In her controversial Le Conflit : la femme et la mère, French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter sings the praises of the French crèche system, which enables mothers to go on with non-mommy business as usual after giving birth. (Of course, they're supposed to wait until baby's two or three months old, or they risk getting as much slack as Rachida Dati did when she showed up for work five days after her C-section.) Badinter explains in Le Conflit how crèches are simply today's version of sending your infant into the country with a wet-nurse--a choice that even middle-class Frenchwomen made in order to focus more time and energy on their social and wifely duties. Of course, instead of spending their days primping and prepping for salons, today's respectable French mothers are supposed to hold down a 9-5 job. So as soon as they've entered their sixth month of pregnancy (or third month in child-laden Versailles), Parisian women sign up their unborn babies for day-care. And as soon as their babies are three months old, they drop them off daily (with formula and bottles--even the French have given up wet-nurses) at the local crèche. The up-side is clear to Badinter. French mothers get to "have it all": a professional life; a feminine (nursing bra-free) identity; and motherhood. But at what price?Catalina Sandino Moreno as Ana. [Online image] 2006.
