Public Policy Update In Many Voices: Mothers And Families Challenge The Culture by Heidi L. Brennan Article Copyright 1997 Heidi L. Brennan.  Reproduction or dissemination of  this work -- or any part of it -- is expressly forbidden without the written consent of  the author.

Fourteen years ago, Mothers At Home founders Linda Burton, Janet Dittmer, and Cheri Loveless met in each other's homes to create a community of support for at-home mothers. Although their initial focus was the creation of Welcome Home, immediate public interest in their new organization quickly pulled them and the new MAH volunteers into the ongoing cultural and political debates about contemporary family life. Indeed, early in the first year of publishing WH, Linda Burton testified by invitation before the House of Representatives Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families,¹ calling for a new respect for at-home mothers, and economic and social support to help families balance family and work demands.

The five books selected for review here, which address motherhood, work and family issues, and the cultural value of parenting, reveal that most of the concerns of at-home (and employed) mothers remain largely the same as in 1984. However, they represent a growing wave of deeper national discussion on these topics.

Two of these books are essentially scholarly works with policy recommendations. Arlie Hochschild's Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work created a spring media storm, with articles in The New York Times Review of Books, U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, and countless newspaper stories and broadcast interviews. Less known, but an equally substantive yet broader discussion of family issues, is Dana Mack's The Assault on Parenthood: How Our Culture Undermines the Family. Though policy books, both incorporate enormously fascinating interviews with and observations about parents, making them very readable.

The other three books are more personal in nature. Deborah Shaw Lewis and Charmaine Crouse Yoest's Mother in the Middle: Searching for Peace in the Mommy Wars clearly articulates the many dilemmas facing at-home and employed mothers. Iris Krasnow, a former star UPI reporter, details her struggle to accept the here-and-now demands of guiding children as the priority of her life and the surprising answer to her own spiritual quest in her deeply personal book Surrendering to Motherhood: Losing Your Mind, Finding Your Soul. Sue Lanci Villani and Jane E. Ryan's Motherhood at the Crossroads: Meeting the Challenge of a Changing Role is somewhat less personal since its cornerstone is research the authors conducted on at-home mothers. It delves into the psychological burdens carried by these mothers as they attempt to balance their families' needs with their own.

The Family-friendly Debate

Nearly ten years ago, the term "family-friendly" entered the media mainstream. It quickly became ubiquitous in news stories and policy discussions about families. Unfortunately, "family-friendly" most often seems a hollow cliché that connotes a benefit or service designed allegedly to ease the burdens of increasingly stressed families. In too many instances, however, these benefits seem either to exist only in writing or to supplant parents rather than help them — in today's current business parlance, "outsourcing" family functions to paid substitutes and contracted service providers.

Arlie Hochschild's Time Bind is without question the most provocative book to date that addresses work/family conflicts in the seemingly more "family-friendly" employment culture, as heralded by the media. While its impact on families with at-home mothers is not immediately obvious, this riveting book is likely to help set the terms of the family-friendly debate in far-reaching ways.

A sociology professor at the University of California (Berkeley) and self-described feminist, Hochschild has been an advocate for expanded government involvement in child care and mandated employment benefits. Yet she remains independent in her research observations about how parents react to the conflicting demands of family and work life. The Time Bind is the result of her three years of on-site observations and interviews with employees at a respected (and disguised) "family-friendly" Fortune 500 company. Her surprising conclusion is that employees are likely to make work their time priority over the heartfelt needs of their family members. And those employees who try to negotiate new schedules with their superiors, often meet with great resistance despite organizational claims to offer support to them. A description from the book jacket cover describes her work succinctly:

In a series of vivid portraits, Hochschild paints a surprising picture of couples as time thieves, children as emotional bill-collectors, spouses as efficiency experts, parents who feel like helpful mothers and fathers mainly to their workmates, and women who – like generations of men before them — flee the pressures of home for the relief of work.

Hochschild is willing to question the notion that children are fine in substitute care, regardless of the number of hours, as long as it is "high quality." She quotes such people as the company child care center director, feminist economist and author Sylvia Ann Hewlett, and numerous employed parents, all of whom question the number of hours many children are expected to spend away from their parents. With the skill of a psychologist, she notes the non-verbal behavior of parents as she meets with them both in their workplaces and at home, offering remarkable insights into their often conflicting motivations and needs.

Unfortunately, Hochschild carefully distances herself from full-time homemakers - she calls them housewives. While she doesn't directly criticize them, she seems to hold them partially responsible for supporting stereotypical workaholic husbands who, in turn, create time pressure on two-earner families and single working parents. In this regard, she follows the same line of thinking as do many other academicians and cultural commentators, wherein mothers who choose to leave the work force are seen as a marginal group whose existence creates a burden for other women's economic and career advancement.

Hochschild proposes a new workers' revolution, led by mothers and fathers, to demand reform in our work cultures so that employees can make time for their families and "family-friendly" is no longer a hypocritically proclaimed organizational value. I suggest that any cultural reform designed to ease the burdens of employed parents cannot occur unless we create a renaissance of respect for those parents whose work is in the economy of heart and home.

