It's really happening: the mailman just dropped off an advance copy of Truth Behind the Mommy Wars! As I tore off the envelope, not quite believing I was holding the real book in my hand, going through my mind was: it really looks like the picture on Amazon! For weeks I've had a copy of the bound galleys on my desk, with it's dour gray cover, a shadow of the glossy red and white that has now appeared. My daughter especially was very excited, and asked to take the copy to school today to show her first grade friends. Of course, after I studiously avoid writing about her, because I am committed to her privacy, her first question to me was: where am I in your book? Good thing I mention her name here and there, so I had something to show her, and of course, the book is dedicated to her, and to my mother both.
Okay, the W's, as promised. Warner and WEG, as in Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness, and Raising WEG, the fabulous blog of a mother of triplets. Everyone's been asking me what I think of the Warner book, and I have actually read it. Honestly--and I believe in honesty about things maternal and gendered--I'm a terrible person to ask about this book. My book on a similar topic is due out in there weeks, and it won't have the marketing prowess/Newsweek cover/New York Times review cover that launched Perfect Madness. I'm not exactly the person to offer a good review. So, for anyone who wants good commentary, check out Raising WEG's reading and collection of blogosphere reviews of Warner's book. Personally, I like Raising WEG so much, I'm adding her to my linklist, and wishing her luck with the trips.
For those who still want me to answer, my book is different. When I set out to solve the mysteries of motherhood, I didn't get stuck on only talking with the most affluent mothers. Those aren't the mothers I meet on my daily rounds. I'm also really committed to moving motherhood from the style page where it seems to be stuck, to front and center where we belong, and that means not getting lost in the details of how we mother. I'm keeping our eye on the rigid workplace that makes it so hard for us to mother and work at the same time, well, and with relative sanity. And I'm always looking around for mothers who are resisting, organizing, and speaking out for change. They're out there, they're fabulous, and there's an incipient mother's movement happening. That's the playground revolution of the last chapter, and of this blog.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Join the MotherTalk phenom
We're trying to get a certain New York Times reporter interested in the MotherTalk energy (see below) .... Untill it hits print media, if you want to be included on the MotherTalk list for future events, contact Andi or me. One person already emailed Andi from Rhode Island to say she's so hungry for this kind of talk between mothers--real talk, talk about change and improvement---that she'll travel all the way to our fair city of Philadelphia. Can we make Mother Talk into a Mom's Night Out cultural destination? Shall I turn my guest bedroom into a B and B to support my writing habit? Stay tuned!
Is it the first LiteraryMama.com Mother Talk event, or a Consciousness Raising session, or Both?
Last week our pal Faulkner Fox, author of the wonderful Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life was in town. She read at the first ever MotherTalk session sponsored by LiteraryMama.com. Mother Shock author Andrea Buchanan was there too, and she blogged about it, beating me to it, and quoting my part of our long email exchange after.
It's all posted on Mama's Ink, our group blog.
Okay, if it's the end of a long day and you're just too tired to tramp over to another site, I'll copy it in here, but visit Mama's Ink some time (tag line: Enough Dishes Already,) and Andi's blog too.
"Mother Talk" salon evening
The salon evening the other night, "Mother Talk" with me, Faulkner Fox, and Miriam Peskowitz, was so much fun. My friend Maureen hosted it at her house, and about 30 women came. We milled around for a bit eating and drinking, and then gathered to talk about our books and hear Faulkner read a funny and thought-provoking paper she had given at the ARM conference about mother-judgement and feminism. I functioned kind of as a moderator, prompting questions or jumping in with something, but mostly the discussion just evolved on its own as the women there began talking. I didn't know which way the evening would go -- a lot of people who'd said they were going to come couldn't make it, and there were a lot of people there I didn't even know, or barely knew, and it was one of those things where I just didn't know until we started talking whether or not people would be totally put off by the conversation we were going to have.
But it was great. The discussion ranged from playground judgmentalism to how hard it is to be honest with your old friends vs. the honesty you can have with other mothers who are strangers, to what our work means vs. what our husband's work means, to what it feels like to always be the one initiating the conversation about ambivalence and motherhood, to people's reactions to our books... There was a wide range of opinion, and a real willingess and excitement to talk about this stuff -- it felt like one of those 1970s "consciousness-raising" meetings, and I mean that in a good way.
