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Authors tackle media, Congress and celebrities

by Julia Watts

Historian Barbara Welter coined the term “the Cult of True Womanhood” to describe the social expectations placed on women of the 19th century. As if they weren’t confined enough by their undergarments, Victorian women, according to Welter, were also confined by a “cult” mentality perpetuated by the media of the day which told them that if they weren’t “pious, pure, domestic, and submissive,” they were traitors to their sex, not “true” women.

According to Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels in their book The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women (Free Press, $26), today’s mothers are also the victims of confining social expectations, a sort of media-created “Cult of True Motherhood” which Douglas and Michaels refer to as “the New Momism.” In their introduction, Douglas and Michaels state that while they love being mothers, they are “...fed up with the myth-—shamelessly perpetuated by the media—that motherhood is eternally fulfilling and rewarding, that it is always the best and most important thing that you do, that there is only a narrowly prescribed way to do it right, and that if you don’t love each and every second of it there’s something really wrong with you.”

The media-generated New Momism, as the authors explain it, uses the double-edged sword of glamorizing motherhood while simultaneously making mothers feel that they’re not good enough and will probably damage their children for life. This potent cocktail of guilt and glamour is exposed in each chapter of the book. Dr. Spock and other “kid shrinks” who subject well-meaning mothers to needless anxiety are the focus of one chapter, while another chapter, “Attack of the Celebrity Moms,” explores how magazine spreads featuring star moms such as Uma Thurman and Celine Dion have been “an absolutely crucial tool in the media construction of maternal guilt and insecurity, as well as the romanticizing of motherhood.”

How many everyday women, the book leads us to ask, see the flawless spreads of celebrity moms with their beautiful spawn and feel inadequate by comparison? Perhaps these everyday moms should stop to think that the celebrity mom’s radiance is at least partially due to the fact that she employs a nanny, a personal assistant, a chef, and at least one maid. If regular women could hire an entire staff to do our multi-tasking for us, we’d probably be radiant, too.

Perhaps the most important chapter in the book, “Dumb Men, Stupid Choices—or Why We Have No Childcare,” traces the history of childcare and childcare legislation in the United States. During World War II, when women were needed to replace absent male factory workers, government-run childcare centers provided not only quality care for children, but ready-made hot dinners for work-weary mothers to take home and serve to their families. As soon as the war ended, however, the government shut down the centers, and the history of federally funded childcare since then has been grim. Why should dependable, affordable childcare be such a struggle for families, the authors ask, since, “for most mothers, work is an absolute necessity, and so hello, Earth to Congress, some reliable form of child care is an absolute necessity.” The chapter explores how the media has demonized working mothers while presenting terrifying but anecdotal evidence about the “dangers” of day care. Meanwhile, the government has frequently denied or limited funding for childcare, from Nixon’s veto of the Comprehensive Child Development Act to Bush’s proposed cuts for the “No Child Left Behind” program which, the authors observe, might as well be renamed “Piss on the Little Bastards.”

Certainly not all readers will agree with all of Douglas and Michaels’ points; however, The Mommy Myth is a witty and well-researched book which raises some provocative questions: Why does our media spend so much time making mothers feel anxious and guilty? And why does our country, which claims to be family-oriented, do so little to help children and their parents?

August 5, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 32 © 2004 Metro Pulse