Let's throw the assumptions out with the bathwater

I'm late to the party, I know. It is a party I didn't want to attend. I read Erica Jong's essay in the Wall Street Journal on the Madness of Motherhood and I yawned. Ho hum. She isn't saying anything that Hanna Rosin, Margaret Wente, and plenty of others haven't already said. She sounds like the broken record of old guard feminism and I didn't feel I had anything to add that I hadn't already said ten times over. But finally, after reading Erica's daughter, Molly Jong-Fast's essay Growing Up with Ma Jong, in which she talks about the difference between her own choices and those of her mother, it clicked. The assumptions are the problem.

In Erica's rant about attachment parenting and environmental correctness amounting to female victimization, she says:

Someday "attachment parenting" may be seen as quaint, but today it's assumed that we can perfect our babies by the way we nurture them. Few of us question the idea, and American mothers and fathers run themselves ragged trying to mold exceptional children. It's a highly competitive race. No parent wants to be told it all may be for naught, especially, say, a woman lawyer who has quit her firm to raise a child. She is assumed to be pursuing a higher goal, and hard work is supposed to pay off, whether in the office or at home. We dare not question these assumptions.

Erica's assumptions in this paragraph are as big as the assumptions she accuses others of making. I do not assume that I can perfect my babies by the way I nurture them. I know that genes, their peers and other outside experiences will have a greater impact on who they become than my nurturing, regardless of how intense it is. I do question assumptions, which is why I have read The Baby Book by William and Martha Sears (which Erica refers to as today's bible of child rearing), but I have also read The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris (according to Malcolm Gladwell "a graceful, lucid, and utterly persuasive assault on virtually every tenet of child development"), Hold on To Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate, and Feminist Mothering by Andrea O'Reilly. That is really just the beginning of the reading that I've done, nevermind the thinking and the writing that that go along with it. My conclusions (not assumptions) from all of my reading, and thinking and writing, is that attachment parenting is the right parenting style for our family. It is right because I see it as the easiest way to develop the type of relationship I want to have with my children, because it is the parenting style that most allows me to respect them as human beings, and because it is the easiest way for me to parent. Who wants to get up and make a bottle at 2am, when you can just roll over and flop out a breast? This has nothing to do with perfect babies or higher goals. It has to do with human beings making choices that are right for their family.

Molly Jong-Fast's essay provides a lot of insight into the animosity Erica Jong appears to have for attachment parenting. Molly writes: "To my mother and grandmother, children were the death of a dream; they were the death of one's ambition."  She then goes on to conclude:

Ironically, it was because of my mother's hard work that I have the life I do now. She worked hard so that the women of my generation could have the choice to work or to stay home. She slept in hotel rooms in San Diego so that I could cuddle with my own children. She spoke to large groups of women in Toledo so that I could work at the school book fair. We can devote ourselves to our work, or we can decide to be 1950s June Cleaver types. And that's because of the sacrifices that my mom and her feminist comrades made.

My mother made sacrifices so that I could have choices, and perhaps that makes her a better mother than I will ever be.

While I don't disagree with Molly's last sentence, about her mother and other feminists of that generation having made sacrifices so that we could have choices, I cringe at her characterization of those choices. More assumptions. I do not have to be either devoted to my career or June Cleaver. The gift that my generation of feminists will give to our daughters is the gift of flexibility. The option to have a successful career and cuddle with our children. The option to choose a mate who will share the nurturing role. The option to request flexibility in the workplace. The option to start a business. The option to use part-time child care. The option to bring babies to work and the option to bring work home. The option to have options.

My generation of feminists struggles with work-life balance, there is no question of that.  But my hope is that our struggles, and our victories, will pave the path for our daughters to have both the career and the family that they want to have and for our sons to do so too.

Photo credit: istockphoto

Comments

[@theabbster22]

Hahaha I believe this was merely meant as an illustration to the two opposite options. Later in the post (obviously you didn't finish) that elusive third option of both IS in fact mentioned.

But good try!

[The Bad Moms Club | Get out of]

[...] I hate it when writers take what could have been an interesting topic and worthwhile discussion and turn it into a rant against something they apparently know nothing about. In her article, Is Sex Passé?, second wave feminist Erica Jong says sex has become boring because younger women are “obsessed with motherhood and monogamy” (…and if you missed it last time, we’re also trying to perfect our babies by the way we nurture them). [...]

[Cardenie]

I agree, she assumes a lot. The biggest assumption is the idea that moms are in competition with one another in terms of childrearing choices. This POV stems from some insecurity about the choices she has made, instead of just doing her thing.