Au Contraire, part one

Choosing to stay at home (mostly) and raise children (especially "green" children) is a betrayal of all our predecessors have worked for, according to a leading feminist. Okay, so maybe she's a French feminist, but this chick has serious chops and impact on women's issues around the world.  That's throwing down some pretty big gauntlets, but I think she's only saying what many of us face: the conflict between being what our educations and opportunities allow us to be and the desire for home and family.  It's the golden handcuffs of feminism. 

Intellectual, historian, and feminist  Elisabeth Badinter caused quite the ruckus last year in France with the release of her book, Conflict: The Woman and the Mother.  In this treatise, she takes the current generation of Frenchwomen to task for backsliding in the feminist movement through trying to put motherhood first.  Breast feeding in particular and the expectation to provide a nurturing environment for one's offspring are seen as serious hindrances to one's career and "sociobiological corruptions", a  societally inflicted guilt trip for women which holds them back from achieving on par with men. 

 Well, duh.  Or whatever the French equivalent may be.  It is really hard to juggle a newborn who needs to eat every two or three hours and business functions, teacher prep, or client meetings. I've done it. It wasn't pretty.  Things didn't really improve with toddlerhood. People were very kind and supportive, but the times I tried to juggle motherhood and full time work were less than my best moments. No one got what they needed from me.  When I went back to work this past spring temporarily, it took a husband and two grandparents to help out with our three kids and keep everyone afloat. My eleven year old put it succinctly: "Dad, you are a great dad, but you are not a very good mama."  He would be the first to agree. 

I will be very upfront: I haven't read Badinter's book ( I don't read French) but I really, really want to read it.  I've had to make do with reading synopses and articles about the book. Even though it is aimed very specifically at a small country which values intellectualism and discussion, the book itself made ripples around the world. I agree with her on this premise:  you really can't do it all.  It is incredibly hard to be fantastic at what you do professionally and keep it all together on the home front.  Something's gotta give: work, marriage, kids, life, health. 

Here's a link to the original NY Times article that caught my eye:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/fashion/06Culture.html. 

A year later, her pronouncements are still so controversial that the July 2011 issue of the New Yorker featured a piece on Ms. Badinter and her book.  She is, from all accounts, a tremendously talented historian and writer.  She also has three children and is married to a very prominent French lawyer who has played a significant role in French government.  Badinter isn't just writing from an intellectual perspective- she has to balance work, family, and societal expectations. Self-deprecating, she described herself as" a mediocre mother" in the  original Times piece.  I kind of doubt that anything this doyenne of French feminism does is mediocre, but maybe she's just being honest about what her priorities are. 

It was oddly good to hear what she was thinking, because I know I struggle with woman vs. mother questions sometimes.  I feel I lose my relevancy, I worry that the things I do have no significance.  (Excuse me for a moment while I go take the diapers out of the wash for roughly the 200th time.  It's getting old.)   I love my children with an intensity that makes me frightened sometimes, yet I wonder what my legacy outside of mothering will be.   

To be continued.