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Rediscovering Motherhood
| Article
# : |
19850 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1991 |
2,517 Words |
| Author
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Nancy Pearcey
Nancy Pearcey writes on science and social issues from her
base in Washington, D.C., and is currently working on The
Scientific Prism, a book on world-views in the history of
science. |
The number of births in America last year jumped to four million, the first time that annual figure has been reached since the end of the postwar Baby Boom, reports the National Center of Health Statistics. Birth rates had already been rising among women over thirty as this group seeks to make up for postponed childbearing. But the increase in the number of births last year may indicate that more women in their twenties are having children as well, reports the Washington Post. Motherhood is becoming popular again.
Many of today's new mothers were raised in a feminist era, when the implicit assumption, especially among educated women, was that motherhood is a trap and that true fulfillment is possible only through a career. The careerism common among men in the fifties spread to women in the sixties. Having babies was at best something done on the side, during leisure hours.
Women raised in such a social climate often entered energetically into careers and put any idea of having a family on hold. It was only after several years on the fast track that they began to feel a nagging sense that something was missing. Having "made it" at work, which they had been led to regard as the most significant arena of accomplishment, many of these women are puzzled by their desire to have children--and are nothing less than astonished at the actual experience of having them.
Hobnob with new mothers for a time and you are likely to hear musing such as "I had no idea that having a baby would be so much fun" and "I was completely surprised by the intensity of the emotional bond I have with my baby." Surprise at the joy of motherhood is a novel phenomenon. In virtually all cultures and at all times, the birth of a baby has been regarded as an occasion for rejoicing. In her book Mothering: The Emotional Experience of Motherhood after Freud and Feminism, Elaine Heffner says there is nothing new about women feeling the desire to have and raise children. "What is new," she remarks, "is the number of women who are startled by such feelings."
A Bill of Goods
Lonna Wilkinson is a dancer and choreographer who had her first child at age thirty-eight. "For women of my generation," she says, "motherhood really got a bum rap. None of us were going to be mothers, for goodness' sake--there were more important things to do."
Eileen Bakke, English teacher and mother of
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