Her Mother’s Daughter

From The Washington Post:

Baby BABY LOVE Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime Of Ambivalence By Rebecca Walker.

Rebecca Walker comes to her ambivalence by birth. The biracial daughter of divorced parents, she spent her childhood moving between two households on opposite coasts — and between two radically different ways of life. She is also a product of 1970s feminism, a member of “the first generation of women to grow up thinking of children as optional.” Her mother, the novelist Alice Walker, has written of her own mixed feelings about having a child; now it is Rebecca’s turn. Her new memoir is a thoughtful and amusing play-by-play of pregnancy and birth, investigating the difference between the theory surrounding motherhood and the scary, messy, snuggly practice of it.

She barely got beyond the theory phase. During her eight-year relationship with the musician Meshell Ndegeocello, the two women had asked a male friend to serve as birth father — “the natural way, no turkey basters.” They considered moving as a group to Europe, “where I could write and be cared for by the thriving holistic midwifery and healing network. I could learn French, and the baby could be bilingual, and we could live in one of those charming villages in Switzerland.” The arrangement fell apart after a first failed try at conception.

But that’s just backstory. The 30-something Walker who learns she is pregnant on page 1 of Baby Love is somewhat more grounded, no small thanks to her new partner, Glen, the baby’s father, seemingly a model of well-adjusted, nurturing manhood.

More here.