Dystopia Is All Too Plausible in 'The School for Good Mothers'

opens, single mom Frida Liu is strung out from working full-time while simultaneously caring for her 18-month-old daughter, Harriet. When Harriet was a newborn, Frida’s husband left her for a much-younger pilates instructor. Gust had convinced Frida to move to Philadelphia, where she has no family or support system. Now she feels stuck. In a moment of exhaustion, Frida makes a reckless choice: She abandons Harriet for an afternoon, the toddler marooned alone in a bouncer.

Located in a former liberal arts college, the school in question is a prison with a genteel facade, a leafy, open-concept Room 101. The mothers are forced to chant “.” They are sorted into groups depending on their children’s age and gender, and matched with eerily lifelike robot children. The AI kiddies are equipped with cameras to record the mothers as they are given lessons on parenting. Instructors drill the women on what tone of voice to use, how many seconds to hug their kids.

Racism and classism are baked into the program at Frida’s school; most of the prisoners are Black, poor, or both. Second-generation Frida, one of the few Asian Americans, is alternately judged for being too Chinese and not Chinese enough . She is accused of “false tenderness” while gazing at her fake daughter’s crib. She is accused of having a “hostile” grip while she practices cutting food to cook family dinners. Cooking, the school insists, is one of the highest forms of love.

One of Chan’s canniest narrative moves is making Frida’s judgment just shaky enough to make you want to clasp her shoulders and gently tell her to get it together. Although she repeatedly tries to shrug the inciting incident off as “one really bad day,” Frida does walk out on her daughter for more than two and a half hours, a choice that does endanger Harriet.

What a great summary I hope this book is adapted to a series because too many times men and women alike are insensitive and neglect the amount of responsibility it is to even have a child. It's an extreme cautionary tale

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