**AS SEEN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, BITCH MAGAZINE, THE LA REVIEW OF BOOKS, LIT HUB, AND MORE**
In this groundbreaking collection of essays, poems, and creative nonfiction, more than twenty-nine writers offer witty and incisive insight into the unique experience of being or having an older parent in today's world.
By turns raw, funny, tender, and wise, these stories reshape our understanding of the social factors that impact later parenthood, honor the strength and resilience required to overcome countless challenges posed in healthcare and adoption settings, and relish in the many joys of a parent-child relationship, no matter what age. Writers, child development experts, and older parents themselves Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin have curated a collection that truly affirms and destigmatizes the act of becoming a parent over 40, whether by choice or by chance.
Contributors include New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award winner Elizabeth Acevedo; award-winning author Adam Berlin; writer and editor Laura Broadwell; author and editor Salma Abdelnour Gilman; professor and institute director Elizabeth Gregory; podcast producer and host Barbara Herel; author and research scholar Elline Lipkin; retired journalist Linda Wright Moore; founder and executive director of The Democracy Center Jim Shultz; and more.
Tick Tock is a document, a community, a manual, a help line, a chorus of voices expressing the gamut of complicated emotions that accompany a person of a certain age contemplating the leap into parenthood. I wish this important book existed when I was at that crossroads, and am grateful for it today.
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Michelle Tea, Against Memoir
Tick Tock reads like a wide-ranging chat with friends who ask 'What’s your story?' These are human, lived tales that describe life-changing and interconnected issues—political, social, and personal. What a gift.
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Judy Norsigian and Jane Pincus, Our Bodies, Ourselves
Tick Tock is an exquisite, understanding, and inclusive examination of the unique challenges and joys faced by older parents. An unforgettable book—undeniably important and a pleasure to read.
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Beverly Gologorsky, Can You See the Wind?
- Timely yet underrepresented topic. Voices of parents over the age of 40 are largely missing from parenting narratives, yet the number of people choosing older parenthood is on the rise, as marked by public figures like Senator Tammy Duckworth and Viola Davis.
- Thirty-two contributors, with original material by: NYT-bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo, award-winning author Adam Berlin, podcast producer and host Barbara Herel, retired journalist Linda Wright Moore, founder and executive director of The Democracy Center Jim Shultz, and more.
- Includes diverse voices. Contributors represent a wide range of races, ethnicities, ages, genders, sexual orientations, and experiences.
Engaging, thoughtful, and provocative.
—LA Review of Books
For anyone considering parenthood at a later age, scholars Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin have put together an expansive collection of stories from 30 writers on the beauty and difficulty of being a 40-plus parent.
—Bitch magazine
Tick Tock reads like a wide-ranging chat with friends who ask 'What’s your story?' These are human, lived tales that describe life-changing and interconnected issues—political, social, and personal. What a gift.
—JUDY NORSIGIAN and JANE PINCUS, OUR BODIES OURSELVES
Tick Tock is a document, a community, a manual, a help line, a chorus of voices expressing the gamut of complicated emotions that accompany a person of a certain age contemplating the leap into parenthood. I wish this important book existed when I was at that crossroads, and am grateful for it today.
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MICHELLE TEA, AGAINST MEMOIR
Tick Tock challenges readers to rethink what parenting means in this time in America from a wide variety of vantage points and through voices that are, in all their great diversity, eloquent, sharp, and deeply engaging...Brilliantly framed and beautifully written.
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ROSALIND PETCHESKY, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Political Science, Hunter College & the Graduate Center, City University of New York
Honest, personal, and often downright funny, these brave parents provide insight, solidarity, and hope for any over 40 who are ready to love a child…and laugh and cry and wonder upon the universe every day for the rest of their lives. May it always be so.
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JESS P. SHATKIN, professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Pediatrics, NYU School of Medicine
As an over-40 mother myself, I appreciate how this groundbreaking collection marks momentous changes in gender roles, child-rearing patterns, and family composition.
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JOYCE ANTLER, Professor Emerita of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University and author of YOU NEVER CALL! YOU NEVER WRITE! A HISTORY OF THE JEWISH MOTHER
Tick Tock is an exquisite, understanding, and inclusive examination of the unique challenges and joys faced by older parents. An unforgettable book—undeniably important and a pleasure to read.
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BEVERLY GOLOGORSKY, CAN YOU SEE THE WIND?
Brave, honest and moving...most important are the truths, both personal and political, that will resonate, no matter your age or parental status.
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MARLENE FRIED, faculty director of Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP)