Mask of Motherhood: How Becoming a Mother Changes Everything and Why We Pretend It Doesn't

Erma Bombeck meets Naomi Wolf--a funny, articulate, right-on-the-money look at being a new mother. When you got your period, your best friend gave you Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. In college you got a copy of The Feminine Mystique from your roommate. Your sister gave you What to Expect When You're Expecting when you were pregnant. Now you're a mommy; give yourself The Mask of Motherhood. After endless talk of "juggling" work and family, and "having it all," the first generation of born-and-bred feminists are actually becoming mommies -- and they are learning firsthand about the great divide that separates the childless from parents. That smile frozen on their faces (Maushart's "mask of motherhood") is the pose they have adopted to disguise the mix of rage, elation, and confusion they feel about being so misled, so misinformed, so downright unprepared for motherhood. Nothing currently in print adequately prepares new mothers for the joy and the pain of motherhood. Why, Maushart asks, when we are so up-front about everything from orgasms to liposuction, do we maintain such a conspiracy of silence about motherhood: about the impossibility of creating a "balanced" life and about the effect on marriages, friendships, relationships with our own parents, sex, self-esteem, and world view? The current generation of young mothers has been exposed to the most fervent rhetoric about women's lives and the least firsthand experience of motherhood of any women in history. This diabolical combination is what Maushart, a social scientist by training and a mother of three young children by choice, explores with wit, candor, and passion in this groundbreaking, unforgettable work.