Rating: 
Summary: Not great not horrible
Review: This book has some good aspects but feels like it needed more research or more time in introspection. Sure it is great to have a well known respected feminist writer say the things that Suzanne Arms, Ina May Gaskin, Sheila Kitzinger, etc. have all said before(and somewhat better in my opinion) and women will pick up this book, because it is Naomi Wolf, that wouldn't otherwise buy a book about birth and mothering. That is all to the good! I see strengths in the chapters describing the truly typical dismissive prenatal care most OBs give (I say this as an experienced childbirth educator/labor support person/mother of twins - the dreaded "high risk" pregnancy that wasn't). It clearly says that there is no basis in fact or simple human decency in such a birth culture. The Post Partum Depression chapter is worth the price of the book. Honesty on that topic is often lacking! I actually liked the stories about women trying to negotiate changing marital relationships. Some have found them whiny, but they sound like some of my girlfriends conversations and rang true to me. I think she is overly pessimistic. Some of us find a good balance with our mates and are truly happy(rather than resigned) with the results. It is true that a sense of entitlement doesn't render this a truly representative book. Where are the Latino, African-American and immigrant birth experiences. If she thinks hers was bad, she has no idea how truly bad it can get! I once consoled a sobbing 19 year old at a health fair, who told me how her nurse and OB literally yelled, "shut up!" to her repeatedly when she asked questions during her birth. I was horrified at Wolf's indefensible comments on LaLecheLeague. I want to know what meeting she went to (I suspect she actually didn't go to one). I belong to the DC chapter and she had her first child when she lived/worked in DC and I tell you that we have never been "lactation facists" or unrealistic "milk missionaries" to the women who choose to come to our meetings. The biggest problem I have with the book is her chapter on the "naturalists". She tells women that hospital courses are not adequate or honest (true) but does not tell women that there are literally thousands of independent childbirth education classes held in homes, community centers and yoga studios that do provide the information she seemed unable to locate before her traumatic first birth. Women can seek a Bradley Method (disclosure-I teach Bradley), Birthing From Within, Birthworks, or other natural childbirth class to get balanced viewpoints and better yet - referral lists of wonderful midwives and the (sadly too few and far between) supportive respectful OBs and hospitals. Just about all my OB-employing students switch to *independent* midwives (Joint OB/midwife practices can be a dicey form of window dressing that hides an uncomfortable birth reality. Be sure to ask if the midwives actually catch and how often.) midway through my 12 week class (that's right a weekender B&B cram session is not going to be enough because you need committment, education and time to navigate our scary birth culture in a way that suits your needs) My final disappointment was that as a feminist she did not even touch on the fact that women are taking control/stepping out of the abusive system by engaging independent certified nurse midwives, lay midwives(professional, apprentice trained homebirth specialists legal in 17 states and deserving of legality in all others!!!!), having homebirths and even choosing unassisted births in ever increasing numbers. There is a womanist mothers' movement that is alive and well and she and her feminist-success-story (admittedly) privileged friends could have availed themselves of it had they dug a little deeper. This book was worth reading but, go read Immaculate Deception II, Spiritual Midwifery, The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth and the Birthlove.com website as well!
Rating: 
Summary: Would you like some cheese to go with that whine?
Review: What a horrible book. Most of the complaining Wolf does in her latest work isn't even original--she steals it from the Sears, Henci Goer, and other childbirth alarmists. Her paranoid rantings against obstetricians are completely incredible. If she thinks midwives are better than OBs, why did she go to an OB for her second child--only to complain about that one, too? When it comes to actually having a child, Wolf is shocked to find out, for example, that women still do most of the childrearing, and that babysitters and nannies are working for money and would rather be doing something other than taking care of the children of rich white ladies such as herself. Her thinly veiled complaints about her husband's lack of participation in childrearing (she mostly just complains about men in general) are not very compelling. It is pretty obvious that Naomi Wolf would not be interested in having a stay-at-home dad for a husband, or even a "down-shifter" who spends less time at work. She wants the status of a career-driven man without the commitment to a career. Can't she put two and two together? Other writers such as Ann Crittendon have done a much better job actually documenting the inequities of childrearing in America. This is a humorless, self-pitying, depressing book.
