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Tuesday, March 02, 2004

My trusty A&L Daily delivered up the goods today with a link to a mighty pertinent subject:  a discussion of two new books having to deal with the "home-work problem", or life, as it is otherwise known.  Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life (Little, Brown; $25.95), by Daphne de Marneffe, and The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women (Free Press; $26), by Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels.  The author of the article, Elizabeth Kolbert posits these two books as sitting on opposite sides of an ideological spectrum.  Frankly, I don't think I have the stamina to read either of them. I just don't. I find myself a little beleaguered, weary of the whole discussion. The New Yorker article is enough for me to know I probably fall more predominately in the de Marneffe camp-- my decisions regarding motherhood having been guided almost purely by instinct and not by the media or "the new momism".  And yet, is it that cut and dried?  Are we not affected by both our instincts and our culture? Sigh. . .too many books blabbering on and on and not enough art.  Where is the great work of art about motherhood?  What would it look like if I could find it?  Are the mothers who could produce it simply too weary?  It's 4:00 in the morning.  If I don't get back to bed, I'll be too weary to produce a hard boiled egg tomorrow much less the Pieta. comment []4:54:14 AM

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