In most other modern societies working mothers are not put under these special and exaggerated pressures. For example, French and ...English mothers often prefer to breast-feed their babies, but they do not feel that their womanhood is at stake if they fail to do so. Nor does anyone else.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
American feminists have generally stressed the ways in which men and women should be equal and have therefore tried to put aside d...ifferences.... Social feminists [in Europe] ... believe that men and society at large should provide systematic support to women in recognition of their dual role as mothers and workers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fashions change, and with the new psychoanalytical perspective of the postwar period [WWII], child rearing became enshrined as the... special responsibility of mothers ... any shortcoming in adult life was now seen as rooted in the failure of mothering during childhood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Women of my age in America are at the mercy of two powerful and antagonistic traditions. The first is the ultradomestic fifties wi...th its powerful cult of motherhood; the other is the strident feminism of the seventies with its attempt to clone the male competitive model.... Only in America are these ideologies pushed to extremes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
John B. Watson, the most influential child-rearing expert [of the 1920s], warned that doting mothers could retard the development ...of children,... Demonstrations of affection were therefore limited. "If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Modern women are squeezed between the devil and the deep blue sea, and there are no lifeboats out there in the form of public poli...cies designed to help these women combine their roles as mothers and as workers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For women the wage gap sets up an infuriating Catch-22 situation. They do the housework because they earn less, and they earn less... because they do the housework.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The degree to which the child-rearing professionals continue to be out of touch with reality is astounding. For example, a widely ...read manual on breast-feeding, devotes fewer than two pages to the working mother.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »