Buchanan, Andrea

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BUCHANAN, Andrea

PERSONAL: Married; children: two.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Seal Press, 300 Queen Anne Ave. #375, Seattle, WA 98109. E-mail—andi@mothershock.com; andi@phillymama. com.

CAREER: Writer; Literarymama.com, managing editor. Former classical pianist.

WRITINGS:

Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It, Seal Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to Breeder: Real Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers; contributor to periodicals, including Parents' Magazine; contributor to online parenting magazines, including LiteraryMama.com, Pregnancyandbaby.com, Sheknows.com, Oxygen.com, and Hipmama.com; author of column "The Dark Side" which appears on Web sites, including author's Web site PhillyMama.com.

SIDELIGHTS: Andrea Buchanan's debut book of essays, Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It, introduces her four-stage theory of "mother shock" to new parents. In an interview with Robin Bradford of Austinmama.com, Buchanan described how she originated the term "mother shock" and its similarity to the culture shock felt in a foreign place. She came across the term "baby shock" in a parenting book but felt that it did not perfectly capture her experience. To her, the shock was in becoming a mother, not having a baby. She came up with the phrase "mother shock" and connected it with the concept of culture shock. Through research, she found the adaptation process of living in a foreign land and that of becoming a mother to be parallel.

She lays out four stages. The first is mother love, involving the initial joy, which leads into mother shock, or the crisis stage. At this point, the mother can feel overwhelmed with exhaustion and uncertain of the changes in her life and her body. The mother tongue stage can be considered the recovery stage, and mother love is the final adjustment, when the process is no longer foreign and confidence and comfort begins.

The book's thirty essays span the first three years of her daughter's life. The book also covers some of the toddler years, as in the essay "Mother Tongue" in which her daughter picked up swear words from an accidental adult slip. This essay provides insight into how children learn language and how they understand without words.

In Mother Shock, Buchanan provides an alternative to the idea of an innate maternal instinct in women, suggesting instead that mothering is a skill that can be learned and successfully practiced. Reviewing the book for Mothers Movement Online, Judith Stadtman Tucker praised Buchanan's style as "funny, bright, and highly accessible," calling the text "required reading for every mother and mother-to-be." In Library Journal Mirela Roncevic concluded that Buchanan's "commonsense, nonjudgmental approach is especially praiseworthy."