We love our boomer moms. And our boomer moms are complicated. When Tracy Clark-Flory first told me about her memoir — in which she discovers the half-sister her mother had at age 19, and was forced to give up for adoption — I immediately thought about how so many of our boomer moms' choices were limited in ways we struggle to imagine. No matter how feminist their current politics may be, it doesn't change the fact that so many of them grew up (and became adults) in deeply patriarchal, racist, restrictive, and incredibly anti-sex families and communities.

So in this episode, Tracy and I work to activate some deep empathy for boomer moms just generally — but we're also very real about how some of the patterns they couldn't escape have affected their children. We talk about boomer moms who loathe feminism, who've dealt with un-present partners, who struggle with bitterness, who reproduce the criticalness of their own parents, and who really, really want to give gifts. The goal for this episode is empathy that doesn't shy from consequences; became a paid subscriber so you can continue to work through these themes in the comments!

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Show Notes:

Buy My Mother's Daughter here
Follow Tracy Clark-Flory's work here
Subscribe to Tracy's weekly newsletter on sex, feminism, and pop culture here
Listen to her fantastic podcast Dire Straights (with the fantastic Amanda Montei!!) here

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