A Parent Revolution

Dana Mack addresses a larger set of societal issues in The Assault on Parenthood. She effectively describes a growing cultural conflict between parental autonomy and "expert" control of child-rearing and family life. While Hochschild calls for a worker revolution, Mack calls for a larger parent revolution to address the cultural erosion of respect for parents' intuitive and emotional knowledge of their children.

Mack provides a highlighted yet thorough review of important social data, making her book highly readable. It is accompanied by engaging interviews with parents on the frontlines of cultural conflicts. Thus she presents a practical policy book for parents addressing community issues such as education, welfare, marriage and family law, and child care. Rather than relegating at-home mothers (and fathers) to the cultural backwaters of society, Mack recognizes them almost as new social reformers, who are paying attention to the details of anti-parent trends and prepared to provide the necessary cultural and political leadership to reclaim the rights and responsibilities of parents.

While Hochschild and Mack's political orientations (liberal and conservative, respectively) form the basis for some of their recommendations, neither book fits neatly into these categories, perhaps to the confusion of those who prefer clear ideological distinctions. Both authors have created honest forums for the expressed needs of parents, and in so doing, offer a somewhat politically transcendent message that is grassroots, or populist, at its core.

Radical Motherhood

Deborah Shaw Lewis and Charmaine Crouse Yoest, too, offer incisive cultural commentary and a sensible policy agenda in their book, Mother in the Middle. Sharing their own personal stories as well as those of many mothers from diverse backgrounds, they blend them into a well-organized examination of the cultural trends that affect mothers. Their excellent analysis of the "Mommy Wars" exposes the concept as largely media-created, using narrowly drawn stereotypes to exaggerate conflict. They show employed mothers desperately seeking more balance in their lives through added time for family, and explain the needs of at-home mothers for cultural respect and inclusion of opportunities to remain connected with the adult world. Reflecting the reform or revolution themes of the previously mentioned books, Lewis and Yoest speak of a new vision of "radical motherhood" — interesting terminology for two Christian writers, one liberal and one conservative. Theirs is both an affirming and assertive book for all mothers, presenting them in a coherent and engaging style. It echoes many of the sentiments that have been sent to MAH over the years.

A Spiritual Quest

Iris Krasnow, in her book Surrendering to Motherhood, also speaks to revolution as she describes her metamorphosis from high-achieving career woman to "militant mama," when she and her husband moved quickly to establish a family and have four children (one set of twins) in a short time. A liberal feminist, Krasnow details her spiritual exploration of various New Age and other philosophies, finally rediscovering her Jewish roots as she surrenders to the enormous draw of her children, who also compete for her attention with her successful free-lance writing career. Krasnow has met and interviewed numerous of the world's political, cultural, and economic glitterati — and to the detriment of an otherwise engaging book, keeps reminding us throughout of her enormous career attainment. Yet, despite her happiness with these accomplishments, she tells us that the ultimate soul satisfaction comes in the absolutely mundane, unscheduled, and spontaneous engagements with her children. A talented writer, Krasnow is able to capture much of the joy and angst of motherhood in a way that can cause one to exclaim, "Yessss!"

Krasnow sometimes seems apologetic to contemporary feminism as she repeatedly explains how her strength and independence as a woman are not compromised by her choice to forego tempting career opportunities that would take her away from her children. Clearly Krasnow's struggles are part internally-driven by her competing personal needs and part culturally-driven as she reacts to the anti-at-home mother messages she has assimilated since adolescence. Some of the writing is redundant. However, reading Surrendering to Motherhood may well provide an opportunity to reflect and clarify one's own ideas.

Mothers: Listen To Your Souls

Motherhood at the Crossroads focuses on the self-esteem crisis at-home mothers face, which Sue Villani and Jane Ryan call the "Mother Crisis." The authors, incorporating interviews conducted with at-home mothers in the 1970s and 1990s, thoughtfully explore myths about motherhood and the potential for all mothers to feel guilt as they pursue an elusive picture of perfection. While reading these interviews can be depressing, they shed light on some of the internal struggles experienced by all mothers.

Villani and Ryan, like most of the previous authors, express concern about the "Mommy Wars," seeing them as a conflict fueled by the huge demands our culture places on women and by media-perpetuated stereotypes about at-home and employed mothers. Their perspective is that women will be able to experience joy and self-respect in their motherhood role if they receive societal support as mothers and workers. Naively, in my opinion, they recommend national policies providing readily accessible, free child care for all to lessen any conflicts between at-home and employed mothers. In the end, though, their book is less about political change and more a call for mothers to listen to their souls and to make their own personal, supportive cultures at home and in their communities.

A Call To Mothership

Each of the titles of these five books is an expression of challenge or conflict. Coming from diverse political and spiritual outlooks, the authors all reveal that the battles mothers may experience are rarely with each other. Rather, they are most likely to occur within themselves or with the prevailing cultural expectations about motherhood and work. In different ways, each book calls on mothers to exercise leadership - call it mothership - to create the respect and support they need for satisfaction and accomplishment within theirmothering roles. While the issues remain the same as when MAH was founded, the discussion now encompasses many more voices. This is a welcome enrichment of our personal, cultural, and political debates about motherhood and family life.

1This committee no longer exists by that name. Now, the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families addresses the same legislative issues.