Lob der Stiefmutter - Familie, Patchwork und Co

A conversation with Elsa Köster about her book "Stiefmutter sein. The unplanned happiness of living in a patchwork family"

Word has actually gotten around that family means more than father-mother-biological-child - and yet it is still far from being fully understood. Author and journalist Elsa Koester shows just how deeply the clichés and negative ideas about stepmothers still linger in people's minds in her book "Stiefmutter sein. The unplanned happiness of living in a patchwork family ".

Koester is an editor at Freitag and a novelist ("Couscous mit Zimt"). Using her own example and going far beyond it, she describes how the desire to have children and having children can function completely independently of one's own uterus - and how cultural, economic and political expectations of family life have only recently, in capitalism, been directed towards the biologically determined nuclear family.

On this evening, taz editor-in-chief Ulrike Winkelmann will talk to Elsa Koester about ideas of the standard family and love and child-rearing in complex adult alliances, and she will of course also read from her recently published book.

Guests:

🐾 Elsa Koester is an editor at Freitag and a novelist. Following her novel "Couscous mit Zimt" published in 2020, her autobiographical book "Stiefmutter sein. The unplanned happiness of living in a patchwork family".

🐾 Ulrike Winkelmann moderates this talk. She is editor-in-chief of taz.

Koester's book "Stiefmutter sein. Vom ungeplanten Glück, in einer Patchworkfamilie zu leben" was published by Penguin Verlag in October.