"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." "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."--BOOK JACKET.