What our Mothers didn't tell us: Why Happiness eludes the Modern Woman.

Danielle Crittenden, What our Mothers didn't tell us: Why Happiness eludes the Modern Woman, Simon & Shuster, 1999, 202 pages, $34.00 (Cdn).

"Agitprop for real women," read the Globe headline above its review of Danielle Crittenden's recent book. The reviewer went on to call it a "pale fire, a little can of sterno," and referred to the author as "academically challenged."

True, her book isn't intellectual, but that's because these issues affect women at a visceral level. We've spent long enough regarding women's role intellectually; it's time to examine it realistically.

Crittenden, wife of David Frum--the columnist who now lives in Washington, D.C.--and step-daughter of Peter Worthington, exposes the inequitable deals women have made with themselves, with men and with society in their pursuit of equality. She examines the contradictions of feminist ideology and calls for a re-examination of feminism's premises as well as its past, in order to reach a truce, not only with men, but with other women and with society.

After analyzing decades' worth of women's magazines, "all pessimistic on the chances for women's happiness," Crittenden sees the source of the modern women's unhappiness as the inevitable outcome of certain feminist beliefs. Under the headings marriage, love, sex, motherhood, aging and politics, she examines the practical effects of feminism on the lives of men and women.

Postponing marriage and motherhood

The feminist dogma that women do not need men or their protection to lead fulfilling lives, she says, has led women to pursue an exaggerated autonomy and to postpone marriage past the time when they have the sexual power to attain it. Out of fear of dependence, women prolong the illusion of youth, living the lives of 22-year-olds into their 30's. Having constructed this elaborate facade of independence, women have difficulty admitting their dependence on men for even temporary economic support, never mind love.

As for motherhood, feminism taught us to "be wary of" it, and to "do it when it's convenient." Feminism provides no preparation for the "most defining experience" of a woman's life. And just as free sex has blurred the signals between men and women, so has working motherhood brought confusion to the relationship between mother and young child. A working mother cannot know whether her child's misbehaviour is run-of-the mill naughtiness or a reaction to her absence.

It's also taught us to see only the externals of child rearing. As long as children are provided for physically and materially, they're in good hands. The need to go to work deprives many women of the time and energy necessary to share their lives more generously with their children.

This "need" to work is taken at face value by society. A "perceived lack of choice" is partly due to our level of taxation and our higher expectations for standard of living, but the driving force behind this need, Crittenden claims, is the greater prospect of divorce." Consequently, many women work even when there's no absolute need to do so. Feminism, she says, has taught women to live provisionally and "make decisions defensively."

That well-known feminist slogan, "the personal is political," has personalized politics to the point of absurdity. It's given rise to a "gender gap" in politics which manifested itself in the 1996 American election (and in Ontario where, according to a Globe headline, the Tories were "feeling the chill from women voters"). Women, especially single parents, became aware that they should be able to "connect emotionally" with candidates and look to them as a source of order and stability in their lives. Candidates obliged, paternalistically addressing local, private issues such as school uniforms and V-chips.

Some flaws

Crittenden's book is no glamourizing of the past, but an honest look at the effects of feminism on women and society. It's unfortunate, however, that Crittenden--who, I'm guessing, is an agnostic with some respect for Judeo-Christian ethics--didn't "come clean," as the Globe review put it, regarding her politico-economic views. It would have made for more fireworks. Since she merely hints that she holds fight-wing capitalist tendencies, the reader can only suspect her own disagreement, and argument becomes futile.

Her view of motherhood, generous for the times perhaps, still falls short of the Catholic view of motherhood as a lifelong vocation to be embraced rather than regarded as a brief episode of "six or seven or eight years" wedged into a lifespan of 80-some years. "Planning and arranging" our lives better to realize our aspirations outside motherhood is more indicative of the bourgeois attitude of control than an opening outward to the transcendent.

Despite these faults, Crittenden's book provides an opportunity to rethink the past and creates in the reader a wistfulness to combine the best of the past with the future. I've already begun to share the contents of this book with my daughter.

Kathline Nitsch is a freelance writer based in Toronto.