The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women
Language: English
Pages: 400
ISBN: B000FC1LO2
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Susan Douglas first took on the media's misrepresentation of women in her funny, scathing social commentary Where the Girls Are. Now, she and Meredith Michaels, have turned a sardonic (but never jaundiced) eye toward the cult of the new momism: a trend in American culture that is causing women to feel that only through the perfection of motherhood can true contentment be found. This vision of motherhood is highly romanticized and yet its standards for success remain forever out of reach, no matter how hard women may try to "have it all."
The Mommy Myth takes a provocative tour through the past thirty years of media images about mothers: the superficial achievements of the celebrity mom, the news media's sensational coverage of dangerous day care, the staging of the "mommy wars" between working mothers and stay-at-home moms, and the onslaught of values-based marketing that raises mothering standards to impossible levels, just to name a few. In concert with this messaging, the authors contend, is a conservative backwater of talking heads propagating the myth of the modern mom.
This nimble assessment of how motherhood has been shaped by out-of-date mores is not about whether women should have children or not, or about whether once they have kids mothers should work or stay at home. It is about how no matter what they do or how hard they try, women will never achieve the promised nirvana of idealized mothering. Douglas and Michaels skillfully map the distance traveled from the days when The Feminine Mystique demanded more for women than the unpaid labor of keeping house and raising children, to today's not-so-subtle pressure to reverse this thirty-year trend. A must-read for every woman.
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made to hold a bottle next to an infant so the infant can take nourishment without an adult in attendance.”88 In her unwelcome starring role as the celebrity mother’s evil twin, the news media’s version of the welfare mother reinforced one of the most un-warranted stereotypes of all: Black mothers are bad mothers. As Dorothy Roberts has shown in her powerful indictment of the child welfare system, Shattered Bonds, the assumption that most black mothers are unfit has prompted the state to remove
families and one in four parents didn’t think their child-care was good enough.14 But never mind what parents think, especially if those parents happen to be mothers, or worse yet, feminists. In 1970, the White House Conference on Children, which convened every ten years, was especially rowdy, rebellious, and productive, filled as it was with four thousand delegates, which included black activists, feminists, childcare activists, Native Americans, Chicanos, and pacifists, all eager to force “the
Rinehart and Winston, 1942). See also Ruth Feldstein’s excellent discussion of momism in Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930–1965 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), especially chapter 2. 7. Hays’s book is must reading for all mothers, and we are indebted to her analysis of intensive mothering, from which this discussion draws. Sharon Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 4. 8. For an account of
11, 1991, p. 77. 49. Susie Pearson, “Diana’s Darlings,” p. 110. 50. “Once Upon a Time,” People, July 22, 1991, p. 29. 51. “Love on the Rocks,” People, June 29, 1992, p. 80. 52. Pearson, pp. 108–109. 53. Ingrid Seward, “Diana and Charles: A Weekend at Home,” McCall’s, September 1988, p. 119. 54. “Bringing Up Baby,” InStyle, July 2000, pp. 190–97. 55. Glynis Costin, “8 1/2 Months & Counting…,” InStyle, July 2000, pp. 199–203. 56. “Late Arrivals,” People, April 29, 2002, pp. 89–90. 57.
reported in the press with a straight face, and by quoting the prosecutors, news outlets like NBC, KABC, and others did not have to use the word allegedly. With coverage like this, it is not surprising that in the absence of any evidence—and remember, none of the defendants in the McMartin case was willing to testify against any of the others in exchange for leniency—a whopping 90 percent of Los Angeles residents surveyed in 1986 believed Ray Buckey and his grandmother Virginia to be guilty.35