From Publishers Weekly
The "mother's fear of child loss" is universal, omnipotent and inescapable, Smith (Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life) argues; women's urge to protect their young is their bottom line, their most fundamental drive. This "maternal vulnerability" explains much about "women's unequal status" in society, as it makes it difficult for women-the majority of whom become mothers-to commit to the job world as men do. (Why men are not similarly afflicted goes largely unexplained.) Furthermore, Smith argues, throughout human history, "mother blaming" has been a key method of maintaining high levels of "maternal sacrifice." To support her argument, Smith calls on anecdotes from her own mothering experiences, as well as examples from various Greek classics, Puritan meditations on child loss and child-rearing advice manuals. While her choice of evidence is hardly systematic, it's the conclusions she draws from her hypothesis that are most problematic. She suggests more social support for "free mothers," such as flexible career paths and better day care, yet these measures might not make much difference if mother-love obsession is, as she believes, instinctive. The author means well, but pads her book with repeated assertions and doesn't fully explore the existential implications of mother-love obsession. Her pleas to stop guilt-tripping employed moms and her endorsement of more social responsibility for child-rearing will find favor with many feminist readers, but her overall argument is so muddled it will be hard to appeal to anyone.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Mothers' fear of losing their children through death, illness, degeneracy, delinquency, or denial of custody has heightened women's vulnerability and made them easier to constrain socially since time immemorial, according to Smith, a clinical psychotherapist. In this fascinating book, she eloquently explores how religion, psychology, literature, and advice books have admonished women to curb their aspirations in favor of protecting their children, and women have acquiesced out of fear. Smith investigates this theme in literature, history, art, and science, homing in on the iconographic image of Mary's suffering at her loss of her son, Jesus; Demeter's loss of her daughter, Persephone; Puritan tracts that suggested that a child's death was due to God's jealousy at the mother's devotion; and Czarina Alexandra's reliance on Rasputin to cure her hemophiliac son, Alexander, setting off events that led to the Russian Revolution. She also explores how advice-giving authority has moved from ministers to doctors and later to child psychologists with attendant changes in perspective on how children's welfare is tied to constraints on women.
Vanessa BushCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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