Motherguilt: How Our Culture Blames Mothers for What's Wrong with SocietyMothers today feel guilty. The parenting and women's magazines ask you to weigh how your job affects your child. Employers blame you for taking family time. Politicians blame you for the decline of "family values". Do mothers really deserve all this blame? In her provocative new book, Motherguilt, psychologist Diane Eyer probes the origins of this culture of blaming mothers - and encouraging them to blame themselves. She asserts that it is the very sources of parenting advice to which mothers turn for help that make them feel guilty. In fact, parenting experts and social scientists provide the foundation for the growing chorus of motherblame. Writing with scholarship, passion, and wit, Dr. Eyer argues that scapegoating mothers for society's ills is merely a convenient smoke screen for the real culprit: the national neglect of children and our utter failure to provide a national child-care program. This revolutionary book champions mothers against the bogus accusations of science and politics and paves the way for refocusing our concern on our nation's children. |
Contents
Motherblame | 3 |
Framing Motherhood | 35 |
Crimes of Attachment | 69 |
Copyright | |
5 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
abuse adults AFDC American attachment attachment theory baby gurus become behavior benefits Benjamin Spock Berry Brazelton billion biological birth bonding Bowlby caregivers cause chil child care Child Development child rearing child support claimed costs course custody Dan Quayle day care day care centers delinquency divorce dren early economic emotional employment experience fact factors family day Fatherhood fathers feel full-time guilt husband income infants involved John Bowlby Journal kibbutz kids labor leave less lives male marriage married Mary Ainsworth masculinity maternal ment middle-class months Moreover moth nursery nurturing paid parental leave parents Penelope Leach percent Policy poor poverty poverty line preschool problems psychological psychologists relationships Rene Spitz role single motherhood single mothers single-parent social spend Spock stay home stepfamilies teachers tion welfare woman women workers workplace York young children