Is motherhood a form of oppression?

OK...so I just had to resurface to address this latest blip on the madness meter:

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article7070165.ece

First let me answer: NO

I felt like I had to at least acknowledge and express my eye rolling displeasure at this, especially having hinted at the notion that maybe the French have some better insights on life than we Americans. And my always reverential recollection of Paul Krugman's column from a few years ago espousing 'French Family Values'...I am now doubting this...but should we really generalize, anyway?

I think this old bat, Elisabeth Badinter is full of 'merde'. Maybe me being German and Lithuanian predisposes me to the die mutter/earth mother archetype, but it's what makes me happy.

What's oppressive is an economy that makes it "necessary" for two adults to work full time to run a middle-class household...I blame bad policy making and I blame feminism to some extent.

No Western women are oppressed by motherhood! What a joke. You want to go back to work, you go. You want to formula-feed, or combo-feed or whatever, fine. Disposable diapers are still on the shelves and easily had. What's the problem? People do exactly what they want to do.

I am one of the crunchy types who finds great happiness in having breastfed my kid past two years old, never used a pump, just brought her everywhere in my cool sling til I was comfortable leaving her with a sitter, worked from home part time, co-slept (in her bed, separate from the bed I share with my husband) and who switched to cloth diapers after getting acclimated to the baby first. It's all been no big deal. Some women just whine about everything. Challenging at times, sure, but I enjoyed my beer and wine once she was a couple months old (wasn't sure about drinking while breastfeeding a newborn) and have always had an active sex life w my husband (thank you natural birth/no episiotomy/quick recovery).

I think Madame Badinter has a very outdated view of motherhood! Feminism, man-hating and baby-hating is so ugly!

What is most troubling to me, and I have to say, a little surprising, is all the comments on various U.S. websites that are sympathetic to what she is saying, other than the smoking, of course, and feel so oppressed by the crunchy/AP-leaning parenting "culture". I don't understand why people would feel oppressed by what is a minority movement at best. Furthermore, I don't understand what is so hard about these things, anyway. Not every day is a picnic, but why are women always so put upon. Lighten the fuck up!

You want to get heavy about something, take a look at places where women are truly oppressed...like, kept from going to school, raped by militias when they're going to get water for their families, where the legal system makes is OK for their families to kill them if they're dishonored. These Western feminists should be ashamed.