There is little that is new in Lara Bazelon’s brisk, engaging book Ambitious Like a Mother. Her message — working mothers are good for children, embracing ambition is good for mothers — is one that has its moment in book form at least once a decade or more.

“She does not advocate anything in particular, as hers is not a prescriptive book,” said Lisa Belkin in a review for The New York Times.

Bazelon’s focus is more about the head space and emotional struggles of women who feel their ambition makes them a failure as a parent.

“It is tempting to conclude that Bazelon’s book represents its moment much as her predecessors did,” said Belkin.

“But there is a looming elephant on nearly every page. It is being published in what may be the end of the pandemic, or may just be a lull between variants; either way, the workplace she writes about — and rails against — will likely no longer exist in the way she experienced it.”