Judith Warner is a good writer. The problem with this book is its lack of ideas. She writes about middle- and upper-middle-class mothers and their unhappiness, but she doesn't offer any real solutions. What she does offer (government programs for mothers including childcare standards and maybe even a government tax credit for working mothers) won't be viable until they're economically necessary for population (and, hence, economic) growth, as in France and Sweden, where the governments implement such programs in order to encourage women to have children. ( )

According to Warner, mothers in modern (Western) society are more stressed than ever before. Women are expected to have children, work, grocery shop, clean, prepare dinners, and coordinate stellar birthday parties and award-winning science projects. Perfectionism emerges in all the above scenarios. Women should not just have children, they should have smart, athletic, good-looking, well-rounded children. Women should not just work, they should do something meaningful and important with their careers. Women should not just take care of the house, they should prepare homemade, organic baby food and such.
Warner says we've allowed ourselves to be pushed into these roles, and we're bearing the consequences of sleepless nights, corroding marriages, and irritable tempers. She recommends, basically, that the government step in to help.

Unsurprisingly, Warner is from France, where there is a 35 hour work week for both men and women, government-subsidized and regulated daycare is available to all, and laws provide extensive maternity/paternity leave. Women should lead the way in finishing the womens' liberation movement.

Let's just say I have my doubts as to whether government is really the answer here, but Warner gives an interesting chronology of the expectations of motherhood through the 20th century and certainly hits on the fact that mothers these days are expected (by others and themselves) to do a lot, and maybe we should all take a good look at how motherhood, fatherhood, and work environments could be altered to make everyone's lives a little better. ( )

After reading the "Perfect Madness. Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety" I was honestly wondering why any woman would ever chose to have a child. Maybe Judith Warner just painted a very grim picture, but according to her book it doesn't sound as if there is much to be gained from motherhood. She made it sound like all sacrifice and no play. The ideal of an egalitarian marriage in which all the child rearing and household duties are equally shared seems to be a myth. Apparently mothers still get stuck with the most chores and on top of that mothers of today raised the pressure by striving for insanely perfect standards. What happened to feminism? And why aren't more women really upset about this? ( )

Thanks Judith

This is an excerpt of the blog entry found at:
http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2007/05/perfect-madness.html

The book covered too much ground for such a short book; she could only treat the topics superficially. As she wrote in the preface, it is a book exploring a feeling. On that level, she is successful. Too bad that I don't share the feeling.

First off, I do not believe that France is as much a feminist utopia as she makes it out to be in the early chapters. (Only in the last chapter does she write about the dark effects of the French laws upon working women.) That said, I do agree with several of her arguments.

I had a hilarious and somewhat sad conversation with a French scientist at a meeting about feminism and motherhood in our respective countries. Bear with me during this digression.

She told me about how mothers get Wednesdays off at full pay to stay home with their children. I exclaimed how wonderful that would be. Mothers could take Wednesdays off and Fathers could take Fridays off and children would only be in daycare for 3 days a week!

She looked kind of taken back. She said that she supposed fathers could take time off, but they never do. I asked why. She said that it was because they would have to take time off without pay.

Then it was my turn to look taken back. I asked, "You mean the law treats fathers and mothers differently? Why would anyone hire a woman, then?"

She scoffed, "You Americans want everything to be equal. Look where it has gotten you. Nowhere." Judith Warner did write that French women think that American women lead dog's lives. Well, this French scientist certainly agrees

Anyway, back to Perfect Madness. I slogged through the chapters about eating disorders and women who internalize things rather than deal with the root cause of their misery (society and their husbands). In fact, I found that women at Berkeley with eating disorders often did blame "the patriarchy" for everything that was wrong with their lives. For the most part, those women weren't science majors and I didn't hang out with them. I just didn't identify with the perfectionist motherhood malaise Warner chronicled in her book.

That might be part of the problem. Judith Warner, her subjects, and the essayists in The Bitch in the House are mostly writers or in other feminine professions. (A friend called them pink collar ghettos.) Except for a few, most are likely out-earned by their husbands. Like Linda Hirschman pointed out, if you choose a low-paying profession, don't be surprised when you are economically forced out of the workplace by childcare costs.

[snip]

I do object to the way Warner disses women who are careful about what they feed their children, e.g. mothers who feed their children soy products. Her book is ostensibly about how women shouldn't undermine each other and cut each other down. Yet, she appears to do the same thing. At the very least, she is culturally insensitive; Asian women have always fed their children soy products. I don't find that in the least bit weird or control freakish. In fact, I find it very yummy and environmentally conscious. (She is conscious of her bias. Warner herself admits she is mainly describing the lives of upper middle class white women in the DC area.)

The same goes for her criticism of women who breast feed longer than a few months. We don't do it because we are control freaks. We do it because it works for us. I breastfed until Iris was 18 months old, weaning her in May, after her second flu season had passed. I didn't find it as onerous or as strange as Warner found it. It was the only guaranteed way I had of putting Iris to sleep. ;-) My employer also guaranteed me a private office as long as I was pumping at work. It is also very common to breast feed in Asian cultures, even children up to 4-6 years of age.

Anyway, the book improves in the last section, when Warner turns her anger at the way American society and work is structured. I wish she spent more of the book building up her case here.

Joan Williams wrote a devastating analysis of how the legal profession, and American society in general, fails mothers in Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It. Williams does a very thorough job, explaining why we are not failing. Society has failed us. The workplace, and our husbands, has given us a Sisyphean task. The whole setup is a farce and I refuse to shoulder the blame for it on top of my already monumental workload.

Read Joan Williams book. Amazon users give it 4.5 stars; Perfect Madness only gets 3. I would have given them 5 and 3 respectively. ( )