Tone dilutes message about moms

“Imagine it’s Mother’s Day, and you are being taken out to one of those god-awful brunches where you and hundreds of other mothers will be force-fed runny scrambled eggs and flaccid croissants by way of thanking you for the other 364 days,” begins Chapter 1 of “The Mommy Myth,” giving readers a heads-up on how the book’s authors, Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels, professors and mothers both, feel about motherhood in contemporary society. The basic premises of their book are that nothing -- no brunch, no hugs, no homemade Valentines -- can justify all that mothers are asked to do for their children in this day and age and that there’s plenty of blame to go around.

The problem, they tell us, is to be found in the “new momism,” a ruinous cultural trend that has taken over the American psyche, insisting that “no woman is truly complete or fulfilled unless she has kids, that women remain the best primary caretakers of children, and that to be a remotely decent mother, a woman has to devote her entire physical, psychological, emotional, and intellectual being, 24/7, to her children.” This ideology, they contend, a far cry from the sisterhood days of 1970s feminism, has “snowballed since the 1980s and seeks to return women to the Stone Age.”

The media, they tell us, have sold women a bill of goods about the honor and integrity of motherhood that has either forced women to give up their career aspirations or compelled them toward impossible “super-mother” heights while balancing family and career.

Portrayals of mothers in the media over the last 30 years are examined to illustrate this shift in consciousness. Particularly offensive, in the authors’ opinion, is the advent of the celebrity-mom profile, exposes in which smart women are portrayed as having it all yet insist that their roles as mothers are the most important in their lives. After reading such a profile, Douglas and Michaels tell us, we’re supposed to feel that the celebrity “made smart choices, she exercised control, she has that phony fantasy of bliss, beauty, and unconditional love after childbirth that you, sputum covered, exhausted slob in your bathrobe, do not.”

By propagating an overly glowing view of motherhood, they argue, the celebrity-mom profile does a disservice to mothers everywhere who struggle with the difficulties of the role and effectively fuels the “mommy wars,” in which stay-at-home and working mothers compete against each other. “Why do Kirstie and Vanna and Whitney love being mothers in some unequivocal way that you do not?” these profiles implicitly ask, according to the book’s authors. “Because they’re successful mothers and you’re not.”

The authors celebrate the development of “mouthy” mothers on television shows like “Roseanne” and “The Simpsons” and bemoan the overly perfect mothers depicted on shows like “thirtysomething.” At the same time that we’ve been swayed by these images, they argue, the media’s portrayals of the dangers of child care have become rampant, reminding women that their desire or need to work endangers their children. These factors have conspired to push women back into the kitchen, which is exactly where the right wing of the Republican Party wants us.

The sardonic tone the authors adopt is at times wickedly funny but more often comes off as flippant and caustic, turning off readers who might have been swayed by some of their arguments. (Only readers already converted to the authors’ perspective, it seems, could possibly swallow the majority of their opinions.) They rail against just about everyone and everything having to do with child-rearing -- did you know, for instance, that society’s use of the word “mom” assumes “a familiarity, an approachability to mothers that is, frankly, patronizing”? -- and rely on biting sarcasm and derision to make their case.

If the 1950s were so difficult for women because stay-at-home motherhood was considered drudgery, as they tell us, isn’t there something to celebrate in the fact that the importance of a mother’s role is being recognized? These kinds of contradictions, rampant in the text, are not addressed by the authors, who assume that readers -- gullible enough to put their faith in People magazine celebrity-mom profiles -- will believe, unquestioned, the statements they put forth.

To be fair, the authors make some excellent points about the media war against welfare mothers and the abdication of the government’s role in caring for the nation’s young. They also write convincingly about Andrea Yates, the Texas woman convicted of murder after drowning her five children in 2001, and the motherhood-related pressures under which she finally broke. In fact, many of the issues they raise deserve our attention. It’s too bad that the broad-stroke generalizations, paired with a contemptuous tone and the assumption that they’re preaching to the converted, may dissuade readers from adequately examining them.