The Mommy Lobby

Oh, pity the mother torn between whether to be a top editor at a major magazine, or to pick her child up in person each day from an elite Manhattan day school. (Anna Wintour, I know first-hand, manages to do both, so there.) It's impossible, isn't it, when your child mistakes the caviar for jelly and--oops!--several hundred dollars down the drain. At which point you have to send your nanny alllll the way back to the store to pick up some more caviar, as well as some no-added-sugar jam, because no child of yours is eating Smuckers....

And yet... difficulty comes in all shapes and forms, and who's to say if misery as experienced by a wealthy housewife in a DC suburb is any less miserable than that which is experienced by a middle-class working mother in the Bronx? My impression has always been that, among people who are not in dire situations, who have a certain basic standard of living, who know that they will be able to eat and sleep, perhaps not eat or sleep anywhere spectacular, but whose lives are not continually in peril, happiness and misery both are evenly distributed between the super-rich and the too-poor-for-Prada-but-gosh-what-nice-stuff-they-have-at-the-GAP.

Which brings me to Sandra Tsing Loh's review of "Mommy Wars,"(via Arts and Letters Daily) a book about the struggles faced by wealthy, mostly-white women torn between high-powered yet luxurious careers and a very glamorous, well-staffed version of childrearing. Loh argues that these women have nothing to complain about, and ought to focus their energies on issues of class. The problem with this sort of argument is that every interest group is fighting for its own group's situation to improve. A person who chooses to fight for housewives, Arab-Americans, or the transgendered is not declaring that their particular cause is of more global importance than that of African-Americans, or of those outside America with still greater problems, but has simply picked a cause they, for whatever reason, care most about. It's not fair to expect a book about women choosing between careers and time with family to be one about racial segregation in America.

I agree with Loh that there's something wrong with conflating the problems of a very specific set of wealthy women in urban areas with those of American women in general. That is, I would imagine, the flaw of this book. Or perhaps the brilliance of it. Just as Philip Roth recasts anti-Semitism, rather than anti-black racism, as the major problem facing the US in the 20th century in The Plot Against America, these "mommies" pretend that their own, rather specific dilemmas affect half of the U.S. population. But all of Loh's cliched remarks, such as one about women with "iced mochaccino latte in hand," or her proud assertion that she'd have trouble even recognizing "Kate Spade bags or Ferragamo shoes," as if, say, drip coffee and Nine West are marks of moral superiority, don't do much to help her case. It's one thing to hate the rich for not doing enough for the poor. It's another to get all smug that you send your child to a diverse magnet school and not a majority-white private school (why not just a regular old public school?), or to look down on--or is it jealously at?--those who can afford everything, not just enough, and to assert that such people have it easy in every facet of their lives. Yes, I would be happy if presented with a West Village townhouse of my own, with room for several massive, fluffy dogs and several Israeli actors who may happen to be in town. But does that mean that a person living in such a house is happier than I am, in a very cramped three-bedroom in Prospect Heights? I'd have to say, I doubt it.