Why do we have so many myths and legends in the West that center long battles or heroic quests, but none that specifically center the journeys of pregnancy and childbirth? After all, these profoundly powerful passages are how we all got here. What happened to the stories passed down mother to daughter and midwife to midwife that once must have guided women through the portal of birth?

In Mother Labyrinth, Sylvia V. Linsteadt follows the knotted paths of her ancestral European myths and fairytales, gathering and weaving references to pregnancy and birth, and the hidden stories those traces carry. This book is a mythic resource for mothers, children of mothers, and lovers of mothers, where fairytales reveal their conception charms, young women dance as bears to learn the ways of pregnancy, and ancient Mediterranean goddesses descend into the earth to birth, and only then to be themselves reborn.