That doesn't mean it wasn't convincing; it just means that the book essentially covers the prologue and introduction to what is in actuality a much bigger topic.

The most serious deficiencies are more difficult to pinpoint and may be better served by giving examples of an underlying attitude:

1. While critiquing the aforementioned celebrity mom profiles, they conclude that motherhood isn't "transformative." I would agree that it doesn't transform women in the ways that celebrity mom profiles detail, but that doesn't mean that women aren't changed profoundly when they become mothers.

2. While critiquing the selflessness and self-sacrifice demanded of mothers, they conclude that it is wrong to always put the child's needs first. I can't agree with that. The child's needs must come first; that is a part of parenting. The problem is a culture that continually identifies as a child's "needs" such things as expensive nursery suites and wall murals, a few thousand dollars worth of primary-coloured plastic toys, and personal ever-happy one-on-one attention from their "primary caregiver" (i.e. mother) all hours of day and night. **Actual needs of children must come first.** The trick is separating out true needs from all the bullshit.

3. While critiquing the industry of surrogate mothers, they argue that the portrayal of surrogacy in the media claims that the lives of infertile women will be empty and unfulfilled without children. I don't know how to put this, except to wonder if the authors ever met any women struggling through years of infertility and related treatments, ever talked to them intimately and heard their stories of indeed feeling unfulfilled and even tortured by the thought of never having a child. It almost seems as if they're claiming that without media stories about surrogacy and other infertility treatments, that these women would find out they can't be pregnant, throw up their hands and cry, "I'm free!" and then do a jig around the living room. While the media does indeed portray a very different motherhood than most women experience, and while stories of infertile women can be one-note--of course the obvious truth is that \\infertile women who don't want to have children may never even find out they're infertile because they're not trying to become pregnant.\\ Infertile women undergoing treatment have already made a commitment to having children. Such a feeling is, I believe, a deep-seated biological need in those who feel it. If there were no inborn desire to procreate, the human race would have died out long ago. It is terribly cruel to suggest that these women, using their life savings and hawking all their worldly possessions to have the joy of a baby of their own, are somehow merely media dupes who would have just shrugged it off and decided to remain happily childless had only Newsweek not given them ideas about surrogate mothers.

These are only three examples of approaches and wording that led me, while reading the book, to wonder if the authors thought that any woman who decides to become a mother is a fool who is falling for a sophisticated PR campaign--if there are NO valid reasons or desires underlying motherhood at all.

Overall it was good, but not as good as I had hoped.

I think I'll split this into two entries and cover \\Perfect Madness\\ separately, since this became a little longer than I thought it would.