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Continuing the series in which I answer the questions posted at Blue Milk (sadly interrupted by my technical difficulties). Today is Part 2. You can see Part 1 here.
5. Do you ever feel compromised as a feminist mother? Do you ever feel you’ve failed as a feminist mother?
I don't think so. I wish that my children had seen me out in the world earning more money and that "daddy goes out to work, mommy works at home" didn't seem to translate into "mommy has less power in the world." But I don't think that is me failing – I think that is the society failing me and I try to make sure my children know that.
I hope my kids see that part of being a feminist is engaging in the feminist struggle. They definitely see me struggling. The challenge often is showing my anger without letting my kids think that I am angry at them for being a force that holds me back. I often tell them that how society treats me because I am a mother holds me back and it isn't their fault- but I know there are times they blame themselves. How could they not? It may be in those moments when I can't hide my unhappiness from my children that I am failing as a feminist mother. Or maybe not. I visit this question a lot.
6. Has identifying as a feminist mother ever been difficult? Why?
No. I think there are people who don't understand what I mean when I identify as a feminist mother. It is difficult that my political positions as a feminist mother are often dismissed. I am infuriated by the Bill Mahers of the world who deny that motherhood is a political identity as important as any other.
And there are people who think I can't be a feminist if I [fill in the blank]. "You can't be a feminist if you breastfeed on demand." "You can't be a feminist if you let having kids change or limit your career choices." "You can't be a feminist if you homeschool your kids." Well, I can and I am. And … well … fuck you for thinking you can decide whether I am a good enough feminist.
7. Motherhood involves sacrifice, how do you reconcile that with being a feminist?
How are sacrifice and feminism difficult to reconcile? Sacrifice is part of life, part of living in society, part of being in human relationships. If my children thought motherhood involved sacrifice but fatherhood didn't, then I would have failed as a feminist mother.
Feminism is not just about women having more or women having as much as white men. It is about fairness and balance. It means that the oppressed have more and that the oppressors have less. There is nothing anti-feminist about sacrifice – feminism requires sacrifice. Feminism is not the right to become the oppressor – it is the elimination of oppression. Switching places with the oppressor, or replacing yourself in the social hierarchy with someone else, is not feminist.
It is anti-feminist if I am the only one sacrificing for my children. Our society needs to recognize that we all need to sacrifice for all children and redistribute obligation accordingly.
8. If you have a partner, how does your partner feel about your feminist motherhood? What is the impact of your feminism on your partner?
I don't know how he feels. I have always been a feminist and, as far as I know, so has he.
As for impact on him, he works harder on maintaining the household than he would (I guess) were I not a feminist. I believe maintaining the household (cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry) is not part of mothering and that he must do as much of that as I do even if I am home with the kids. If I were not a feminist, I might think I had some biological imperative to do dishes and then he wouldn't have to.
There is more but it is private.
The last two questions in Blue Milk's meme are biggies so I am saving them for a post of their own. Check back for Part 3 in which I will give my take on:
9. If you’re an attachment parenting mother, what challenges if any does this pose for your feminism and how have you resolved them?
and
10. Do you feel feminism has failed mothers and if so how? Personally, what do you think feminism has given mothers?
If you are interested in what you are reading, please comment and tell your friends about this blog. I'll try to keep my technological mishaps to a minimum and keep the posts coming.
Tooling around the world of feminist mother blogs, I came upon this post at Blue Milk asking feminist mothers to answer ten questions. I hope she will forgive my coming late to the response dance but I am a newbie playing catch-up. Some of the questions have several parts so there are actually way more than ten questions. I will give my answers to these questions in a series of blog entries. Today is Part 1.
1. How would you describe your feminism in one sentence?
The belief that women are people (yeah, I stole that) and that I have a duty to protect everyone's right to be whoever they are as long as they aren't hurting anyone.
When did you become a feminist?
Birth.
Was it before or after you became a mother?
See above.  I meant my birth.
2. What has surprised you most about motherhood?
How all-consuming "24/7″ really is.
3. How has your feminism changed over time? What is the impact of motherhood on your feminism?
Motherhood made me more acutely aware of the extent of sex discrimination against mothers. Motherhood pushed me to examine more closely, and finally reject, "equality" as a useful idea. Motherhood forced me to feel in my bones how much I had been able to "pass" as male, despite many many instances of sex discrimination in my schooling and employment.
