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# Caitlin's New Book
- URL: https://thedailyeudemon.com/4378/
- Published: 2006-04-12T10:08:38.000Z
- Updated: 2006-04-12T10:08:38.000Z
- Author: Eric Scheske
- Tags: Current Affairs, Family, #wpChunk

Fine stylist Caitlin Flanagan has waded further into the feminist wars with a book on working mothers. The *[LA Times](http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-et-flanagan12apr12,0,487361.story?coll=la-home-headlines&ref=thedailyeudemon.com)* has a pretty a good piece about it. Excerpt:

> These are the women who seem to be a natural audience for the 44-year old Flanagan, who lives in Hancock Park with her husband and two young sons. She socializes in liberal circles, and she writes about working mothers' struggles: to keep households humming, to cope with ego-gratifying yet demanding careers, and to live with the nagging specter of the Perfect Mother. But because Flanagan writes cloaked as a (mostly) happy housewife, she's raised the ire of her peers. In their view, the only thing more maddening than a happy housewife is a happy housewife who writes for the New Yorker.

I appreciate the *LA Times'* honesty in this piece. It admits: liberal feminists hate Caitlin because she thinks mothers should stay home. They don't just hate the idea. *They hate her* because of her opinion.

Why the hatred? I loathe pop psychology, but could the hatred come from guilt? Caitlin doesn't pull many punches, and the overall gist of her message is so simple it cuts: you can't have it all. Based on the *LA Times* piece, all she is saying is, "Something is lost. You can't do it all. You can't have it all." That shouldn't be incendiary. It should just be common sense. The *full*\-time (not just eight hours a day) job of motherhood can't be fully accomplished part-time.

Many sane working mothers acknowledge it and have chosen the trade off. That's their choice. It's only the ideologues that fly into rages when confronted with the common-sense notion that a person can't work 36+ hours a day.

Aside: The best passage from the story:

> A profile in this month's *Elle* is a case in point of the impasse between Flanagan and her critics. In writer Laurie Abraham's telling of their interview, Abraham arrived at Flanagan's house flustered; back home, her daughter's pet gerbil had just died. Flanagan at first sympathized. Then after their chat turned heated over the question of what's lost when a mother works, she reminded Abraham: "The gerbil's dead and you're here." "You could hear me gasp on the tape," Abraham said in an interview.