The Mother Puzzle: A New Generation Reckons with Motherhood

Schwartz, a 29-year-old journalist, examines her peers' ambivalence toward motherhood in a lightly researched personal discussion. Claiming that educated women of her generation face special conflicts in deciding when--if ever--to bear children, Schwartz argues that she and her contemporaries have been brought up to emulate their mothers in the home and their fathers in the workplace. She reviews the legacies of 1970s feminists (their advances as well as their drawbacks); invokes a number of pseudonymous young women's opinions about body image, fertility and career conflicts; and quotes Nancy Friday on the mother/daughter bond, Kim Chernin on the psychology of eating disorders, Nancy Chodorow on identity formation, etc. However, Schwartz makes only superficial use of her ``experts,'' depending on single authorities to support entire arguments and failing both to analyze the sources themselves and to address their critics. Her amiable report reflects little more than individual musings. First serial to Glamour and New Woman. (Apr.)