"Equality" was, I thought, the right to be treated as if I were a white man. I didn't see that such a standard was not okay. As a student, I could envision being "equal" to a white man since I saw myself as behaving and performing like a white man. As a lawyer, I thought I could be "equal" to my male counterparts because my work was the same, if only people did not alter their behavior toward me because I was female. But there is no male pregnant person. There is no male breastfeeding person. Note I use "male" here to mean "a person who appears to be and is believed to be male" and am making no statement about what physical characteristics constitute gender.
What this made me understand, and forces me to constantly examine, is that feminism can not be about equality because there is no such thing as equality. It has to be about fairness, balance, real choices, and humanity. I don't want to be free to be "white man." I want to be free to be whoever I am.
4. What makes your mothering feminist? How does your approach differ from a non-feminist mother’s? How does feminism impact upon your parenting?
My children know that each of them are different and that nothing about their gender alters the way I treat them. I teach (and show) my children that treating people differently based on gender is wrong. I also, in age appropriate ways, point out sexism to them.
I have to say that this has been much easier than I thought it would be. I was shocked to become the mother of sons (for some reason it never occurred to me that I would have boys). But my boys have never needed any prompting from me to reject the notion that there are boy things and girl things, boy colors and girl colors, boy clothes and girl clothes. They have always been upset when other parents have set limits based on gender. Other parents have rejected them as appropriate playmates for girl children. Other kids have teased them for liking pink. I hate pink but my boys are who they are. All I needed to do was let that happen and support them when other people got in the way.
As they get older, the issues get a bit stickier. I try and find ways to let them know that, while I love them and love being their mother, I made sacrifices I should not have had to make. I am starting to let them know this as they start to form ideas about themselves as fathers. I want them to think about choosing a career and lifestyle that will allow them to spend more time fathering than their own father does. I want them to be sure that the other parent of their children should have more choices than I did.
I don't want to indulge much in stereotypes of non-feminist mothers. I suppose they tell their children that their lives should be defined by gender. I suppose they tolerate harmful and unfair behavior in their kids. I was in a playgroup some years back in which play was divided by the kids into boy play and girl play. It was uncomfortable for me and for my boys, who sometimes wanted to play in mixed groups or with the girls. One day the boys played a "game" that consisted of throwing rocks at the girls. I and my sons were horrified. Two other mothers said, "Oh, boys will be boys. All boys hate girls." When I said that my boys didn't hate girls, they insisted it was because they had no sisters. "If your boys had sisters, they would hate girls too." And I think they are wrong. I told them so. Those were mothers who were not feminists. To my boys, girls are just other people. And my boys would never throw a rock at anyone.
Stay tuned for Part 2.
Tomorrow I will watch the U.S. presidential inauguration with my children and I will weep. I will tell them that we are watching history, glorious history, something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. I, like many people my age in the U.S., never thought I would live to see an African-American president.
I grew up in a country in which only rich white men could be president. I grew up certain I could never be the leader of my country. People who grew up in poverty, like me, could not be president. People who were female, like me, could not be president. People who were Jewish, like me, could not be president. When I was born, the country had its first Catholic president.
Well, despite all the hope the election of Barack Obama brings to me and to my children, someone like me could not be elected president in the U.S. today. I feel sure I will live to see a woman elected president. I think there is a decent chance I will live to see a Jew elected president. But I am also an atheist and that fact alone would likely prevent my election.
In a February 2007 Gallup Poll Americans were asked:
whether they would vote for "a generally well-qualified" presidential candidate nominated by their party with each of the following characteristics: Jewish, Catholic, Mormon, an atheist, a woman, black, Hispanic, homosexual, 72 years of age, and someone married for the third time.
In my view, all of these characteristics are irrelevant to qualification to hold office. Happily, only 5% responded they would not vote for someone who was black. Good news and the subsequent election proved the respondents were largely truthful. Seven percent would not vote for a Jew and only 11% answered they would not vote for a woman.
I was sad, but not surprised, that 43% would not vote for someone if he or she was gay. However, the only single characteristic that would prevent more than half of the respondents from voting for a candidate was atheism. Because I do not believe in a god, 53% of the respondents would not vote for me.
I thought about this poll quite a bit yesterday while I was watching the We Are One performance at the Lincoln Memorial. Virtually every song had a mention of god or prayer. Virtually every performer mentioned god or said "God Bless You" to the crowd.
Tomorrow, the U.S. Constitution requires that Barack Obama say:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Nothing else. He chooses to use the bible (not all presidents have). He chooses to add "so help me God" (not all presidents have). And the ceremony will include not one but two prayers (prayer was not part of U.S. presidential inauguration until 1937) – one prayer delivered by a man with a history of anti-gay positions.
