Tick Tock
Essays on Becoming a Parent After 40
**AS SEEN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, BITCH MAGAZINE, THE LA REVIEW OF BOOKS, LIT HUB, AND MORE**
In this groundbreaking collection of essays, poems, and creative nonfiction, more than twenty-nine writers offer witty and incisive insight into the unique experience of being or having an older parent in today's world.
By turns raw, funny, tender, and wise, these stories reshape our understanding of the social factors that impact later parenthood, honor the strength and resilience required to overcome countless challenges posed in healthcare and adoption settings, and relish in the many joys of a parent-child relationship, no matter what age. Writers, child development experts, and older parents themselves Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin have curated a collection that truly affirms and destigmatizes the act of becoming a parent over 40, whether by choice or by chance.
Contributors include New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award winner Elizabeth Acevedo; award-winning author Adam Berlin; writer and editor Laura Broadwell; author and editor Salma Abdelnour Gilman; professor and institute director Elizabeth Gregory; podcast producer and host Barbara Herel; author and research scholar Elline Lipkin; retired journalist Linda Wright Moore; founder and executive director of The Democracy Center Jim Shultz; and more.
Tick Tock is a document, a community, a manual, a help line, a chorus of voices expressing the gamut of complicated emotions that accompany a person of a certain age contemplating the leap into parenthood. I wish this important book existed when I was at that crossroads, and am grateful for it today. —Michelle Tea, Against Memoir
Tick Tock reads like a wide-ranging chat with friends who ask 'What’s your story?' These are human, lived tales that describe life-changing and interconnected issues—political, social, and personal. What a gift. —Judy Norsigian and Jane Pincus, Our Bodies, Ourselves
Tick Tock is an exquisite, understanding, and inclusive examination of the unique challenges and joys faced by older parents. An unforgettable book—undeniably important and a pleasure to read. —Beverly Gologorsky, Can You See the Wind?
Vicki Breitbart holds an MSW from NYU, an MS from Bank Street, and an EdD from Teachers College, and has been a writer and educator for more than forty years. Throughout her career, she has worked extensively with young children, parents, and other educators. She is the author of The Day Care Book and Open for Children, as well as numerous academic articles on women's issues, and the producer of documentaries Sugar and Spice and Open for Children. She is the parent to a 43-year-old son and a 19-year-old daughter, who she adopted when she was 53.
Nan Bauer-Maglin worked at City University of New York for almost forty years as a professor and administrator. She is the editor of Widows' Words: Women Write on the Experience of Grief, the First Year, the Long Haul, and Everything in Between. She is the editor of Cut Loose: (Mostly) Older Women Talk about the End of (Mostly) Long-term Relationships and the coeditor of Women and Stepfamilies: Voices of Anger and Love; “Bad Girls/Good Girls”: Women, Sex, and Power in the Nineties; Women Confronting Retirement: A Nontraditional Guide; and Final Acts: Death, Dying and the Choices We Make. In 1977, she adopted a baby when she was 35 (which was considered old then).