Rating: 
Summary: Naomi Wolf Sheds Light on Childbirth in America
Review: As the mother of two children, I never tire of hearing the stories of childbirth from other women. In this fresh, new view of motherhood, Ms. Wolf takes you along in an intimate journey through the stories of new mothers, the stories are not so pretty truths, but truths, that are indeed necessary in being informed, empowered new mothers. The many medical truths that are revealed in this book--are shocking and certainly distressing--and in true form, Ms. Wolf asks difficult questions about what really is going on in pregnancy and childbirth. Her answers--although disturbing, are certainly challenging and courageous in a world which traditionally avoids second guessing the authority of the medical establishment. You will definitely feel emotionally involved with this book--Read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Insight on the road to motherhood
Review: For women embarking on the journey to motherhood, Naomi Wolf's new book reaches out like the wise counsel and comfort of a loving big sister or a beloved close friend. Written with characteristic warmth, compassion and wisdom, "Misconceptions" provides women with in-depth research on the medical road to maternity and arms them with information they need to take control of their pregnancies and childbirth. Through detailed descriptions of her own experience and that of other women, Naomi Wolf reminds women they are not alone when they confront the tremendous emotional highs and lows of becoming a mother. She also proscribes ways our culture and medical establishment can make the transition to motherhood easier for women and families.
This book is also a must-read for medical professionals. For them, "Misconceptions" provides a window through which they can see the consequences of their doctor-patient relationships with expectant mothers.
Rating: 
Summary: Self obsessed old news.
Review: I picked this book up with great excitement. Naomi Wolf may be seen as the acceptable face of feminism, but I thought that could only be a good thing when tackling the hideously intervention-oriented American mainstream birth system. WRONG - unless you're a clueless, self centred upper middle-clas woman without the ovaries to really take on the system. Wolf had a typical unecessary C-section and got angry. She learned a lot about cascading interventions and alternate birthing models, got to interview the likes of Ina May Gaskin - and then had another C-section. No truly convincing explanation is given in either case and it's very tempting to assume that Wolf doesn't want her readers to know either. The obfuscated explanations she gives are so full of holes you could drive a truck through them. Yet with all the apparent knowledge and research within her grasp, Wolf still has the temerity to bleat "I will never know if the section saved my babies' lives, and on the chance they did, my husband and I must be grateful". Oh, baloney! It's also hard to forgive the author who in one breath acknowledges the vast amount of research over the past decade that has proved breastfeeding is not only essential to a baby's wellbeing but has important health ramifications throughout later life, but in the next breath describes the La Leche League as "lactation fascists". There's not an iota of information in this book that you can't find in a thousand places on the internet, far better expressed by women who have learnt some savage lessons at the hands of modern obstetrics and changed their lives as a result. Women who have had the courage to confront the mainstream and support other women in making safer natural choices, against often fierce opposition. Not Wolf. She's (seriously!) more concerned with how nice the obstetrician will be to her) and seems to believe that questioning epidural and C-section rates is somehow radically daring of her. She is similarly struck by the experience of being a new mother and how much it impacts on her and her 30-ish professional friends. Hello?? Men don't share parenting equally?? You don't say so!! "Misconceptions" falls awkwardly between two chairs - as a personal pregnancy and mothering memoir it might just have worked. As an expose, it would have been better with more accurate and meaningful research. But Wolf seems to imagine that her experiences have some sort of magic resonance for the rest of us and that she and her friends are a valid prism for the experiences of women everywhere. Mainstream obstetrics desperately needs to be thoroughly exposed and criticised for the way it treats women, and Western cultures need to respect motherhood and breastfeeding far more than they do. A fiery, passionate, impeccably researched book aimed at middle America could do much to galvanise popular opinion. What a shame this one falls so far short.
Rating:
Summary: Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected
Review: Naomi Wolf has beautifully blended her personal experience of pregnancy and, most importantly for me, in giving birth, to powerfully effect. By sharing her own experience, along with information about how hospitals, the medical profession, and doctors themselves CONTINUE to subjugate the needs and desires of women giving birth to their own needs, she broke through my buried grief and anger about my own birthing experiences. (Due to my doctor's scheduling needs, the birth of my first child resulted in a fractured tailbone and a decade of chronic pain.) As always, Wolf raises the bar on what women deserve, and should demand. Brava!
Rating:
Summary: A few valid points overwhelmed by melodrama & poor-me-ism
Review: As a pregnant stay-at-home mother, I've experienced first-hand the extent to which society devalues motherhood and pregnancy. I therefore found the concept of Naomi Wolf's book, "Misconceptions," intriguing: Wolf purports to "show how the experience of becoming a mother ... [is] undersupported, sentimentalized, and even manipulated at women's expense." Sadly, the book's whiny, self-pitying tone and unrelenting negativity will undoubtedly alienate the people Wolf seeks to convince.
Let me start by saying that Wolf does make many valid points about the unsupportive and often negative way American society treats pregnant women and new mothers. For example, she rightly points out the stinginess of most employers when it comes to maternity leave; the unreasonable difficulty in determining important statistics like a hospital's rate of maternal death or percentage of patients who ultimately get C-sections; and the unwillingness of society to deal straight-on with the less romantic aspects of pregnancy and motherhood. And Wolf's critique of the patronizing "What to Expect When You're Expecting" (which is a minuscule portion of the book, but has received disproportionate emphasis in many reviews) is dead-on accurate.
