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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

I believed in the breast
And then the control freaks at La Leche League buried me in bureaucracy, bare breasts and too much LLLove.
By Sue Robins
[03/31/00]

Daniel is good at not dying
A mother lives with the disciplined ambivalence of a do-not-resuscitate order.
By Elizabeth Halling
[03/30/00]

Life as a fate worse than death
A lawyer tries to prevent the ultimate abuse of a tiny victim.
By Beth Broeker
[03/30/00]

When the jailhouse is far from home
Kids with parents behind bars share the pain of incarceration.
By Nell Bernstein
[03/29/00]

Swag hags
Mothers, driven by impure decorating motives, should not be allowed in bachelor pads.
By Matthew DeBord
[03/28/00]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

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Here is Sears, for instance, on the dilemma of the working attachment mom:

I say, "Forget the day you're going back to work" so they [don't] keep themselves from getting too close to the baby for fear it will be tough to leave. They come back for the one-month checkup, things are going great, they're real connected, baby's in a sling, nursing on cue, there's a real harmony.

Also Today I believed in the breast And then the control freaks at La Leche League buried me in bureaucracy, bare breasts and too much LLLove. By Sue Robins

So mom says, "I've got to go back to work in about a month, Dr. Bill, would you mind writing me a little medical note so I can extend my leave a few weeks?" So I say, "Baby's allergic to formula" -- which is true, microscopically every baby's allergic to formula. I give them a medical reason to extend maternity leave. They come back in another month, they say, "I'm having trouble finding a caregiver." They come back by the third month and say, "You know what! I've decided to change jobs. I've started a home business."

Riiiight. When approached with the question of what they would do should they need to return to work outside the home, many of the attachment moms I spoke with took a more pragmatic approach. "I'd pump," says Jennifer, mother of 17-month-old Carlyle and 6-week-old Maxwell. "People do it."

Others, though, gave responses that exemplified the philosophical gulf forming between attachment moms and the other kind. How self-absorbed and cold appears the mother who can leave her 6-week-old baby in the hands of strangers! How cruel it seems to let an infant wail in a room alone, when you, the mother, are right there, listening in agony! How unnecessary the pacifier! How unnatural the crib!

One begins to wonder how a working mother could ever forgive herself, or even be friends with these other mothers. Until, of course, you consider how incredibly Peter Pan the idea is that everyone can afford to hunker down at home with their kids 24/7. How smug indeed seems the middle-class full-time mom, arms folded over her life-giving breast, eschewing the workplace for the greater good of her brood. How easy it is to point to the expense of day care and the desirability of full-time mothering from the high perch of financial and conjugal stability.

Or maybe the gap is, once again, generational. "A decade ago the big goal of women was to be in the workforce, and women were waiting until they were in their 30s [to have families]," is how one 25-year-old mom explained the attachment craze. "Now a lot of people are starting their families at an earlier age because we've seen what happened to those women." Ouch.

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