The Abandoners: On Mothers and Monsters

An incisive collection about motherhood and creative life through the lens of mothers—in history, literature, and pop culture—who have abandoned their children.

What kind of mother abandons her child? It’s a question that conjures the worst kind of moral judgment. Yet during the pandemic, trapped at home with young children and struggling to find creative space to write, journalist Begona Gómez Urzaiz became fixated on artistic women who were able to overcome both society’s condemnation and their own maternal instincts to leave their children—at will or due to economic or other circumstances. More than anything, she was fascinated by her own prejudice toward these women, so clearly tied up in a much wider cultural bias.

The Abandoners is sharp, at times slyly humorous, and always deeply empathetic. Using famous examples such as Ingrid Bergman, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, and Maria Montessori as well as fictional ones like Anna Karenina and the many roles of Meryl Streep, and interrogating modern trends like “momfluencers,” Gómez Urzaiz reveals what our judgement of these women tells us about our judgement of all women.