Poems that represented the real, lived experiences of mothers remained hard to find until the 1970s, the time of the second-wave feminist movement. Poets who are also mothers use their work to attack the sexist assumptions that motherhood is not an appropriate (or appropriately sublime) subject for poetry and that talk of motherhood should remain in a compartmentalized, domestic sphere.

Before the 1970s, very few realistic poems about motherhood were published. Instead, mothers of appeared in earlier poems as “mythic mothers, mother goddesses, and nurturing muses,” write Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Diana O’Hehir in their preface to the anthology Mother Songs. In the Victorian era, poetry about mothers became popular—but largely portrayed mothers one-dimensionally as self-sacrificing “angels of the house.”

In our A Change of World documentary about the role of poetry in second-wave feminism, the poet Sharon Olds recalls the response to submitting motherhood poems in the 1970s: “The editor would say, if you wish to write about your children may we suggest the Ladies Home Journal. We are a literary magazine.”

The past several decades have seen a flowering of poetry about pregnancy, birth, and motherhood: poets are not only writing these poems but publishers are also publishing them.

We present this wide-ranging selection about the many aspects of motherhood, attempting to offer a diversity of poems about the rich, messy, overwhelming experience. These poems offer a sense of mutual joy and struggle while countering the ongoing idealization of motherhood in American culture; some tackle difficult subjects and emotions while daring to say what’s been deemed unspeakable. To suggest additions from our site, please contact us.