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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

She loves me, she loves me not
In an exhaustive -- and exhausting -- book on motherhood, anthropologist Sara Blaffer Hrdy breaks some big news: There is no such thing as maternal instinct.
By Susan Caba
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Sophie's choice
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Hand holding for moms
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[12/07/99]

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[12/07/99]

Trapped and torn
Locked in by a chain of protesters, I wanted to kick myself. My kids were at home and I was about to be pummeled for all the wrong reasons.
By Lisa Guide
[12/03/99]

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"Well, we'll take your boys," I offered, at a rare dinner. We've known them for almost a quarter of a century but we live 1,000 miles apart; I see them once, twice a year.

"And we'll take yours!" they agreed.

We clinked glasses to jocularly seal the deal.

Surely we must have better options. What about my local friends? Shouldn't I have friends whose children are the same age as my children, whom I see regularly, who will take my son in for an afternoon if I need a couple of hours by myself for, say, root canal work? Well, I don't. We barely see our friends. Most of them can't make room for lunch, much less a grief-stricken orphan.

One of these friends spent weeks trying to get off work for a mammogram. Her frantic schedule was not the only problem. She was terrified. "I can't die," she said. "I can't die now. It is out of the question. I have kids."

This line made me churlish. Would dying be peachy if she were childless? Are Americans so unable to admit to any personal longings that even a desire to live must be deemed selfish unless wrapped in the flag of Family Values?

I thought of the warped, silly sentimentality of "Titanic" -- the bad guy grabbing the baby so he could get the last seat on the lifeboat. What a cur! Yet if Kate Winslet had simply boarded the goddamn lifeboat when she was supposed to, Leonard DiCaprio would not have had to give her his seat on the piece of flotsam, and he would have lived. If that's generous love, give me selfishness. It's OK to want to live, even without children.

True to my friend's wildest fears, the mammogram turned up something suspicious. She had a biopsy, the news was good and she was told that she was in no danger. The last couple of developments happen much quicker on the page than they did in life, and I don't want to belittle her panic -- I'd gone through it myself -- but this friend acted, every step of the way, as if it were time to pick out her headstone. She simply knew she was going to die.

"Cut them off!" she begged her doctor, in re her breasts. "My kids need me!" Another woman I know remains convinced, despite the reassurances of several doctors, that she is at extremely high risk for breast cancer. She also worries about brain tumors from living too close to high-tension wires. And toxic mold. This is less fear for their children than, in my utterly unqualified psychiatric opinion, a plea for attention and appreciation. These women had been so buried in the relentless needs of their families that they feel invisible, even to themselves. And being too generous, too other-directed, to complain, they unconsciously seize on an opportunity to set the score straight. It's the grown-up version of a game we all play when we're little: "Won't you all miss me when I'm gone. And boy will you be sorry."

Now that my son is 8, he's quite capable of wishing me dead if I, say, make him do his homework. He understands about the insurance money. He has let it be known that in the event of my death he would like to be able to spend it at his discretion, without an intermediary. There are certain Pokémon cards he would like to buy, on Ebay. He would like a new bike with -- "Wheelies"? "Poppers"? He would also like to visit the surfing beach in Australia that he saw in "Endless Summer."

We have explained that the money is for college. "Why would I need to go to college," he retorts, "if I'm a millionaire?" He has now met Russell's girlfriend; he even liked her. But of course he cannot really conceive of losing us.

We all want to bequeath our children the dependable yet twinkling goodwill of Jimmy Stewart in Bedford Falls. But it's not as if "It's a Wonderful Life" was a piece of social realism in 1946. Every orphan is an orphan out of Dickens. For all our careful nest feathering, our son is about as buffered against ugly contingency as a passenger wearing a safety belt during a plane crash.

My brother Russell, it turns out, is on many parents' approved-guardian lists. In fact, he has agreed to take five little boys in addition to my own. This disturbed me at first, but now I try to look on the bright side: Half-a-dozen screaming boy-children in a one-bedroom, one-bath house on Potrero Hill might rouse themselves to some amusing food fights.

My brother and his girlfriend, who are heavily involved with virtual reality R&D, don't do Christmas, but I hear they have a really good homeopath. It's a charmingly high-concept extended family -- not a wonderful life, perhaps, but it will have to be good enough.
salon.com | Dec. 10, 1999

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