Lively, informative… Nell uses her own experience generously and the effect is inclusive, reassuring and funny, She articulates feelings I’ve had but never quite explored – it’s excellent' - Amy Liptrot Read everything that Nell writes! We continuously mention her work on the High Low because she really is such a unique writer/ - The High Low Podcast

Honest, unflinching and necessary - alleviates parental guilt and might even encourage you to forgive your own!' Sara PascoeBut how to stay sane in such a maddening time? How to know who you are and what you might want from life? How to know if you're making the right decisions? Raw, hilarious and beguilingly honest, Nell Frizzell's account of her panic years is both an arm around the shoulder and a campaign to start a conversation. This affects us all - women, men, mothers, children, partners, friends, colleagues - so it's time we started talking about it with a little more candour. Helena Gonda, commissioning editor, bought UK and Commonwealth rights to Holding the Baby from Zoe Ross at United Agents. Zoe Berville, senior commissioning editor, is overseeing publication. It will publish in March 2023. Giving parents a break doesn’t just mean doing a bit of yoga and lying on the sofa and ignoring the piles in the sink. True, genuine release from the stress of raising small children means shared and equal parenting in whatever shape your family happens to be. It means mandatory paid parental leave. It means a child-friendly workplace culture. It means a functioning welfare state funded by taxation. It means safe and high-quality housing for everyone. It means accessible, subsidised childcare that pays its staff a living wage. It means access to green space and affordable healthy food and good public transport and mental health care and playgroups and children’s centres. It means funding and supporting the National Health Service. It means park benches and playgrounds and fully-funded schools and honest conversations with your peers.

A blazing, brilliant read, combining style and message to powerful effect ... compassionate, convincing and funny.' Amy Liptrot Frizzell writes beautifully and poetically … while reassuring and validating the reader’s concerns with hilarious and comforting anecdotes from her own panic years. This is an important read for all women’ - the Independent Heartening, eye-opening, hilarious. I'm glad Nell has given this weird time a term we can all use'. - Emma Gannon The Panic Yearsmade me laugh and it made me cry. There's a rare tenderness to this book that comes from not having felt seen before. It's for our generation, and Nell gets it. She understands and respects us.' Over the course of more than 130 columns, British Vogue’ s parenting columnist Nell Frizzell has analyzed and dissected the highs and lows of motherhood—interweaving deeply personal reflections on raising her son with calls for greater support for parents across the board. In her new book, Holding the Baby , she distills everything she’s learned into a moving memoir and manifesto for change. Here, she reflects on her greatest revelations from five years as a mother.Timely, honest, brave and funny calling for a new kind of conversation about love, work, and parentood' - the Daily Mail Nell Frizzell has written for The Guardian, VICE, The Telegraph, Elle, Grazia, The Pool, The Observer, Buzzfeed, Refinery29, Red, Time Out and is a Vogue columnist. She is best known for features and columns on gender, culture, art and politics, including a recent Guardian piece on childbirth that was shared over 10,000 times, a dispatch from The Jungle refugee camp in Calais for VICE, advice on breastfeeding in public and many, many pieces on wild swimming. Nell has also featured several times on BBC Radio4’s Woman’s Hour, Shortcuts and as a guest on Radio 5 Live, BBC London and (surprisingly often) on BBC Radio Ulster. As well as journalism, Nell has written and performed comedy (at Green Man and Machynlleth Comedy Festival as well as various comedy nights in London), works as a lifeguard at the Ladies Pond on Hampstead Heath, is a seamstress and occasionally recreates famous portraits in her front room for her blog http://goppeldangers.tumblr.com/. Searingly honest, witty and moving. For anyone who knows what it's like to simultaneously want to weep with joy and throw your child out of the window, Frizzell is a very welcome voice in the conversation on motherhood'. - Vogue For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. There is so much about womanhood that feels indefinable. And yet with her definitions of the flux, and the panic years, Nell manages to define the indefinable - as well as uniting childfree women and mothers, where the two are so often pitted against one another. Lyrical, moving and thorough, this is a memoir, a feminist text and a piece of social commentary. Every millennial woman should have it on her bookshelf'. - Pandora Sykes

It continued: “In Holding the Baby, Nell offers a brilliant blend of the personal and political – an honest, reassuring and sharply observed account of her own experience, but also a rallying cry for real change for new parents. We can’t wait to share it with readers next year.” Frizzell’s compassionate, compulsive prose fizzes with imaginative humour and metaphor... I admire Frizzell’s bravery, candour and campaigning spirit. Her critique of a society where inadequate, outdated government policy and workplace culture perpetuate gender inequality is sure to spark crucial conversations.- the Evening Standard Nell Frizzell is a master. I particularly recommend this book to men… it is a visceral exploration of one young woman’s life that has immediately applicable lessons for us all. Vital reading. The Panic Years is also fun, funny, and warm. I love it dearly!’ Nell Frizzell is the author of Holding the Baby: Milk, Sweat and Tears from the Frontline of Motherhood

Children’s centers are the most beautiful places on earth

A memoir culminating in a manifesto, Holding the Baby sets out to understand why we still treat early parenthood as an individual slog rather than a shared cultural responsibility. Tracing her own journey to the nadir of sleeplessness via social retreat and murderous rage, Frizzell draws on the latest research to explore: The Italian notion of sprezzatura – the conscious effort of making things look easy and nonchalant – is toxic in the world of new parents. Oh me? I just whipped up this sugar-free carrot cake. Oh them? I didn’t do anything; they just started sleeping through the night. Oh the house? I just have these sixteen different handmade boxes where I sort their clothes and toys, so it’s really easy, actually. I’ve not been a single parent, a dating parent, a parent in a new relationship or in an open relationship. What I know is that being in a relationship with the other parent of your child means years – no, a lifetime – of conflict and compromise. You will, inevitably, have different approaches. One of you thinks you should let the baby crawl down the aisle of a Great Western carriage while the other thinks it’s dirty; one of you likes co-sleeping and the other doesn’t; one of you thinks you should just clear up in the evening, the other as you go along; one of you wants to be held as you fall asleep, one of you needs to have nothing and nobody on their skin just for an hour. You might disagree on whether you want more babies, or when. You might disagree on childcare, on money, on feeding, on what bib, on Calpol, on Hey Duggee. One of you will be more tired than the other but at different times. One of you will use naps to clean the hobs while the other uses them to lie down. Try to separate your parenting life from your relationship, even if that just means taking 70 seconds out of your day to look them in the eye. And don’t make your child a mediator or a weapon in those fights. You might not smell “that baby smell” The publisher described the work as “a memoir culminating in a manifesto”. It said: “ Holding the Baby sets out to understand why we still treat early parenthood as an individual slog rather than a shared cultural responsibility. Tracing her own journey to the nadir of sleeplessness via social retreat and murderous rage, Frizzell draws on the latest research to explore the ways in which we fail new parents, and offer a rallying crying that we fight for a better alternative.” Every woman will experience the panic years in some way between her mid-twenties and early-forties.