Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety

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'Manic cake-baking at midnight. After-school activities and young social lives that require dedicated and complex organisation. Mother-of-the-birthday-boy meltdowns. Ritalin days. No Sex. No Nights out. No Sleep. Ever. What's wrong with this picture?' That's the question Judith Warner asked herself after taking a good, hard look at the world of modern motherhood, at anxiouswomen at work and in bed with unhappy husbands. By moving personally between the worlds of stay-at-home and working motherhood, interviewing numerous women and reading and seeing what our popular culture and politicians had to offer on the subject of motherhood in our time, Warner comes to a stark conclusion: that what is now happening in the culture of motherhood is nothing less than perfect madness. In her words: 'This book is an exploration of a feeling. That caught-by-the-throat feeling so many mothers have today of always doing something wrong. And it's about a conviction I have that this feeling - this widespread, choking cocktail of guilt and anxiety and regret - is poisoning motherhood for women today. Lowering our horizons and limiting our minds. Sapping energy that we should have for ourselves and our children. The feeling has many faces, but it doesn't really have a name. It's not depression. It's not oppression. It's a mix of things, a kind of too muchness. An existential discomfort. A mess.' Written in a lively, accessible and often amusing tone, this is a book that all mothers caught up in the 'mess' will be able to relate to.