Frida Liu is a 39 year old woman, recently divorced and co-parenting their 18-month old Harriet with ex husband Gust. On one of her custody days, Frida is dealing with days of insomnia and Harriet has an ear infection. In a burst of insomnia-fueled insanity, Frida puts Harriet into her bouncer and leaves to go get a cup of coffee. Then she remembers that she left an important document at the office, and so goes to get that. Then she has to answer some emails. And before she realizes, she has left her daughter alone for two hours, and concerned neighbors have called the police.
What follows is a nightmare of bureaucracy, governmental overreach, and the impossible expectations that society places on mothers. What Frida did was wrong, and put her child in danger. In a sane world, this would result in reduced custody, supervised visitation, and parenting classes. But in this dystopian world in the near future, Frida is sentenced to one year at an experimental rehab facility that will teach her how to be a good mother. There will be regular tests on mothering subjects, such as comfort, “motherese” (the sing-song voice and explanation of everything in the surrounding area and every action the child or mother is taking), and protection from danger. Each test has impossibly high standards, and it isn’t enough to pass – Frida must do better than the other mothers in order to win a chance – not guarantee – at getting her daughter back. They practice their mothering on terribly realistic robot children – Frida’s is half-Chinese, just like Harriet – who record every interaction with the mothers and send back data on eye contact, heart rate, and the maternal quality of their hugs. And any infraction – contraband, questioning the teachers, “flirtatious body language” with the fathers in the program – can earn punishments up to expulsion, which would automatically terminate Frida’s parental rights.
This book is horrifying. At the start it will make you angry at the people who should have been there to support Frida, primarily her ex-husband who cheated on her with a 28-year old while Frida was pregnant, and then manipulated Frida into a no-fault divorce rather than admit infidelity. Then comes the fear of a social system turned against parents, rather than for children, including cameras that monitor Frida 24-7 and bugs on her phone and laptop. Finally there is the helplessness of the Sisyphean task that is the rehab facility. Even as Frida subsumes her own identity under that of “mother” she cannot win.
This book is the culmination of the current trad-wife TikTok trend. Once a woman becomes a mother, that is all she is. A mother has no life, no responsibility, no priority, no desire, other than the well-being of her child. A mother is only a mother. It will make you tense, it will make you angry, and it will make you cry. This book is not for the faint of heart, but it is a damn good one. Let’s hope that it stays speculative.