The Eros Of Parenthood: Explorations In Light And Dark - Hardcover

Oxenhandler, Noelle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312269765 ISBN 13: 9780312269760

Publisher: Golden Books Adult Publishing, 2001

Synopsis

Leaning over a sleeping child or waiting for a small dripping body to emerge from the tub, what parent hasn't felt the pull of contradictory emotions: the rush of tenderness, the pang of anxiety? We know that the physical love between parent and child is both natural and necessary, yet it's a subject we're afraid to approach-- indeed, it's been called "the last taboo." In language both lyrical and provocative, The Eros of Parenthood explores this highly charged and controversial territory.

Even to put the two words together- eros and parenthood-- is to enter a forbidden realm. Yet the two are inextricably linked. For eros, the energy of connection, fuels the immense labor of parental care, fosters the formation of the human self, and lies at the foundation of all forms of human love. In its intense physicality, the love between parent and young child is similar to that between adult lovers, but it is different in some absolutely crucial ways. Healthy parental love is sheltering, protective. Putting the child's needs first, this love respects the inequality-- in size, power, and maturity-- between parent and child.

Alas, in our zeal to protect children from the trauma of sexual abuse, we often resort to black-and-white thinking. Because we are afraid to acknowledge the erotic component of parent-child love, the most innocent interactions become suspect. The atmosphere becomes so saturated with anxiety that it intrudes on the most tender moments between parent and child.

Navigating between the extremes of injurious denial and hysterical fear, The Eros of Parenthood finds a middle ground. While celebrating the passion that naturally exists between parent and child, it seeks the limits of this passion. Inspired by the fairy-tale figure of Goldilocks, Noelle Oxenhandler takes as a central question: "Between the poles of too hot and too cold, too much and too little, how can I find the just right?"

The answer to this question lies in the power of attunement. A dynamic process of adjustment that balances between fusion and separateness, attunement is the compass in Goldilocks's hand, the key to the mystery of intimacy between parent and child. To understand this is to
cf0discover a way through the eros of parenthood that, while breaking the grip of fearful thinking, leads to an authentic sense of boundary.

In poetic prose that encompasses topics as subtle as a pregnant mother's dream and as dramatic as the recovered memory of abuse, The Eros of Parenthood breaks new ground. Personal, yet with profoundly social implications, the book employs a highly readable format in which each chapter consists of a linked sequence of "explorations" that can be read in a single sitting, in the brief interstices of a busy parent's life. The hardest thing for us, in the wake of what we have too often witnessed is-- while keeping our children safe from harm-- to experience the full measure of delight in them. To gaze at them while they sleep-- on their backs with limbs flung like the petals of an open flower or curled on their sides like an inner ear...

Through responsibility and tender awareness, parents and children can reclaim a form of love that is natural, necessary, and the ground of all human intimacy.

About this title

About the Author:

Noelle Oxenhandler has been a longtime contributor to The New Yorker. The author of A Grief Out of Season, she is the mother of one daughter and lives in northern California.

From Publishers Weekly:

In an attempt to reclaim the primal intimacy of the parent-child bond from dogmatists who see close physical affection as suspect or indecent, Oxenhandler (A Grief Out of Season) argues that parental love is inherently erotic. Despite her flamboyant terminology, what Oxenhandler means is that the parent-child bond can have the same physical and emotional intensity as a bond between lovers. There is, she points out, some scientific basis for this magnetism. The chemical oxytocin "controls a woman's pleasure during orgasm, childbirth, cuddling and nursing." Meanwhile, a child's "irresistibleness" in infancy is also a mechanism for survival. But Oxenhandler soon leaves science behind in favor of addressing the different "erotic" feelings a parent may experience. Throughout, she stresses the importance of "attunement," a process by which parents modify their physical affection as their children grow older--after all, the same caresses one showers on a baby are hardly appropriate for an adolescent. While the subtitle suggests an evenhanded treatment of the "light" and "dark" aspects of the parent-child relationship, Oxenhandler is much more skillful at presenting its sunnier side. She admits she has little experience in dealing with victims of child abuse, incest or pedophilia, and her attitude toward these issues may strike some readers as dismissive and uninformed. (In one chapter she suggests that adults use "playfulness" as an alternative to slipping into forbidden territory, though that seems an unlikely remedy to true pedophilic impulses.) Despite the flaws in her argument, many parents will find some comfort in this beautifully written book, which reassures them about the pleasure they may find in their child's natural curiosity and unconscious sexuality.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Golden Books Adult Publishing
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0312269765
• ISBN 13: 9780312269760
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304