something better.