American Mothers' Anxiety Sparks 'Perfect Madness'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American women are anxious these days and no wonder: They've been vilified as inadequate mothers, desperate housewives, lackluster academic scientists and -- most rudely -- too fat to be French. These characterizations have come in guilt-edged packaging on television, in newspapers and a raft of non-fiction books about the plight of U.S. women in the 21st century.

One of the most celebrated new works takes aim at the fallacy of having it all as a mother. Author Judith Warner dubbed the problem, and her book, "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety."

It isn't just about the challenges of motherhood, Warner said in a Reuters interview. Rather, it's a revisiting of the same kinds of frustration American women voiced in the first wave of modern feminism, back in the 1960s.

Warner, an American who lived in France for the births of her two daughters, returned to the United States to find a complicated, expensive, often baffling world, where grown women dressed in the same styles as their children, were too tired to think about sex and felt compelled to spend their evenings at such child-centered events as Girl Scout cookie meetings.

She re-read "The Feminine Mystique," Betty Friedan's ground-breaking 1963 book outlining the dissatisfactions of American women in the mid-20th century, "just to see what parallels I could find."

"I was shocked by the degree to which women's inner monologues were similar," Warner said. "The world had changed enormously since the early '60s, but the kind of pressure that women put on themselves, the kind of failure they felt like they were always facing, was very, very similar."

The first chapter of Friedan's book was called "The Problem That Has No Name," and described the American woman's life: "As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night -- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question -- 'Is that all?"'

For the women in Warner's book, though, the question seems to be, "Will anything ever be enough?"

As Warner wrote of contemporary mothers: "The moms' lives were punctuated by boxer shorts on the floor and quilt-making at school, carpooling and play dates and mother-daughter book clubs, and getting in to see the right dentist ... and, and, and, layer after layer of trivia and absurdity that sometimes made them feel like they were going out of their heads."

An earlier generation of American women seemed able to deal with the demands of work and family, but Warner said this latest wave of post-baby boom mothers is different.

"We inherited a world that was created for us by women in the generation right before us, without really seeing any of the struggles or battles that went into creating that world," Warner said. "We've been a very competitive generation, a very materialistic generation and a very perfectionistic generation. and we bring all of that into motherhood now."

Husbands -- who were supposed to be part of the feminist push to give women more choices -- came in for their share of criticism from the dozens of women Warner interviewed.

In one chapter called "Wonderful Husbands," the women in Warner's coffee groups almost uniformly begin sentences about their spouses with the phrase, "I have a wonderful husband, but ..." and then proceed to trash the man's domestic incompetence and overweening sex drive.

Warner's book -- which was splashed on the cover of Newsweek magazine and the front of The New York Times Book Review -- is among a rising chorus of media mentions of problems for some of America's most publicly visible women.

On television, there are the outwardly enviable and inwardly twisted lives of the fictional "Desperate Housewives." A typical scene shows one wife in nothing but a fur coat and red lingerie, interrupting a heavy-breathing session to make sure a messy sandwich doesn't fall off the nightstand.

In academe, there is the mess at Harvard University, where President Lawrence Summers caused a furor in January by suggesting that intrinsic differences between the sexes may help explain why so few women work in the academic sciences.

In the corporate realm, the ouster of Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina and the much-monitored prison term of Martha Stewart were long-term front-page fare.

One non-fiction best-seller is unlikely to make American women's anxiety go away any time soon. In "French Women Don't Get Fat," Mireille Guiliano, the CEO of Cliquot Inc., tells how she looked like "a sack of potatoes" -- a big restaurant-size sack -- after spending time in the United States.

She slimmed down when she returned to her native France; her book is a light-hearted instruction manual on how to combat the "American way of eating."

More on Judith Warner:

Judith Warner Wants to 'Have It All' With Your Money ("Mommy Madness" Part I)
By Eva Ellsworth
Mar 14, 2005, 00:56

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Judith Warner bemoans her misery as a career woman mother in her Newsweek article, “Mommy Madness.” She states that women with children have two choices: “You can continue to pursue your professional dreams at the cost of abandoning your children to long hours of inadequate child care. Or: You can stay home with your baby and live in a state of virtual, crazy-making isolation because you can’t afford a nanny, because there is no such thing as part-time day care, and because your husband doesn’t come home until 8:30 at night.”

