The Boston Review on Elizabeth Badinter’s “The Conflict”

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow has a very interesting review of Elizabeth Badinter’s book The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women:

Now an American version of Le Conflit has been released, with the title The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women. In the book, Badinter lambastes the return of motherhood to the center of women’s lives, a shift she observes throughout the West. She examines a wide assortment of policy and cultural factors at play since the 1970s. But her chief culprit is an ideology she calls ​“naturalism,” the belief in the infallible wisdom of nature. She sees naturalism at the heart of breastfeeding absolutism, as well as other trends, such as un-medicated childbirth and cloth diapers. In the name of nature, all of these deprive women of conveniences that could ease the burdens of motherhood. ​“Nature has become a decisive argument for imposing laws or dispensing advice,” she writes. ​“It is now an ethical touchstone, hard to criticize and overwhelming all other considerations.” [Boston Review]

I don’t normally take much of an interest in debates about childrearing practices, but I’m glad a philosopher is critiquing the fuzzy-headed nature worship that permeates so much of our culture.