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Four Mothers

An Intimate Journey through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries

Coming Soon
Four Mothers Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Abigail Leonard

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On Sale
May 6, 2025
Page Count
288 pages
Publisher
Algonquin Books
ISBN-13
9781643756530

In the tradition of Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women and Robert Kolker’s Hidden Valley Road, Abigail Leonard’s immersive, page-turning reporting follows four women from around the world as they embark on the first year of motherhood

Utterly moving and addictively readable from page one, the book begins with the pregnancies and labor experiences of Anna in Finland, Tsukasa in Japan, Sarah in the U.S., and Chelsea in Kenya. The year that followed was an experience both remarkably unique for each woman, and remarkably universal. Leonard takes readers inside their relationships, families, and interactions with employers, the healthcare system, and the social safety net, weaving in deeply researched background on each country’s history, political priorities, and cultural norms that influence the women’s lives.
 
As debates surrounding paid leave, universal daycare, and national healthcare rage in the US and around the world, Four Mothers offers a uniquely intimate, moving portrait of what those policies mean in the everyday lives of parents. By turns enraging and full of hope, this on-the-ground yet global look at new motherhood today offers readers – especially new or future parents – unprecedented context for the innumerable different ways we could create our family lives, to help us more expansively imagine the possibilities for the future.
 

Genre:

  • “With all the gifts of a novelist, reporter Abigail Leonard chronicles the lives of women around the world during their first year of motherhood, to make you feel their joy, their fear, their exhaustion, and their fierce love for their children. This is real motherhood on the page, bolstered by rigorous research to explain why our current systems have failed families and offer insights for a brighter future.”
    Jo Piazza, bestselling author of How to Be Married

Formats and Prices

Price

$30.00

Price

$40.00 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Hardcover $30.00 $40.00 CAD
  2. ebook $10.00 $12.99 CAD
  3. Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $24.99

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Abigail Leonard

About the Author

Abigail Leonard is an award-winning international reporter and news producer, currently based in Washington D.C. and before that in Tokyo, where she was a frequent contributor to NPR, Time Magazine, and New York Times video. Her stories have also appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Vox. Before she moved to Japan, she wrote and produced long-form news documentaries as a staff producer for PBS, ABC and Al Jazeera America, and was a lead writer for "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" and "The War Room with Jennifer Granholm." Stories she reported have earned a national Emmy Award, an Overseas Press Club Award, an Association of Health Care Journalists Award, a National Headliner Award, and a James Beard Foundation Media Award Nomination. 
 

Learn more about this author