This anthology, co-edited by poets Catherine Wagner and Rebecca Wolff, includes nearly 80 poets writing on all aspects of motherhood. The anthology hosts myriad perspectives and subject matter, (including topics such as adoption, parenting guide books, and single parenthood) in poems that address the politics, difficulties, and satisfactions of mothering.

In the anthology's foreword, Alicia Ostriker writes: "The poets in [Not for Mothers Only] have been ravished, whacked, illuminated, blown away by the experience of motherhood....The intensity of the poems here bespeaks both the power of maternity in bending us to its will, and the power of the artist to resist-while-submitting."

Poets represented in the anthology include Olena Kalytiak Davis, Carolyn Forché, Kimiko Hahn, Marie Howe, Ann Lauterbach, Sharon Olds, Hoa Nguyen, Alice Notley, Danielle Pafunda, Claudia Rankine, Adrienne Rich, Jean Valentine, C.D. Wright, and Rachel Zucker, among many others.