When her sixth-grade daughter was sent home from school with a “flour-sack baby” to look after for a week, Hope Edelman was initially skeptical (“Weren’t sixth graders a little young for this kind of thing?” she wondered). But soon she saw the assignment as an opportunity to equip her daughter with the parenting skills her own mother never got the chance to teach her. She might have taken the exercise a little too far.
On this week’s Modern Love podcast, the actor Gillian Anderson reads Ms. Edelman’s moving and frequently funny essay “Maternal Wisdom (5 Pounds’ Worth).”
Ms. Edelman is the author of six nonfiction books, including “Motherless Daughters, Motherless Mothers” and “The Possibility of Everything.” She teaches writing at Antioch University Los Angeles and lives in Topanga Canyon, Calif., with her husband and two daughters.
Ms. Anderson is known for her role as F.B.I. Special Agent Dana Scully in “The X-Files.” She will appear as sex therapist Jean Thompson in the Netflix series “Sex Education,” which premieres Jan. 11. Stay tuned after the reading to hear from her, Ms. Edelman and the Modern Love editor Daniel Jones.
To read past Modern Love columns, click here. Continue following our fashion and lifestyle coverage on Facebook (Styles and Modern Love), Twitter (Styles, Fashion and Weddings) and Instagram.
