Elisabeth Badinter versus Laura Schlessinger: Motherhood

Elisabeth Badinter, the distinguished French scholar and professor at the École Polytechnique, has published a new book entitled Le conflit: La femme et la mere (Flammarion 2010).  In the book, Professor Badinter mourns the fact that women are increasingly valuing the role of motherhood over the realization of their talents and skills in the work place.  For she thinks that this is tantamount to none other than a return to male dominance.  A moment’s reflection should suffice to show that this is not so at all.  It is in this regard that I find the views of Dr. Laura Schlessinger so very telling and to the point.

The issue, of course, is not whether women are capable of doing brilliant things in the work place.  We know that they are.  To be sure, there are men who cannot seem to wrap their mind around this truth.  However, the point most certainly cannot be that unless every man accepts women as fully equal, then the struggle must go on.  I say this because unanimity regarding matters of equality would appear to be an impossibility, whether we are talking about the sexes or ethnic groups.  Indeed, there are women who believe that women are superior to men with regard to morals; and there are blacks who believe that blacks are superior to whites with respect to morals.

At any rate, Laura Schlessinger’s point is twofold: (1) If adequately informed women would prefer to devote their lives to raising children rather than excelling in the work place, then surely there is nothing wrong with women making that choice?  (2) There something majestic about motherhood that has no equal in terms of other activities.

There are good reasons why we suppose that (2) is true.  In their evolutionary reasons why (2) is true.  These reasons fall under the category of parental investment.  Women put their lives on the line to bring a child into the world.  For that very reason, it stands to reason that there is a bond between mother and child that has no equal between father and child.  This is why in the movie “Sophie’s Choice,” for example, it is the mother rather than the father who is asked to choose which son shall live and which son shall die.

Such a choice would of course be painful for the father.  However, because the mother has brought each child into the world, such a choice has a pain for the mother that simply has no equal in the life of the father.  This we instinctively grasp.

At any rate, what intrigues me is that Professor Elisabeth Badinter has entirely discounted this reality regarding women and motherhood.  Or, to put the point another way, it is as if Badinter takes motherhood to be on a par with any other task that a woman perform.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I do not believe that biology is destiny.  I do not think for a moment that a woman must become a mother.  Even if there is a certain “pull” in that direction, I certainly think that a woman might resist that pull.  None of us can do everything; and a woman might very well think that all things considered she would rather do something else rather than be a mother.

Just so, it is surely understandable why a woman might want to become a mother.  I mean if we can understand why a man might want to become a father, then surely we can understand a woman’s wanting to become a mother.  And if a woman should bring life into the world, why would she not want to stay home and nurture the very life that she brought into the world?

What can be more incongruous than bringing life into the world and then having someone else raise it?  Why, nowadays, we seem to attach more importance to interacting with our cars and gadgets than we do with the children whom we bring into the world.

In a word, Dr. Schlessinger’s point is that there is no greater gift a mother can give to her child than staying home and raising the child. This follows from the simple truth that every child wants to be loved; and nothing is more conducive to that feeling than the presence of a parent.  The mother stands as first choice in this regard owing to the sublime truth that the child issues from her body.

The heart of Badinter’s problem is that she is too busy seeing equality as a measure for measure activity.  Women and men are moral equals; and it is a poignant truth that we see that we see that reality more clearly now than we saw it in the past.  But this moral equality hardly means that women and men match one another in their behaviors.

What never ceases to amaze me is that we accord moral “natural” differences to ethnic groups than we do to women and men.  So it is although it is a brute fact that the differences we accord to ethnic groups have no moorings whatsoever in evolutionary theory.  This brings out the power of ideology.

Badinter is a brilliant philosopher.  However, she is driven by an ideological view of women.  She thinks of motherhood as a form of oppression and that reveals none other than a deep, deep hostility towards both women and, in particular, children.

One does not have to believe that women should be kept barefoot and pregnant in order to grasp that there is an extraordinary majesty to motherhood.  I believe no such thing.  I have never believed such a thing.  Yet, I regard motherhood as a tremendous gift.  Likewise, I have enormous respect for women who have excelled in roles that do not pertain to mothering.  Indeed, I am entirely at-ease the mother and the brilliant female research scientists.  Just so, my enormous respect for each woman flows from two very different sources, just as my enormous respect for a male fire fighter and a male professor flows from two very different sources.  I can see marvelous moral equality in all of these.  It is such a pity that Professor Elisabeth Badinter cannot.

It is very reveling that so often people talk about freedom and then they insist that another is free only if she or he is acting as they want that person to act.  Even the Almight holds that human beings are perfectly free to go against His will.  So it is very striking indeed that people often accord human beings less freedom than God does.