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"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun." - Katherine Hepburn

The Madness of Motherhood

In a new book, Perfect Madness:  Motherhood in the Age on Anxiety (2005:  Riverhead Books), author Judith Warner, describes her experience as a mother:

"I listened to my friends, listen to talk radio, to the mothers on the playground, and to my daugher's nursery school teachers, and I found it all -- the general culture of motherhood in America -- oppressive.  The pressure to perform, to attain high levels of perfect selflessness was insane.  And it was, I thought, as I listened to one more anquished friend wringing her hands over the work-family 'balance,' and another expressing her guilt at not having 'succeeded' at breast-feeding, driving American mothers crazy.  Myself along with them.

"It took very little time on the ground in America before I found myself becoming unrecognizable.  I bought an SUV.  I signed my unathletic elder daughter up for soccer.  Other 3-year-olds in her class were taking gymnastics, too, and art, and swimming and music.  I signed her up for ballet.  I bought a small library of pre-K skill books.  I went around in a state of quiet panic."

In her review of Perfect Madness (New York Times Book Review, February 20, 2005), Judith Shulevitz observed, "Warner tends to hyperbole, but she strikes me as right about the basic phenomenon.  In a society that measures status in comsumer goods and hard-to-come-by symbols of achievement -- grades, awards, brand-name colleges -- the scramble for advantage is bound to propel American upper-middle-class parents into exponentially goofier displays of one-upmanship."

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