I will weep tomorrow, as I did on election night watching the tears of civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and the crowds of people who, like me, never thought they would see this happen. I will tell my children again about what I think the election of a black president means in this country for people who are different and historically disenfranchised. But as an atheist, much of the day will be a slap in the face. On a day all about a new era of inclusion, I will still be on the outside looking in. And I can't tell my kids that even they can be president some day because if they grow up to be atheists like their parents, probably they can't.
The presidential inauguration is only a few days away. All of us have our list of priorities for the new administration. Given the state of the economy and our war in Iraq (and on and on), I don't hold out much hope that breastfeeding will get much Congressional attention early on. Last year (and much of the year before) political attention was focused on the elections. So again, I was not all that surprised when the Breastfeeding Promotion Act received so little Congressional attention. But … well … when will it?
The Breastfeeding Promotion Act is a simple piece of federal legislation that should be pretty uncontroversial. It amends the section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on employment to include lactation. You know that law passed a year after I was born which prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex (and race and a few other ways one can not be a white man)? Well, I am forty-five years old and U.S. federal courts still haven't figured out what sex discrimination is. So if you want to fire someone (or reduce her hours or pay her less or moo as she walks by or refuse to hire her in the first place) because she is breastfeeding, no problem. The federal courts say breastfeeding discrimination is not discrimination on the basis of sex.
Nancy Watzman at Muckraking Mom has an interesting suggestion as to why the BPA hasn't moved much since it was introduced – Congress isn't talking about it. Using a nifty search engine called Capitol Words she searched how often the word "breastfeeding" was used by Congresspeople (as reported in the Congressional Record). The result is pretty grim. Since the BPA was introduced in May of 2007, the word "breastfeeding" was used in Congress less than 30 times. Watzman notes that "golf" was discussed more often. I checked and during the same period it appeared a few hundred times. For fun, I threw in "trout." Less than "golf," but it was used about 200 times.
Breastfeeding discrimination is sex discrimination and the BPA is necessary for women to have Civil Rights Act protection. Much needs to happen to move the BPA forward but clearly at the very least legislators need to be talking about breastfeeding.
After years of lobbying and failed legislative bills, Massachusetts breastfeeding advocates have at long last succeeded in getting a law passed to protect breastfeeding in public. Yay and congratulations to all the people who have worked so hard and for so long! I am particularly pleased to see that that the new law, which goes into effect in April of 2009, has an enforcement provision. As I wrote about at some length in the July/August Mothering, women in states with public breastfeeding laws lacking enforcement provisions have found themselves with no way to effectively use these laws. Many woman find themselves shouting "but I have a right!" waiving the law, while the store owner says "so what?"
"An Act to Promote Breastfeeding" states:
Chapter 111 of the General Laws is hereby amended by adding the following
section:-
Section 221. (a) A mother may breastfeed her child in any public place
or establishment or place which is open to and accepts or solicits the
patronage of the general public and where the mother and her child may
otherwise lawfully be present.
(b) Notwithstanding any general or special law to the contrary, the act
of a mother breastfeeding her child, and any exposure of a breast incidental
thereto that is solely for the purpose of nursing such child, shall not be
considered lewd, indecent, immoral, or unlawful conduct.
(c) No person or entity, including a governmental entity, shall, with the
intent to violate a mother’s right under subsection (a), restrict, harass or
penalize a mother who is breastfeeding her child.
(d) The attorney general may bring a civil action for equitable relief to
restrain or prevent a violation of subsection (c).
(e) A civil action may be brought under this section by a mother
subjected to a violation of subsection (c). In any such action, the court may:
(i) award actual damages in an amount not to exceed $500; (ii) enter an order
to restrain such unlawful conduct; and (iii) award reasonable attorney fees.
(f) A place of religious instruction or worship shall not be subject to
this section.
So the new Massachusetts law creates a private right of action – the ability to file a civil lawsuit – for a mother against anyone who "restrict[s], harass[es] or penalize[s] a mother who is breastfeeding her child."
