Even if she runs a company, sells millions of records, or has a thrilling job, a woman is supposed to say, “The kids come first.” Increasingly, men are also expected to be parentally correct. Do you think that the two prime presidential candidates in the 2007 presidential elections, Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, would admit that their political careers were their prime concern? But where do they spend the majority of their time? Not at home. Consider François Bayrou, also a candidate, whose family routine was described by Le Monde: “Six children, and his wife, Elizabeth, who mostly brought them up herself at Bordères while François was politicking in Paris.”* No worries there. What a lovely portrait of the père de famille: perfectly tailored for the election campaign. Nicely played, François.
France has never had a childless president of the Republic. And in other countries there are not that many either; a childfree leader like German chancellor Angela Merkel is a remarkable exception. Having children is clearly a real electoral advantage, which candidates are all too eager to exploit, splashing their family photos all over the media. President Kennedy set the tone in the 1960s.
I often think of that image of him at his table in the White House while his son is playing under the desk. Kids sell – it’s that simple. They’re walking billboards that declare, “You can trust my mom or dad. Vote for them in full confidence. They have kids – they’ll understand your problems.”
Hard to imagine a public figure admitting, “My work comes first: dogs don’t need babysitters.” That would be a public relations gaffe, most likely a career-ending one. Mother first, professional second, woman third: that’s the winning formula. Don’t try to reverse the priorities – it won’t fly. Model Adriana Karembeu got a lot of grief when she said, honestly and sensibly, “Children scare me a little. I’m not sure I have what it takes, or that I wouldn’t repeat the mistakes my own parents made.”
Well, she was right. Every merdeuf is potentially a bad mother and feels guilty about that. The simple fact of having brought a child into the world, especially on purpose, is the source of a terrible guilt. “I created a human being: I am responsible for that” – what a cross to bear! Every mother is afraid of being a Mommy Dearest, so she can never do enough: she can never look after the kids as well as she should; she can never be available enough; she’s a poor listener; there are never enough snacks in the house, or balanced meals. Never enough, given that her own mother and her feminist friends have all told her that she has to get out and work, leaving her caught between the Scylla of the home and the Charybdis of the office. She is guilty. Guilty of coming home tired from work, of not singing lullabies at night, of having a meltdown after ten hours of yelling and screaming kids; guilty of feeling relief when she ditches the kids at daycare in the morning; guilty of being delighted when they go off on a school trip. At times she may even beg her children’s forgiveness for not knowing what a good mother really is, for coming off as the wicked stepmother in Snow White without really meaning to.
What does “wanting a child” really mean? Do we know what we want when we want a child? Are we seeking its well-being? Psychoanalysis teaches that nothing is more dangerous than wanting good things for someone else, since you’re simply projecting your own needs onto the other, and one day you are going to make the other pay for that famous good that you were trying to impose. Wishing someone else good fortune at any cost is ultimately destructive, because no parent is ever wise enough to know what she really wants for the children. To Marie Bonaparte, who asked him for advice on raising her children, Sigmund Freud wisely replied, “Do whatever you like – whatever it is it will be bad.”
In the past – and I mean only a few decades back – we put up with kids as a kind of unavoidable fate, which was far from perfect but at least had the benefit of absolving the parents of too much responsibility. Now, listen: I am not nostalgic for a time I never knew. But it is true that one is likely to take better care of, perhaps to overcare for, the child you really want. The spread of contraception may even have had some surprising effects: according to the authors of the book Freakonomics, it has reduced crime in New York. It seems that kids who were actually desired integrate socially better than kids who were not. It’s not such a big leap from there to imagining that the pill and the IUD have been sponsored by the System to ensure a more docile workforce.
* R. Bacqué and P. Ridet, “François Bayrou et son double,” Le Monde, March 21, 2007.