Mojo Mom points to a Newsweek article by a writer who professes to be sick of the “mommy wars.” Kathleen Deveny is losing interest in what she considers to be a “narcissistic obsession” with the discussion and defense of parenting choices, including that taking place in the fictional genre of “mommy lit.” In Mojo Mom’s view, this drift in the article makes it a missed opportunity for serious discussion.
I think she has a point, to a degree. Serious fiction can reveal a lot about the underpinnings of society and what makes people tick – it keeps book clubs going. But my experience with most “mommy lit” is that “serious” doesn’t really describe it. It’s the next stage of “chick lit” – which can be a great diversion, but don’t take it as any more than that – except the protagonists are a little older and now they’re freaking out over children instead of boyfriends (and for designer baby bags instead of shoes. Yes, I’m stereotyping a genre that I read occasionally but don’t have a lot of patience with overall.). But novels about mothers and families with more substance to them can be great fodder for the discussion – I’m hearing good things about The Other Mother by Gwendolen Gross, a new novel about two neighbor mothers learning to deal with each other and their different life choices. Mothers make for great stories.
At the same time, I think there’s also something to this quote from the header to the Newsweek article, although I didn’t think it was elaborated very well in an article that struck me as fairly superficial:
“…We’ve become narcissist mommies, obsessed with our parenting choices and defensive when confronted with others’.”
I don’t know about the first part, but I tend to agree with the second. I’m not sure if I’d say “obsessed” and “defensive,” but I do think we look for validation of our own choices by trying to associate with other people who have made similar ones. One observation of mine is that women’s communities that emphasize the “motherhood” aspect of our lives tend to sort into “non-working” (at-home) and “working” moms. As mothers, a lot of experiences are probably common to us all, but our lifestyles shape our perspective on those experiences and we tend to look for others with similar viewpoints. I think that’s a human thing, not a “mom thing,” though. I think that the fact that we do have so many choices about what to do with our lives – that there’s not a general “norm” for everyone – makes us very lucky, but can also make us very insecure that we’re making the “right” choices. Finding other people who have made similar choices is reassuring; those who’ve gone a different route may challenge us (not a “picking a fight” challenge, but a “raising questions” one). I know it does for me, at least…in many realms including motherhood, and in my own family. I’ve been a working mom for over 20 years. My stepchildren’s mother was an at-home mom until after her divorce from their dad was final. I know my husband lived differently in his first marriage, I know how my son turned out with a full-time working mom, and my stepchildren are works in progress.
Raising questions is important, though – looking for answers can widen your perspective, and wider perspective can help in finding common ground among all of the choices we make every day.
