In defence of the imperfect mother

French writer Badinters new book on motherhood has created both admiration and anger

Her most recent battle cry: to defend women from the impossibility of being ‘the perfect mother,’ and even from the pressure to be a mother at all. “Women’s lives have grown more difficult in the last 20 years,” Badinter said in an interview. “Professional life is ever harder, ever more stressful and unattractive, and on the other hand, there is an accumulation of new moral duties weighing on women.”

Her new book, published in France, has created a stir among environmentalists, politicians, academics and mothers. In it, Badinter argues that the idealism of ‘green’ politics and a romanticised notion of naturalism are steering women away from careers and back into the home. “A revolution has taken place in our conception of maternity, almost without our realising it,” she writes. And that revolution, in Badinter’s view, has reduced women’s freedom and damaged their professional prospects.

In ‘Le Conflict: la femme et la mere’ (‘Conflict: The Woman and the Mother’), she contends that the politics of the past 40 years have produced three trends that have affected the concept of motherhood, and, consequently, women’s independence. First is what she sums up as ‘ecology’ and the desire to return to simpler times; second, a behavioural science based on ethology, the study of animal behaviour; and last, an ‘essentialist’ feminism, which praises breast-feeding and the experience of natural childbirth, while disparaging drugs and artificial hormones, like epidurals and birth control pills.

All three trends, Badinter writes, “boast about bringing happiness and wisdom to women, mothers, family, society and all of humankind.” But they also create enormous guilt in a woman who can’t live up to a false ideal. “The spectre of the bad mother imposes itself on her even more cruelly insofar as she has unconsciously internalised the ideal of the good mother,” she writes. Badinter, 66, a professor at the elite Ecole Polytechnique, says that the baby has now become “the best ally of masculine domination.”

It is an argument likely to resonate among American women who must decide whether to embrace the notion that breast-feeding, washing diapers and remaining home with their children is morally or politically superior to pursuing a career. In France, the book was the best-selling nonfiction title in the week after its release in February and was No. 2 for the next eight weeks. Because Badinter is the country’s most prominent voice on feminist topics, her works produce sometimes heated responses. Edwige Antier, a pediatrician, author and government legislator, called Badinter an “archaeo-feminist who knows very little about the hopes of today’s young mothers” and who is ‘in denial of motherhood.’

But Badinter thinks that new social pressures are hard for many women to resist. The ‘green’ mother, she says, is pushed to give birth at home, to refuse an epidural as the reflection of ‘a degenerated industrial civilisation’ that would deprive her of ‘an irreplaceable experience,’ to breast-feed for both ethological and environmental reasons and to use washable rather than disposable diapers — in other words, to discard the inventions ‘that have liberated women.’

Defend equality

Cecile Duflot, who has four children, ages 2 to 13, and is the leader of France’s Green Party, rejects the Badinter thesis. “Badinter mixes up ecology and ‘naturalism,’” said Duflot, 35. Ecology is about saving the planet, she said, “not a vision of nature and of our natural instincts.” “Greens have always been feminists and always defended equality in the sharing of household tasks,” Duflot said. There are indeed men who like to cook for their children, she added. “But for Elisabeth Badinter, it is unthinkable to imagine that cooking for a child means anything other than an obligation.”

Amandine Panhard, 29, has two young sons. She took two years off but returned to work as a project manager in Geneva, where her husband works. She says she thinks the Badinter thesis is a false one. “It’s not about disposable diapers or plastic baby bottles but each woman’s personal development, financial independence and the relations between husband and wife,” she said. “The real conflict is not between the woman and the mother, but between the woman and the company.”

Margaux Meffre, 30, is five months pregnant and works at a French energy company. She has some sympathy for Badinter’s argument. “She’s right: We’re coming back to a more conservative vision of the couple, to a woman who should stay home and raise her children. And this is paradoxical, because what we’ve earned is the right and the possibility to work, so there is double talk now.” The issue of breast-feeding creates guilt for women, said Meffre, who finds the idea unpleasant. She quoted her female gynecologist, who said that a bottle was better for a baby than an unhappy mother.

Badinter would likely agree with Meffre’s gynecologist. In an earlier book, Badinter argued that the maternal instinct itself does not exist. In the 18th century, French mothers were indifferent, and were pushed to care more about the upbringing of their children ‘only because of the persistent hectoring of intellectuals like Jean-Jacques Rousseau,’ according to a 1981 New York Times review of the English translation of the book, ‘Mother Love: Myth and Reality.’ The latest book suggests that our desire to return to a ‘more natural’ world distorts our views of motherhood. It is a deeply emotional issue for women, Badinter acknowledges. “I think each woman, someday, asks herself the question: ‘Do I want to be a mother? Do I want kids? How will I raise them?’ They deal with motherhood in a passionate way, as if it were the most fundamental choice of their lives.”

So she is not surprised that her new book has created both admiration and anger. Over the years, she has been both a thorn in the side of many feminists and also an inspiration. In 2003, she published a book called “Fausse Route,” or “Wrong Way,” which she described as reflections on 30 years of feminism. She blames feminists for inventing the idea of women as victims, putting men on trial and making maternity itself a political act.

Yet she is also considered a militant who defends women’s rights, and as a rightful heir, if not the only one, of Simone de Beauvoir. She says: “I’m not considered a traitor, but someone who is a little old-fashioned, an archaic feminist. But I’m convinced that the way feminism has been evolving will lead it to a dangerous dead end. I continue to think that gender equality comes with sharing roles and duties.”

Badinter is married to a lawyer, professor and politician, Robert Badinter, who fought successfully to end the death penalty in France. And she is the mother of three children. “I’m a mediocre mother like the vast majority of women, because I’m human, I’m not a she-cat,” she said. And did she breast-feed her children? A little annoyed, she declined to answer....