Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life

by Daphne de Marneffe

Thought-provoking, empowering, and revolutionary, a clinical psychologist explores the timeless debate between mothers who choose to work and mothers who choose to rear their children full-time, shedding new light on the conflict between work pressures and home values. 50,000 first printing.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Gender, Feminism, Womens, Self Help, Family

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Debbie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book seeks to legitimize stay at home motherhood from a psychological perspective by positioning the desire to mother as an authentic, real wish for some women. Most of the book is spent refuting the traditional feminist view that real women's lib is women & men working equal hours outside & inside the home. While I'm quite interested in this debate & always looking for new perspectives to inform my own choices, I found the author's supporting evidence weak & unconvincing. As a psychotherapist she mostly refers to specific annecodatal cases v. any emirical evidence. In addition, I found the constant rebutal of the traditional feminist stance reduntant & irritating to read over & over. I got the point after the first chapter.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

overly academic in tone, but helped me raise to a conscious level some of the decisions I have made in response to the advice I've been given and how the conflict between work and family is indeed a conflict and there's no right answer and that being a parent is and should be an emotionally challenging activity. I think the main thing that is particularly refreshing is that it rejiggers the society's victim vs personal responsibility debate regarding children.

[Kellie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 considering I didn't finish it. I really like the premise and highlighted many sections in the first half saying yes, yes! But it's a bit too academically written and repetitive for my taste. The notion is awesome, the execution could be more accessible.

[Kate]

I tried. Really, I did. This was recommended by the blogger Blue Milk, of whom I am inordinately fond, so I tried it. But it just made me MAD in fits and starts, like reading any psychoanalyst will do, and I could not push myself to continue examining the thoughts of someone with whom I disagree so vehemently. There was a bit too much assumption about the universal experiences of women and pity/disbelief that some women really might not want to stay home with their children. Really! They are not just repressing those desires and foolishly denying that maybe they should look into part time work. de Marneffe is trying to encourage recognition of the desire to mother, which is fine and good, and yes, if society made this easier, more women might choose it, and yes, there's some bad current feminist lack of recognition of this kind of desire on the part of women, but the paternalistic vibe really bothered me. Pair this with the irksome Lean In and The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding and I'm about done with challenging my feminist boundaries for the moment.

[autumnthing · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading this over the course of the past several months. As other reviews will note, it's certainly academic in tone; maybe too much? Sometimes, the author nearly misses an important point. Nonetheless, as I sift through it slowly, I'll suddenly find a thought, an experience, a pattern verbalized for the first time for me...! Each time this happens, I am both comforted and propelled on to delve more into this book and my own "inner life" as a mother.

[Aly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm a feminist mom-to-be, so I was excited about reading this book. But I gave up after 50 or so pages because the author basically kept saying the same thing over and over: The desire to mother, while not shared by all women, is natural and life-giving and sacred and should be respected and revered and nurtured. Great. I agree. Now tell me something I don't know.

[Emalee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is truly amazing and really expands my thinking, or perhaps articulates a lot of my thinking about mothering. It has great sections reviewing important theoretical history on mothering. Also interesting are discussions of fertility, abortion, pleasure & ambivalence of being a mother. Biggest problem is the book very much speaks from a highly educated, white upper SES perspective.

[Ewatkins]

Still reading - very involving, but hard to get into at three in the morning.

[Aamina · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Progress in my own life revolved around creating an intact family in which father and mother were both alive, present, and involved. This is the “better life for my children” that most preoccupied me as a young woman, my particular American Dream.”

This quote from the author could not be more true when applied to my own life. This book showed me that there is an innate mothering desire to be with and care for children, and that it is important for mothers to be a source of comfort and security for their children, and vice versa. As she points out, there is more emphasis on having children than caring for children, but this must change. When we begin to invest in caring for our children, we begin to invest in caring for ourselves, as the self-sacrificial mother trope, though culturally celebrated, leaves a great deal of pain and trauma for mothers.

In order to properly care for our children, we must properly care for their teachers.

