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I had no business reading or even perusing the "books" section of the New York Times yesterday morning. There was the baby who takes pleasure in literally gnawing on me (he laughs when told "No" in the Severe Voice). There was laundry to do. There was the thicket of Felix's crayons to collect (while encouraging him to clean up with one of those insidious Clean Up songs that are catchy but not entirely effective).
But I was reading it online between bites (Sebastian's) and I saw an article about a woman and her book. Meg Wolitzer has written a book called The Ten Year Nap about stay-at-home mothers (or in the current lingo, "moms who opt out") and their fancy lives. She says quite pointedly that she didn't want to write a polemic or anything that was controversial. She merely wanted to write about this segment of the population and their experiences (in New York). This is fair enough, but I do wonder why this is so compelling. What is it about mothers who don't work that makes people want to write about them so much? I'm thinking about The Nanny Diaries a little bit here (and, no, I haven't read it), but I realize that book is more of an expose, a topical revenge tale, but there's also Little Children which is about stay-at-home mothering and its discontents. These stories always seem to have a lot of moralizing and punishment in them, which is a bit depressing, but I suppose given how guilty mothers feel all the time about everything, moralizing and punishment are pretty obvious things to include.
I am not really objecting to the fact of these books (and movies), as much as I am confused that they're emerging as their own sub-genre. Where is the novelty? Is there novelty? Non-working mothers aren't really anything new.
posted by Elise at 9:02 AM
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