A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother

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Cusk separates true love, empathy and devotion to another being from the more primal bonding she found tricky from the start of her pregnancy caused by a dissociation from the (physical, mental, soul) power of womanhood afflicted upon too many of her generation. Penelope Leach gives, I think, an accurate definition of postnatal depression: she says that in postnatal depression the mother believes that there is something faulty or abnormally difficult about her child.

It is the process by which an ordinary life is transformed unseen into a story of strange and powerful passions, of love and servitude, of confinement and compassion. Despite the number of people who had praised and admired it, and the letters I received to that effect from readers, I regretted, constantly, the fact that I had written A Life's Work. She might rant a bit about the unfairness of new motherhood at times, but her adoring love for her daughter is blatantly clear. Sa mère se retrouve ainsi emprisonnée dans un ‘bunker coupé du reste du monde’, dont les geôliers sont les autres mères, les sages-femmes, les méde-cins et autres assistantes sociales, dans un monde totalitaire régi par l’idéologie des ouvrages sur l’éducation Dans un mémoire controversé sur la naissance de son premier enfant, intitulé A Life’s Work, Rachel Cusk a brisé le mythe de la mère comblée et de la relation idyllique avec son premier enfant, ce qui lui a valu beaucoup de ressentiment de la part des lecteurs et des critiques, et en particulier chez les mères.The only reason I didn't make a big stink about having to do so was because I had already read Cusk's "The Country Life," which was brilliant on a number of different levels.

I was interested to find out what all the fuss was about, but unfortunately l was disappointed by this book. I could not have been more wrong, and although my children are wonderful I often found that in caring for them, I was losing myself. I would recommend though, you supplement this literature with a huge dollop of self-empowering joy and above all the intent to relax into motherhood, when the first year, is more that three quarters, a matter of standing by and sitting it out.At other times, finding she misses her daughter while she is sleeping, she lies down beside her cradle.

Both parents can work and employ a nanny or childminder, or sometimes each can work a shorter week and spend some days at home and some at work. Concerned, Cusk consults a series of healthcare professionals, who all simply congratulate her on her daughter’s healthy appetite.My appetite for the world was insatiable, omnivorous, an expression of longing for some lost, pre-maternal self, and for the freedom that self had perhaps enjoyed, perhaps squandered. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk's children were taken into care, that was she was unfit to look after them. She is right in the things she says tho but as It gives a very sad and bad feeling after reading it, the book seems not really helpful during pregnancy and early motherhood. In my case a decision was made to demolish traditional family culture altogether, and it was regarded by other people with amazement, approval and horror.