I checked in with Miriam afterwards, and she had this to report:
Last night was fabulous! I'm just settling down to think about Faulkner's talk and about all that happened last night. I would have loved to stay much later. Her talk was all about women talking, about moms talking honestly, and delving into what's intimate. I was thinking back to when I lived in Atlanta, and was introduced to the whole phenom of women's book clubs. No one ever read the book, but everyone wanted to be in a book club, or two, or as many as they could be. That it was literary meant it was okay to say to their spouses, Honey, you watch the kids, I have something important to do. It's more lofty than saying, Honey, I'm meeting my girlfriends at the local pub to bitch about life as a mother and wife. I even knew women who formed Bible Studies. They would invite me, even though they knew I was Jewish, because it wasn't exactly about reading the Bible. Like book clubs, Bible Study is a socially acceptable reason to leave the kids and spouse and head out to a bottle or two of red wine and the company of girlfriends. What husband could object to the Bible, or to The God of Small Things, or a rereading of Moby Dick?
What happened last night was extraordinary -- in the largest sense -- because it combined the excuse of getting out of the house with real thoughtfulness about what change, or revolution, would look like. With her writing, and with all of us there, Faulkner was able to create the consciousness-raising group she wanted. I think we need to keep doing these -- for any excuse -- our books coming out, our friends coming to town. Something important happened. Mothers were really talking -- and [the discussion] had a chance to get to structural issues, to something larger than the usual venting we do. There was Faulkner, sitting in a stranger's living room and talking about feminist revolution. It seemed historic. It seemed like what happened a million years and several decades ago.
My book begins by saying that we mothers talk all the time, but we don't really talk. Not about what truly matters, because it's just too hard. But last night we created the space for mothers to really talk. And I think we need to take this on the road. When Faulkner started to talk about revolution, in her calm voice and her perfect prose, I remember thinking, are we serious? Here we are in this lovely brownstone, in our own ways, well-coifed and stylishly dressed, articulate when we speak. From the outside, we look like all those privileged women the media always writes about. Yet there's Faulkner, saying the word revolution over and over and over again. Talking about Antonio Gramsci, and about how people can be critical of the status quo, and conformist at the same time. Faulkner's saying that word.
Revolution. I can't stop myself from thinking: Are we serious? Is she? Are we playing the part? Can we convince ourselves that we can do this? That we can stop critiquing other women for things that don't matter, like whether for the moment her kids are running wild because to save her sanity she's talking with another mom at the playground? Like whether she's feeding her toddler a Philly pretzel -- doesn't she know that it digests to sugar immediately, and sugar is bad, bad, bad?
As we're all saying to each other now, it's us moms we need to worry about, to figure out lives that are rich and rewarding and human. Revolution sounds so silly. So strange. So old-fashioned. And so feminist. Yet my eyes wandered around the room, and all the women were listening raptly. The hour was late but the room was hushed, attentive, even when Faulkner turned to Gramsci. Italian Marxists? At 9.30 after a day of work and childraising?
Can she be serious? Can we?
It's all posted on Mama's Ink, our group blog.
Okay, if it's the end of a long day and you're just too tired to tramp over to another site, I'll copy it in here, but visit Mama's Ink some time (tag line: Enough Dishes Already,) and Andi's blog too.
"Mother Talk" salon evening
The salon evening the other night, "Mother Talk" with me, Faulkner Fox, and Miriam Peskowitz, was so much fun. My friend Maureen hosted it at her house, and about 30 women came. We milled around for a bit eating and drinking, and then gathered to talk about our books and hear Faulkner read a funny and thought-provoking paper she had given at the ARM conference about mother-judgement and feminism. I functioned kind of as a moderator, prompting questions or jumping in with something, but mostly the discussion just evolved on its own as the women there began talking. I didn't know which way the evening would go -- a lot of people who'd said they were going to come couldn't make it, and there were a lot of people there I didn't even know, or barely knew, and it was one of those things where I just didn't know until we started talking whether or not people would be totally put off by the conversation we were going to have.
