Other ordering options
Order at your local indie bookstore with IndieBound
Or, support indie bookstores by buying at BookShop
For bulk orders, contact jb@dottirpress.com
Books ordered here will ship on or before September 21, 2021.
Tick Tock: Essays on Becoming a Parent After 40
Edited by Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin
On Sale September 21, 2021
ISBN 9781948340458
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.” —Michelle Tea, Against Memoir
“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.” —Beverly Gologorsky, Can You See the Wind?
"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." —Rosalind Petchesky, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Political Science, Hunter College & the Graduate Center, City University of New York
“This 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
"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." —Jess P. Shatkin, Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Pediatrics, NYU
Featured in “BitchReads: 11 Books Feminists Should Read in September”, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New York Times
About the Editors
Photo by Drew Stevens
Vicki Breitbart holds an MS from Bank Street, an MSW from New York University, and an EdD from Teachers College, and has been a writer and educator for more than forty years. Throughout her career, she has worked extensively with young children, parents, and other educators. She is the author of The Day Care Book and Open for Children, as well as numerous academic articles on women's issues, and the producer of documentaries Sugar and Spice and Open for Children.
Nan Bauer-Maglin worked at the City University of New York for almost forty years as a professor and administrator. She is the editor of Cut Loose: (Mostly) Older Women Talk about the End of (Mostly) Long-term Relationships and Widows' Words: Women Write on the Experience of Grief, the First Year, the Long Haul, and Everything in Between. She is the coeditor of Women and Stepfamilies: Voices of Anger and Love; “Bad Girls/Good Girls”: Women, Sex, and Power in the Nineties; Women Confronting Retirement: A Nontraditional Guide; and Final Acts: Death, Dying and the Choices We Make.