Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life

Read an Excerpt

The Problem of Maternal Desire
IT WOULD SEEM THAT EVERYTHING it is possible to say about motherhood in America has already been said. Beckoning us from every magazine rack, beaming out from every channel, is a solution or a revelation or a confession about mothering.

The Problem of Maternal Desire, Part 2
The view that caring for one's children amounts to self-sacrifice is a very tricky psychological point for women, and a confounding point for theory. It is confusing partly because the term self-sacrifice is potentially applicable to two different aspects

The Problem of Maternal Desire, Part 3
Our national discussion of child care, for example, understandably focuses on the reality that most parents need to work. Because the discussion appears to deal with an immutable fact of life, it is sometimes viewed as impractical, even elitist, to raise

I was born in Boston in 1959, the second of three children born within three years to a psychiatrist father and a housewife mother. The term housewife tends to conjure images of boredom in modern minds, but perhaps the most significant fact about my childhood was how much my mother enjoyed caring for us. My siblings and I benefited from her love of drama and creative spirit, spending hours learning the entire songbooks of the musicals of the day.

	Home \| Forum \| Search
Health Parenting Personal Growth Relationships Religion & Spirituality Career & Money