The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women
by Elisabeth Badinter
Metropolitan, 208 pp., $25.00
Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species
by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Ballantine, 723 pp., $19.95 (paper)
Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting
by Pamela Druckerman
Penguin, 284 pp., $25.95
Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood
by Anne Enright
Norton, 207 pp., $24.95
As long as children need to be born and taken care of, certain disputes, now renamed “the war on women,” seem irreducible about the woman’s place, with established political equations (stay-at-home mom = Republican; working mom = Democrat), even when these aren’t universally the case, as plenty of stay-at-home moms plan to vote Democratic, and vice versa. In the meantime, the conflict between motherhood and career remains as divisive as any of the other cultural issues that viscerally affect Americans.
