Mom's the Word: Silent No More

By E.M. Stoddard

Book Overview

As the third of nine children in a tight-knit Catholic family, author E.M. Stoddard learns how to be resilient early in life. Although her childhood has many happy memories, Stoddard is determined not... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0595376975
• ISBN13: 9780595376971
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A life well lived

When I first investigated E.M. Stoddard's "Mom's the Word: Silent No More," I suspected it was the sort of book that would appeal more to women than men. It's easy to understand why I thought so: there is a heavy emphasis on describing the trials and travails of finding a suitable nanny for the author's young son. Invoking images of "The Nanny Diaries" and other books that deal with similar themes, i.e. the tension that inevitably arises between a family and their hired help, doesn't really sound like the sort of book I would be interested in. I was wrong. Stoddard's book goes far beyond nannies run amok. "Mom's the Word" is actually a memoir. It's an examination of a difficult life lived to the fullest, a book that describes one woman's experiences growing up in a family with eight siblings, dealing with seven different nannies in about as many years, surviving a fat beagle, and going through the anguish of living and divorcing an alcoholic husband. Moreover, many of the events take place while Stoddard works a full-time job that requires her to travel around the globe. It should go without saying that this memoir covers a lot of ground. The first part of the book concerns Stoddard's tumultuous upbringing in Boston, Massachusetts, her marriage, and her reemergence as a single working mother. How could her childhood and adolescence be anything but tumultuous with eight brothers and sisters, a worry wart for a mother, and a colorful father who drinks a lot while working as an international fish buyer? Sit back and watch the hijinks unfold! Seriously, though, the author deals with everything from watching bar fights rage in the streets outside the family apartment to pulling teenage pranks with a mischievous friend. Nothing too outrageous happens, which is surprising considering the huge size of the family, but it's obvious that this chaotic upbringing put a bit of steel into the author's backbone. She needs it when she marries her husband Patrick, a man who would go on to a very successful career in advertising before sinking beneath waves of alcohol. Stoddard goes into great detail about the acrimonious divorce proceedings and her efforts to raise their son by herself. It is at this point that the nannies start marching across the stage. Seven of them in less than seven years. It's also the point where the fat beagle comes to the fore. For those of us not wealthy enough or desperate enough to have to bring total strangers into our house to help raise our kids, Stoddard's descriptions of her various encounters with nannies are a bit of a shock. Despite her best efforts to check the backgrounds of these young people, she had to deal with a few frightening incidents. There was the nanny who showed up prim, proper, and uptight only to turn into a raging estrogen hurricane by the end of her tenure. Then there was another girl who showed up ready for a neverending party. This gal favored illegal substances and liked to hang around with drug dealers.