TBR: Perfect Madness
I promise, this is going to be my very last post about Judith Warner and Perfect Madness. When I wrote about her articles, I said that I didn’t think she had made a convincing case between the problem she identified and her solutions, but I thought the missing links might be in her book. Well, I’ve read the book now, and I’m pretty disappointed.
I think Warner is making three basic arguments, of which I agree with maybe one and a half of.
The first argument is essentially psychological. A great deal has been written already about how Warner is only writing about an extremely narrow — and privileged — slice of American society. Well, I’m in that slice. I’m at the tail end of the generation she’s writing about. I live in suburban Washington DC, where Warner did most of her "research." And while she never defines what she means by "middle- and upper-middle class," I’m probably in that too. And even so, I found myself thinking "what the heck is she talking about?" much of the time. In a typically overwraught paragraph, she writes:
"Our baby boomer elders often call us selfish, but in doing so they miss a larger point: that what our obsessive looking inward hides is at base a kind of despair. A lack of faith that change can come to the outside world. A lack of belief in our political culture or our institutions. Our outlook is something very much akin to what cognitive behavioralists call ‘learned helplessness.’"
Oh fercripessake.
Warner’s second argument is that there’s a severe problem of the commons, in which good health care, good schools, recreational opportunities are not generally available, but left to each family to obtain on its own. Warner writes:
"It would be easy (and comforting too) to dismiss the pervasive parental anxiety of our time as so much media-stoked nonsense… But to parent in such a state of grace, you have to be able to believe that things will, if you let them fall into place, basically turn out all right. And, frankly, at this point in time, in our winner-take-all-society, there is much reason to believe that they will not."
I find this an infuriating argument, because I think it’s probably true for everyone EXCEPT the upper-middle class women whom Warner is talking about. Warner herself points out that the whole body of early brain research, which has been used to sell all sorts of crap to anxious parents, is largely based on the experiences of highly deprived children. Perry Preschool dramatically transformed the life courses of the very poor kids who attended it; my kids — and those of Warner’s subjects — will almost certainly be fine whatever preschool we send them to or if we send them to no preschool at all.
Warner’s final claim is that American society gives mothers an artificial choice between inflexible, often more-than-full-time, work and isolating full-time motherhood. Many women would prefer something in between. This is essentially a version of what Joan Williams has argued about good jobs still being based on an ideal worker who either doesn’t have kids or has an at-home spouse to take care of them. (Warner seems to ignore the fact that there are plenty of part-time jobs out there, if you don’t care about things like benefits or decent pay. But it’s true that many of these jobs are not worth the effort for women whose husbands make as much as those of Warner’s subjects, so I’m not going to quibble.)
My bottom line: if you’ve read the articles, don’t bother with the book. Do read Phantom Scribbler’s Self-Evaluation Test and Angry Pregnant Lawyer’s discussion of one mom’s reaction to that NYTimes article. (Warning: the second link isn’t work- or kid-safe.)
March 16th, 2005 at 10:58 am
Elizabeth, thanks for being so thorough about this and actually reading Warner’s entire book. Nice to know there’s someone in the blogosphere who looks for full information before ranting. 😉
March 16th, 2005 at 10:29 pm
I also went to the effort to read the book before writing down my take, which is here:
Themes of the book:
1. Mothers who over-parent, whether because they want to give their kid every advantage in a world of limited opportunity, or they are control freaks, or a little of both. Or because they gave up a career to be a SAHM and have to make it all count. Attachment parenting is seen as linked to this.
2. Working women not having societal supports (most obviously quality, affordable day-care, most often on a part-time schedule) to be able to balance work with parenting their children.
3. Economically, our generation of mothers has to work harder to achieve the same standard of living as our parents, maybe even a slightly lower standard.
4. Mothers using harsh judgments about other women’s more-or-less benign parenting styles (such as SAH vs. WOH; cry-it-out vs. co-sleeping) is a problem because it keeps us at each others’ throats instead of working together to improve the lot of ALL mothers.
Sort of in the same way Betty Friedan’s _The Feminine Mystique_ pointed out the resentment and frustration of college-educated women stuck in the home with children, this books points out the, well, resentment and frustration of college-educated women stuck either in a home or in a “mommy-track” job AND at home with children. Add to that the tendency to perfectionism from point 1 above, there are a number of people who are obviously chronically tired and stressed out because such a life ISN’T anywhere near perfect.
Warner’s solution? More government. The kind of family-friendly policy popular in France and other European countries. The kind of policies that seem to make finding a job so difficult in those countries as well.
I still look at the above and wonder just if a lot of women aren’t more-or-less putting too many pressures on themselves? It must be an awful realization to realize your choices are limited by economic reality when you never actually expected as a middle class woman it would apply to YOU…And how reasonable is it, really, to expect society to fund your choices when you aren’t really suffering economically?
Having studied history, I actually think middle-class American women have it pretty good. Some of these kids would benefit if their mothers were just more relaxed with who they are and what they should be doing, and take some time for themselves already. On the other hand, many of the things Warner suggest, like quality standards for day care teachers (some states don ‘t even require a background check) make a lot of sense though, aren’t overwhelmingly expensive, and would benefit everyone.
Joy
March 17th, 2005 at 11:08 pm
Slowly but surely corporations are realizing that the best way to keep productivity up, increase loyalty, and retain its highly trained mothers is by offering excellent on-site childcare. I live in Los Angeles where HBO offers up to five months maternity leave, and many of the major studios offer on-site daycare; there are, of course, not enough spots and there is a waiting list, but at least they are starting to get it right. Most mothers I know (in their mid-thirties) have worked hard to get where they are and, most importantly, really enjoy what they do. But as so many of us know, finding the balance between motherhood, especially of young children, and our work is hard to find. Finding ways to make a working mother’s life even a little bit less stressful goes a long way and is mutually beneficial to family and business.
There was even a company that made a giant baby room in a high rise. They blew out walls and opened a giant room, they put gliders in, mats to play on, had a changing area, took out the florescent lights, and allowed nannies to come all day with infants so that if the mothers wanted to nurse all they had to do was bop down the hall and chill with her babe if she wanted to. The nannies would take walks, play on the mats, etc…That seems incredibly humane to me (if only it wasn’t a hermetically sealed building).
I do have to mention STARZ though (with headquarters in CO and run by white Republican men- which may explain this story). They offered no maternity leave to my friend (a Sr. VP), she was allowed to take six weeks disability (at a fraction of her salary); anything beyond that she was to use her sick leave and vacation. Unlike HBO, they were completely rigid about flex-time, working from home, etc.. I will never forgive them for that. So in the end, they lost a brilliant wonderful person stressed out beyond her limits.
March 20th, 2005 at 2:25 pm
Thanks for pointing me to angrypregnantlawyer (I’m trying to do a little catch up since I’m out of town and not near a computer nearly enough)!! I couldn’t stop laughing through the comments of her JW post.