The Mommy Myth The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women

Taking readers on a provocative tour through thirty years of media images about mothers -- the superficial achievements of celebrity moms, the sensational coverage of dangerous day care, the media-manufactured "mommy wars" between working mothers and stay-at-home moms, and more --The Mommy Mythcontends that this "new momism" has been shaped by out-of-date mores, and that no matter how hard they try, women will never achieve it. In this must-read for every woman, Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels shatter the myth of the perfect mom and all but shout, "We're not gonna take it anymore!"

Susan J. Douglas is the Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies at The University of Michigan. She is author of Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination, which won the Hacker Prize in 2000 for the best popular book about technology and culture; Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media; and Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922. Where the Girls Are was widely praised, and chosen one of the top ten books of 1994 by National Public Radio, Entertainment Weekly and The McLaughlin Group and the paperback was chosen one of the top books of 1995 by Choice. Her journalistic articles have appeared in The Nation, Ms., In These Times, TV Guide, and The Progressive. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband and daughter. Meredith W. Michaels is in the philosophy department at Smith College where she teaches courses on reproductive ethics and feminist theory. Before joining the Smith department, she was a professor at Mount Holyoke and Hampshire Colleges. Her previous books include Fetal Subjects/Feminist Positions (1999), with Lynn Marie Morgan, and the top-selling philosophy text Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy (Fifth Edition 2003), with G. Lee Lee Bowie and Robert C. Solomon. She has lectured widely on gender and reproduction, and has written for Ms. and The Nation, and for other professional publications. She and her husband have five children and live in Amherst, Massachusetts.