Push Back

‘I love my children. They fill me with joy. But I felt guilty when I rebelliously ate runny cheese while pregnant, I felt guilty when I had an epidural for my first baby, and I frequently feel guilty when I sneak off to check my emails while my children are at home.’

We might like to think that in these liberated, self-expressive times, no topic is out of bounds. But where the more difficult aspects of parenting are concerned, a combination of shame and competitiveness kicks in – even among close friends, it’s taboo to discuss how parenthood stretches you to the limits.

It can feel as though parenting guidelines impose blanket bans on doing anything human and ordinary.  And the media mostly fans the flames: there is a mountain of advice literature, but rather than providing context, each book takes a different line – seemingly to distinguish it from all the others.

What provides a genuine antidote is historical, geographic and scientific context. As Push Back shows, parenting styles and practices have varied hugely in different places and over the decades and centuries, and so has the advice. This can be hugely liberating for parents who worry that there is a single correct way – and the fact that attitudes have emerged out of specific historical circumstances (and hand in hand with underlying agendas), enables us to take them with a large pinch of salt.

Our relationship with our children, as well as with our own mothers, is profound and psychologically resonant. Push Back calls for a new feminist motherhood – one that employs comradeship, tolerance, and acceptance. Eliane Glaser argues that how we approach motherhood fundamentally needs to change: from adjustments so that mothers can work school hours to addressing the isolation that so many working mothers feel when they go on maternity leave. We will only change the structure of work and increase fathers’ participation once we debunk prevailing myths about the women being the rightful primary carers, and deconstruct the culture of childcare perfection. After all, if motherhood is natural, why not trust us to do it?