MATERNAL DESIRE

The author brings her experiences as a mother of three, her expertise as a psychologist, and her sympathies as a feminist to a consideration of women’s powerful desire to nurture.

Wanting to care for children is a major feature of many women’s lives, de Marneffe argues forcefully, but our individualistic culture has devalued and misinterpreted this desire. In the writings of feminist theorists she finds an erroneous conflation of femininity with motherhood and of housework with child care that has obscured the unique character of mothering, making it difficult to understand women’s options and possible sources of oppression. Further, the author states, psychoanalytic thinking has not fully explored the strength of maternal desire or the idea that a woman expresses her subjectivity through caring for children. We need a psychology that makes sense of the experience of motherhood, de Marneffe asserts, a psychology that considers the relationship between women’s individual aspirations and their maternal impulses and offers a way to think about and manage the conflicts between them. She calls for open discussion of this topic so that women can come to a clearer understanding of maternal desire and better comprehension of their own needs and conflicts. Chapters on “Adolescence,” “Fertility,” and “Fathers,” look at the stages of life and aspects of human experience most affected by maternal desire. De Marneffe is at her most accessible when writing as a parent; other mothers will have no difficulty recognizing the epiphanies she experiences. When she dons her professional robes, her prose becomes more demanding, but it is here that she probes most deeply into the nature of maternal desire and the misconceptions surrounding it.

A work of personal conviction backed by scholarly research, sure to arouse controversy among feminists and psychologists.