Ooh! ooh! Eeh! eeh!
Oh dear. Elisabeth Badinter needs to sell some books. Time to make dramatic, out of touch generalizations and rekindle the mère indigne wars by judging women for their choices. Check out her interview in Der Spiegel.
Look, it's definitely not a good thing when women feel strapped to the notion that they must stay at home, forsake their careers and social lives in order to raise their children well. That would be terrible for all involved. And yet. Why on earth does she go and melodramatically describe the mothering movement she criticizes as, "It's a bit like trying to reawaken the slumbering mammal inside women. But we women aren't chimpanzees."
I'm not sure that using formula, disposable diapers, and putting your baby in a daycare at 2 months makes one a feminist in France -- just another mother, probably doing the best she can with what she has. The logical leap, however, is not that women who choose to do differently, i.e. breastfeed, use cloth diapers, and stay at home to raise their children are somehow moving backward in time.
Badinter assumes that if women follow WHO recommendations, they will be forced to quit their jobs and start wearing Laura Ashley. Where is her inner visionary? Why not shame the government into subsidizing daycare centers in offices (I know some large corporations in France do, but this is definitely one of many areas where our Nordic fellows have got us beat), so that women could continue to breastfeed during the day and work?
She rails against encouraging the use of cloth diapers... well, why not rage against the Pampers machine and the fact that most of the disposables on the market are produced with chlorine, and its chemical byproduct, the known carcinogen dioxin? (see The Diaper Drama)
The best part, though, comes when she starts defining French women versus their German counterparts (to a German journalist writing for a German magazine), "I think that's one of the big differences between French and German women. French women have always been women first and foremost, and only then mothers. Shortly after giving birth they don't just stay at home with their child; they go out, and they go back to work quickly. They want to return to their lives and be a part of society, and they also have to be a woman again, to be seductive -- that's what French men expect."
Ah. Oui. Of course. If French men expect it, then French women must heed. As feminists. (By the way, what does it mean to be a "woman first and foremost?" As opposed to what? Oh, right: chimpanzees.)
She made similar misguided, inaccurate, anecdotal comments during a radio interview several months ago, and luckily several nurses, mothers, and ecologists rang in to call her on her shit.
Good Lord, lady, watching depressed mothers at the Jardin du Luxembourg does not a sociological study make.
Look, it's definitely not a good thing when women feel strapped to the notion that they must stay at home, forsake their careers and social lives in order to raise their children well. That would be terrible for all involved. And yet. Why on earth does she go and melodramatically describe the mothering movement she criticizes as, "It's a bit like trying to reawaken the slumbering mammal inside women. But we women aren't chimpanzees."
I'm not sure that using formula, disposable diapers, and putting your baby in a daycare at 2 months makes one a feminist in France -- just another mother, probably doing the best she can with what she has. The logical leap, however, is not that women who choose to do differently, i.e. breastfeed, use cloth diapers, and stay at home to raise their children are somehow moving backward in time.
Badinter assumes that if women follow WHO recommendations, they will be forced to quit their jobs and start wearing Laura Ashley. Where is her inner visionary? Why not shame the government into subsidizing daycare centers in offices (I know some large corporations in France do, but this is definitely one of many areas where our Nordic fellows have got us beat), so that women could continue to breastfeed during the day and work?
She rails against encouraging the use of cloth diapers... well, why not rage against the Pampers machine and the fact that most of the disposables on the market are produced with chlorine, and its chemical byproduct, the known carcinogen dioxin? (see The Diaper Drama)
The best part, though, comes when she starts defining French women versus their German counterparts (to a German journalist writing for a German magazine), "I think that's one of the big differences between French and German women. French women have always been women first and foremost, and only then mothers. Shortly after giving birth they don't just stay at home with their child; they go out, and they go back to work quickly. They want to return to their lives and be a part of society, and they also have to be a woman again, to be seductive -- that's what French men expect."
Ah. Oui. Of course. If French men expect it, then French women must heed. As feminists. (By the way, what does it mean to be a "woman first and foremost?" As opposed to what? Oh, right: chimpanzees.)
She made similar misguided, inaccurate, anecdotal comments during a radio interview several months ago, and luckily several nurses, mothers, and ecologists rang in to call her on her shit.
Good Lord, lady, watching depressed mothers at the Jardin du Luxembourg does not a sociological study make.
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