Book review: 'Seven Myths of Working Mothers' by Suzanne Venker

Then there is the myth that we can give our children quality time in place of quantity time. This is just plain false. Children need our undivided attention, and they need lots of it. They do not need a committee drifting in and out of their lives. They need a mother and a father, and especially a mother during the early years of life. “What children need - what children have always needed - is time and attention, and the undivided loyalty of one adult, preferably their mothers. Anything less just isn’t good enough.”

Also questionable is the idea that we need two-income families. Do we need that second income, or have our expectations simply risen too high? True, our Western economies do make it very hard for families to survive on one income. But much of our perceived needs are instead mere wants. Is it the fourth TV or the third car we crave so much, that we abandon our children in droves to embrace the dream of having it all? Maybe less is more after all, and maybe we need to resist the sirens calls of Western materialism.

What matters is not having an over-abundance of things, but having quality relationships, especially family relationships. And a committed mother is essential to this outcome.

Indeed, motherhood is the most noble and most important of occupations. We have allowed feminist ideology to rob us of this truth. We have allowed a market-driven economy to convince us that we are by nature working, not relational, beings. We have allowed the lure of materialism and consumerism to cause us to put wealth ahead of family.

“Women must begin to view motherhood as something they get to do rather than something they have to squeeze into their hectic career lives. Motherhood is a career, not a sideline occupation.” And it is the most difficult, yet the most vital, career one can ever embark upon.

This may all smack of chauvinistic doubletalk. But recall that our author is a woman. And as she rightly concludes, “the traditional family structure is not something that holds women down. The traditional family structure simply keeps women from having to worry about producing an income while they work on the most important job of their lives.”