Amy Bloom weighs in on newborn addiction.

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Katie Roiphe and the newborn as narcotic

A guest post from Amy Bloom:

I'm glad that Katie Roiphe is crazy about her baby. I was crazy about my babies, too. Even better, I am still crazy about my children, now that they are adults. I don't fault her for the headline, as I'm sure that was chosen for her. What baffles me is her claim that somehow feminists have failed to acknowledge, in writing, that many lucky mothers love their babies. (We do understand that that is a gift, right? That many mothers find themselves unable to experience that lovely, dopey, mind-altering attachment?) Really? No word on this from Grace Paley, Tillie Olson, Adrienne Rich, Ursula LeGuin, Bronwen Wallace? This seems to be an odd, blank spot in Ms. Roiphe's reading. But not so odd, I guess, if one prefers to read Rebecca West and Virgina Woolf. It is true that there is not so much in literature on the glorious romance with the baby, for the same reason that happy marriages, conflict-free lives, and blissful vacations figure so rarely in literature.

I'm pretty sure that some feminists were keen to point out (since there had been so many thousand years of silence on the subject) that motherhood was harder than lots of nonmothers thought. I'm equally sure that many feminists did—and do—adore their children, and many even wrote about it in the past and blog about it now, for better and worse.

Photograph by Getty Images.

Tags: amy bloom, feminism, katie roiphe, newborns

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Emily Bazelon is a founding editor of Double X, and a writer and editor at Slate.

Comments

تحميل برامج تحميل برنامج

By: beckham_250 | Sun, 09/20/2009 - 06:55

تحميل برامج تحميل برنامج تحميل برامج نوكيا برامج
تحميل ماسنجر تحميل موبايل موقع دليل مواقع

One more fem off the top of my head

By: Madeline H | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 13:37

Adding to commenter Elizabeth's and Bloom's list is Katha Pollitt. She's got a chapter in her book Learning to Drive about googly-eyed love for her baby girl.

qualifications for the F card

By: mmesandrine | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 13:33

this claim - that feminists don't like babies, their own, or otherwise - falls in line with other completely untrue claims that stereotype feminists. people of all walks of life, including mothers and fathers, act their feminism in different ways. there are feminists who like babies, high heel shoes, sex, men, lingerie, cooking, cleaning, i don't know, whatever else you can think of. let's not sell women, or feminists, short.

- shiyuan

A treasured gift indeed

By: blue lucia | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 12:08

I'm in the childless by choice camp myself. I have enormous respect and admiration for women who choose motherhood -- and I love babysitting for my friends so they can have a night out with their spouse -- but I just can't see myself in the role.

The babysitting is great ... but so is leaving the kid behind at the end of the evening and heading home to my partner and our dogs, who will never follow me through a grocery store screaming at the top of their lungs because I won't buy them candy, who will grow up to be teenagers and tell us we're the worst parents ever, who will never get knocked up or addicted to drugs or turn out to be shiftless wastrels when I know they have so much potential, and who can be left home by themselves (even locked in a crate) for several hours at time without Child Protective Services coming to investigate me.

Some friends have told me that it is different with your own child, that I would love my own child with a blinding passion that makes all the sacrifices absolutely worthwhile.

And maybe I would. Maybe, if I knew for sure that I would, I might go home to my partner and say, "let's have a baby."

But I'm terribly afraid that I wouldn't be addicted to my baby. I don't feel like mommy material. I think I would resent all the sacrifices. I imagine myself as the mother whose child winds up thirty years later explaining their unhappy childhood to a girl/boyfriend or a therapist, "My mom is basically a good person, she just never really knew what to do with a child."

And I love my life as it is. I was never one of those girls who played with baby dolls, who looked forward to getting married and having children. I don't crave children, and I don't need them to complete my personal fairy tale -- I've already got my happily ever after.

So I'll stay as I am: childless by choice, but occasionally wondering wistfully what my life, and my child, might have been like if I had chosen otherwise.

Yes!

By: Elizabeth_Davis | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 11:16

Thank you, Amy.
I'd like to add to your list. Hopefully others will, too.
Baby Love, Rebecca Walker
Spiritual Midwifery, Ina May Gaskin
Woman and Nature, Susan Griffin...

Feminists Do Write About Newborn Addiction

Comments

تحميل برامج تحميل برنامج

By: beckham_250 | Sun, 09/20/2009 - 06:55

One more fem off the top of my head

By: Madeline H | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 13:37

qualifications for the F card

By: mmesandrine | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 13:33

A treasured gift indeed

By: blue lucia | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 12:08

Yes!

By: Elizabeth_Davis | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 11:16

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The Root

The Big Money

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Washington Post

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