タイトルに惹かれて図書館で借りたLeslie Morgan Steiner著作のMommy Wars。
この本は、専業主婦と兼業主婦、そして子育てと平行しながらパートタイムで仕事をした経験のある著者がそれぞれの立場を紹介しようと、インタビューを集めたもの。
最初は、かなり引き込まれて読み始めたが、エリート意識が鼻について読み手の気分を損ねてしまう。
筆者はハーバード大出身で現在はワシントンポストの重役。離婚歴を持つが現在は再婚しており、子どもは３人。
子育ての傍ら働くことを選択した母親とそうじゃない母親のそれぞれの思いやジレンマを生の声を通して表現しようとした試みは面白いが、インタビューに取り上げた人たちは皆アイビーリーグ大卒のジャーナリズム関係者でしかもイーストコースト在住。
アマゾンのレビューでは、サンプルの狭さと偏りに対して、かなりの批判が掲載されている。そのひとつを紹介してみる。http://www.amazon.com/Mommy-Wars-Stay-at-Home-Choices-Families/product-reviews/1400064155/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar
My main complaint is with the editor, Leslie Morgan Steiner, for choosing such similar women to contribute. Most are from the Upper East Side or West Side of Manhattan (no one from below 42nd St, muchless the midwest!), most are affiliated with the publishing world (editors, journalists, columnists, etc.), most are the type of person to specify that she went to "Harvard" or "an ivy league college" even when this specificity has little to do with the essay. They had "Type A" personalities (few spoke about having messy homes); they wrote with that contemporary columnist tone of "aren't I so cute and current?"; more than half a dozen of them shared the EXACT SAME ANECDOTE of being unpopular at cocktail parties because now they were "just moms." (I personally haven't been to a cocktail party in years--I associate them with the pretentious phase I went through and outgrew after college). There is so much more to say and learn about motherhood than the string of essays I've read about one's cocktail party cache going down the drain.
To be fair, several essays were very lovely, vulnerable, and honest. One wrote of post-partum depression, another about the legacy or her mother's suicide, another about the dilemma of helping the daughter of an abusive mom. These and several other essays had, in my opinion, that special quality one reads in great literature. They transcend the ego of the writer and touch upon that soft and mysterious part of the reader, and linger.
But for the most part, I was very annoyed that the part-time editor, who changes into her yoga pants after 2:00 pm every day, had cast such a small net of contributors. Part of me wants to go through the essays and pull quotes that struck me in terms of narcissism and self-entitlement, but I'll refrain.
日本の子育て支援やワークバランス関係の政策も、エリート学識者たちの体験のみならず、一般の専業主婦及び兼業主婦者の生の声をバランスよく集めていくことで、政策が一人歩きすることを避けられるに違いない。
