 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
Mère Knows Best
Is the American mother really a slave to her child? Is breast-feeding really anti-feminist? The newest salvos in the Mommy Wars, French edition.
Still, a little railing is in order. Badinter’s positions are irrational, poorly substantiated, and ridiculous. She derides anything related to nature, which to her is merely a manmade notion intended to hold women down. The entire field of ecology, she fumes, gave nature “the stature of moral authority” that humans then had to serve. As a result, ecologically minded societies, and women in those societies in particular, have come to attack everything “artificial,” including “Caesareans, episiotomies, and inductions being done excessively purely to suit obstetricians.” But there is good evidence that artificial interventions in fact are being done excessively and do harm women. It is clearer than ever, for instance, that high C-section rates do not benefit women: The World Health Organization’s women’s health division has found that C-sections improve women’s overall health up to a level of about 15 percent of all births. But when a country’s rate goes higher than this—in the United States, it has reached around 34 percent—we are seeing unnecessary surgeries, with a range of negative consequences, including a rise in premature births and neonatal and maternal complications. As for those episiotomies she so blithely slips in there: These vaginal incisions were done as a matter of course when Badinter was having her children, but even the medical establishment has been forced to acknowledge that doing so routinely to women giving birth led to no benefits and only undue suffering.
In the same anti-ecology section, she rolls her eyes at the “recent discovery of a chemical substance, bisphenol A (BPA)…which is suspected of disrupting hormonal development, causing cancer (breast and prostate), and increasing the risks of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.” In the face of this research, and of the presence of BPA in most plastic baby bottles (and nearly all canned food), she is worried only about the Infinitely Liberated Mother. “Of course any true mother will throw [BPA-contaminated bottles] out,” she writes, dripping with contempt—as if the (largely unregulated) corporate entities that brought us these damaging “conveniences” are somehow women’s real friends. Immediately on the heels of this perfidy, she tells us that for the first 30 months of life, a baby produces two tons of disposable diapers that will take up to five centuries to degrade, and that the number of these diapers used each year in France alone causes the “destruction of 5.6 million trees.” In today’s world, such ecological impact does—and should—affect the way we think about our consumer choices. But to Badinter, for mothers even to consider such impacts just plays into the hands of the mommy police, waiting for any excuse to force women into the back-breaking, status-degrading labor of washing cloth diapers. Luckily, she writes, France has so far resisted this impulse, “mercifully” rejecting a proposed tax on disposable diapers. “But there is no knowing whether our concern with biodegradability and recycling will eventually defeat our reluctance” to accept the menacing ecological alternative, she warns. It’s easy to imagine where her blinkered vision of liberation leads: to the woman of the future, completely liberated, drowning in a sea of undegraded diapers.
Most vile of all to Badinter is breast-feeding, to which she devotes a significant portion of her book. She recounts in explicit detail the supposed conspiracy of La Leche League and a cabal of international, medical, and governmental bodies to literally tie women to their babies. Everything bad follows from that: co-sleeping (“so the woman-as-mother may well obliterate the woman-as-lover”), overinvestment in the well-being of the child, lack of energy directed toward one’s work and one’s personal life, and a belief that mothers “owe [children] everything!” It’s true that devotion to exclusive breast-feeding can be difficult, and that it can interfere with a woman’s ability to work professionally. But it is beyond absurd to suggest that this element of women’s biology is somehow the enemy of women’s well-being. Modern feminists have fought for ways to make work and breast-feeding compatible, acknowledging the need for change without denying nature. But to Badinter, this is only evil nature at work again.
Her fury escalates as she goes. “The irony…is that it was precisely at the point that Western women finally rid themselves of patriarchy that they acquired a new master in the home,” she writes. “Sexist men can celebrate: we will not see the end of their reign any time soon. They have won a war without taking up arms, and without having said a word. The champions of maternalism took care of it all.”
It is difficult—in a season when women in Texas are being forced to see a sonogram before choosing an abortion, and when Republican presidential candidates can stay viable while debating the morality of birth control—to remain sanguine about women’s progress against traditional roles and the biological mandates that maintained them. It is equally difficult, in a media culture whose basic unit of currency is hyperbole, to see clearly how much has changed. The Mommy Wars may exist, but mostly in the minds of politicians, or on the ledgers of media companies putting out books and magazines. As ever, what sells is extreme: Caitlin Flanagan’s prim serve-your-husband claptrap (summary: women ought to drop everything to serve their families), The New York Times’s flawed but instantly popular “Opt-Out Revolution” (summary: women are dropping everything to serve their families), or Judith Warner’s best-selling assertion of modern motherhood’s Perfect Madness (summary: women, having dropped out of everything else, are driving themselves crazy with motherhood).