Unfortunately, the important and thought-provoking parts of the book are far outweighed by the book's flaws: (1) for every one well-reasoned argument or analysis, there are at least two or three that are questionable or even plainly absurd. For example, is Wolf seriously suggesting that what a pregnant woman sees or does can somehow "imprint" on her unborn fetus? Consider her response to the morally ambiguous and extremely complex issue of selective termination: "What sort of violence might the surviving siblings remember in that place below memory?". In another case, she cites the statistic that women in "troubled" relationships have a much higher percentage of children with problems, in support of the proposition that a pregnant woman's "happiness" has a direct impact on her baby's health. Isn't it more likely that a woman without a supportive partner is less likely to receive adequate prenatal care, or is more likely to receive physical abuse from her partner or to resort to drugs or alcohol to deal with her problems? (2) The melodramatic and whiny tone that permeates the book. See, for example, this description of the ambivalence most pregnant women feel before the baby is born: "The maiden 'I' sometimes had to weep with the sure, coming death of the maiden-self, the self that could 'arise and go now' at will; the self that is not food for others but eats and drinks the world." Or Wolf's over-the-top, pages-long description of her labor experience (basically, she didn't like the hospital, had an epidural, and later, a C-section) - subsequently described as her "trauma" - that would make one believe the nurses shoved bamboo shoots under her fingernails for kicks (e.g. "What was left of me as a physical presence felt like a trapped, cornered animal"; "Drugged and pinned, that is what I remember of the birth"). Believe me, I am sympathetic to tough labor experiences - I pushed for 3 hours before my son was delivered by C-section - but the flowery adjectives, the ridiculous turns of phrase reflect an unending quest for melodrama, not to mention bad writing. (3) A related point - Wolf's wallowing in this self-imposed victimhood. For example, the angst that Wolf describes when encountering two cold and insensitive OB's is remarkable - but instead of moaning about how infantalized they made her feel, wouldn't it simply be more constructive to find a new doc and be done with it? Throughout the book, one senses this urgent need to feel victimized, even though by most objective standards, Wolf's experiences just weren't that bad. (4) Wolf's paranoia and suspicion of the medical profession, and American society in general, also undermine the effectiveness of her arguments. I wholeheartedly agree that women - pregnant or not - need to be educated and assertive health care consumers. And certainly there are many health care professionals who are not very good. But Wolf descends into a level of paranoia that makes one wonder how slanted her arguments are, how objective she truly can be in evaluating the system. (5) The unremittingly negative tone and focus of the book. Not because I don't wish to hear how [bad] society treats pregnant women and new moms - I've experienced (and still am experiencing!) that firsthand - but because it feels like Wolf has deliberately chosen to dwell on the most extreme cases, the most unpleasant birth experiences, the most angst-ridden and neurotic emotions she felt while pregnant. She attacks so many aspects of motherhood and so many ideological viewpoints that I was left wondering what, if anything, is left. And by including so many anecdotes from friends and acquaintances that are overwhelmingly negative, one wonders if she has chosen not to hear the positive ones.
Perhaps the ultimate flaw in the book is the most ironic: on the one hand, Wolf criticizes society for its refusal to discuss the blood and guts of pregnancy and motherhood in favor of a sanitized, "Hallmark card" version, but at the same time obviously believes that this idyll exists and that she was unjustly deprived of it. If you are interested in the subject matter, and wish to read a more sensible and convincing critique of the way America treats its mothers, you'd be better off reading Ann Crittendon's "The Price of Motherhood".
Rating:
Summary: Best, most honest book about pregnancy and motherhood
Review: [....] This book saved my life. Ms. Wolf so honestly and bravely discusses the TRUTH about pregnancy, birthing and being a new mom, I was completely overcome. I too am an educated woman and wanted honest, non-condescending information. Every time I read "What to Expect When You Are Expecting" I was left empty and felt condescended to, but it's the bible, so you read it like everyone else. No where else have I found the kind of real information and thought-provoking matierial as in this book. I only wish I'd had "Misconceptions" a year ago when my first child was born so I didn't have to go thru a terrible adjustment and anti-depressants because I felt so alone and distraught. Please, please buy this book if you are like me and want to really be prepared for the amazing and scary journey you are about to embark on. You will be informed and prepared. This book will be your guiding light.
Rating:
Summary: Me- -Again!
