Naomi Stadlen

Naomi Stadlen (born Naomi Jacoby; November 25, 1942 – June 6, 2025) was a British therapist and writer. She was known for writing What Mothers Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing.

Early life and education Stadlen was born in 1942 in London. When she was two, her father, Hans, died. Her parents were Jewish graphologists who had escaped from Germany before the war. Her mother, Marianne (born Goldschmidt), had just given birth to her younger brother when she became a single parent. Her mother later became a Jungian analyst. Stadlen studied at North London Collegiate school and the University of Sussex, and then trained at Goldsmiths as a psychoanalytic counsellor. However she worked mainly as a book editor, a social worker and a supervisor of

Career In 1997, she began leading a module at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, the existential-therapy-based school founded by Emmy van Deurzen. Stadlen was a visiting lecturer for the module she designed, titled "Families and Family Systems". During one session, the idea of What Mothers Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing was mentioned, which inspired her to write the book. The book drew on Stadlen‘s own experience, and she took pride in never offering specific advice. She explored the transition of a woman into a mother and the invaluable contribution that can appear to observers as "nothing". Her fifth and final book, A Grand Quarrel: Elizabeth Gaskell, Florence Nightingale and Mothers Today, was published later in the same month.

Works What Mothers Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing, 2004 A Grand Quarrel: Elizabeth Gaskell, Florence Nightingale and Mothers Today, 2025