In my usual role as "she who finds the problems," I have some concern with how the enforcement provision will work. Needless to say, there may be some disputes about what conduct on the part of, say, a store owner will be considered restricting, harassing, or penalizing, Asking a nursing woman to leave a store or refusing to serve a nursing woman seems obviously to meet the test. I wonder whether asking a mother to move or cover will be considered harassing if nothing is done when the mothers says no. I certainly think asking is harassing but I suspect this will remain a question until a court decides. But I don't think this wording is a problem with the law – often the more specific one gets in drafting a statute the more you end up accidentally excluding things you want to prohibit. Laws get too long and unwieldy. In noting the room for interpretation in this new law, I am just giving women a bit of a heads-up that passing a civil rights law is never the end of the journey.
I also have a concern with the language requiring that recovery under the private right of action requires that the wrongdoer act with the "intent to violate a woman's right." Intent is essentially what is going on in someone's head when he or she acts and it can be difficult to prove. I second Angela White's concerns over at Breastfeeding 1-2-3 that the intent requirement might be used to protect wrongdoers ignorant of the law but agree that that argument is generally unsuccessful. I am just baffled as to why the intent requirement is there at all. Seems like an unnecessary hoop to jump for someone bringing a lawsuit. Angela suggests that a nursing woman might be asked to move for some other legitimate reason and I too hope that is why the provision is there.
There are two more problems I see with the enforcement provision that might prevent women from making full use of it. First, few people have the skill to file a lawsuit without hiring a lawyer and lawyers cost money. I prefer an enforcement provision under which a mother can file a complaint herself with a government agency and can go forward without expenses that might exceed anything she might recover. The new Massachusetts law does allow the court to award attorneys fees (which it should) but lawyers usually need to be paid upfront and one risks that the attorney fee award won't be as much as what the fees actually are. Believe me. Been there.
Which leads me to my other question about the recovery element of the new law. In a successful lawsuit under this law, a court may award "actual damages in an amount not to exceed $500." This is where I need a Massachusetts lawyer (I am going to try and find one and check back with you but feel free to speak up about this). I am concerned that this provision puts another burden on the woman to prove that she has been injured in a measurable way – "actual damages" also known at Common Law as "compensatory damages" means different things in different states. It may mean a measurable monetary loss. Hmm.
Any woman who has been harassed for breastfeeding in public can tell you about her embarrassment, her humiliation, sometimes her fear that she would be arrested or touched physically by the menacing stranger who was harassing her. In what way will a woman have to prove that this resulted in loss that should be compensated with money? I need a Massachusetts lawyer to tell me if my concerns about this are valid.
Finally, I'll note that the new Massachusetts law does not apply to religious schools and houses of worship. While I believe currently only Illinois specifically limits the application of its public breastfeeding law in houses of worship, it has been pointed out to me that houses of worship are excluded from the definition of "public accommodation" in other states and therefore civil rights laws often apply differently in religious buildings. I don't agree with it. I can't see the justification. But there it is.
After all that peeing on the parade, let me say again that it is a great thing that Massachusetts finally has a public breastfeeding law and that it is one with an enforcement provision. Massachusetts has gone from one of only five states with no law protecting breastfeeding in public (the final four are West Virginia, Idaho, North Dakota, and Nebraska) to being one of only nine states with a penalty for violating the right to breastfeed in public (check here for the other eight). And that is something to celebrate.
Most mothers either want or need to both mother their children and work for a wage. It always surprises me that some find that a controversial statement. It is pretty hard (though some try) to dispute the economic necessity of waged labor for mothers in the U.S. (where I live) today. I won't go down the "but what if she doesn't need the money" road – that way lies mommy wars.
In order to mother and earn a wage, mothers must have their children with or near them most of the time. There, I said it. No, I don't mean that women who can't have their children with them are not mothers or that they are bad mothers. I do mean that while they are away from their children, someone else is doing the mothering acts. And most mothers have very little choice in the matter.
I was pleased to see an article in The New York Times about workplaces in which mothers may bring their children every day. It makes me very happy to see workplaces in which children are welcome. I am excited by the work of Carla Moquin and the Parenting in the Workplace Institute. I am thrilled that The New York Times, which so often gives arms to the mommy wars, published an article in which children in the workplace is portrayed as positive and viable. What bothers me is the title of the article: Maternity-Leave Alternative: Bring the Baby to Work. What the title and some of the content suggests is that bringing children to work eliminates the need for maternity leave.