But it was great. The discussion ranged from playground judgmentalism to how hard it is to be honest with your old friends vs. the honesty you can have with other mothers who are strangers, to what our work means vs. what our husband's work means, to what it feels like to always be the one initiating the conversation about ambivalence and motherhood, to people's reactions to our books... There was a wide range of opinion, and a real willingess and excitement to talk about this stuff -- it felt like one of those 1970s "consciousness-raising" meetings, and I mean that in a good way.
I checked in with Miriam afterwards, and she had this to report:
Last night was fabulous! I'm just settling down to think about Faulkner's talk and about all that happened last night. I would have loved to stay much later. Her talk was all about women talking, about moms talking honestly, and delving into what's intimate. I was thinking back to when I lived in Atlanta, and was introduced to the whole phenom of women's book clubs. No one ever read the book, but everyone wanted to be in a book club, or two, or as many as they could be. That it was literary meant it was okay to say to their spouses, Honey, you watch the kids, I have something important to do. It's more lofty than saying, Honey, I'm meeting my girlfriends at the local pub to bitch about life as a mother and wife. I even knew women who formed Bible Studies. They would invite me, even though they knew I was Jewish, because it wasn't exactly about reading the Bible. Like book clubs, Bible Study is a socially acceptable reason to leave the kids and spouse and head out to a bottle or two of red wine and the company of girlfriends. What husband could object to the Bible, or to The God of Small Things, or a rereading of Moby Dick?
What happened last night was extraordinary -- in the largest sense -- because it combined the excuse of getting out of the house with real thoughtfulness about what change, or revolution, would look like. With her writing, and with all of us there, Faulkner was able to create the consciousness-raising group she wanted. I think we need to keep doing these -- for any excuse -- our books coming out, our friends coming to town. Something important happened. Mothers were really talking -- and [the discussion] had a chance to get to structural issues, to something larger than the usual venting we do. There was Faulkner, sitting in a stranger's living room and talking about feminist revolution. It seemed historic. It seemed like what happened a million years and several decades ago.
My book begins by saying that we mothers talk all the time, but we don't really talk. Not about what truly matters, because it's just too hard. But last night we created the space for mothers to really talk. And I think we need to take this on the road. When Faulkner started to talk about revolution, in her calm voice and her perfect prose, I remember thinking, are we serious? Here we are in this lovely brownstone, in our own ways, well-coifed and stylishly dressed, articulate when we speak. From the outside, we look like all those privileged women the media always writes about. Yet there's Faulkner, saying the word revolution over and over and over again. Talking about Antonio Gramsci, and about how people can be critical of the status quo, and conformist at the same time. Faulkner's saying that word.
Revolution. I can't stop myself from thinking: Are we serious? Is she? Are we playing the part? Can we convince ourselves that we can do this? That we can stop critiquing other women for things that don't matter, like whether for the moment her kids are running wild because to save her sanity she's talking with another mom at the playground? Like whether she's feeding her toddler a Philly pretzel -- doesn't she know that it digests to sugar immediately, and sugar is bad, bad, bad?
As we're all saying to each other now, it's us moms we need to worry about, to figure out lives that are rich and rewarding and human. Revolution sounds so silly. So strange. So old-fashioned. And so feminist. Yet my eyes wandered around the room, and all the women were listening raptly. The hour was late but the room was hushed, attentive, even when Faulkner turned to Gramsci. Italian Marxists? At 9.30 after a day of work and childraising?
Can she be serious? Can we?
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
"Issue Fatigue"/Even Uma Thurman can't make the problem go away
Here's me, I send my daughter off to school and take five to browse through the trashiest newspaper articles I can find. In my case this means the NYT intrigue on A5 about why the Queen won't attend Charles and Camilla's wedding, and the Philadelphia Inquirer's article about Uma Thurman in her new flick.
Writer Hugh Hart is a sight for a tired mom's eyes. Stuck in the middle of the article, on E4 is where Uma's a mom who can't do it all, and who feels the same damn struggles we all do. Even movie goddess Uma can't get the rules of the game to change. She hasn't been working much, and she's divorced Ethan, too.