Review: Naomi Wolf is getting really, really tiresome. First, we got a treatise on how the world forces women to be consumed with their looks (written when she was a single young woman, consumed with her looks). Then, on becoming famous and influential, she tells us how important, how noble, it is to be powerful. But at least these books wrestled with ideas.
Now she's had a baby, so, a book about having babies. There's barely the pretense that this book is anything more than a description of her privations as representative of Woman's privations, written in what felt to me a humorless and hasty way. It's the startling inablilty to really conceive of a world beyond herself that makes the book so disappointing. There's only so much that a book about Ms. Wolf's pregnancy hardships can inspire in a reader.
Rating:
Summary: Controversial/Painful!/ Speaks Truth to Power
Review: I was instantly engrossed and disturbed when I began to read MISCONCEPTIONS. As a co-founder of the National Womens Health Network I couldn't but ask myself.....Have birth customs not become more patient-friendly over the past 30 years? Are mothers not getting a better break? Was all our effort, - for the passage of Title 9, for a patient's right to full disclosure and informed consent, for a mother's own option to select midwifery or natural childbirth ....or breast feeding ....all in vain?
At first glance it would seem that just about everything has changed. We wanted more women doctors and we got them. In 1971, women obstetrician/gynecologists were only 3% of the total.( Back then, when I asked the Director of ACOG, the ob/gyn organization, why there weren't more women, he replied, "It's a strenuous specialty. Few women have the stamina for it.") Today ob/gyn is rapidly converting to a female specialty. By 1999 , two out of every three doctors training for it were -- women..... We wanted fathers in the delivery room and, obviously, we got them too. (The old- fashioned obstetricians stood against it, -seriously- because "The men might faint and then we'd have two patients on our hands." )
Our daughters are no longer drugged, shaved, humiliated, isolated, and stuck up in stirrups as readily as in the old days, but as Naomi Wolf reveals in this, her fourth book, women have not , by any means, become true partners in their pregnancy and delivery decisions. They cannot become partners without full disclosure of the pros and cons of every option, and this, Wolf demonstrates, is frequently - and deliberately- withheld. While 21st-century medicine claims to accept and honor "informed consent" many obstetricians still serve up obfuscation, false assurances ("Would I give you anything that would harm you?") and withholding of the bare facts and safety statistics on" iffy" interventions. Wolf makes a persuasive and harrowing case that the scandalous increase in C-sections ,-up from 6% in 1971 to as much as 25% or higher today,- is "part of a complexly negotiated minefild of litigation, politics, vested interest, money, and who holds the power in the delivery room." Wolf shows how ridiculously difficult it can be for a patient who is C-section wary to get simple statistics on the comparative rates for the various obstetricians and medical centers in her community., .Wolf also reveals how hospitals deliberately speed up the birthing process to bolster their profits and minimize the possibilities for malpractice litigation, sometimes placing these values above the genuine interests of mothers and babies. For all our high-tech, high-priced interventions, the United States remains twenty -third internationally in infant mortality and twenty -first in maternal deaths. Wolf also casts an investigative eye on prenatal screening , routine epidurals, episiotomies, needless forceps intervention.- all which may needlessly "spoil " the mother's experience of pregnancy and birth. Wolf herself underwent the emotional pain of a false positive on her AFP test, which screens for birth defects such as spina bifida. She writes of the frustration she experienced trying to garner empirical information about various pre-natal tests. "I was slowly getting angry as well as feeling humiliated and diminished. Not only was she (the doctor) dismissing my questions without addressing them, she seemed to be dismissing my right to ask."
The expectant mother's right to ask, -and to know -the true benefits and risks of all the tests and procedures that are plied on her, and to decide for herself what type of birth she prefers- continues to be trampled on by modern obstetricians - whether by their own preference ,or because of the hidden agendas and self-protecting regs laid down by hospital legal and fiscal departments, as well as health insurers. .Furthermore, as Wolf documents, some obstetrics practices and some hospitals deceptively use midwives as "window dressing" - such midwives are rarely granted the authority to use their own time-tested judgements and techniques. MISCONCEPTIONS will be controversial.. Plenty of women would just as soon "let doctor do the worrying for them.," and cannot understand why others disagree. Such women would probably say to Naomi Wolf, "What are you complaining about.? You had a healthy baby." Others criticize this book because they think it's old hat. Long ago, they may have read Suzanne Arm's IMMACULATE DECEPTION, or Jessica Mitford's THE AMERICAN WAY OF BIRTH. Wolf acknowledges the splendid shoulders on which she stands, but critiques on the practice and politics of obstetrics get dated. Customs change, technologies change, so do insurance standards.... And so, indeed, do marriage roles. MISCONCEPTIONS deals brilliantly with the related issue of how the birth of a child is apt to tip the gender balance in a two-career marriage.
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