Reading the Perfect Madness is incredibly similar to reading those first short stories at the beginning of the class for me. Every step I ask will this happen to me? What can I do to stop it? I feel as though every young college student looks forward to their lives and vows that none of these horrific scenarios will ever occur to them, but no matter how determined they are their lives end up spiraling into an oppressive mommy religious state. Warner's descriptions sound to me exactly like what I thought feminism was going through in the 60s, but apparently it is a much harder cycle to break out of than I thought. Her generation goes through such similar turmoil as her mother's that I can't help but feel I will be caught in it as well. And for me that notion is horrifying enough to make me not want to have children at all. I don't think that that was Warner's objective in writing these unspoken universal thoughts down though. This book seems to fit in extraordinarily well with the theme of social change and political agenda. Warner is asking for help for mother's from our society just as much as Bernstein was. It seems that these real problems could have solutions and if society were just a better and more equal place mothers wouldn't have to suffer.
The scariest problem to me that is brought up by this book is the sense that the problem isn't society forcing women into the home, or their husbands being entirely inept at anything child related, but the other mother's themselves. Everyone seems to force each other into the never ending world of activities. As someone who believes that women should be able to work full time with children in powerful positions it seems unbelievable that others would "choose" stay-at-home mom as their life's work. How can some women be able to leave their children at day care in order to pursue their career and their own lives while others choose to be perfect mothers and not have any hardships because of these choices surface. Won't those who work criticize the stay at home mom's for throwing away degrees and not contributing to society? While at the same time men in the workforce see so many women choose to say home and therefore make it subtly harder for women to continue to choose the workforce? I constantly see women who I would judge as sexist for their beliefs and actions. How can women gain equality when women can't agree that equality should be fought for?
Warner's style seems both bewildered and angry at the way the world is, but through writing she can channel these feelings into some sort of social change. However, at least in the first section, she has neither produced nor claimed to have a solution. I hope that by the end of the book she has some recommendation for a future generation of families. I wish that Warner is posing a problem that I can come away from with hope rather than fear.
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Megan: You raise some really good questions here. If you know about the "Mommy Mystique" before hand, how can you prevent it for yourself? I do think there are some answers, though Warner certainly doesn't get to them in the first 60 pages. The point you raise about the "mommy wars" are important. My own sense is that self doubt leads to judgmental behavior, but, even then, I would say that societal structures are more worrisome than individual mothers. There's a great article about how the media exaggerates the conflict between working mothers and stay at home mothers called the "mommy war machine." It was published last year in the Washington Post. It would make a great paper topic for anyone's next paper.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042702043.html
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