The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women
Élisabeth Badinter
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The truth is that a woman who chooses not to have children has generally engaged the question of a mother’s responsibilities to a degree of seriousness not previously explored when motherhood was simply a natural necessity.”
“Childless couples, on the other hand, take pleasure in the advantages of being alone: living for each other, doing more things together than parents are able to do, paying more attention to the other person’s feelings and desires. They see children as a possible threat to the harmony they are able to take for granted.”
“The message is clear: a good mother breast feeds. Significantly, this good mother shares a sociocultural profile with women in other developed countries: she is over thirty, is a high earning professional, does not smoke, takes prenatal classes, and benefits from a long maternity leave.”
“Childless people are always expected to explain themselves, although it would never occur to anyone to ask a woman why she became a mother (and to insist on getting good reasons)”
“Those who have taken a rather more pragmatic and individualist position on not having children tend to talk directly in terms of personal fulfillment. They have made a choice to live their lives in a particular way, associating motherhood with burden and loss—of freedom, energy, money, pleasure, intimacy, and even identity. A child is synonymous with sacrifice and frustrating, even repellent, obligations; it is perhaps a threat to the stability and happiness of one’s relationships. They refer to themselves as “child-free” rather than childless because they are free of children and therefore of motherhood.”
“Motherhood is still the great unknown. For some, it brings incomparable happiness and enriches their identity. Others manage as best they can to reconcile contradictory demands.”
“According to American sociologist Kristin Park, who has reviewed most of the surveys carried out on child-free men and women in the last twenty years, the primary and most frequently cited reason for their decision (in 79 percent of surveys) is freedom. These people prized their emotional and financial autonomy, their freedom of movement, and their ability to take advantage of every opportunity for personal fulfillment. The second reason, mentioned in 62 percent of surveys, is marital happiness. After that came professional and financial considerations, fear of overpopulation, and lack of interest or a dislike of children.”
“The tyranny of maternal duty is not new, but it has become considerably more pronounced with the rise of naturalism, and it has thus far produced neither a matriarchy nor sexual equality, but rather a regression in women's status.”
“The realities of motherhood are often obscured by a halo of illusions. The future mother tends to fantasize about love and happiness and overlooks the other aspects of child-rearing: the exhaustion, frustration, loneliness, and even depression, with its attendant state of guilt.”
“Mothers with high ideals for child-rearing must pay the price for those ideals.”
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Book Keywords:
gender-roles, women, childless, identity, depression, relationships, mom-guilt, demand, regression, motherhood, childfree, ideal, privilege
