Of course, just as cockfights don't really have much to do with the choices made by the hapless fighting cocks, the mommy wars also have little to do with the choices women make. When it comes to the decision of whether to seek paid employment or stay home, most American mothers face virtually no choice at all.
Some mothers find that working makes no economic sense because the cost of commuting and child care would exceed their take-home pay. Most mothers face the opposite problem. Even if they want to spend more time with their children, their paychecks are the only thing that keeps food on the table. Women with the luxury of choosing are in the minority.
Yet as Steiner's book makes clear, even this privileged group -- whose stories are at the heart of the book -- find that motherhood is no bed of roses. "Mommy Wars" contains essays by 26 mothers, most well educated and affluent. These are women with as many options as women can get in this world. Most came of age after the first wave of feminism and assumed that they would combine motherhood with a meaningful career -- until their early aspirations collided agonizingly with the twin brick walls of the typical American workplace and typical American males.
Their bosses scowl when they ask for more child-friendly work arrangements. Their male colleagues have wives who handle snow days, birthday parties and children who throw up at 3 a.m. But with rare exceptions, their husbands are bewildered or resistant when asked to take on more of the child-care duties. In the end, exhaustion and frustration force most into choosing between family and career.
This is the book's deep, painful message: When it comes to work and family, it's still very much a man's world.
Like the Balinese cockfight, the spectacle of the mommy wars tells us very little about how women feel about each other -- but quite a lot about men, gender relations and the cold, corporate world of work.
