Michèle A’Court reviews Emily Writes’ third book, Needs Adult Supervision.
Every parent knows this moment – gazing into the eyes of your newborn and wondering when the grown-ups are going to arrive and take charge, and the panic of realising, oh fark, that’s you now.
But there is another flash of understanding in the years that follow when you might think, if not “Nailed it!”, that at least you have muddled your way into being a comfortably imperfect parent, and maybe you are also becoming you.
Emily Writes’ third book, Needs Adult Supervision, honours both these moments. In essays written over the past three years – often on her phone at night while her two children sleep in snatches – you see her blossom and flourish. This is a māmā who knows – really knows, hasn’t just been told – that a baby who never sleeps in his own bed will one day sleep in his own bed. That one day your kids will be at school and the house will be empty and you will be “staggered by the silence of it all”. And that what you feel simultaneously is grief and relief, and that’s OK.
A self-described “late bloomer” and “functioning mess”, Emily is arguably the most-loved, most-relatable of The People Who Write About Being A Parent. She is also the one who gets the most hate. This is not down to Emily, it’s just how we do things with women who have voices. See also Jacinda and Meghan and anyone else who dares to do more than wear a nice hat. Women like Emily are catnip for dickheads called Steve who have a lot of opinions about how the ladies should behave. For a full catalogue of those opinions, see Emily’s gloriously rage-fuelled chapter dedicated to the Steves we’ve all met.
It is one of about a hundred pieces in here – all different sizes, arranged like a mosaic between the covers. There are longer essays, comedic ones like the chapter on the five stages of toilet training grief, satirical ones (“You Are A Bad Parent With Fat Horrible Children”) and serious ones, like how to spot if a “parenting expert” is really a grifter, and how much you can learn from your kids about courage and connection and how to be in the world.
We get quick snapshots of Emily’s life: poignant recollections, like watching her husband on their first journey home with their first baby, two people now moving together as three; and the hilarious, like being encouraged to drink from a cup that her older son Eddie then reveals he has farted in, which had seemed a fun idea but now he is very sorry.
There are pictures painted in more detail: how you can remember the exact moment in your first pregnancy when you stopped feeling like a sexual being; a beautiful cluster of essays about her whānau dealing with deaths; about long nights in hospital; life in the time of Covid; and about boys wearing pink.
Emily treats her readers as close friends, so there are three-wines-in confessions, too. There’s that time she thought she was about to deliver her own baby in the elevator but it turned out to be a poo, which was disappointing not only for her, and her husband, but also for the random man in the lift with them. It is a perfect story because if you’ve never pooed in a lift, you immediately feel better about yourself; and if you have pooed in a lift you feel less bad because you are no longer alone. Plus there’s all the exquisitely observed detail of each player’s reaction, and – cherry on the top – the midwife asking years later, “Are you the one who pooed in the lift?”
Sprinkled among these are tiny “Meditations”, brief fantasies (it’s all a mother has time for) some of which are sexual and involve a Chris (Hemsworth, Pine, Evans) and others that are simply comforting and delicious thoughts to focus your brain on like the one about imagining yourself an amoeba who is just there and has no need for therapy. Ah, the peace.
At times you detect the tension Emily feels between maintaining privacy for her family while usefully sharing experiences with people who face similar challenges. From maybe halfway through the book, Emily gets specific about Eddie’s diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes which means he needs to be checked every two hours. They also learn their younger son, Ham, has a beautifully neurodivergent brain which means he is smarter than most of us about many things, and also does not like to sleep alone. So Eddie sleeps with his father so he can be monitored and have injections through the night, and Ham sleeps with his māmā. Which makes perfect sense. Except that this is technically called “co-sleeping” and popularly regarded as a Parenting Crime.
I am relieved that when I had my child – I have mokopuna now the same age as Emily’s kids – I was oblivious to all this stuff. Honestly, I barely read a thing about parenting and there was no Facebook, that’s how old I am. Someone asked me once about my parenting style – had I been a tiger, helicopter, snowplough, or free-range? I snort-laughed and explained “style” was too fancy a word for the kind of mothering I did. I just tried to keep my daughter fed and let her know that she was endlessly loved.
The isolation might have been tough back in the 90s (I was new to Auckland and did not take to my Plunket coffee group) but from where I’m sitting now, this constant judging of parents on social media looks brutal. The third parenting option (not isolation, not judgement) is community, and this is what Emily has created in recent times. Far away from social media she has a Substack newsletter with comment threads filled with positivity and encouragement between writer and readers. You should have a look – it can throw a lot of sunshine on a bleak day.
There is a chapter at the centre (in both senses) of Needs Adult Supervision that feels like a turning point. It talks about how she got her name, and who Emily Writes is now. She says this: “Becoming a mother has been redemptive for me. Every time I mop up tears or offer cuddles or kiss away little hurts, I am doing it in turn to the old me. The child who couldn’t cope. The lost teenager … People often talk of losing themselves in motherhood but it’s here I was found.”
As I am reading, I write notes on my phone. One of them says, “Pg 184 – the dog, ffs!” This is where an already busy household dealing with complex challenges adopts a 30kg greyhound who is the size of a pony and terrified of everything. Emily does not make life easy for herself, I think, and then remember it is not an easy life that she wants.
This is not superwoman parenting bullshit where you get the house and family sorted and running with military precision (“corporate parenting”, is that a style? It probably is). Emily doesn’t want to get her family tidied away, she wants to relish every messy, sticky moment. Her cup runneth over. Sometimes with farts.
Needs Adult Supervision by Emily Writes (Penguin Random House, $35) can be ordered from Unity Books Auckland and Wellington. Emily and Michele both appear at Verb Readers & Writers Festival in Wellington in November.