Before: Short Stories About Pregnancy From Our Top Writers - Hardcover

An anthology of short fictional works is a whimsical tribute to the joys and pitfalls of pregnancy, childhood, and early parenting in twenty-first-century America, in a volume that includes contributions by such writers as Nick Fowler, Ann Packer, and Jodi Picoult.

As contemporary parenting relationships now encompass such a broad array of forms and guises, the experience of pregnancy included more meotional, professional, and interpersonal challenges than ever before. Mothers and fathers now face the usual anxieties about difficult pregnancies, financial planning, and the inevitable Lamaze classes, alonside new worries about balancing the professional and artistic goals of two independent parents with responsibilities of parenthood, struggles with fertility and modern fertility treatments, and explaining a pregnancy of an untraditional couple - or a single woman - to family and friends.In this groundbreaking anthology of short fiction, editors Emily Franklin and Heather Swain give voice to the fear, frustration, hope, and humor that all play a part in the simultaneously unique and timeless experience of pregnancy in the twenty-first century America.