mumsnet in the guardian again ... hth... lol

[SlartyBartFast]

here

actually the ever sensible penelope leach has a very good quote.

I heard the Rachel Cusk book serialised on Radio4 while I was pregnant, and I found myself yelling 'oh shut up whinging, woman!' at the radio. I didn't change my opinion post-birth. It was all moan, moan, moan, interspersed with 'oh dear everyone with a baby is so stupid compared to ME'.

Moan, moan, moan and what a pity I was so much cleverer than anyone else in my book group
www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/aug/20/featuresreviews.

I can't get that link to work, msled - but I do remember her writing something incredibly annoying in the Grauniad.

Is now a good time for me to admit that for the first half of this thread, I was thinking of Helen Simpson but writing 'Rachel Cusk'?

Penelope Leach: "The topic of childcare is becoming more sensitive because, after two generations of startlingly rapid social change ... we are still looking at it backward, treating the sole mother care that was typical of white middle-class families for a generation after the second world war as a gold standard ... It is difficult to imagine a less useful mindset."

I could not agree more with that.

Sorry, this is completely facile, but Dorothy Dinnerstein is a brilliant name.

yes I liked that Leach quote Pruners.

I enjoyed this article because I agree with the assertion that there has been a gap in good 'prose and poetry' relating to parenthood. I do think that all the mummy memoirs have seeped into the market and created this 'parent-lit' for the sake of consumerism and as a marketing ploy.

It's easy to prey on the raw emotions of new parents (and their disposable income) and as a youngish single mother (23). I searched for literary and non fiction books that I could reference my emotions to in vain. All I could find was he slushy 'I want to eat them, they're so adorable' or stark 'You must be uber-mother and only go organic' or unhelpful 'God I'm so wry, parenting is such a bore, where HAS my old life gone' stuff. I didn't know about Plath's 'Morning Song' or 'You're'. I'd love to write about my experience of motherhood from a literary perspective. If only I had the talent and confidence to do so. I don't think for a minute it would be seen as viable from a marketing POV either.

Would also have to get my spelling, grammar and sentence structures down before trying to be literary too

There's a good collection of bits of writing called "Gas and Air"

I got given it when ds was born and my hormones couldn't cope. But it is good.

Interesting thread. I'm TTC for teh first time so dont feel I can coment on teh emotions of having a baby but I am intrigued by the "Of Woman Born" book and just ordered it from Amazon.

Just a quick word re the "pointless and patronizing reference to MN".

Agreed but this is probably just the journalist using a popular internet keyword in the article to boost Google rankings. Happens surprisingly often - similes about "Paris Hilton" or "Britney Spears" being shoehorned into serious articles about global warming in the online broadsheets.

Search engine optimisation, innit.

Wasn't the absence of feminist analysis striking?

She talks a bit about modern "not-niceness" - which is largely politics-free but oddly haunted by earlier political discourses (I'm thinking of Helen Simpson and Rachel Cusk here) - and she rates earlier, feminist work on child-rearing but ... no feminist analysis! Not even a mention of its weird absence.

Maybe just me who thought that.

And daft about mumsnet. Two threads I've loved recently have been about parenting and work and about why parenting is still, by and large mothering - and ensuing discussion of where we might want to go with that.

If you're going to talk about the strange and shadowing experience of the tearing of subjectivity that can, sometimes, haunt the experience of becoming a mother in the early twentieth century, surely you have to talk about the political/historical realities and discourses that shape women's subjectivities?

Weird article. Kind of content-free. but I'm really glad it gave the heads-up to some great books on parenting.

Threadworm - I think you're right about Plath. The journalist has dreamt up that version of "sanitised" Plath - I doubt there is anyone in the world who has read Plath without knowing she is dark and sharp, even at her most seeming light. I doubt that anyone is taught Plath in a school without being told all the interesting bits that of her life and other writing that inform its texture and emotional complexity.

re. sincerity - I think it's time to reclaim sincerity. for a long time it's had a bad rep. as = stupidity, lower class, morally vacuous (stupidly good) and female - typified by the idea of some dim, uneducated, Victorian girl; too dim for seditious intelligence.

there's something a little bit anti-woman about it.

ooh yes good point about sincerity cherryblossoms. And I do see what you mean about her presentation of Plath. The 'not niceness' that she refers to is oddly devoid of relevance or even meaning really. It is a bit like saying Ted Hughes writes a lot about animals.

I was a bit shocked at that quote from Germain Greer, about the mother child bond being unhealthy and one of exploitation [child to mother]

Yeah but (without being flippant) what would Germaine Greer know about it?

Cusk = idiot

Anne Enright's book is good though.

Here ends my contribution to the debate.

Ithangyou

For feminist views on motherhood- I've just read a brilliant book called "breeders" with loads of little essays and articles about being a young feminist mother, it was brilliant.

yes that was why i was shocked Pruners. I'll look that up Lissy.

Yes, thank you, Lissy.

(And "Ted Hughes writes about animals" made me laugh Pofacedand proud.)