Reading group guide (written by Miriam Peskowitz)

Welcome to the Reading Group guide for The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother?. This book is a great book for women to read together. I can already hear women sharing their stories as mothers who want to lead rich and rewarding lives, take care of themselves and their kids, and think together about our place in the world and how to make things better for mothers and parents.

I’m in a book group too. I know it can be tough to move from uncorking the wine and chatting happily with the other fun and fabulous women in the room to actually talking about the book. Here are some questions to get the conversation started:

The book begins with Rachel visiting her old friends in LA and saying that none of the moms seem happy, whether they’re at home or working, but that no one’s really talking about this, that we all have too much at stake in looking like we have it all together. Do you agree? What’s the difference between our usual talking and venting frustrations, and really talking?

How did you become a mother? And how did you decide whether to be at home, to work fulltime, to work part time? Did it feel like a decision? What makes you happy about it? What is frustrating?

Have you worked for pay while raising your kids? What makes it easier? What makes it harder? Does your boss and workplace care about helping parents? Do they have policies that help all parents, or does everyone need to negotiate their own deal?

I was shocked to learn that 37% of mothers work part time. Were you shocked by this? Have you worked part time? Why is this both a solution and an inequity at the same time?

In October 2003 The New York Times published “Opt-Out Revolution,” an article that set new terms for talking about motherhood. It claimed that mothers opt out of the workplace, that on their own they choose to leave good, high-paying professional jobs. On the other hand, Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff argues that these women are experiencing a “squeeze-out,” that rigid workplaces are forcing mothers to leave by not accommodating their responsibilities as mothers. Where do you stand on this debate?

One of my closest friends while my daughter was very young was Anita, from chapter 6. Our daughters went to Kids Day Out together a few mornings each week, and we became fast friends. Anita and her family are African American, and when I sat down later to write the book, I wanted to make sure that the mothers I had in mind included all of us, since the media mostly focuses on white mothers. Has your experience of motherhood crossed America’s racial lines? America’s class lines? Does it help to keep in mind our different experiences of social possibility, and our different histories as mothers? Has it been hard to find preschools and daycares that are racially integrated?

I loved becoming a mother. I adore my daughter, even on the hard days, and for the first time in my life, being a mother was a chance to hang out and relax with other moms at the playground. I looked forward to packing the stroller each day, just as now, I look forward to the casual conversation with other parents when I pick my daughter up at school. I know that many mothers experience the playground as a place not of relaxation, but a place of judgment. What can we do to make this better? When we hear judgment and mommy-war talk, how can we

When I interviewed author Faulkner Fox, in chapter 1, she said that when she talked with mothers, the number one issue on their minds was the judgment they feel. The Truth behind the Mommy Wars focuses mostly on the judgments coming our way from the media Mommy Wars. What kinds of judgments do you feel? Where do they actually come from? What are the judgments you make of other mothers, and are these warranted? It’s good to have opinions, so what’s the difference between rightfully held opinions about childraising and judgments that hurt? What would real support of each other, through our differences in style and values, look like?

While writing the book, I constantly wondered whether I truly believed that things can improve for mothers, and for fathers who want to actively parent. Sometimes I felt despondent. Other times, I became excited. When I interviewed Judith Stadtman Tucker, of Mothers Movement Online, she talked about this being “the embryonic moment” of a new movement based on better lives for mothers. Do you feel optimistic about changes? Do you feel that true change is possible? What are the conditions for it? How might it happen?

The other day I saw four moms getting together for the babies at a café. The owners of Infusion café made a special area in the back for kids. There’s a kid’s-sized table with chairs, a large chalkboard, games and books. The moms were ending their isolation, and the café owners were contributing space toward ending this isolation. Both acts—gathering, and making it possible to gather—create space for mothers to be in public, for mothers to talk. What small acts in your life make mothering easier, better?

In the epilogue, I quote my friend Elizabeth, who says that when it comes to social change, it’s better to feel slightly ridiculous than totally passive. If you weren’t afraid of feeling slightly ridiculous, what would you do to make change for motherhood? How would you speak out, and what would you say?

The other day my friend Eileen, the author of a forthcoming book on motherhood and Quaker spirituality, handed me the DVD, Searching for Deborah Winger. “I think you’ll want to watch this,” she said. The film is narrated by Rosanna Arquette, and features interviews with an array of actresses that stretches from Jane Fonda and Whoopi Goldberg and Gwyneth Paltrow to 20 others I didn’t even know. All talked about their lives as women and as mothers in the film industry. I was touched by their honesty. They really talked. About the pressure to look young and beautiful forever. About how the entire industry is set up around men’s lives and the worst of male values, and about how frustrated all of them are, especially as they age and want interesting parts for women in their thirties and forties and fifties. Searching made me think that if these very public women can speak so honestly about the frustrations that our society places upon women, the rest of us can too. What are the possibilities for such public speaking-outs for us less famous women?

It’s hard to talk about motherhood these days without someone asking the Desperate Housewives question! And now ABC plans a fall show, Soccer Moms, starring Sex and the City’s Kristin Davis, about two suburban moms who become private detectives. The media has discovered moms. But as I show at the end of chapter one, advertising marketers are telling the media that attention to motherhood is a way to sell women more products. The DH images are both stereotypical and helpful. The scene everyone talks about—where Lynnette has a nervous breakdown on the soccer field, her friends tell her that motherhood was terribly hard for them too, and she responds, Why doesn’t anyone tell you this—was something new and remarkable, a scene we haven’t before seen on TV or at the movies. What do we think of this new attention? What are the ways that it helps and what are the ways that it harms? What images of ourselves as mothers do we want to see in the media? Imagine that you’re part of the writing team for Desperate Housewives or similar shows: what would we be seeing on screen then?

Of course, for more ideas, you can check my blog, www.playgroundrevolution.com.