Books |
The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women
Elisabeth Badinter
By
Published: Jun 27, 2012
Category:
Non Fiction
Elisabeth Badinter has been voted “the most important intellectual” in France.
Why, you wonder, would American women hate a French intellectual?
Scorn, sure. Be intimated by, understood. But hate?
Try this: Badinter is no fan of the idea that natural childbirth — untold hours of contractions — is superior to childbirth with a pain-killing epidural. Unlike the La Leche crowd, she does not hold that a good mother is a mother who breastfeeds. But even more, she sees the economic and political events of the past 40 years as devastating to the gains women had made in the first wave of feminism. “The baby,” Badinter has said, “is the best ally of masculine domination.”
So here is an American woman, on the message board of an American web site, commenting on “The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women,” Badinter’s short (169 pages) but scholarly (28 pages of footnotes) new book:
I frickin’ love being an animal. Loved moaning and groaning through labor. Loved pushing my baby out without an epidural. Love breastfeeding (my mom watches me do it and feels incredibly sad that she was duped into not doing it.) And honestly the many women who "can’t" breastfeed often don’t stand a chance because they don’t have the proper support to make it work (i.e. a midwife who comes over everyday postpartum to help you and see how it’s going.) Love sleeping next to my baby and feeling her rooting around for me in the night like a little piglet. Love watching her learn and grow through her first year. Love watching her tuck into the homemade beef stew I make (yes, with homemade chicken broth.) Sorry — I’m not feeling oppressed by it all.
The reason Badinter provokes responses like this is because she has located some key issues. And, though women like the message board poster don’t get beyond the breastfeeding and natural childbirth issues, because she has a political and economic analysis to support her views. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
Like this: Until 1990, women could still hope to attain equal pay in the workplace and helpful husbands at home. Then the economic slump of the early ‘90s sent many women home — cheaper to have a mom take care of her kids than pay for a caregiver. At the same time, we began hearing more about a “maternal instinct.” (Badinter, a mother of three, does not find this innate.) And there was the political argument from the right that motherhood just might be more important than any career.
This political argument made headway in America, but not in France. Until recently: “The majority of French women [now] reconcile maternity with professional life. Many of them work full-time when they have a child. They are resisting the model of the perfect mother, but for how long? I get the impression that we may now be at a turning point."
It should be noted that Badinter is wealthy; her father was the founder of Publicis, a public relations company. Publicis does PR for Nestle’, the world’s largest formula manufacturer. It also represents the manufacturers of Enfamil and Similac. This has led to criticism of Badinter — again, only in our country — as some hack whose fortune depends on keeping women from breastfeeding. Consider this subhead in Slate, of all places: "Elisabeth Badinter’s job is to increase sales of baby formula. Why is no one talking about her laughable conflict of interest?"
Excuse me. Elisabeth Badinter has been writing along these lines for 30 years. Her ideas are not cover for marketing. She does not manage PR campaigns by day and scribble by night. But this — this is what now passes for smart commentary in our hard-of-thinking country.
If you’re in the mood for a bracing argument about the ways intelligent women navigate the job/home dilemma, this is a fascinating book. And not one that a man should do more than describe to women, because men have a lot more self-interest at stake here than a PR company that hawks formula.
[Major thanks to Nina Planck]
