"The Retoño Que Parí: A Manual of Maternal Programming" is a book of stories that, without falling into the topics of idyllic motherhood, is going through chapter by chapter different realities related to children, mothers and fathers.
He tells us in a close style stories of different maternities, of broken relationships when a child is on the way, of the magical moment in which another couple decides to have a child in common, of the doubts about the unknown that brings a new life to the world…
There is also the issue of infertility through some characters who cannot (at the moment) realize their dream of being parents, although afterwards there are diverse conclusions: the final achievement of pregnancy and adoption.
The book "The shoot that I gave birth" is structured in 22 chapters (plus an epilogue) that these three main plots alternate: the couple that achieves the desired pregnancy, an unwanted pregnancy stained with abuse and the drama of infertility.
The stories are woven with reflections on motherhood by the narrator who shows us the different characters in each chapter. Characters with doubts, happy, hopeful, fearful, disappointed ... that ultimately they are reeling all the faces of the central theme.
But in the work not all possible maternity units appear. They do not appear (or at least they only do it tangentially to be criticized and even, I would say, despised) some maternities that do not enter into the more traditional and conservative conception of what it is to bring children into the world.
But not all maternity homes are worth it?
Although I agree on the issue of the importance of motherhood and attachment, which is widely developed in the work, it seemed to me that there are some issues that are treated from a very conventional or traditional point of view, and enough maniqueo to highlight the thesis. I explain myself with examples of the work.
If the mother goes to work, the children grow up abandoned and end up being abusers like their father. If the woman wants to be a single mother, it is something against nature and she who gives them modern is actually seen as "pendeja" (this, I must say, has seemed especially retrograde).
If the parents hire a babysitter to take care of their child, they are irresponsible and she drugs the child to rest. In daycare centers, children get ear infections that cause them to lose their hearing ... An abuser from whom his wife does not separate and who perpetuates the abuse in his child may end up regenerating ...
In this way some of the characters speak, so others act, an issue that has "squeaked" me a lot and that has made me distance myself from what is narrated in the different chapters, far from achieving an identification that will bring me closer to the message or the characters. I almost ended up thinking that on the subject of artificial fertilization I was also going to find some rant against not being the way to make "lifelong" children ...
A personal vision imposed by a Christian concept that is quite conservative, respectable but with which I do not identify myself, and which I think will not like a reader with other ideas about women's freedom and motherhood in a broader sense (and not only from the traditional family).
The author of these stories about motherhood It is the Mexican María Teresa Topete, who enters the narrative for the first time. She is a graduate of the Technological Institute of Higher Studies of the West as a Bachelor of Science in Communication, an expert in advertising and marketing, as well as being a teacher, and a poet, but also a mentor, daughter, sister, companion, friend and first and foremost, mother.
The simple illustrations of "The Retoño Que Parí: A Maternal Programming Manual" They are the work of Bety Rodríguez and the book is published by Nowadays Orange Productions LLC. It can be purchased on Amazon in different formats, from where you can read the first pages and get an idea of the work.