Is staying home with one’s children crazy-making isolation? Many stay-at-home moms are happy. They have social lives that include their children. Since when does a healthy stay-at-home mom need a nanny? Part-time childcare is often arranged as a trade between women who have kids. Often, husbands of stay-at-home moms work more to earn the income that enables that arrangement. Sometimes, one has to choose the best among imperfect possibilities – that’s life in any society.

Mrs. Warner also bemoans “the fact that middle class life is now so d*** expensive that in most families both parents must work gruelingly long hours just to make ends meet.” I would like to know her definitions of “middle class” and “making ends meet.” Designer clothes, a new SUV every couple of years, vacations to Tahiti, etc.? Some couples whose income is at the lower end of middle class have stay-at-home moms. It can be done.

Unhappy with her “choices,” Mrs. Warner believes the taxpayers should fix things – a recycled version of Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child”. The problem with that idea is “the village” wasn’t consulted about creating the child. If career comes first or the couple
doesn’t want to give anything up for a child, maybe parenthood isn’t right for them.

Mrs. Warner’s demands on the taxpayers are: 1) “tax subsidies to encourage corporations to adopt family friendly policies”, 2) “government-mandated child care standards and quality controls”, 3) “flexible, affordable, locally available, high-quality part-time day care so that stay-at-home moms can get a life of their own”, 4) “vouchers or bigger tax credits to make child care more affordable, by making health insurance available and affordable for part-time workers and by generally making life less expensive and less stressful for middle-class families”, and 5) “alleviate the economic pressures that currently make so many families lives so high-pressured, through progressive tax policies that would transfer our nation’s wealth back to the middle class.”

Corporations exist to make money. This is what keeps the economy going. Their purpose is not social engineering. If “family friendly” policies are needed to attract talented employees, corporations will adopt them for economic reasons.

State and municipal regulations already exist for childcare facilities. Almost all childcare horror stories involve unlicensed daycare. Even the strictest regulations do not eliminate the need for parents to carefully vet facilities before enrolling their children.

If there is consumer demand for part-time daycare, businesses will provide it as long as market forces control prices. If government price controls are imposed, facility owners may choose to quit the childcare business.

Parents who use daycare already get a tax credit. Those who stay home to care for their own children don’t get one even though one earner families typically have lower incomes than two-earner families. Why should the taxpayers fund daycare for relatively affluent families?

Some companies do provide health insurance for part-time employees. If it helps recruit needed, qualified, part time workers, corporations will provide it. Family members of a full-time earner can be included on that earner's policy.

Judith Warner must not have heard about President Bush’s tax cut, which decreased the percentage of the nation’s tax burden for all except those in the top 20% and reduced tax rates for all income groups. If the government provides some or all of the items on Mrs. Warner’s list, we can say “goodbye” to the tax cut and “hello” to some hefty tax increases.

I am sorry Mrs. Warner’s life has been a “mess” since she had children. The taxpayers did not choose for her. It should not be their responsibility. I also made the wrong choice. I wanted to be a housewife and mom but pursued a career instead. I had ovarian failure at age 27. Is it someone else’s fault that I thought I’d have more time? No, it isn’t. I may not be living the life I planned on since I was a little girl, but I am reasonably happy because I make the best of things. Women like Mrs. Warner should learn to
do that, too. There must be some aspect of being wives and mothers that these women can enjoy.

http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.org/artman/publish/article_1810.shtml

"...and then proceed to trash the man's domestic incompetence and overweening sex drive."

The book talks about a woman asking herself "Is this all?" after she "made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night", and complains about that husband not being capable of (much) productive housework, and of wanting to be intimate. Yet few women I know of are competent groundskeepers (mowing, raking, external house maintenance). What about that husband who wakes up early, slams down a tasteless (and probably unhealthy) breakfast, grinds through traffic for an hour to a mind-numbing job, grinds through traffic again to come home to a wife uninterested in physical intimacy, kids he rarely has time to spend with, and complaints about how he doesn't help around the house enough? He's probably asking "Is this all?" too. Life doesn't owe anyone, men or women, fulfillment, just the opportunity to feel that way. Actual fulfillment is up to the person. Couples can provide each other a measure of that fulfillment, but ultimately life is what you make it. Stop whining and fix what you don't like.

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