Mommy madness

You suggest that getting too much parental attention harms children, leaving them "stressed and anxious and, at the very least, often badly behaved." That sounds a lot like what experts very recently were saying would happen to children who didn't get enough attention, who were put in daycare or whatever. It seems that no matter how faithfully mothers try to follow experts' advice, they get blamed for wrecking their children. Is there any real evidence that kids' problems are the result of mistakes by well-intentioned mothers?

I think that parents have to take some responsibility for their children's behavior. In the past, I know, mothers were blamed for absolutely everything, and this was ridiculous and hateful. I am very clear to say in the book that I don't want to play into that same history of mother blaming.

However, I think that we have gone too far now in the direction of avoiding parent blaming -- and this is an issue of parental behavior, not just of mothers'. It is now politically incorrect to even talk about the family environment as playing a role in children's "issues" -- behavioral or emotional. Everything now is brain chemistry and genetics, and, frankly, while that is up to a point true, it also lets parents and society, which is the larger point of the book, entirely off the hook.

While I in no way want to add to mothers' guilt, I think it does our children a great disservice to not even open our minds and hearts to the possibility that some of the things we do -- and by "we" I mean mothers and fathers and educators and society; I can't make this point strongly enough -- have deleterious effects.

Specifically, what do you think parents do wrong, and what effect does it have on kids?

I think we can make our children self-centered by giving them too much attention and making them feel like they're the center of the universe. I think there are a lot of discipline problems in schools now, a lack of respect for adults, an inability to listen and make eye contact when somebody's speaking to you. A general lack of empathy. Children are lacking empathy for others because they're being raised in a way that makes them too self-centered.

I also have heard psychologists make the link between the pressures we put on children and the rise of anxiety and depression among children and people in their 20s.

You ultimately hold our conservative government responsible for a lot of what's ailing mothers because they're the ones who have created policies that force middle-class families to work ever harder just to keep up.

I think there's much greater harm done to women and families by the fiscal- conservative part of right-wing ideology ... let me rephrase that -- "fiscal conservative" is too mild -- that's been done by the stripping away of social supports, the redirecting of the nation's wealth from the middle class to the wealthy, the tax policies, the benefit cuts, etc. All of that has contributed to the enormous wealth gap between the rich and poor in America and has made the middle class feel the squeeze and become worried about having their families fall off the map, fall onto the side of the losers. Because to be a loser in our society is such a terrible thing -- or rather, not to be a winner in our society is, at this point, such a bad thing.

Things that, in the past, could be counted on to be staples of the middle-class existence -- access to good public schools, access to decent healthcare, the ability to buy a house in a nice neighborhood -- these are now luxuries. So you've really got to be in there, making money, and making sure that your kids have the ability to make money, just to have a middle-class existence. All of that is, at least in large part, a direct result of social policies that stem from right-wing political beliefs. And that, I think, is much more toxic than whatever kinds of so-called traditionalist, family-values rhetoric might come from the right wing.

But if these pressures are mainly affecting middle-class people, how do you explain the frenzy getting more intense as you go up the socioeconomic ladder?

In my mind all this exists on a continuum. It seems to get more absurd the higher up you go because there's more time and money to spend. It's always been a bit of a mystery to me why it is that wealthy people can't sit back and relax a bit, but they don't seem capable of it.

What advice do you have for women who read your book and see themselves reflected in it? How do mothers get to a place where they are more relaxed? What are your public prescriptions for change?

In terms of what society can do, we need to think creatively to find more support for families. We need to lessen the financial burden on middle-class families, change our tax policies so that the middle-class isn't underwriting the wealthy as it is now. We need to have public education that people can believe in. We need better support for parents such as part-time daycare for part-time working and at-home mothers. We need universal government standards for daycare and preschool.

On a personal level, stressed-out mothers should talk to other women. Discover that you're not alone. Think about if there's anything you can do in your own life to make things less crazy.

• View blog reactions