The monster within lion sex7/21/2023 ![]() ![]() This book addresses the subject underlying the young mother’s reaction to her parenting class and the two articles, maternal ambivalence-that mixture of loving and hating feelings that all mothers experience toward their children and the anxiety, shame, and guilt that the negative feelings engender in them. The article was followed by Anna Quindlen’s Last Word column, titled “Playing God on No Sleep,” in which Quindlen admitted frankly that as horrified as she and others were by the murders, some part of her understood all too well how it could happen. On July 2, 2001, ten months before the publication of the New York Times article, the cover of Newsweek carried the shocking headline, “‘I Killed My Children’: What Made Andrea Yates Snap?” Andrea Yates was a depressed nurse, the mother of five children under the age of seven, who one morning, in the grip of severe postpartum psychosis, became desperate, lost control, and drowned all of them. I suspect that the majority of women taking that class shared her feelings. As this woman is both educated and emotionally sensitive, the degree of her relief was impressive. Although she had taken the class to learn more about child development, especially during toddlerhood, her most intense reaction was one of vast relief on discovering that other parents could feel exhausted, lonely, bored, and short of temper with their children. ![]() Two days before reading this article I had talked with a young woman in her mid-thirties, the mother of two small children, about a parenting class she had attended. Here was one expression of the current groundswell of revolt against the idealization of motherhood in the 1980s and 1990s resulting from the enthusiasm and perfectionism of the baby boomers as they took on the “job” of parenting. “Admitting to Mixed Feelings about Motherhood,” by Elizabeth Hayt, appeared as the lead article in the Styles section of the Sunday New York Times on May 12, 2002-Mother’s Day. Maternal ambivalence is a normal phenomenon. The Monster Within: The Hidden Side Of Motherhood By Barbara AlmondĪmbivalence is a combination of the loving and hating feelings we experience toward those who are important to us. Here & Now: Steve Almond reviews "bad parenting" books.Harvard Book Store: Barbara Almond reading in Cambridge, Mass.In her new book ," The Monster Within: The Hidden Side Of Motherhood," Almond explores mothers' negative feelings about themselves and their children and explains why those feelings need to be addressed and expressed.īarbara's son, author and Here & Now literary critic Steve Almond, also joins the conversation with his take on Barbara's parenting style. Barbara Almond calls it the hidden side of motherhood, and says mothers shouldn't be afraid to be more open about it. Writers from Erma Bombeck to Anne Lamott have confessed to harboring dark thoughts about their children, even though they loved them dearly. Facebook Email This article is more than 12 years old. ![]()
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