For all its insightful information (for a few years I used to read it cover to cover; I miss it), when most of us think of National Geographic magazine, we think of the stunning photography.
And so, it should come as no surprise that the National Geographic Society's little coffee table book (can it still be a coffee table book if it's little? I guess so) Mothers & Children is full of wonderful photos—some beautiful, some tender, some funny, some awkward in their honesty. I love the juxtaposition of cultures and classes.
It's in my nature to overanalyze, though, and I have to say I would have preferred the book without any words at all over the words that were there: over-the-top, one-sided quotes about selfless, all-consuming motherhood (ick!) and three banal essays by the same guy (Craig Wilson, a USA Today writer, whose privilege to get to write most
of the text in the book is never explained. His bio is on the Barnes & Noble listing for the book, but nowhere in the book itself). There's no sense of the complexity of defining motherhood, no acknowledgement that while there are commonalities across cultures, there are also huge differences in the experience of it.
(And how is it that pictures of kids alone fit the theme? Does a child only exist in relation to its mother?)
I would have been much happier to get a couple sentences of context for each photo and draw my own conclusions about what the photos say about the relationship(s) between mother and child.
So get it for the photo-lover in your life (at the NGS bookstore or Amazon), but I recommend skipping the words.
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