"An essay about culture and feminism argues that human culture simultaneously romanticizes and vilifies mothers, making them into a scapegoat for all failings. A simple argument guides this book: motherhood is the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts. By making mothers the objects of both licensed idealization and cruelty, we blind ourselves to the world’s iniquities and shut down the portals of the heart."--