Author: By Caryl Rivers

Date: SUNDAY, July 19, 1998

Page: C1

Section: Books

The stronger the actual facts get, it seems, the more the media portray such mothers as suffering from stress, neglecting their children, and wanting desperately to go home and be just like their 1950s mothers or grandmothers.

The media reality too often becomes the reality around which people plan their lives. So ``Not Guilty!'' by Betty Holcomb, an editor at Working Mother, comes as a fresh breeze in a smog of myth and misinformation.

Holcomb is especially good at following the spoor of false media trend stories, often fueled by well-financed conservative think tanks that consistently put out the bleakest possible picture of working families.

Take, for example, the notion that women are fed up with working and are happily rushing home to don aprons and diaper their babies. A raft of these stories has appeared in such places as USA Today (which called it a ``stunning'' trend), CBS-TV, The Wall Street Journal, Barrons, and more than 50 other media outlets. It began with an economist who noted, in the early '90s, a small drop in the number of women in their prime childbearing years entering the labor force. He announced that women were at last returning home.

But Holcomb points out that the dip in the number of men entering the labor force was even greater. Were they going home to have babies? More likely, the dip represented the sluggish economy early in the decade. The protests of a Labor Department specialist that no such trend existed got almost no press. He worried that the stories would make employers less likely to invest in working women -- who continue to flood into the work force. ``I felt that much of the reporting was irresponsible,'' the specialist said.

Still, the media love bad news about women, and keep repeating it well after the ``data'' behind it are discredited. Holcomb cites the massive press coverage given to Arlie Hochschild's book ``The Time Bind,'' including cover articles in Newsweek and US News & World Report. The former ran the cover line ``How We're Cheating Our Kids,'' and the latter a cover that trumpeted: ``The Lies Parents Tell About Work, Kids, Money, Day Care, and Ambition.'' The book claimed that home had become so stressful for working women that they were rushing off to work, where they were now finding their happiest hours. Work had become a refuge from home, and the subtext was that all those women rushing off to work were spending less time with their children.

Hochschild based her story on interviews at one company, where only 20 percent of the people displayed this pattern. The real story was that even in a high-demand company, 80 percent of workers found their home lives just fine. But the cover stories represented the minority as a national trend.

When you look for a nuanced view of working mothers, Holcomb points out, you have to look at publications aimed at working women. Rarely do ``mainstream'' outlets run cover stories about the fact that in big studies, working women are significantly healthier and less depressed than nonworking women, or that 50 years of studies of the children of working mothers and at-home mothers show virtually no difference in any measure of child development. There are good mothers at home and good mothers at work, and their children will probably do fine whatever their mothers' choices.

``Not Guilty!'' points out ways in which ``science'' is used to make women feel guilty indeed. Much press coverage was given to the idea that women's work interferes with the natural attachment between mother and child. (One egregious example came only a few weeks ago in a New York Times Magazine story on Romanian orphans. These children suffered horrible deprivations, often lying in cribs for years with little human touch. They turn out, not surprisingly, to have severe behavioral problems. But the article -- and the headline on the cover -- implies that the plight of these children has some relationship to the children of working mothers.)

In fact, the news about babies' attachment to their mothers is very optimistic, and mostly uncovered. The first results of a massive study of day care at 10 sites around the country were announced in April. Even infants in day care were securely bonded with their mothers, with the exception of a very small group whose mothers had problems with their babies to begin with. The study received scant press coverage; good news about day care rarely makes headlines.

Holcomb is especially good at delineating the power of conservative family forums, which emit a steady stream of disinformation about the ``harm'' employed mothers cause to children. Working mothers are dead center in the culture wars; fact and common sense get replaced by ideology and emotion.

One of the strengths of ``Not Guilty!'' is its clear-eyed look at today's families. In a rapidly changing global economy, with men's wages stagnant or declining, women are in the work force to provide for themselves and their families. In the light of new data showing that adult women alive today will have to support themselves into their 80s and 90s, it's clear that the media nostalgia for the Ozzie and Harriet era can be positively toxic.

Holcomb makes no secret of her strong point of view, but she backs it up with careful reporting. She offers a sensible agenda of support for what is today the dominant family form. She notes an intriguing fact: Polls show that Americans retain the information that supports their own personal philosophies. Working women think it's fine that they are working; women at home defend their choice. But why does each group feel so defensive? Because mothers are blamed no matter what they do. Women at home in the 1950s were accused of ``momism,'' of coddling their children. Critics even suggested that US soldiers broke under brainwashing in Korea because of overprotective mothers. When women went out to work, they were told they were neglecting their children, even brain-damaging them.

It is time to end the mommy wars -- to realize that there is no one-size-fits-all family, and that women can make different choices about mothering without harming their children. Readers looking for a sensible argument backed with real data will find ``Not Guilty!'' both helpful and supportive.