Elisabeth Badinter's "The Conflict" speaks to regidity
Hey SS. I’ve been thinking about how the reviews of Elisabeth Badinter’s latest book The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women which, as the Globe and Mail reports today, has caused "a motherlode of debate" ( http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/advice/more-advice/a-motherlode-of-debate ), and how there has been a fierce backlash in the press against her ideas, often by mothers and feminists. What is fascinating to me is the little analysis that’s offered about the minimal space and accommodation that’s made within capitalism and labour force arrangements for working parents, most particularly for mothers, to do the work of parenting. If families, and more specifically the lives and well-being of children, were at the center of our culture’s values and social mores, I believe the attention and work of parenting would be respected in a way that would translate into the respect and care for mothers that currently does not exist, and what I b