MOTHERING HEIGHTS: Reclaiming Motherhood from the Experts

by Sonia Taitz ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 1992

Taitz, a columnist for Child magazine, offers an uneven collection of short essays loosely linked by the theme of learning both to resist the hype that modern parents are bombarded with and to trust your own instincts in raising your children. The author aims her book at a rarefied audience: mostly urban (primarily Manhattan) women, affluent, well educated, professionally accomplished--but reduced to utter insecurity by their love of their babies and their fear of doing the wrong thing. Into the breach stampede the Experts, who recognize rich possibilities in such naked fear and ambition. It begins with the baby nurses who demand to be picked up in limos and whose first words on entering the apartment are, ""What's for dinner?"" It continues with the educational-toy-of-the-month clubs; the newsletters that promise to teach your child the ""fight"" values with minimal involvement on your part (phew!); the gurus of discipline and limit-setting, whose seminars all around town are constantly packed with mothers who have made parenting a replacement for their former hard-driving careers; the nursery-school admissions applications (""Has your child asked the meaning of abstract words such as 'peace,' 'justice' and 'infinity'?"")...and on and on. In that vast territory reputedly known to media execs in L.A. and N.Y.C. as ""the flyover,"" it is difficult to imagine most of these pieces being received with anything other than bemusement and incredulity. Taitz's descriptions of her own children and her feelings for them, however, would play anywhere--they are touching, sincere, endearingly besotted in a way all mothers will recognize.

Pub Date: April 21, 1992

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992

Categories: NONFICTION