Actually I was interested only in seeing if I got the captcha puzzle right. All the other faux problems couldn't possibly interest me less.
Jun 12, 2012, 10:31 PM
The obvious paradox Ms Badinter presents is that the French are almost always exquisitely, and defiantly, aware that French ways are so utterly dependent upon the particularisms of France and French culture that French ways are impossible to export to nations which are, lamentably, not French.
And yet Ms Badinter offers her musings as some sort of model for international feminism, as if they were something which reasonable right-thinking egalitarians around the globe ought recognize as an inarguably cogent and practicable outline for motherhood and parenting.
For this reason alone Ms Badinter comes across as a freakishly out-of-touch loon, weirdly indifferent to how her thoughts and words resonate in the various contexts in which she's deliberately made them available.
Lord knows the Swedes aren't offering their pre-schoolers anything approaching what Ms Badinter might define as a nominally acceptable "cheese course."
Why doesn't she rant and carry on about that sort glaring transgression?
It'd be far more amusing and far more legitimately in keeping with the particular formation of Ms Badinter's sensibilities.
Jun 13, 2012, 12:06 AM
I very much disagree with the reviewer. Elizabeth Badinter is right that the regressive models of motherhood have returned to the detriment of feminists and working women. I am amazed by her courage in publishing her books. Badinter is a courageous intellectual.
Jun 13, 2012, 4:15 AMChacun a son goute
Jun 13, 2012, 6:47 AMThis woman is a lunatic.
Jun 13, 2012, 9:26 AMFreaky bitch.
Jun 13, 2012, 2:43 PM"It is equally difficult, in a media culture whose basic unit of currency is hyperbole, to see clearly how much has changed." Why can't more discussion reflect the overuse of this rhetorical device (hyperbole)?
Jun 13, 2012, 3:12 PMWhat a waste of intelligence: flattering selfish egotism over and over, year after year. What a small thing to spend one's life and best efforts on.
Jun 13, 2012, 4:34 PMI'm a man and I'm childless. When my brother and sister-in-law became pregnant they left the States and came back to Canada to take advantage of the free health care (both have Canadian citizenship); and ended up moving in with me as I'm single and have a large new house.
When my niece was born I would walk the halls at night with her, change her diapers and feed her every chance I could get.
Spending my days taking care of her was a million times more enjoyable and fulfilling than trudging off to work.
Even four years later I enjoy every minute I have with her, in a way that differs from all other platonic and familial relationships I've ever had, and must have some sort of biological origin.
I can only think that M.Badinter is some kind of mental deficient. Aspergers and psychopathy masquerading as an intellectual.
Jun 13, 2012, 6:59 PMSchoenborn: what made you refer to Aspergers and psychopathy in the same sentence. And to relate them to Badinter? You do a disservice to everyone with your offhanded use of such terms and rash generalizations
Jun 13, 2012, 8:24 PMSchoenborn: what made you refer to Aspergers and psychopathy in the same sentence. And to relate them to Badinter? You do a disservice to everyone with your offhanded use of such terms and rash generalizations
Jun 13, 2012, 8:27 PMIs "helicopter parenting" a strictly feminist issue? Aren't men expected to become "helicopter fathers" as well?
Jun 14, 2012, 12:58 AMI'm an adopted mom. If I didn't give up a lot for my daughter what would make me a mother since I did not give birth?
On the same hand I overdid my involvement and have a quite indifferent and insensitive 27 year old. There are no general answers. None.
Jun 14, 2012, 1:38 AM@E.Schoenborn google Tom Sawyer painting a fence.
Unfair to include the DSK fiasco in this as Ms Badinter was a witness at their wedding. Hardly an impartial intellectual take on the issue.
French people do not treat their children with 'benign neglect'. Francoise Dolto would have been the person who's thinking most influenced 'my' attitude towards babies/toddlers and the relationship is one of utmost respect. The 'goo goo gah gah whee' business insults both adult and child.
That said I didn't feel any need to follow the prescribed 'throw the baby in the child minders and get on with life' scenario and practically attachment parented two children in rapid succession. And I STILL find modern anglo saxon parenting nauseatingly overblown, clingy, and neurotic.
I couldn't agree more @Wendy you didn't do anything wrong, you know that. Raising a child is not like baking a cake - follow step by step instructions and get perfect results is just not feasible.
