Posted in book reviews

I just finished reading a book that I have had for a while called Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life by Daphne de Marneffe.  This book is not really about what I thought it was about, and so I was mostly disappointed.  The author has a good point but never explores the why behind it.

Basically, she believes that there is a lack of recognition among feminists and society in general that many women *want* to mother their children, ie, maternal desire.  So I thought, since the author is a psychologist, that she was going to explore where maternal desire comes from, etc.  Instead the chapters are more like essays on various topics: Fertility, Adolescence, Ambivalence, Pleasure, Child Care, Midlife, etc.  I actually thought several of these were misnamed - "Fertility", for example, seemed to be more about infertility, and "Midlife" was more about intergenerational interactions between women.  There really seemed to be a lack of clear focus.

I don't know why I keep reading books by feminists.  I guess I am trying to understand them, but so often I just have no clue what they are talking about. In the chapter on "Adolescence," she discusses a book called The Hungry Self by Kim Chernin, which is about eating disorders.  Chernin argues that eating disorders are "a way for young women to manage their guilt and fear about surpassing their mothers."  Apparently Chernin drew from the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein, who suggested "a kind of normative greed in infancy, expressed in fantasies of scooping out the mother's insides and sucking her dry.  A psychologically healthy mother communicates to her baby that she has survived her baby's 'attack' by being loving and constant in the face of the baby's inevitable greed."  What?  Do people really believe these things?  How on earth would we know if a baby was "fantasizing" and further, what the baby was fantasizing about?  Why would we assume that the baby is having such a destructive fantasy?  What a horrible view of babies, that they consist of greed!

I really have to say, in all the books I have read by feminists, that in general, I think they have real issues with their mothers.  These issues are probably at the heart of their problems with motherhood and why the direction of the feminist movement has never been to support mothers, but rather to make women like men.  I don't include the author of Maternal Desire in my sweeping generalization here, just to clarify.  She actually sounds pretty level-headed, and at least willing to admit that she likes her children and likes being with them and taking care of them.

Several times, the author comments on mothers' feelings that they have done nothing, which reminded me of a much better book I blogged about in the past: What Mothers Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing by Naomi Stadlen.  Here is a link to my 3 part review of that book.  My recommendation: skip Maternal Desire and read What Mothers Do, and if anybody knows a book that explores why women want to mother without denigrating them, please let me know about it!