Mommy Wars Suck (but their lessons are valuable)

This article (mostly a book review) appeared in this week's New Yorker magazine.

The review covers Bennetts'recent book "The Feminine Mistake" and tackles the pros and cons (mostly cons) of her mandate to moms (get a job or you are wasting your life and harming your children) and the alarmist nature of her threat (you never know, he might leave you or die and then you'd really be up shit creek without a paddle).

The hilarity of her edicts seems obvious. These are ridiculous blanket statements that can only serve to stir up battle between those that order mothers to "go home" and those that order mothers to "get to work". Neither of these camps is one I'd pup my tent in. For G-d's sake, don't we know yet that each mother has a different situation to assess and do the best she can with? Haven't tests proven that we can find kids on both sides of the working vs. stay at home mom rearing scale who turned out horribly and also fantastically?

Okay, so maybe these blanket statements can serve a higher purpose. As blind as they seem at first, of course they do play an important role in today's feminist and humanist debate.

First, these statements, books, articles and appearances related to the mommy wars undeniably spur debate (whether it is healthy debate might be argued but...) about what feminism and motherhood means today. We're talking again, and that's a good thing.

Second, I find it exciting that these issues are even showing up in The New Yorker and the like, even though I'd much rather see coverage of family friendly agenda issues instead of mommy warring issues. To some extent, as has been argued, the mommy wars detract from the fight for a family friendly agenda. However, if those of us fighting for this agenda can learn from the work vs. SAH war that goes on between moms, we can perhaps learn how to engage both sides as well as the middle majority in the attempt to help our children. In understanding the psychology of the mommy wars we might just understand how to appeal to all moms and parents to fight the good fight.

After all, if you ask me, this whole how to provide well for America's children issue is not about whether you are a mom, or even a parent. It's not about whether you work or stay home. It's not about whether you have health care or not, or whether you are wealthy or poor. It's not, at all, a women's issue. We need to fight, with the help of many stay at home, many working, many rich and many poor moms, dads and other human beings, for a nation that takes care of its children in a way that makes economic and moral sense for the survival and success of the United States of America, whether each of our individual children's parents are in the work force or not.