It is a shame that Sarah Blustain has purposely put such a negative spin on her review of Badinter's work. Because of this, men, and women, who will never actually read or consider closely such important feminist, counter-hegemonic theories are calling Badinter insane and a "bitch" (see comments to this article). It is people such as Badinter, who are brave enough to voice opinions against the status quo, who cause the positive changes throughout history. And they are always derided by the masses in their time.
Jun 14, 2012, 1:46 PMNo one likes being told that some behavior or other is suggested by our knowledge of nature... unless, of course, that behavior is something like immunizing yourself or sterilizing our hospitals, etc. How dare those arrogant scientists suggest that I should take my blood pressure medication just because they've studied nature!
Jun 14, 2012, 2:04 PMI came away from France thinking the French are wonderful people, France is beautiful, but the French culture drives anyone to distraction. Ms. Badinter is just more proof of those thoughts, it's tough to care for someone when they are out on a tear. In this case, the French are just trying to survive!
Jun 15, 2012, 11:26 AMI agree with NSmith that Blustain could have pointed to a few more positive aspects of Badinter's work. Badinter might be arguing using extremes to prove her point, but that doesn't mean her views have no validity to them whatsoever. for example, I have personnaly witnessed how children are treated as royalty these days, as parents cater to their every desire, sometimes to the detriment of the couple. It is doing a disservice to the child if you lose yourself in the process of raising it. And mothers naturally (Badinter would shiver at the use of the word) end up giving-up more than fathers if they chose to breastfeed - however blaming nature for giving us breasts is downright silly. The trick is to find a balance between making sure children are nourished, loved and disciplined while not letting them take-over. Parents should bring children into their lives, not the other way around.
Jun 15, 2012, 11:41 AMIt isn't "motherly love," that EB doesn't understand, it's human love itself. John Ruskin once remarked that Utilitarianism, which also reduced humans to self-interest, was like a system of gymnastics which ignored the human spine. Just grant that, he said, and you could prove that humans could be rolled into balls, twisted in spirals. An interesting system but hard to apply in the real world since spines are real. So is love.
Jun 15, 2012, 3:31 PMMy observation of French mothering - comparing it with other familiar countries (UK, USA,Norway) - is that is it simply less neurotic, less concerned to match some norm.
I can imagine two French friends who are mothers both dismissing Badinter as loopy and wrong, but from two very different perspectives: one of about Badinter's age would predictably want to get into a hectic feminist philosophical punch-up with Badinter about how she had failed to learn - the other would make a face at Badinter's loopiness then go outside to have a cigarette (going outside to smoke is her one major concession to mimsy notions of motherhood).
The underlying problem here is perhaps that Anglo-Saxons believe too far readily that their own way of doing things is both universal and perfect. (It is not. Even to imagine so is incredibly arrogant.) Then to get nervous and twitchy about trying to match each new norm - Spock, Dragon mother, whatever next? There must be a publishing niche somewhere for the Albanian Chatelaine's Guide to Perfect Motherhood.
Jun 16, 2012, 3:52 PMthis article is ready for the NYTimes -- slip in some irrelevant "right wing" bashing -- No Republicans are not against birth control -- just on your demand that I have to pay for it!
Jun 17, 2012, 2:09 AM
The writer is so exaggeratedly blithe towards breastfeeding. She is so gauche in that she is not aware of the sole purpose of breastfeeding, which is to provide antibiotics to child, which lasts eternally (There's no substitute for such subtle phenomena).>
Jun 18, 2012, 10:12 AMPost a Comment
Sarah Blustain is a senior editor at Newsweek magazine. Her writing has appeared in The New Republic, Women's Review of Books, Mother Jones, The American Prospect, and other publications.
Events
Democracy, Brennan Center Co-Host Money-in-Politics Event
On May 7, the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York City-based public policy institute, hosted a panel discussion co-sponsored by Democracy and Demos on money in politics, the subject of Democracy’s centerpiece symposium in the Winter 2013 issue.
News
Washington Post Interviews Kleiman on Crime Policy
In a March 28 post in The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, Dylan Matthews interviewed UCLA professor Mark Kleiman about his essay, “Smart on Crime,” in the current issue of Democracy.
News
Klein Cites Democracy Essay on Defense Spending
In his Bloomberg View column on February 13, Ezra Klein discussed the politics of military spending and highlighted a number of quotes from former Representative Barney Frank’s feature contribution to Democracy’s Winter 2013 issue.