I owned my own solo law practice when I gave birth to my first son. Whatever maternity leave I was getting, I was creating for myself. I don't consider the federal Family and Medical Leave Act a vast improvement over my situation, though if I had had FMLA time (twelve unpaid weeks), covering my court dates would have been someone elses problem. I hired a friend to cover my court appearances for thirty days from my due date, got the phone number of a nanny agency recommended by the local bar association, and set up a portable crib in my office. My plan was to go back to the office thirty days after giving birth bringing my son who would sleep peacefully in the portable crib and I would hire someone per diem to come to the office when I had to go to court. No problem. I had everything under control and had saved up so I could go without income for a month. I filed my last brief three days before I went into labor. During early labor, I took a conference call.
And then life happened.
Four days into my "maternity leave," I was still recovering from thirty hours of back labor, a cesarean section, aspiration pneumonia, and a post-operative infection. My healthy son was in the NICU on antibiotics "just in case." (No, I still don't understand why.) I would have difficulty walking for months because, unbeknownst to me at the time, my broad ligament had been cut during the surgery. I was lucky – my son's father had three weeks of paid vacation time he could spend at home with us (when we finally made it home). Even though my son had been given some formula in the NICU, I started pumping in the hospital and when we could finally be together he latched on without a problem. And he stayed latched on. When his dad tried giving him pumped breastmilk in preparation for my return to court, he would have none of it. Though he had taken a bottle in the NICU, he never would again. I arranged my schedule so I was never away from him longer than three hours. When I took him to my office, every time I lay him in the portable crib, he screamed non-stop. Soon he started to scream whenever I walked into my office. So I started working from home. I signed on with the nanny service which guaranteed that the nanny would show up at the appointed times (initially a few days a week) or the owner would come in her place. And then the nanny was late. And then she was just "FTA." FTA is a court clerk designation for a party who doesn't show up for trial – "failure to appear" which could get you a bench warrant for someone's arrest. No such remedy with a nanny. When my nanny was FTA, I tried reaching the owner of the agency for that guarantee that she would personally come. She didn't answer her pages. I was screwed.
Slowly but surely I cut my practice down to part-time from home. My mother-in-law stepped in as emergency childcare. Yes, I needed a workplace to which I could bring my son but first I needed maternity leave. I needed time for my body to heal. Even if I had had the birth I wanted, I still would have needed peaceful quiet time to be with my new child. He and I needed to nurse and sleep and rest and play and not worry about clients or judges or conference calls or bills. We needed to be mother and son and nothing else. Not necessarily forever. But for a while.
Should every mother have a workplace to which she can bring her child so that they can have access to each other throughout the day, breastfeed, snuggle, play? Absolutely. Children will be happier and healthier and mothers will be more productive. Older kids can spend some days at work with the other parent as well. But first mothers need paid maternity leave. I am not saying maternity leave is more important than children in the workplace – I am saying it is different. Bringing a baby to work is better than forcing a mother to leave an infant for long work days but it should not be used as an excuse to deny women paid maternity leave. A mother's wage-earning work life is likely to be long. There are a lot of years left to bring kids to the office.
At this point I didn't have more to say about Facebook removing breastfeeding photos but I was struck by the latest final word from Facebook:
"We've made a visible areola the determining factor," said Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt, who stressed that the company supports breast-feeding. "It is a common standard."
For real? Visible areola? I will admit I am no expert on porn but I have never seen Big Areola magazine sitting next to Hustler or flipped passed Areolas Gone Wild in the adult pay cable. I am sure there are people driven mad with desire at the sight of that red circle around a woman's nipple – for every body part there is a fetishist. But a "common standard" for deciding whether an image is obscene? I don't think so.
This week the press and the mothering blogosphere have been filled with talk of Facebook. If you need to catch up, see this blog entry at PhDinParenting. If you want to hear some good old fashioned outrage, check out this podcast of Fox Across America which aired on 12/26 and includes an interview with me about 25 minutes in.
The short version is that Facebook has been sanctioning subscribers for posting breastfeeding photos. A protest event took place on December 27th during which an estimated 11,000 Facebook subscribers changed their profile images to breastfeeding photos and changed statuses to "Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is Not Obscene."
I have not had a Facebook page for very long so I watched the event with some interest. I changed my profile photo to one lots of people have seen – my youngest son's tiny head nursing at my huge breast. It is a beautiful photograph which I love because of my son's sweet comfort and the fact that my hair covers my face. By baby number three I was not at all self-conscious about people seeing my breasts but still don't like photographs of my face. Of my seventy-five or so Facebook "friends," nearly half of them changed their profile images to breastfeeding photos on the 27th. Three of them had those breastfeeding photos removed by Facebook within forty-eight hours. As far as I know, no one has discovered how many breastfeeding photos were removed on the 27th or have been removed in total (though there is a site with a collection of some of the removed photos).
