As revolutionary as The Second Sex and as controversial as Backlash, Maternal Desire will transform forever our thinking about the place of child rearing in women's lives and in our culture.

What is the desire to mother? How do we understand it, talk about it, and think about it? These questions are at the heart of Maternal Desire, a groundbreaking book that gives a voice and a vocabulary to one of the most transforming and powerful experiences in women's lives.

If a century ago it was women's sexual desires that were unspeakable, now it is women's desire to mother that has become taboo. Attempting to free women from conventional roles, the feminist movement celebrated the world of work, unintentionally inhibiting women's thinking about motherhood. Simplistic images of stay-at-home moms or career supermoms, along with endless debates about what is better for children, continue to obscure the profound meaning of mothering for many women, in all its chaos, complexity, and joy.

Maternal Desire is the first book to treat women's desire to mother as a legitimate focus of intellectual inquiry and personal exploration. Shedding new light on old debates, Daphne de Marneffe provides an emotional road map for mothers who work and mothers who are at home. The book both explores the enjoyment and anxieties of motherhood and offers mothers in all situations valuable ways to think through their self-doubts and connect to their capacity for pleasure.

Drawing on a rich tradition of writers like Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, Carol Gilligan, and Susan Faludi, as well as her experience as a psychologist and mother of three, de Marneffe illuminates how we express our desire to care for children, as individuals and as a society. By treating maternal desire as a central feature of women's identity rather than as an inconvenient or slightly embarrassing detail, we can look at controversial issues such as child care, fertility, abortion, and the role of fathers with fresh insight. De Marneffe unearths ideas that have unwittingly shaped our inner lives, and offers women a new vision of liberation. Revolutionary and transforming, Maternal Desire is a book about ideas, a book about culture, and an invitation to self-reflection.

"By examining both sides...de Marneffe avoids sounding judgmental. Her book...isn't light reading....But she offers a fascinating analysis that's a welcome addition to the dialogues about motherhood." Publishers Weekly

"A work of personal conviction backed by scholarly research, sure to arouse controversy among feminists and psychologists." Kirkus Reviews

"[A]bsorbing....This is a stirring book that celebrates women's love for their children and mothering while also supporting their interest in careers and other pursuits." Booklist

"De Marneffe lightens her discussion of the psychoanalytic literature with beautifully drawn anecdotes drawn from her life and the lives of her patients and friends. Even for skeptics, this is an important addition to the literary canon on motherhood." Stephanie Wilkinson, The Washington Post

"At times this well-researched book contains flashes of insight and expressions of deep sympathy....Yet alongside nuanced analyses are familiar caricatures and overstatements." Patricia Cohen, New York Times Book Review

"I wonder what would happen if de Marneffe had simply acknowledged that she was writing a book of relevance to women of a certain class and level of education, or at least for women who have the good fortune not to have to work full time." Ayelet Waldman, San Francisco Chronicle

"[D]e Marneffe is not breaking any new ground....Her final recommendation is to notice your own feelings and your children's feelings and to question your life choices. Nice, but it doesn't address how you can fix the problem for all women." Library Journal

Supermom is at the end of her rope. Maternal Desire shows mothers who work a full-time job and take care of their family that there is another way. The author explores maternal enjoyment as she does maternal anxiety, and offers not just understanding but the exhilaration of seeing a universal frustration discussed clearly for the first time.

One casualty of the feminist movement was the importance of motherhood. Stay-at-home childrearing came to be portrayed as wageless drudgery, while the mother who worked a full-time job and also took care of her family was celebrated as Supermom. But Supermom is at the end of her rope. And Maternal Desire is here to show that there is another way. In bracingly clear and powerful chapters, Daphne de Marneffe breaks open the long-ignored truth that for many women, having and rearing children is their life's most important work. Emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually, nurturing a child gives many women a sense of meaning that life seldom affords. Giving equal credit to women who choose to work (or who must work) and to women who choose to rear their children full-time, Daphne de Marneffe gives powerful voice to the most deeply felt conflict in most mothers' lives. She explores maternal enjoyment as fully as she does maternal anxiety and offers not just understanding but the exhilaration of seeing a universal frustration discussed clearly for the first time. Maternal Desire is a revolutionary, joyous, and transforming book, one that will provoke a heated debate about one of our most crucial conflicts.

Daphne de Marneffe, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist who has lectured nationally on the subject of maternal desire. She has three young children and lives in California.

Preface vii
1. The "Problem" of Maternal Desire 3
2. Feminism 23
3. Psychoanalysis 57
4. Pleasure 90
5. Ambivalence 118
6. Child Care 147
7. Adolescence 182
8. Fertility 211
9. Abortion 237
10. Midlife 255
11. Fathers 280
12. Time with Children 312
Acknowledgments 337
Notes 339
Bibliography 371
Index 391