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This nimble assessment of how motherhood has been shaped by out-of-date mores is not about whether women should have children or not, or about whether once they have kids mothers should work or stay at home.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.

In 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...

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.

INTRODUCTION 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

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index