The mommy mystique

A new book faults the media, politicians and all those perfectly coiffed celebrity moms for making mothers feel like dirt.

By Amy Reiter

Feb 19, 2004 | When Jennifer Lopez holds forth, as she often has, on how she won't really feel complete until she births a few babies, or when new mother Sarah Jessica Parker proclaims, as she recently has, that her infant son is a "wonderful burden," whatever that means, are the mothers of America getting hosed?

Susan J. Douglas, who with Meredith W. Michaels has co-authored the buzz-gathering book "The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women," thinks so. And it pisses her off.

"If you're like us -- mothers with an attitude problem -- you may be getting increasingly irritable about this chasm between the ridiculous, honey-hued ideals of perfect motherhood in the mass media and the reality of mothers' everyday lives," Douglas and Michaels write. "And you may also be worn down by media images that suggest that however much you do for and love your kids, it is never enough."

Using dual tools -- fantasy and fear -- the media has created a standard for mothers that is wholly impossible to live up to -- and spawned a generation of guilt-plagued, anxious mamas who are far worse off than their mothers before them.

"The Martha Stewartization of America, in which we are meant to sculpt the carrots we put into our kids' lunches into the shape of peonies and build funhouses for them in the backyard" has set the women's movement back decades, say the authors, both of whom balance careers in academia and motherhood.

Douglas and Michaels dream of a day when the mothers of the world rise up, raise their fists at their televisions and at Catherine Zeta-Jones looking fit and well-rested as she snuggles her latest nanny-nurtured bundle of joy on the cover of People magazine and yell, "Give me a %$#$% break."

A modest dream, to be sure. In fact, some might call it a bit pat or naive. After all, it's hard to see how talking back to your TV and shouting from the rooftops will change much. But Douglas, a feminist, insists that "naming and denouncing the enemy" is a "crucial" first step, noting the galvanizing power of Betty Friedan's 1963 book, "The Feminine Mystique," and the consciousness-raising movement it helped spawn.

During a recent visit to New York, Douglas sat down with Salon to discuss the corrosive effect of the media on mothers' self-esteem and her contention that the small acts of rebellion she prescribes will lead the way to a mothers' movement of epic proportions.

In "The Mommy Myth," you talk a lot about a trend you call the "new momism." What exactly is it and why is it so pernicious?

The "new momism" is an extremely romantic and demanding myth of the perfect mother in which the standards for success are so high that no woman can achieve them. People then say, "Well, what about June Cleaver? What about the '50s, isn't this the same?" And if it was the same, that would be bad enough. Who wants to go back to 1956? But it's actually worse. I mean, June Cleaver was not expected to drill the Beaver with algebra flashcards when he was 6 months old. June Cleaver was not expected to drive 10 hours round trip to a soccer match. June Cleaver wasn't expected to home-school and, by the way, look sexy the whole time doing it. So even June Cleaver couldn't meet these standards today, which are absolutely through the roof. So it's actually different from the '50s: It's more intense.

How did we get here?

First of all, the media discovered that the family was changing in the late '70s, early '80s, and children became a big story. But endangered children became an even bigger story, and so you got these media panics. You got sensationalized stories about children in danger: razor blades in Halloween candy, pajamas that caught on fire by themselves almost, day-care centers staffed by Satanists and pedophiles. That was all out of proportion to the risks that real children were facing, but it made mothers terrified to let their kids out of their sight. So fear was important.

The other thing was fantasy. Again, the media responded to women when we were looking for role models. Who's a better role model, in some ways, than a celebrity mom because celebrity mothers were working outside the home, but they were having children. So we got the explosion in the '80s of the celebrity mom profile, something you just didn't see in '70s women's magazines.

What's so bad about the celebrity mom profile?

They create this impossible ideal of motherhood. You know, I had a kid that didn't sleep. She got up at 4:30 and was up for the day, so I'd be at the supermarket at 7:30 in the morning, exhausted -- I'd already been up for hours -- in my husband's sweat pants, the only thing that fit, sweat shirt covered with spit-up, hair that hadn't seen a comb in two days, a kid screaming. I'm at the checkout line and there's some celebrity mom saying, "Motherhood is sexy." There she is, her perfect hair, her perfect makeup, no spit-up -- her kid's even made up, you know? The inside of her house is decorated in white furniture. She's got a perfect, doting husband. And you're there, like, "What is wrong with this picture?"

But it laid out a fantasy that a lot of us wanted to enter. A fantasy of a world where you could work and enjoy your children and it would be easy and stress free. Who doesn't want to go there? This fantasy of course helps sell magazines. But the norms and the standards for motherhood that are in these celebrity mom profiles are also completely impossible. Occasionally you get the reference to the SWAT team of nannies and personal assistants who are making this woman's life possible. But for mothers who don't have the SWAT team, it's a different story.

Next Page: Mothers have been revered in rhetoric, but reviled in public policy

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