Warner, Judith

Judith Warner, born July 4, 1965, is an accomplished American writer who primarily focuses on politics and women's issues. In terms of contemporary mothering issues, Warner writes a New York Times weekly blog, Domestic Disturbances, which covers a wide range of domestic and parenting issues. But it is her book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety (2005) for which she is best known. In the book, Warner explores contemporary motherhood in “the age of anxiety.” Warner argues that American mothering is a “selfless” and all-consuming form of mothering that makes women chronically stressed and guilty, and encourages women to blame themselves for the stress and guilt they feel.

As a result, Warner also argues that the “mommy mystique” also works so that mothers feel too much guilt to ask for the social service support they need to make mothering more manageable. Thus, Warner concludes that American mothers need to begin to resist the “madness” of this style of mothering, while American culture needs to create public policies that support parenting and give mothers relief. Specifically, she argues that mothers need more affordable, flexible, well-regulated, and high-quality daycare.

Warner's two children were born when she was working in France, where there is a social-service net for mothers that, she argues, allows French mothers both to mother and work and to prioritize their relationships with other adults rather than with children. When she returned to the United States, she was surprised by how frazzled and guilt-ridden her American mothering friends were and how little childcare support—both ideologically and via social-service programs—there was for contemporary American mothers. Warner wrote Perfect Madness to explore the American parenting culture that she describes as a “widespread, choking cocktail of guilt and anxiety and resentment and regret” that “is poisoning motherhood for American women today… And drowning out thoughts that might lead us, collectively, to formulate solutions.”

In the book, Warner argues contemporary women are practicing a “super selfless” form of mothering that is both a new “mommy mystique” and what she also describes as “the mess.” More specifically, Warner argues the mess of the mommy mystique is “the [Page 1262]belief that we can and should control every aspect of our children's lives, that our lives are the sum total of our personal choices, that our limitations stem from choosing poorly and that our problems are chiefly private, rather than public in nature.…” This mommy mystique is also what causes mothers both great anxiety and guilt because they are always striving for “perfection” in terms of their parenting and their ability to provide the educational, social, and material resources they have to their children's needs and future success. Moreover, Warner argues that mothers live within an “age of anxiety” such that maternal anxiety is now “the thread of the energy that keeps us going: propelling us to soccer games, keeping us mentally awake in the evenings to supervise homework, to oversee the perfection of the ‘high school career.’” As a result, Warner concludes the mommy mystique asks women to use all their energy toward mothering, turning “energy that could be used to demand social change inward into control-freakish-ness. …” Consequently, Warner argues women must resist the mommy mystique and begin to demand more social support for mothering. More specifically, Warner argues women must ask for policies that support parenting and give parents relief. She also argues mothers need more affordable, flexible, well-regulated, and high-quality daycare.

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