While I'm on a Wendell Berry kick, here's a link to a Newsweek article about harried mothers. No doubt there are many pressures, personal, familial and social, for mothers to overdo things. No doubt the loss of community supports makes it more difficult yet. This article links the current generation of mothers' malaise to being taught an economic model of motherhood in during the "Reagan Revolution" that is based on competition and intrepid individual achievement. It also goes on to say that "[i]nstead of blaming society, moms today tend to blame themselves."
Well, I may be a grumpy guy, but I'm not about to put myself out there by suggesting mothers should blame themselves. But this article raises questions about the proper way of helping mothers in society. The author lists five particular solutions, all of which are public policy-level. What worries me about only focusing on the public sphere is that one must then assume that the current relation of individual to society is the appropriate or inevitable one, that though, as the author admits, "life happens," and it is hard, the individual nonetheless should have as many policy-supports to allow her to choose the life she desires.
Berry bemoans the fact that men have been forced to work away from the home, and would certainly disapprove of the idea of developing child care so women can follow them "freely." If I could get a little philosophical, how free can one be when pursuing the desires of the self when those desires have already been constructed by an external, inhumane system of power (I assume that capitalism, left to its own devices, without intentional human intervention, will be inhumane). Aristotle says we are social beings by nature, and so whatever happiness is, it will include within it the network of our social relations - that is, it will not be an individualistic attainment. But Aristotle never met Rush Limbaugh or "W"...or Hobbes or Machievelli for that matter.
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