A Look at the First Year of Motherhood Across the World with Abigail Leonard

Air Dates: May 12-18, 2025 

The saying goes that mothers and motherhood are the same all the world-over. Abigail Leonard puts that folk-wisdom to the test in a new book chronicling the first year of motherhood for four women from four different countries.   

Leonard is an award-winning international reporter and news producer, previously based in Tokyo, where she was a frequent contributor to NPR, Time Magazine, and New York Times video. Her stories have also appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Vox. Before moving to Japan, she wrote and produced long-form news documentaries as a staff producer for PBS, ABC and Al Jazeera America. Stories she reported have earned a National Headliner Award, an Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism Award, an Overseas Press Club Award and a James Beard Foundation Media Award Nomination. She was a 2011 East-West Center Japan Fellow and 2010 UN Foundation Journalism Fellow. She served as First Vice President of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, a 2,000-member national press organization, and chaired its scholarship program.  

On this week’s episode of “Story in the Public Sqaure,” Leonard discusses her new book, “Four Mothers: An Intimate Journey through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries,” that was inspired by her own experience raising her children in different countries. “I had my own three children in Tokyo, Japan, and then I moved back to the US. So, I sort of got a sense of how different parenting was in those countries,” she said. “The book itself looks at four different women in four countries around the world, and it follows them for their first year of motherhood.” Through this book, Leonard was able to identify and study the intersection of public policy, culture, and motherhood in Japan, the U.S., Finland, and Kenya. She said, “I think culture plays a huge factor. A lot of the ideas around parenthood are passed down through generations. So, gender roles, how much a woman takes on versus her partner, all those things are transmitted through culture.” 

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Check your local public television listings for air times near you! An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 2:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. and Mondays at 4:30 a.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at Salve Regina University. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.