One casualty of the feminist movement was the importance of motherhood.Stay-at-home childrearing came to be portrayed as wageless drudgery, while the mother who worked a full-time job and also took care of her family was celebrated as Supermom. But Supermom is at the end of her rope.And MATERNAL DESIRE is here to show that there is another way. In bracingly clear and powerful chapters, Daphne de Marneffe breaks open the long-ignored truth that for many women, having and rearing children is their life's most important work. Emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually, nurturing a child gives many women a sense of meaning that life seldom affords. Giving equal credit to women who choose to work (or who must work) and to women who choose to rear their children full-time, Daphne de Marneffe gives powerful voice to the most deeply felt conflict in most mothers' lives.She explores maternal enjoyment as fully as she does maternal anxiety and offers not just understanding but the exhilaration of seeing a universal frustration discussed clearly for the first time.MATERNAL DESIRE is a revolutionary, joyous, and transforming book, one that will provoke a heated debate about one of our most crucial conflicts.