JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Surfing through the list of BloggerCon registrants I discovered Diane Danielson’s To work or not to work, that is the question … which linked to a Boston Globe piece by Cathy Young titled Rebalancing Work and Motherhood:

But does the feminist approach ignore many women’s desire to care for their children? So says a new book by clinical psychologist Daphne de Marneffe, “Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life.” De Marneffe is no conservative calling women back to their traditional roles. She embraces much of the feminist heritage, and she writes powerfully about the happiness that can be gained in integrating work and motherhood. But her case for “maternal desire” is an important corrective to feminism and a must-read for anyone concerned with family and gender issues.

Full-time motherhood, de Marneffe writes, is often framed in terms of female self-sacrifice — but such rhetoric ignores the pleasures of this way of life. “There is the sensual, physical pleasure of caring for small children; the satisfaction of spending most of our waking hours . . . with the people we love the most, taking care of their needs.”