Are you Mad-Woman?
Perfection is demanded from her child. Handwriting must be neat, spelling mistakes corrected, supper must be healthy, after school activities productive. And playtime? There isn’t any after the Kumon maths and the karate. Perhaps you are starting to recognise yourself.
These “helicopter mothers”, always hovering over their children, are the subject of an alarming new book by Judith Warner, Perfect Madness, published this week. A former Newsweek journalist, she had two babies in Paris before moving back home with her journalist husband to settle in Washington with her small daughters. "
Her book, subtitled Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, has been a bestseller in America. She believes the insanity affecting transatlantic mothers is coming here. Her book serves as a warning shot to anyone who ever believed that stay-at-home mummydom was all about finger-painting and baking cookies. For every woman Warner knew who was truly fulfilled baking gingerbread men and tidying up Lego, she could name a dozen or more who were truly desperate.
She found herself in a maelstrom of über-mum competitive parenting. It wasn’t just a question of choosing the right kindergarten and school, it was the right kind of party bag and the right sort of cake. It was a case of stress, exhaustion and tears before bedtime, and that was just the mums. She realised they were harming themselves, their children and family life.
“In Washington I met women who were wading through life in severe depression. Childcare was expensive, they worried about getting into the right school. Many of them felt guilty about ever having any time to themselves.”
Read the full Times article here
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