Motherguilt

Mothers today feel guilty. The parenting and women's magazines ask you to weigh how your job affects your child. Employers blame you for taking family time. Politicians blame you for the decline of "family values." Do mothers really deserve all this blame? In her provocative new book, Motherguilt, psychologist Diane Eyer probes the origins of this culture of blaming mothers - and encouraging them to blame themselves. She asserts that it is the very sources of parenting advice to which mothers turn for help that make them feel guilty. In fact, parenting experts and social scientists provide the foundation for the growing chorus of motherblame. Writing with scholarship, passion, and wit, Dr. Eyer argues that scapegoating mothers for society's ills is merely a convenient smoke screen for the real culprit: the national neglect of children and our utter failure to provide a national child-care program. This revolutionary book champions mothers against the bogus accusations of science and politics and paves the way for refocusing our concern on our nation's children.