A Potent Spell: Mother Love and the Power of Fear

by Janna Malamud Smith

A psychotherapist explores the significant impact of the fear of child loss on mothers throughout history, revealing how such feelings affect mothers' lives at home, in the workplace, and in the social hierarchy. Reprint.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 16, 2003

About the author

Janna Malamud Smith is a practicing psychotherapist and the acclaimed author of four books, including An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Creative Mastery, My Father is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud; A Potent Spell: Mother Love and the Power of Fear; and Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life. Her titles have been New York Times Notable Books and she has been interviewed about her work on top national broadcast media. Her newly published book, An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Creative Mastery, examines the psychological obstacles and fears that prevent aspiring and established artists from building a sustainable, nurturing, and realistic creative practice against the background of how many of today's hot button topics, including social media, technology, the recession, sexuality, and identity, impact the creative process. For more information on Janna Malamud Smith, please visit: www.jannamalamudsmith.com

Reviews

[Kathi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much like a textbook. I think a magazine article might a better presentation of the information.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been on my bookshelf for a while. I had to work up the nerve to read it. (It amuses me that Janna Malamud Smith says she had to do the same before writing it.) The topic is loaded emotionally. Now, I wish I'd read it sooner. It would have been a comfort when I was an expectant or young mother, but the edition I have wasn't published until 2003, after my babies were grown.

Smith takes the long view of motherhood and fear, looking at Greek myth and drama. She considers (and mostly discounts) the advice of experts dating to the American colonies. She brings in voices from medicine and psychology. And, she paints a detailed picture of the common emotional life of mothers.

She takes an extended look at shame as a control mechanism and tool of authoritarianism (in general, as well as when wielded by a government). At the same time, she champions economic, societal and workplace change, to correct conditions that continue to marginalize mothers and children. (It's easier to continue to blame the mother than change the world.) She spends a fair amount of time rebutting a few child-care experts -- none of whom I'd heard of or read. I think she overlooks a phenomenon that seemed to begin when my kids were young and gathered more steam in the past 20 years: mothers who home-school. I'd also like to see a little more about empty-nesters.

Recommended for would-be moms, mothers who think and feminists.

Some pearls of wisdom:

"Within love lies loss, and not simply from death. For the many contemporary women who have not actually had a child die or suffered a miscarriage or infertility, there are the inevitable quieter feelings of loss as children mature."

"Once a woman has a baby to whom she is attached, her sense of well-being rarely again rests exclusively within herself."

"Survival instincts are powerful and overarching. They often move people to avoid challenging the status quo."

"The mother's fears of child loss and the derivative fears of harming children or caring for them inadequately have been continually manipulated, overtly and subtly, even aroused gratuitously, to pressure, control and subdue women for a very long time -- possibly millennia."

"The authorities' admonitions have often harshly and incorrectly punished mothers by suggesting that their children's suffering or death is a consequence of their behavior -- usually any behavior deemed to be ambitious, sexual or independent."

"Because our culture remains saturated with mother hating, mothers particularly -- subliminally but continually -- fear that a small lapse will reveal a large, shameful flaw."

"A woman with a book has often been considered dangerous." I received criticism recently on this score.

"Because mothers have been so consistently flattened, seen not as whole people, but judged too narrowly by their capacity to nurture children and men, society has felt free to objectify them and treat them like nonhuman commodities."

"The work of keeping children safe should not be confused with auditioning for sainthood."

[Jada Roche · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting but unsatisfying read...possibly because many of the conclusions in the book are ones I found myself at years ago as I started parenting. It's a very dry read, and really wasn't what I imagined I was picking up. There is a lot to be gained in the exploration of how mothering and fear intersect, but I just didn't feel that this book did it justice.

[Cynthia]

temporarily shelved... will try again later...