[sarah ☆ · Rating 3 out of 5]

mhh idk about this one

[Morgan Schulman · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting idea.
Amidst a spate of books presenting a feminist perspective on the struggles of motherhood, and the choice not to mother, this book exists to describe the feminist perspective of the joy of mothering. As a mother, I never thought such a book was needed, as I don’t seek out books that describe the joy of breathing oxygen. It just is. We seek to find ourselves in books about our secret struggles, not our secret pleasures, no? Clearly this author, a French psychoanalytic feminist, felt the need to present a feminist psychoanalytic exploration of the desire to mother.
She is quick to point out in this book that she is not anti-working mother and does not see to minimize the stress of mothering, as the book was initially published during the mommy wars of the aughts and the author feels her book was unfortunately politicized as anti-working mom. As a working mother who still hasn’t recovered from those wars, I was able to read this book and not see any repudiation of working motherhood, unless one would argue that going to work negates the desire to mother, which to me would be like saying going to Target negates the desire to mother; mothers are many things at once no matter how much we love our babies. Nor do I interpret the segment on her wanting to be with her baby while she was at work as “anti-working mom” I think many working mothers also feel this emotion as one of the many complicated feelings we feel.
Having establish that this book is not inherently anti-working mother, it’s hard to really describe who it is for. I don’t know many mothers who feel the need to explicate the love and desire they have for mothering. It’s a pretty deep essential bond. However it is interesting to see this mother present the emotions of herself and her clients within the feminist psychoanalytic context. It feels more like an intellectual exercise in a call to arms or a political polemic, but it’s interesting for what it is.

I have a feeling that this will only appeal to a very niche audience however

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether you feel called to and/or are employed in a career/job or not, whether you love what you do or not, whether you stay home full time with your children or not, de Marneffe articulates and substantiates pretty well the reality of the surprisingly deep connection a mother feels about the child she loves and the effect of that connection on her. I say "surprising" because, though I intellectually knew about maternal instinct before I had children, I found the strength of that emotional tie to be far more profound than I had anticipated.
I think that if you read de Marneffe's work with an open mind, not feeling like you need to defend or find validated whatever choices you have made or plan to make about your work and the raising of your children, you will find this book articulately and carefully illuminates an aspect of mothering that many, many thoughtful women who bear and/or rear children experience, in their own way, no matter what their choices are of how they spend their days.
And I believe that if all mothers who experience the phenomenon of maternal desire understood the commonality and validity of that experience, and more husbands, partners and employers understood the power and value of it in society, the world would be a better place for all of us.

[Lena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just started reading this. So far, so good. Very clearly written and well considered. Unpicking the notion of "motherhood" from the ways in which both pro- and anti- feminism camps have shaped it for their purposes. I look forward to reading where she goes with this.

[Monica Voicu Denniston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, really enjoyed this book, and would give it 4.5 stars if I could. -.5 star because it did feel repetitive and somewhat disjointed in places. Overall though, an enjoyable read and one I found myself emphatically nodding along in agreement to quite often!

[sleeps9hours · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that most accurately captures my experience of the stresses and joys of motherhood.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

some good thoughts about the whole woman, working, stay at home, career, family, feminist issue things, but nothing too extraordinary here..

[Janine Tangney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an affirming book for women interested in stay-at-home mothering (or more time with their children in general).

[Kristyna · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book on contemporary motherhood.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't finish it. And I don't want to check it out again. It led to a lively discussion at a coffee shop one night. We all agreed we could relate to the book.

[Jemma Z · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Helena#bookdreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This was a well written novel with lots of provocative and insightful ideas. I do agree that there is a social enigma associated with motherhood that is not easily accepted under the feminist manifestó but motherhood is not all sacrifice and meaningless work as the author points out. There is that innate maternal desire to bond and build a meaningful relationship with your child outside of all the responsibilities it comes with.

[Jennydlovesthebooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

A discussion of why women stay at home and the connection they have with children. I felt this was too academic and difficult to read, but would be more interesting if I was a psychologist. As a working mother, it also made me somewhat concerned about my choice to work a demanding fulfilling job, and how that may impact my children and their development. The author was not doing anything explicitly delegitimize working moms, but the book really is a legitimization of the attached mother, so it puts us working moms in a difficult position.

[Cristie Underwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book presented commonly written about information in an overly academic manner. I felt at times like I was reading a book for one of my psychology courses. This was definitely one that I didn't enjoy.