The Eternal, Internal Mommy Wars - NYTimes.com

Motherlode Book Club

THE CONFLICT

Elisabeth Badinter?s ?The Conflict? argues that the modern natural-parenting movement undermines women.

Wherein, in motherhood, lies ?the conflict???

On and off this week, amid the usual flow of posts on the intersection of family and culture, policy and news, the Motherlode blog is going to focus on exactly that: our own ?conflicts,? as mothers, and the book of the same name: ?The Conflict? by the French philosopher and feminist Elisabeth Badinter.

I?ve asked women at different stages of their family and career lives to respond to ?The Conflict? by describing how reading it has affected their views or plans for work and motherhood ? women approaching motherhood, women for whom work is not a choice, women who?ve chosen to stay home, women who are returning to work and women watching the stability of their marriages falter. I proposed we start from here: no judgment. There?s value in staying home, and there?s value in working outside the home, but how do we, as individual women, decide for ourselves, and how does society push us in different directions?

Between the book?s covers, ?The Conflict? pits what Ms. Badinter sees as the insidious forces of natural mothering ? the breast-feeding, the cloth diapering, the constant attentive enrichment of the child ? against feminist good sense, which leaves room for mothers to work outside the home and allows fathers in as full and equal partners in the tasks of parenthood.

But after just over 10 years of motherhood, I find that to be a simplistic interpretation of a ?conflict? I?ve come to realize I shouldn?t even expect to resolve: the one between myself as a mother, and my previous incarnations; and between my expectations of myself as an adult and as a mother, and the reality that I?ve cobbled together, which falls far short of my own ideals.

We don?t, as a society, make it easy for parents of either sex to balance the financial demands of raising children with the physical and emotional demands of being there for them as they grow up. For women on one side of the income divide, the societal pressure is to get to work as soon as possible, and the only way to ?balance? a job and parenting in many fields is to quit when family needs become too intense and find a new job when the pressures have eased.

The ?conflict? we?re talking about here comes mostly on the other side, in families where one partner?s job (or some other income) is enough to provide the basics of food and shelter, and so what comes next is a matter of priorities. This is where choice comes in, and we can be pretty defensive of our choices ? which means that mothers at different stages of work and parenting life appear to judge one another, and harshly.

We may inflict those judgments on one another, but we?re really judging ourselves. Every accusation is a self-defense, and every defense a self-justification ? because no matter how we make our choices (or have life circumstances choose on our behalf) there is no perfect way to balance all of what we want when we want it. That is the biggest ?conflict? of them all. To hang every choice of home over work on the pressure to mother in a certain way seems to me to be missing the pressures that would remain even in the absence of the ?natural? parenting movement.

Return formula to prominence, subsidize and perfect child care, make the disposable diaper eco-friendly and even create one that changes itself, and we will still struggle with how often it?s appropriate to take Friday afternoon off to watch a soccer game. Not because we believe soccer will get our children into top colleges, or because all the other parents will be there, or because we have an inflated idea of how important our presence is to our child, but because we (even we feminists) like to be around our kids (and feel guilty when we?re not).

The desire to be as present as possible in a child?s daily life is ?natural? for parents of both sexes. It?s how we interpret and act on that desire, not the desire itself, that creates the ?conflict,? along with the circumstances of life ? illness, kindergarten, divorce, autism, middle school ? that change the pressures. Those issues often still affect women disproportionately, but there?s a whole lot more than breast-feeding at the root of that, and the real solutions are best found in societal and corporate structures that make it easier for men and women both to have more flexibility within work, and more off- and on-ramps in their careers. As for the impact of the minutiae of ?natural? parenting? There?s a whole lot of a family?s life to be lived after the last diaper ? cloth or not? has been changed.

Is your ?conflict? as much internal as external? Or is Ms. Badinter right that, as Molly Guiness put it in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, ?modern mothers have a serious problem on their hands, and it?s other mothers?? Speaking from a moment when my own personal and work lives have struck a good ? if probably temporary ? balance, and yet I still find myself working at midnight on Sunday night, and I?m often still conflicted, but I admit that my biggest problem is usually myself. You?

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