Skip to main content

Motherhood: A Manifesto; (M)otherhood; The Motherhood Complex review – calling time on the cult of the perfect parent

Eliane Glaser, Pragya Agarwal and Melissa Hogenboom offer challenging responses to the contradictions of so many parenting guides

The theme of the indignities of post-feminist motherhood is always fresh. And yet the past year seems to have rendered the wound more raw than ever. Eliane Glaser’s Motherhood: A Manifesto has already generated social media coverage galore for the assertions that “motherhood is the unfinished business of feminism” and “the cult of the perfect mother must end”. Who would disagree with these statements? But these things need saying and loudly, especially when “the pandemic is amplifying bias against working mothers”, to quote a recent typical headline.

And yet what are the solutions on offer that haven’t already been proposed decades ago by, say, Betty Friedan or Simone de Beauvoir, both, happily, quoted here? Glaser homes in on the awkward truths: “Modern motherhood somehow manages to demean women while simultaneously raising the stakes.” “For too long, the injustices of modern motherhood have been concealed by anxiety and guilt.” “… fathers’ participation has flat-lined…” But is there much “manifesto” in Motherhood: A Manifesto (ie instruction rather than insight)? Arguably not. This is more exploration and truth-telling. But when it’s so well written and well argued, who cares?

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Tp2JZb
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One giant leap: meet the new generation of male ballet stars

Beauty, strength and bags of energy: BBC Four’s Men at the Barre documentary gets up close and personal with the Royal Ballet dancers on the rise ‘It’s a golden era of male ballet dancers.” So says Emma Cahusac, the commissioning editor behind a new documentary, Men at the Barre, part of BBC Four’s dance season. It’s not just hyperbole. The young men rising up at the Royal Ballet are some of the most exciting in dance right now: principals Matthew Ball and Marcelino Sambé, first soloists Cesar Corrales and William Bracewell, and first artist Joseph Sissens all feature in Men at the Barre. With the majority of them British or UK-trained, it’s a giant leap from the grumblings of a decade ago about the lack of local dancers making it to the top. I spoke to Ball, Corrales and Sambé by phone, all staying resolutely positive during this enforced break from their intensive dancing lives, but all desperate to get back to work with colleagues they’re certain are something special. “I see so m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dita Von Teese: ‘Even when I was a bondage model, I had big-time boundaries’

As the star dives into a giant glass of fizz for her first online extravaganza, she talks about this new golden age for burlesque, why the French Strictly gives her costume problems – and how #MeToo has changed her Dita Von Teese is looking divine. Her lips are that signature red, she’s wearing 1950s cat eye glasses, and her black hair falls in a thick wave across a Snow White skin – and all this on the unglamorous stage of a glitchy Zoom call. Only knowing Von Teese from her femme fatale image, her teasingly aloof burlesque performances, and her time in the tabloids as former wife of goth rocker Marilyn Manson , you might expect an icy demeanour, an impermeable mystique. So it’s surprising to discover quite how normal she is: chatty, self-deprecating, not very vampish. It’s easy to see traces of Heather Sweet, the “super shy” girl from small-town Michigan who transformed into Von Teese. The reason for our conversation is a new film, Night of the Teese, made with director Quinn Wils...
Post a Comment
Read more