Mommies Anxious
Perfect Madness by Judith Warner
Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
Penguin Books, 2005
(327 pages, $23.95, hardcover)
reviewed by Joan Frawley Desmond
As a mother who once purchased an electronic phonics gadget for her toddler, this writer knows the depths to which maternal anxiety can sink. Perhaps most American women will admit to similar acts of irrational spending, scheduling, and worrying on behalf of their offspring. Can public acknowledgment of this kind of hysteria provoke a new wave of social and political reform in America?
Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety thinks so. The co-author of Howard Dean’s campaign book, You Have the Power: How to Take Back Our Country and Restore Democracy in America, and Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story, Warner writes as if her solutions for upper-middle-class control freaks might even rescue the feminist revolution from the dustbins of suburbia.
Anxious Choices
No one subjected to endless parental venting over a child’s SAT scores can dispute the need for calm. But Perfect Madness is unlikely to spark a revolution. Warner describes the symptoms of a generational disorder without confronting the underlying malignancy. Her argument possesses a technical flaw as well: Perfect Madness conflates the existential preoccupations of upper-class mothers with the financial woes of less privileged moms. Then Warner prescribes the same medicine for all her patients.
But if the author has overreached, she still offers cautionary insights for mothers who have morphed into their children’s frazzled chauffeurs, tutors, and secretaries. Indeed, the problem of overscheduled children parallels the “latchkey” phenomenon described in books like Mary Eberstadt’s Home Alone America. Both trends reflect a diminished appreciation for maternal love and its transformative impact within the home and on the culture.
Maternal anxiety, in Warner’s view, is partly the result of unmet expectations generated by the women’s liberation movement. Warner targets the destructive impact of the feminists’ drumbeat of “choice” and “control”—each theme a tactical weapon in the defense of abortion rights. The rhetoric of choice creates unrealistic expectations.
The rhetoric of control leads mothers to shoulder most of the burden for raising children. Guilt-ridden, resentful, and insular, Betty Friedan’s progeny find little respite in their homes, where their husbands—now the primary or sole breadwinner—hold the upper hand.
Only the children’s accomplishments in school, on the playing field, and in the recital hall redeem this grim existence. But the polishing of children’s resumes soon takes on a life of its own, crowding out marital intimacy and obliterating the dinner hour. Many fathers encourage this hyperactivity, Warner contends, because our “winner take all” economy makes both parents fret when junior doesn’t reach his developmental milestones.
Joan Frawley Desmond is a freelance writer who lives with her husband and three children in Chevy Chase, Maryland. She is a recent graduate of the John Paul II Institute for the Study of Marriage and the Family.
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