Maternal Ambivalence

Dr. Margo Lowy is a psychotherapist with a specialty in mothering. In 2017, she completed her doctorate at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, investigating the field of maternal ambivalence. Dr. Lowy is the author of a previous academic book on the topic of maternal ambivalence, The Maternal Experience: Encounters with Ambivalence and Love, and has spoken on the subject at universities and media outlets in the United States, Australia, and Israel. She is a contributor to Psychology Today and a former advisor to the founder of the Australian Jewish Fertility Network (AJFN). She is mother to three children and is based with her husband in New York City.

“In Maternal Ambivalence, Dr. Lowy explores the unspoken experiences of motherhood, relieving us all of the myth of the ‘perfect mother.’ She has translated her personal and professional experiences of being a parent and a psychotherapist into an examination of the paradoxical loving and not-so-loving feelings that we often recognize in ourselves: anger, shame, guilt, and even moments of hatred. Far from being ‘bad,’ Lowy offers a thought-provoking, empowering point of view: that these feelings are normal, and also that understanding and naming them helps us to develop a language that strengthens our love and maternal bonds. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, and caretakers will identify with the moving, real-life stories from Dr. Lowy’s patients, her own accounts of raising children, as well as her insightful interpretations of the myths and media in our culture. She compels us to ask ourselves: how can we learn from these contradictory feelings? Acknowledging our ambivalence, she demonstrates movingly throughout, helps us to reach self-awareness and acceptance, and to be the mother our child needs us to be.”