Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, by Judith Warner

Our book club enjoyed record attendance when we discussed this book last month, not only because of the topic at stake but also because we had the great chance and honor (Thanks to Laure!) to receive the author, Judith Warner.
Judith Warner lived in France and speaks fluent French. She enjoyed some aspects of our social system, such as our famous childcare (what do we do in the States when we have a baby? As women, do we stop working because there is either no affordable childcare or no childcare at all?). Judith Warner also enjoyed our more laid back attitude to life and child education, although some of us enlightened her on the French parental anxiety that seizes a parent once their children is of high school age (what will happen if our dear children cannot make it to a “grande école” or show more interest in becoming plumber or butcher or any other despised form of work in the eyes of the majority?). This educational anxiety is something both French and American parents share. However, what Judith Warner stressed, that we know only for those of us who live urban lives when in France, is the desire to find the “right school” from preschool to Ivy League and what consequence it has on a mother’s life. Driving the children around to more activities than they can really become experts at, finding the right doctor, the right preschool, getting the right kind of house, making sure that the life style is the right life style for what one would like one’s children to become, losing one’s identity as a woman on top of losing one’s job….these are some of the American mother and woman’s realities that Judith Warner details in her book. Her approach to a chronological study of motherhood behaviors in the US is fascinating although a bit difficult to relate to when one is French. It is probably the reason why the French translation of her remarkable book will only stress all the psychological effects, causes and consequences of Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, which will definitely make it look like “perfect madness”!
We had many more questions for the author, and it would be worth inviting her again to explore all these other topics. In the meantime, I can certainly recommend getting acquainted with the various voices, the result of a couple of years of interviews that she made not only in this part of the country, but also on the West Coast or in the Middle West, that angrily or less bitterly, give voice to deep frustrations. Although Judith Warner interviewed predominantly wealthy and well-educated women, these should be heard too: if they can express the need for change in this country in terms of childcare and pace of life, they could be giving a chance to less well-off or less educated women whose stress and anxiety levels must be even higher.
The American version of her book is now in paperback.

Sarah Pickup-Diligenti © April 2006