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Most people have the decency to play out their floundering mother-daughter identity wars in the sanctity of a therapist's office. And then there's Caitlin Flanagan. Somehow, there's no shrink on her vast roster of helpers who can tell her, "It's OK, Caitlin, your mommy really did love you. Now go take a nap." So, instead, she flails about on the pages of various Brainy Mags trying to decide..."am I trying to out-mother my mother? or out-succeed my mother? Look ma, no job! Well, maybe just these two or three jobs."
Basically, it's obvious that Caitlin has never forgiven her mother for the unspeakable sin of being human. After all, the very thing she can't stand about feminists (or, for that matter, children) is their messy, unpredictable human-ness: they make mistakes, they have conflicts, sometimes they are uncomfortable with their own opinions. Sometimes they are just plain boring. Sometimes life is hard for them. Just as it clearly was for Flanagan's mother, in many ways.
It will be interesting when Flanagan's boys are grown, to see how they regard her presence in their own childhoods. Suppose they, too, feel panicky and abandoned, cast adrift by their parents? Where would that leave Flanagan? In fact, I have sometimes thought wistfully how much more significant and interesting a writer Flanagan would be if she spent her time analyzing the ways in which fallibility and politics have intersected in her life...
but she doesn't, and her book THOROUGHLY deserved this pan. Even edited to such an extent, the book failed to move beyond the merely wistful or dreadfully shrill. Rock on, Ms. Walsh. And you're right about the Karma.
