![]() ![]() Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. ![]() McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood. Provocative and well researched, this book offers compassionate insight into the history and predicaments of women who have embraced the “never.uncommon and increasingly common” childless life.Ī liberatingly perceptive work of sociology and cultural history. Finally, the looming threat of climate change has caused many young people, especially those between 16 and 25, to reconsider bringing babies into a “carbon-choked world” where resources are dwindling. Many young women have found themselves taking on multiple jobs or working their way into better employment opportunities from “the small, unstable dinghies that are early career jobs.” Even those with professional salaries must contend with high cost-of-living expenses for themselves and the reality that the day care for just one child typically equates to “the pretax income of someone working full-time at the federal minimum wage.” That American families in general have become increasingly isolated from each other over the last 200 years has created a situation in which those with children cannot rely on community networks to help sustain them through crises like the recent pandemic. Challenging economic conditions-brought about first by the Great Recession and then by the Covid-19 pandemic a decade later-have made it extremely difficult for many millennials to create secure home lives for young children. “Women are choosing to have no children, in other words, because they want other things-lattes, degrees, careers, vacations, definitely avocado toast-more than they want kids,” writes the author. ![]() The reasons for this trend go far beyond simplistic explanations that modern women are “too selfish, too greedy, too shortsighted,” and too focused on their careers. Millennial women are now at the peak of their childbearing years, but as O’Donnell Heffington observes, their rate of childlessness is almost as high as that of fertile women who lived during the Great Depression. A history professor explores the many reasons why increasing numbers of women are choosing to be childless. ![]()
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