Do children ruin mothers’ taste in books?

It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times, when it comes to women’s reading habits, says a new survey. 

When women settle down and have children (promulgating the species – good) they abandon “serious” literature in favour of “light and easy” books and celebrity biographies (Victoria Beckham’s life story - very bad), according to research by Netmums.com and the Bookseller.

Forty per cent of 6,000 women questioned switched from weightier works to lighter fare after having children. More than half of mothers prefer “chick lit” or “anything that doesn’t take much effort”.
Netmums cofounder Siobhan Freegard, says this “mumming down” of literature has an impact on children and mothers.

“We all know that reading is a great way for mums to give their brains a daily boost, and that it’s important for children to see their parents reading if they¹re going to go on to become book-lovers themselves. I think most mothers would like to read the more taxing material that they appreciated before having children, it¹s just a question of finding the time and energy to do so."

That's just a lot of doomsaying that focuses on mothers – ignoring how the wider population is lightening up in their reading too, says Times literary editor and novelist Erica Wagner. “Why are we just singling out mothers as being stupid as opposed everyone else buying more Katie Price or Russell Brand?” she says.

“There are plenty of things that take less effort than reading. We all fall into this. Not just mothers. Let's ask everybody else too,” she says. Wagner recalls a talk given by mystery writer P.D. James in which James said she’s never too tired to watch television but she’s often too tired to read. "The truth is you have a lot less time for everything once you have a kid because you're preoccupied with doing a lot of other stuff you never had to do before. And some of that is tiring."

Parenthood can be taxing - hardly a newsflash for anyone who has children.

“If you’re tired, you need lighter reading, like books in diary format,” says Jenny Colgan, who’s written a raft of popular novels including her latest Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. Books such as those by Rachel Johnson and Piers Morgan “are easy to pick up and put down.”

“My favourite reading position is in the bath, the toddler at the front playing with his tea set and the baby lying on my stomach, kicking his legs in the water as I get on with the latest Liz Jensen,” says Colgan, who also contributes to Alpha Mummy.

For some mums, books and reading are woven into their motherhood experience. Anna Cole, a stay-at-home mother to a four-year-old and a three-year-old, was first initiated into the world of “mummy lit” when her mother sent her I Don’t Know How She Does It, by Allison Pearson, which she enjoyed. Then her sister-in-law gave her The Secret Life of the Slummy Mummy. "It was really funny,” says Cole, although she found some of the other mummy novels boring.

She then joined a book club of other mothers that meets every six weeks. While she describes herself as “not a great reader”, she’s read three novels in the last six weeks: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, On Chesil Beach, and The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.”

“I'm getting back to reading more serious fiction. I'd say the first couple of years I read OK! and Hello!,” she says.

And naturally after they have children, women delve into a new genre of books that includes classic titles like Green Eggs and Ham and The Naughtiest Girl (as Caitlin Moran wrote about last week).

After all, what’s serious literature? “To my mind some of the books that happen to be called children's books are some of the best and most serious books there are,” says Wagner, citing Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.

What's your take on chick lit and reading after having children?

Tell us what you're reading now.

Comments

OK, thanks, MrsL, I'll give it another go.

[Mrs L]

KM - Any Human Heart is a wonderful book, do try to perservere with it. I found it very moving in parts and very funny generally. I think Boyd is a great writer.

[Kieransmum]

No, J, but it's on my to-do list.

[j]

KM anyone who can finish it may not be on your wavelength to start with ;-)

have you read a thousand splendid suns? (khaled hosseini)

[Kieransmum]

I agree, Never Let Me Go is brilliant. (Incidentally, I have just thrown William Boyd's Any Human Heart across the room in despair: I got about a third of the way through, can anyone tell me if it gets better?)

[mumoftwo]

Re: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go? I've just ordered it online on your recommendation, Kim, as he's one of my favourite authors and kind of forgot that this was out there...(read reviews, but never buy hardbacks!)So, thanks!

[Ad-Mum]

I found the chic-lit written by mothers about motherhood (e.g. I Don't Know How She Does It, Slummy Mummy etc) gripping after having had my first baby. The idea of anyone being able to treat the terrifying concept of Motherhood with a sense of humour was hugely reassuring at the time! And to discover that the REAL work of fiction is the perfect Mother...

Well written chick lit can be far more therapeutic than any of those scary self-help manuals which only serve to increase your paranoia that you're doing it all wrong.

Did anyone try reading the continuum concept? Or Gina Ford? Give me a real Mum with a sense of humour, perspective and a good turn of phrase any day!

[Kim]

KM - if you haven't read it, can I also recommend Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go? It's not a religious book, but it packs a hell of a moral punch. One of the best things I've read in years.

[J]

Irene nemirovsky. Dont let that put you off, she writes very unpretentious stuff :)

Its a wonderful book about the German invasion of Paris.

[Kieransmum]

My French is dreadful and I was just thinking today I should start reading in French again, I enjoy it but read v. slowly with a dictionary, so I'll get that to start me off: what is the author's name?

[J]

Km I also thought you were looking for books that didnt go on about it all the time.

Have you read suite francaise? and *pretentious alert* the english translation is horrible, all too ooh-la-la and frou-frou for me so if you read french comfortably then that is better.

[Kieransmum]

The exceptions prove the rule! :-)

Seriously, it's good to have your recommendations. There are some beautiful works out there, like Miss Garnett's Angel. And I wouldn't want to disappear into a pious ghetto. But I do find it frustrating that unless I choose a book with a foreign-sounding name, when there's a sporting chance the writer will at the very least have grown up in a Catholic Moslem Hindu or Buddhist culture, and will at the very least know what they are talking about, religion in modern highbrow fiction is highly likely to be treated of with almost equal ignorance and contempt. It is a serious point that the exceptions prove the rule: they tend to stand out because they are unusual.

I think many people of faith (s) have to have dual vision in a sense, you are part of contemporary culture and yet also part of a community that rejects/is rejected by many core contemporary values. It's a difficult balance to strike. I try to strike a balance, reading devotional or spiritual works on the one hand and fiction on the other. Both can drive me mad if I have too much of them! :-)

[Kim]

Old Filth is great - would recommend that to anyone.

See, I don't think Julian Barnes is up himself. Very much enjoyed Arthur & George, and most of the others too. But anyway...what about Kate Atkinson, Kiransmum? I reckon almost everyone I know enjoyed Behind the Scenes at the Museum.

[Lazy Mummy]

KM - have you read Jane Gardam? God on the Rocks is an older novel, but is all about religion in the 30s (and doesn't belittle religion, from what I remember). She also touches on it in Faith Fox and a little in Old Filth & Flight of the Maidens - again, exploring faith but not in an offensive way.

[Lazy Mummy]

It depends. I actually thought McEwan was up himself with Chesil Beach (really disappointing to me) though Saturday & Child in Time are two of my favourite novels. Same with Iain Banks - Dead Air was dreck, but Crow Road, Espedair St, Complicity, Garbadale (the new one) are all excellent imo.

J mentions Vikram Seth & several people mention Wodehouse. One of my favourite lines in a novel comes in A Suitable Boy (by Seth) where the heroine's best friend diagnoses depression in the heroine & prescribes regular reading of PG Wodehouse to cure the blues. I forget the exact quote but it's as pertinent as the Ransome quotes on the children's lit thread.

[Kieransmum]

Fair points, J, not sure I would class Ballard as 'modern' but that may be an age difference between us. I may have just had a particularly bad run of novels recently. I think what gets me is not works that explore the problematics of faith, or who write about faith from the perspective of non-belief, both of that is always interesting. But I get so tired of the fashionable satire-which-sells, sneering at faith or making all religious characters laughable. The last four or five books in a row I have read have been identical, religious characters have been there for comic relief. Oh, and although I can see the point they are making, I get a little weary of the 'journey out of faith' stories, where a character's self-realisation is symbolised by their loss of childhood faith, generally held by lunatic/abusive parents.

All right I'll stop ranting now.

P.S. Which Moslem writers do you mean? I have read quite a few from the Middle East, but would like some British recommendations.

Brick Lane, by the way, treads the fine line brilliantly - it's not at all a pro-religious book but it talks about religion with careful sympathy. It doesn't scorn, it dissects, even where the religion of the characters is shown to be shallow and false.

[Kieransmum]

Fair points, J, not sure I would class Ballard as 'modern' but that may be an age difference between us. I may have just had a particularly bad run of novels recently. I think what gets me is not works that explore the problematics of faith, or who write about faith from the perspective of non-belief, both of that is always interesting. But I get so tired of the fashionable satire-which-sells, sneering at faith or making all religious characters laughable. The last four or five books in a row I have read have been identical, religious characters have been there for comic relief. Oh, and although I can see the point they are making, I get a little weary of the 'journey out of faith' stories, where a character's self-realisation is symbolised by their loss of childhood faith, generally held by lunatic/abusive parents.

All right I'll stop ranting now.

P.S. Which Moslem writers do you mean? I have read quite a few from the Middle East, but would like some British recommendations.

Brick Lane, by the way, treads the fine line brilliantly - it's not at all a pro-religious book but it talks about religion with careful sympathy. It doesn't scorn, it dissects, even where the religion of the characters is shown to be shallow and false.

[Kieransmum]

Julian Barnes is not up himself?

If he was any further inside his own arse he would be coming out of his own mouth...

[j]

Kim, agree, there is some very good modern stuff, my point originally was only that some of the older classics are a much easier read than we give them credit for, and have plenty in common with PG Wodehouse and Dick Frances, who deserve more respect than they sometimes get.

Still thinking about KMs point though- which modern lit is not dismissive of faith. How about the Kite runner, JG Ballard, anything by some of the young Muslim writers, Vikram Seth's An Equal Music? or for light stuff I like CJ Sansom's detective series set in tudor england, very aware of the cruelty of the times which included religious cruelty but certainly not dismissive of faith. Health warning dont start with his latest just out as it is strong stuff, best read in order IMHO.

[Hayls]

I am just getting to the stage when I can read while breastfeeding. Until about a week ago I couldn't stop staring at her while I was feeding her, but now I have started to read between stares.

Day before yesterday I finished 'The Welsh Girl' by Peter Ho Davies, which was the first book I completed since Ffion was born. For someone who has always been a prolific reader, it has bothered me that there is just not enough time. Bloke bought me 6 novels for my birthday, three days before I had Ffion, because I expected to have another two weeks of maternity leave before she was born. However, she didn't want to wait, and they have been sitting unread on the shelf, taunting me. But, now she's nine weeks old, and things are a little less crazy, I am starting to reclaim a bit of time - last night I read in bed after the baby was asleep, which is something I was beginning to think I would never do again.

I have absolutely nothing against 'chick-lit', and agree that it is quite a patronising term. It's not to my taste really, I have always thought that there are so many great novels that there is no time to waste.

Lazy Mummy - I wrote about Matilda for my finals...children's lit was my favourite module.

BagofBones - please give a bit of warning if you're going to give away the ending of a novel...

[Kim]

I never understand it when people say they don't like serious contemporary fiction. It seems to me there's so much good stuff out there - Jonathan Coe, David Lodge, Margaret Atwood, Helen Simpson, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, David Mitchell, John Lanchester - all stuff that is readable and enjoyable and not at all up itself, imho.

[j]

not sure about full works only being available for child A. The way I remember it, poor child A had to cope with a novice mother who took forever. By child C I was a demon breastfeeder and there was tons of lovely milk and cuddles, I just was finally able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

[fbtoast]

Since having kids, I have no time at all so I either read for pure enjoyment (PG Wodehouse, Diana Wynne Jones) or serious stuff (Chateaubriand, de Tocqueville etc). The one thing I can't stand is serious contemporary fiction, which is so up itself, demands so much of your time, with so little payback, either in terms of enjoyment or intellectual stimulation.

[Mumofboyz]

I find I only get time to read if I take a bath in the evening, after the littles ones are in bed. I'm too tired to read before bed, and can't concentrate during the day. Bath reading is great, though - 20 mins or so uninterrupted concentration. As for chick lit v classics, I find alternating them works quite well. Reading too much chick lit is a bit like having too much chocolate or reading too many glossy mags- indulgent, moreish but ultimately not that satisfying! (Although give me a good Jilly Cooper any day.)

[mumoftwo]

With my second, I used to wander around doing everything one-handed with the baby breastfeeding away (yes, obviously once any initial probs were sorted out). I've also chatted to friends who have been breastfeeding on the phone; when else can you guarantee at least twenty minutes peace and quiet?

The less 'oughts' and 'shoulds' that are flung around women, the better, for reading, breastfeeding, or anything else.