The Conflict: Left Holding the Baby?

Mary Cassatt's The Young Mother, c.1900
Source

'Mum,' asks my Star Wars obsessed six-year-old, 'do you like my clone-turbo-tank?' The tank drives right up alongside my laptop, where I'm perched at the kitchen table trying to quickly hammer out this blog. The washing-up, meanwhile, waits patiently, just out of sight, in the sink.


It's the type of scene Elisabeth Badinter possibly had in mind when she wrote her book The Conflict: Woman and Mother. There is no doubt, Badinter's book is food for thought for engaged mothers and fathers juggling work, parenting, and personal ambitions. 


My review of Badinter's book, 'Left Holding the Baby' can be found in SMH. Badinter offers an engaging analysis of this problem, focusing on the rise of a 'naturalist' ideology. Here's a sample from the review:

Badinter does not ''deny the intricate relationship between nature and culture, nor the existence of hormones'' but argues there is no wholly natural instinct that should undermine the ''infinite variety'' of ways to mother. 

Badinter has some corkers to support her argument about the rise of reactionaries, courtesy of the Catholic-founded La Leche League's 10 breastfeeding ''commandments'': ''I am the milk of your breasts … you will have no artificial versions of my shape … you shall not wean your child for the sake of convenience.'' 

That said, her nostalgia for carefree smoking and drinking while pregnant seems less a lament for lost feminist freedoms and more a defence of retrograde hedonism. 

This book has many ''Yes, but …'' moments.

Badinter's analysis is interesting, but I was unconvinced that the 'natural mother' ideology is as powerful as she claims. I think engaged parenting breeds a kind of confident pragmatism that quickly sees through such oppressive ideals (whether you breastfeed or not). And, interestingly, Australian qualitative research backs up this impression. 


You can read the full review here. You can also read the Jenny Turner essay I mention in the review here.