While my inbox has been flooded with news stories about the Facebook breastfeeding photo virtual protest, it appears that Facebook is holding its ground. Other than a statement issued prior to the protest, Facebook has been quietly going about its usual business. It appears that images are reported to Facebook by Facebook users as violative of the anti-nudity provision of the user agreement and some not particularly strenuous evaluation process occurs at corporate. If Facebook officials in positions of authority are giving the breastfeeding question much thought, there is no indication of it in either their actions or their public statement.
Are these images really bothering anyone? Some of the public commentary on the Facebook event has been the same dichotomy I have seen for years in the public breastfeeding legislation debate. The “anti-“ camp statements are something like:
"I don't want to have to see that."
"Women aren't discreet enough when they do that."
or, my personal favorite, "I don't want my child to see that."
And the “pro-“ camp maintains:
“Breastfeeding is natural and healthy and normal.”
“If you don’t want to see it, look away.”
and, sometimes even when it isn't strictly true, “I have a legal right.”
While I have been forced to engage in these debates, the voice in my head is always shouting, "Too damn bad you don’t like seeing breastfeeding. Grow up or go home." It isn’t nice but the voice in my head rarely is.
But there are two truths at work here: people are uncomfortable with the unfamiliar and some people want to control what other people are allowed to do. As long as breastfeeding remains unfamiliar, it will make some people uncomfortable. The solution seems clear to me – familiarize people with breastfeeding and they will be more comfortable with it.
I have written at length elsewhere about dealing with these two questions (and will certainly write lots about it here) but right now the owners of Facebook must decide whether they will be the arbiters of this debate or leave it to the rabble. Will Facebook say, "These are photographs of people engaged in conduct that would be legal if done in public and therefore the photos will stay" or will Facebook continue to follow some other motivation. Facebook may be running the numbers and deciding that not enough people will boycott Facebook over the removal of breastfeeding photos to make this worth corporate attention. Maybe some Facebook vice president truly is offended by nursing children. Or maybe no one at Facebook cares less.
I do wonder why Facebook is not jumping at the chance to get some positive publicity by responding to subscriber hue and cry – while 11,000 is a relatively small fraction of the total number of Facebook subscribers, it is still a lot of people. Whoever is complaining about the presence of the photographs is not doing so in the press or on blogs or in any way that stands to hurt Facebook. So why not side with the breastfeeding supporters?
What about breastfeeding activists? For mothering to be sustainable, mothers must be free to perform the acts of mothering everywhere life requires they go. While Facebook membership is by no means a necessity, as activists we need to boycott places where mothering is not welcome. Breastfeeding is one of many acts of mothering (and by this I do not exclude or criticize mothers who do not breastfeed). Does that mean that the next step for mothering activists on Facebook is to leave? I don't know. But it is something we need to be talking about. If Facebook continues to remove breastfeeding images, what is the next step for supporters of mothering?
Sustainable Mothering is a blog, an idea, a goal, a journey. We will discuss and examine how the many acts of mothering must be supported and embraced by culture and society. It is not about mothers condemning each other. It is about freedom and educated choice – true choice which only exists in an environment with options.
When I became a mother nearly fifteen years ago, I knew nothing about mothering. I knew stereotypes about motherhood. Some women stayed home with their children. They were women without imagination, without goals for themselves, without income or independence. Other women had children and returned to their productive lives in the real world. I didn't actually know mothers of either variety. I didn't know mothers at all really. None of my friends had children. Most of my clients had children – people in crisis whose lives I did not want. I didn't even particularly like children. At the age of 31, I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to have a child after a lifetime of certainty that I didn't want any.
In this blog I will write about my exploration of the difference between motherhood and mothering, what I left behind when I made the mommy morph, the bigotry and ignorance I encountered when I attempted to enter the world as a woman with a child, and I want to hear the thoughts of others on all of this and more. So far the mommy wars has led to more war – it sets women against each other who might be working together to fight the sexism underlying any statement that a decision about my mothering should be made by anyone other than me. Mothers must live in the public world so the acts of mothering must be done in full view of the world when the mother chooses and needs. Forcing women to be isolated in their homes, to give up the work they love, to leave their children behind, to live in fear, to starve, to be dependent on the whims of the more powerful – none of these allow mothers to be healthy or participate in society or raise daughters who want to be mothers or raise sons able to shape fathering. So – onward to blogging.
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