I have finished writing my book on mothers and am looking for Beta readers. please let me know if you want to read it. Here is the INTRODUCTION. I welcome your feedback and please pass along to your friends!
MOTHERHOOD IS MADNESS – 13 WAYS TO FIND BALANCE AND FREE YOURSELF FROM THE STICKY FLOOR
Introduction
Mothers today feel like they are going absolutely crazy. They are exhausted, underpaid and under-appreciated. They feel like slaves to their kids, to their home, to their husbands and often to their careers – just like their mothers did. The best-selling book, “No Kids” describes in a nutshell how devastating childrearing can be. From ruining sex lives and relationships to sucking up every spare moment attending kid’s soccer games. It’s no surprise that couples are having fewer children these days.
So what went wrong? Did the suffragists and feminists fail mothers? Most people blame mothers for this sad state of affairs. We blame them for not achieving a proper “work-life balance.” We tell them that wanting to have a career is overly ambitious and say things like, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” or “Go home, your children need you.” We convince them they brought it upon themselves and it’s their own fault for choosing to have children. We expect them to lie in the bed they made.
The research, however, says that mothers and their choices are not the problem, the way we treat mothers is. As a society we have slowly shifted the responsibility of raising children onto mothers and convinced them that they must sacrifice their lives and careers for their husbands and children. As a result, if children and families do flourish, it is at the expense of mothers. And if women are unwilling to do this, and choose to have a both a career and raise a family at the same time, we make their lives miserable. We refuse to create positive work conditions or provide supports. And to make matter worse, we as a society tell working mothers that they must do paid work and unpaid work to a level of perfection that is frankly absurd. Mothers are expected to be perfect wives, daughters, mothers and perfect full-time income earner.
Authors Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels remind us in their book, “The Mommy Myth” that this is the same problem that our mother’s faced, “It is important that we remind ourselves of the tyranny of the role of the MRS, because it was what feminists attacked as utterly oppressive, and because under the guise of the new momism, it has risen, phoenix-like, and burrowed its way once again into the media and into the hearts and minds of millions of mothers.” (p 34)
This book shines a light on the real reasons why mothers suffer. It shifts the blame from mothers, to a whole system consisting of hundreds of factors that make it extraordinarily difficult to raise children these days. These factors – often called “the sticky floor” – are not only hidden but are rooted in our out-dated beliefs. Working together, they systematically curtail mothers’ choices in hundreds of different ways, limiting their choices to such a degree they literally leave women with almost no choice at all.
Here you will learn that motherhood is truly madness, but need not be. By looking at the invisible expectations our society places on mothers, we can begin to see why mothers feel so trapped and unhappy. By looking at the propaganda and rhetoric, we can begin to see why women blame themselves, keep quiet and believe they have no options. Motherhood as we know it is complete insanity and it must stop!