Mama Needs a Minute!
In 2020, struggling to parent two young children while working from home during the pandemic, Mary Catherine Starr started making comics about motherhood as a kind of therapy. She found the comics helped her connect with other moms, so in 2022, she created an Instagram account to share them. At the time of this review, that account has 344,000 followers, and Starr has been contacted by moms from all over the world who relate to her comics. Many of them asked for advice on how to avoid the pitfalls of motherhood. Starr wasn’t sure she had answers, but she decided to share her own journey – and what has and hasn’t worked for her family – in this new comic memoir.
Mama Needs a Minute! starts with Mary Catherine meeting her husband, Ben, and their romance and marriage. She emphasizes what a good man he is and the fun they have together, but also includes some incidents that foreshadow problems that will come later. Then comes their first child, followed by a descent into sleeplessness and ever-growing piles of laundry. With the addition of their second child, and then the pandemic, Mary Catherine found herself taking on more and more of the load of parenthood, despite the fact that both she and Ben had day jobs. She resented the imbalance, but didn’t know how to fix it. Their relationship was suffering, and Mary Catherine realized they needed to find help.
The comics (and interspersed blocks of text) in this book are often funny, though also sometimes raw, sad, and/or infuriating. With Ben’s permission, Starr includes some of their fights and disagreements. She documents the traumatic birth of her first child and the devastating loss of their second pregnancy. There are also a lot of comics about motherhood in general, and particularly about inequality: inequality in how moms and dads are perceived by society, in how the mental load of parenting is distributed, and more.
The contents of this book can be intense. The exhaustion, frustration, and judgment experienced by Mary Catherine – and the relationship problems that those things cause and intensify – are common issues for parents, and the book doesn’t have clear answers or a happily ever after. Mary Catherine and Ben remain together, doing their best. The book offers some things that have helped them, though Mary Catherine acknowledges that some, like hiring help for household tasks, may not be affordable for everyone.
The art is composed of bold, loose black outlines and slightly rough coloring, which often goes a little outside the lines. These give the comics a casual quality, like dashed-off sketches. This works well with the subject matter, suggesting mild chaos and an artist who doesn’t have time to labor over careful, precise drawings. At the same time, the characters have natural, realistic-looking poses and an interesting variety of outfits and hairstyles, and there is attention to little details like an exhausted mom wearing mismatched socks.
Perhaps the most distinctive thing about Starr’s art is the absence of facial features. The characters are expressive through posture and dialog, and occasionally through exaggerated reactions like melting into a puddle, but their faces are usually blank of eyes, noses, and mouths. (In profile, we sometimes see noses and mouths, and a mouth might appear if a character is eating or shouting.) There are a few images of nonsexual nudity when Mary Catherine is in labor.
This book offers encouragement and understanding to parents, especially moms. It also explains how an egalitarian marriage can slide into an unbalanced partnership when kids enter the picture, and suggests strategies to try and avoid or solve this problem. It’s clear from the response to Starr’s Instagram that thousands of people find these comics comforting, funny, useful, or some combination of the above. Hand this book to parents of young kids, especially moms who are having a hard time.
Mama Needs a Minute! A Candid, Funny, All-Too-Relatable Comic Memoir About Surviving Motherhood
By Mary Catherine Starr
Chronicle Books, 2025
ISBN: 9781797226866
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+)
Creator Representation:Â Anxiety
Character Representation:Â Anxiety
