Synopses & Reviews
Susan Douglas first took on the media's misrepresentation of women in her funny, scathing social commentary
Where the Girls Are. Now, she and Meredith Michaels, have turned a sardonic (but never jaundiced) eye toward the cult of the new momism: a trend in American culture that is causing women to feel that only through the perfection of motherhood can true contentment be found. This vision of motherhood is highly romanticized and yet its standards for success remain forever out of reach, no matter how hard women may try to "have it all."
The Mommy Myth takes a provocative tour through the past thirty years of media images about mothers: the superficial achievements of the celebrity mom, the news media's sensational coverage of dangerous day care, the staging of the "mommy wars" between working mothers and stay-at-home moms, and the onslaught of values-based marketing that raises mothering standards to impossible levels, just to name a few. In concert with this messaging, the authors contend, is a conservative backwater of talking heads propagating the myth of the modern mom.
This nimble assessment of how motherhood has been shaped by out-of-date mores is not about whether women should have children or not, or about whether once they have kids mothers should work or stay at home. It is about how no matter what they do or how hard they try, women will never achieve the promised nirvana of idealized mothering. Douglas and Michaels skillfully map the distance traveled from the days when The Feminine Mystique demanded more for women than the unpaid labor of keeping house and raising children, to today's not-so-subtle pressure to reverse this thirty-year trend. A must-read for every woman.
Review
Publishers WeeklyIn the idealized myth, mothers and babies spend their days discovering the wonders of life, reading, playing, and laughing. Mom wears her baby in a sling, never raises her voice, and of course has unlimited time and patience. Baby grows up safe, happy, and respectful.
In real life, however, it's a different story. Douglas and Michaels blow the lid off...
Review
Katha Pollitt
author of Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture
I have one word for The Mommy Myth: FINALLY!
With humor, wit and solid information, Douglas and Michaels take on the sentimentalized, privatized moralism of contemporary motherhood and show how it harms both women and children.
About the Author
Susan J. Douglas is the Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan. She is author of
Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination, which won the Hacker Prize in 2000 for the best popular book about technology and culture;
Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media; and
Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922. Her writing has appeared in
The Nation, Ms., In These Times, TV Guide, and
The Progressive. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband and daughter.
Table of Contents
ContentsINTRODUCTION The New Momism
ONE Revolt Against the MRS
TWO Mouthing Off to Dr. Spock
THREE Threats from Without: Satanism, Abduction, and Other Media Panics
FOUR Attack of the Celebrity Moms
FIVE Threats from Within: Maternal Delinquents
SIX The War Against Welfare Mothers
SEVEN The "Mommy Wars"
EIGHT Dumb Men, Stupid Choices -- or Why We Have No Childcare
NINE Moms "R" Us
TEN Dr. Laura's Neighborhood: Baby Wearing, Nanny Cams, and the Triumph of the New Momism
EPILOGUE Exorcising the New Momism
NotesAcknowledgments
Index