**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?
Tabella dei contenuti
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
Circa l’autore
Nan Bauer-Maglin worked at City University of New York for almost forty years as a professor and administrator. She is the editor of Cut Loose: (Mostly) Older Women Talk about the End of (Mostly) Long-term Relationships and Widows’ Words: Women Write on the Experience of Grief, the First Year, the Long Haul, and Everything in Between. She is 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.