Could it be a consequence, unnoticed by Elisabeth Badinter, of women taking into account their professional imperatives, a condition of their financial independence, to the point where they cannot guarantee, as they often assert, to “spend their entire lives with the father of their children”? Nevertheless, female desire and motherhood now follow separate paths. An important evolution that psychoanalysis must take into account, after having, at the beginning of the 20th century, “heard” women consider motherhood as the intimate fulfillment of their sexuality. After the disjunction observed between sexuality and procreation, then the more progressive one between sexuality and genitality, will we see tomorrow motherhood no longer responding to the *ultima ratio* of female desire? Has an amicable separation already been pronounced by the judge of modernity between motherhood and desire?
Regardless of what the philosopher thinks, nothing obliges French women to be, according to INSEE, the most “fertile” in Europe, a phenomenon noted well before the financial crisis—which excludes possible involutionary reasons. With a rate slightly over 2 children per woman, France stands as a strange exception in comparison to nearby neighbors—Germany, Italy, Spain—where, despite similar natalist policies, the fertility rate hardly exceeds 1.4, and Eastern EU members like Poland, Lithuania, and Czechia, where it barely reaches 1.3. These figures reveal a series of changes that hardly align with the ideas expressed by the essayist: various surveys conducted in France on women (Inserm, Insee, and Ipsos) show that motherhood is no longer automatically associated with the sole affection of the “weaker sex.” The rationality of the modern world has been a factor. Indeed, children are increasingly being “planned”: between 1960 and the 1990s, the proportion of “well-planned” births rose from 59% to 83%. The constraints of modernity might even—paradoxically—liberate the woman without totally depriving the mother: here, we recall the research of biophysicist Henri Atlan on the anticipated creation for the next century of an “artificial uterus,” making it possible, between the fifth day and the twenty-fourth week, for an embryo to develop outside a woman’s body. To the young students at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis to whom I shared this discovery, none of them would currently consider using it. But 20% of adult women surveyed on this topic would accept its use for the “second or third child” to not “harm their professional careers.” Should we view this as irrefutable evidence of a “regressive” entrapment of the feminine? Modernity is even shaping the life of the couple: some couples have “separate bedrooms” to accommodate their “respective individualities,” and not just because of conflicting schedules. “A room of one’s own,” to use an expression by feminist Virginia Woolf, also provides an intimate refuge where the sleeping space and bed—children today testify—become an “untouchable territory” hosting meals, books, and the computer. In the United States, a study by the National Association of Home Builders predicts that more than 60% of homes will have, by 2015, two bedrooms per couple. Finally, divorced women take an average of 7 years to rebuild their lives, unlike men, who find a stable relationship after a period of 2 years. Are Elisabeth Badinter’s fears really justified?
Certainly, according to specialists, the rate of increase in female depression, as well as the explosion of addiction phenomena among women (alcohol, drugs, tobacco…) would be partly explained by the frantic pace of modern life, which “forces them to multiply the roles of wife, mother, and lover.” 63% of women have become active in the labor market, which does not prevent 70% of them from taking on nearly all the daily tasks at home. The woman races like the Chinese acrobat tasked with spinning several plates simultaneously at the end of a stick: “if her pace weakens, the plates fall and break,” explains Eliette Abecassis in her book “The Invisible Corset.” In the dock are “decades of male domination and unconscious socialization,” according to sociologist François de Singly.
Nevertheless, would it be enough to “desexualize” domestic habits to restore balance? This would ignore the unconscious source of social codes: it has roots in the repressed infantile sexuality of adults before extending its subsequent psychic influence over their progeny. Most parents indeed wish to know the sex of their future child to “adopt, even before birth, a specific behavior depending on whether it’s a boy or a girl.” The tool kit and doctor’s kit for the son, the little stove or mini-couture workshop for the daughter are more responsible for inducing behavioral codes. It’s the same phenomenon for the expression of emotions: parents seldom “admit” it in their young male descendants. Unconscious identifications then play their role: the little girl likely perceives the mother’s activism as a manifestation of her omnipotence within the household, compensatory for an estimated inaccessible paternal power. In the kitchen, the *horresco referens* of feminists, she notes, for instance, the father’s attempts—in vain because rebuffed by the mother in the name of his incompetence—of an incursion into his “reserved domain.” In Middle Eastern societies, a genuine “psychic matriarchy” thus reigns within the home: mothers simultaneously boast about the sexual exploits of their young sons while encouraging their daughters to “raise the stakes” to marry the “best match.” Passed down from mothers to daughters, this peculiar power holds sway over the boys and the family father within the walls. It perhaps sheds light on some of the feminine resistances to social changes.
Finally, Elisabeth Badinter’s reflection does not sufficiently consider an invariant systematically encountered by psychoanalysis: the role of the mother in the blossoming of her daughter’s feminine position. This remains dependent, “suspended” on the full, partial, or refused transmission of the torch of femininity. For reasons tied to her own unconscious history, the mother may not wish to exchange reality for illusion, just as she additionally cannot transmit a femininity she does not possess or that she rejects: sociologist Françoise Héritier reminds us, for example, that in Burkina Faso—and the example is the very thing—a mother continuing to have sexual relations under the same roof as her now pubescent daughter would condemn her to sterility. Only one female scepter per familial empire! The clinic confirms this in daily practice: numerous cases of unsatisfied women—95% of women experience decreases in desire, but 64% of them claim to do nothing to change this situation—reveal a tragic articulation between enjoyment and the maternal gaze. Some women settle scores with their own mother through the interposed anorexia of their daughter. Some want to move from the status of daughter to that of mother while avoiding the painful but obligatory transition through being a woman. Freud highlighted the impossibility of understanding the mysteries of the “dark continent” without taking the early link to the mother into account. Lacan will speak of “the devastation that is in the woman… the relation to the mother.” It is where everything is tied.
Let us applaud the heightened vigilance of the writing woman, keen on preserving achievements and defending rights. However, let us avoid peremptorily judging this apparently disunited couple of the feminine and motherhood for the sole reason that it hopes to surreptitiously reconnect.
