Fruitful: On Motherhood and Feminism [Hardcover]

Anne Roiphe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 9, 1996

In her passionate new book on modern motherhood, Anne Roiphe breaks the silence among feminists on a subject central to so many women's lives. Viewing three decades of the women's movement through the intimate, deeply compelling story of her own family history, Roiphe makes an eloquent plea for a new agenda. The birth of Roiphe's children coincided with her own emergence as a voice for the women's movement in the 1960's. Since then, through divorce, remarriage, parenting, and stepparenting, she has keenly felt feminism's lack of enthusiasm for issues that touch women's daily lives: the need for quality child care, the need to include men as full partners in parenting, the need for society to accommodate all the turbulent, troubling, joyous experiences known as motherhood. Combining memoir with social commentary and an urgent call to action, Roiphe cuts through the political rhetoric of both the left and conservative right with a healing message for all women torn between their own ambi

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The passion Anne Roiphe feels for being a mother far outweighs any literary accolades she could achieve for her writing. She believes that if men could only learn the art of mothering, the battle between the sexes, especially in the workplace, might abate. In this humorous, yet critical analysis on what it means to be a mother, Roiphe advocates co-mothering and condemns the women's movement for its male-bashing focus. Fathers who mother, she maintains, are less threatened by their wives' successes outside the home, because the traditional gender roles are shared. Though she is adamant about protecting a woman's right to choose to be a mother, she writes that once a woman has taken that step, she must regard it as sacred and never abandon her responsibility.

From Publishers Weekly

Motherhood hasn't been easy for the author of Up the Sandbox and six other novels and two nonfiction works. Breaking through what she considers a conspiracy of maternal silence, Roiphe wants to assign blame for the sorrows of raising children in our times. She herself has a family of six daughters, a mixture of hers, his and theirs, so has the right to be heard. Most important, she feels feminists have ignored and shortchanged mothers. Simultaneously, she is tormented by sacrifices motherhood may demand. She lists as many outstanding 19th-century female writers as she can find (Austen, Eliot, Dickinson, Wharton and others) and points out that none of them had children. "Are passion and love and beauty irreconcilable with domestic life?" she wonders. "Is maternity keeping us from destiny as creative people?" She never answers her own question but wrestles with a daunting morass of guilt about her own mothering and that of her generation born in the late 1930s. There are some moments of joy here, but they are constantly overshadowed by a sense of a generation at war with itself. Roiphe takes aim with uncanny accuracy at many painful dilemmas instantly recognizable by any mother: the effect of a working mother on her children; the sufficiency of being a "good-enough mother." She also raises vital issues about our attitudes to children as a society but confuses them by laying out a sweeping utopian agenda of desirable family and community virtues, including expecting the community to care about all of its children, bringing men into the home as a matter of course and creating nonbureaucratic day care. In the end, however, Roiphe tells us: "The only thing I know for sure is that I would rather have a child than a book, I would rather have a warm-blooded body to carry my message to the world than the most perfect of artistic creations issued in my name." The true question here is why she sees the choice as so stark. First serial to Glamour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 260 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; First Printing edition (October 9, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395735319
• ISBN-13: 978-0395735312
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,412,357 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A breath of fresh air, September 15, 2000

By 

"bubsmom" (portland, maine USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fruitful: On Motherhood and Feminism (Hardcover)

Though there are imperfections, I greatly appreciated this book. I believe that it is an extremely important contribution for anyone interested in feminism and contemporary life for women and mothers. As a feminist, a mother and a social worker (both practitioner and academician), I have struggled to bridge the realities of my life with feminist ideologies (and I have read a great deal of this literature). No one can negate the value of the feminist movement for making huge advances for women in this world. Thank God for it. But an unfortunate and perhaps unintended outcome of feminism is that, in truth, it left a lot of women out. I am struck, year after year as I teach new groups of social work students (mostly women, in a profession built on feminist principles) how many of them feel they cannot call themselves feminists! I have also seen this in my clinical practice. I think this is because the "dogma" of feminism can be quite alienating and self-righteous--too much of how things "should" be and not enough attention to how things are for many women. That can really put people off, and, if they have poor self esteem, even make them feel flawed. In practice, feminism has not been very tolerant of different ways of life. Anne Roiphe's book, even with its imperfections, manages to call attention to these issues, and I think she is right--feminism didn't embrace motherhood in a helpful way, even if it acknowledged the difficulties of balancing work life and motherhood, nor did it help women in their relationships with men very much. I realize this is very complex, but the outcome cannot be denied. Though many read this book and interpret it as a step backwards, I think Roiphe (and her daughter, Katie, by the way) are working to reach more women, to challenge outdated feminist ideas to help modernize feminist concerns. I appreciate her dissenting voice.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent ! Well worth reading for all women, October 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Fruitful: On Motherhood and Feminism (Hardcover)

This is the best book I've read on the subject of being a mother and working. Roiphe hits the nail on the head: childcare has not been adequately dealt with in women's lives. How can a woman exist who is dedicated to her career and also a loving mother ? Roiphe asks us to rethink our answer to this; and to back it up with actions, to support all women. I agree !!! Kimberly Fujioka, university English Instructor now working as a teacher and mother in Japan.

5.0 out of 5 stars Her children should be proud..., October 23, 2000

By 

Nicole Flowers (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fruitful: On Motherhood and Feminism (Hardcover)

This amazing book is poignant and crammed with truth. I related to many, many parts of Roiphe's efforts to be succesful, raise children, keep a husband happy, and maintain a sense of self - all of the stuff Supermom is supposed to do...but most of all I related to her whole and complete love for her children. I've never read anything better about what it truly means for an intelligent woman to be a mother in the modern world. Roiphe tells it like it really is - her honesty is wonderful.