Remember the “mommy wars”?
The term started to gain popularity in the early 1990s and was the subject of magazine features, blog posts, and even a 2006 book with essays by high-profile writers like Jane Smiley and Susan Cheever. In the beginning, the term referred largely to conflicts between moms who worked for pay and those who stayed home with their kids.
But over time, it expanded to include a whole host of “rivalries between mothering philosophies and practices,” from sleep training to breastfeeding to screen time to discipline, Jenna Abetz, a professor of communication at the College of Charleston who has studied American motherhood, told Vox. “More than ever, it feels like moms are fragmented into these smaller and smaller camps and forced to sort of justify and defend their own parenting choices.”
May 10, 2021
By Brigid Schulte and Cassandra Robertson
Ms. Schulte is the director of the Better Life Lab at New America, a progressive think tank, and the author of “Overwhelmed.” Dr. Robertson is a senior policy and research manager at New America.
Caring for others runs in the Williams family. Danielle Williams, 52, and her daughter, Brittany, 35, have spent their entire adult lives caring for others: doing the unpaid labor of tending to family members and looking after older and disabled adults in their jobs as home care workers.
Their workdays are largely similar. Both mother and daughter rise early and make a lengthy commute up to one hour by car for Danielle and up to two hours by bus for Brittany. They make their clients’ meals. They shop for groceries and clothes, pick up medicine, run to the post office. They care for pets. They dress and undress, change diapers and give baths. They assist with medication. They dust, vacuum and do the laundry. They talk and list