"I've just needed to be home. Having children flips the game from being about you to being about what you can create in a home and what your responsibilities are. Actually, my ex-husband said to me the other day that I clearly wanted to be a full-time mother and still wanted to be an actress, and that I kept insisting I could do both, but I can't. [My note to Ethan: thanks for the support; perhaps that's why the marriage is over.] So I'm fighting to keep my foot in the business and still take care of my kids--it's the big conundrum of my life."
Ah. I couldn't handle being a mom and dealing with the stresses and demands of a full-time professorial job. Now I'm working here and there, cobbling it together like a million or so other moms in America, doing our best to work and mother in a system that DOES NOT SUPPORT US.
In last weekend's NYT Book Review, Judith Shulevitz wrote a review of the latest motherhood phenom and said that we have issue fatigue. That's what she called it. Issue Fatigue. She claims that in her circles, mothers don't talk about this to each other anymore. It's passe. Issue Fatigue. Of the entire review, that's the phrase that stuck.
Issue Fatigue. Yes, I too am tired of talking about this. Mostly, I'm tired of living it. I'm tired of the struggle. I'm tired of making dinner every night.And I'm tired of being tired. Furthermore, I'm fatigued by earning really low wages for my work because I can't see a way to decently work fulltime, parent well and stay sane. And what really fatigues me is hearing versions of my story repeated by nearly every mother I know and meet.
That's what fatigues me. And you know what? I'm fatigued my a media that continues to present this as only about affluent moms from tony suburbs. I'm fatigued by reading the same old, same old. That's why Uma's brief tell-all helps. We read constantly about our celeb moms, and finally, the celeb moms are beginning to speak out. Because celeb moms too, want to work. At least a little bit. They want to keep a foot in the door. Just like, well, the rest of us more ordinary folk.
Issue fatigue. Can't we at least call it Injustice Fatigue?
Have a great day everyone.
Writer Hugh Hart is a sight for a tired mom's eyes. Stuck in the middle of the article, on E4 is where Uma's a mom who can't do it all, and who feels the same damn struggles we all do. Even movie goddess Uma can't get the rules of the game to change. She hasn't been working much, and she's divorced Ethan, too.
"I've just needed to be home. Having children flips the game from being about you to being about what you can create in a home and what your responsibilities are. Actually, my ex-husband said to me the other day that I clearly wanted to be a full-time mother and still wanted to be an actress, and that I kept insisting I could do both, but I can't. [My note to Ethan: thanks for the support; perhaps that's why the marriage is over.] So I'm fighting to keep my foot in the business and still take care of my kids--it's the big conundrum of my life."
Ah. I couldn't handle being a mom and dealing with the stresses and demands of a full-time professorial job. Now I'm working here and there, cobbling it together like a million or so other moms in America, doing our best to work and mother in a system that DOES NOT SUPPORT US.
In last weekend's NYT Book Review, Judith Shulevitz wrote a review of the latest motherhood phenom and said that we have issue fatigue. That's what she called it. Issue Fatigue. She claims that in her circles, mothers don't talk about this to each other anymore. It's passe. Issue Fatigue. Of the entire review, that's the phrase that stuck.
Issue Fatigue. Yes, I too am tired of talking about this. Mostly, I'm tired of living it. I'm tired of the struggle. I'm tired of making dinner every night.And I'm tired of being tired. Furthermore, I'm fatigued by earning really low wages for my work because I can't see a way to decently work fulltime, parent well and stay sane. And what really fatigues me is hearing versions of my story repeated by nearly every mother I know and meet.
That's what fatigues me. And you know what? I'm fatigued my a media that continues to present this as only about affluent moms from tony suburbs. I'm fatigued by reading the same old, same old. That's why Uma's brief tell-all helps. We read constantly about our celeb moms, and finally, the celeb moms are beginning to speak out. Because celeb moms too, want to work. At least a little bit. They want to keep a foot in the door. Just like, well, the rest of us more ordinary folk.
Issue fatigue. Can't we at least call it Injustice Fatigue?
Have a great day everyone.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Dads at the Cafe
I'm doing some work at Infusion, my neighborhood coffee shop. