Showing results by narrator "Nell Frizzell" in All Categories

Everyone is moving on...and then, there's Hanna. By 30, Hanna expected to have it all (or at least some of it). A fulfilling and successful career. A healthy, long-term relationship, maybe even an engagement ring. A house (or at least a flat) of her own. But in reality, she's back at square one. Single after breaking up with someone she's not sure ever loved her. Flooded with wedding invitations and pregnancy scan pictures from friends. Unable to afford to live on her own, moving in with her (also single and dating) father.

The panic years can hit at any time but they are most commonly triggered somewhere between the ages of twenty-five and forty. During this time, every decision a woman makes - from postcode to partner, friends to family, work to weekends - will be impacted by the urgency of the one decision with a deadline, the one decision that is impossible to take back: whether or not to have a baby. But how to stay sane in such a maddening time? How to understand who you are and what you might want from life? How to know if you're making the right decisions?

A memoir culminating in a manifesto, Holding the Baby sets out to understand why we still treat early parenthood as an individual slog rather than a shared cultural responsibility. Tracing her own journey to the nadir of sleeplessness via social retreat and murderous rage, Frizzell draws on the latest research to explore: What effect does parenting have on your career? How can we make childcare affordable and fit for purpose? If parenting is so hard, why does anyone ever do it more than once?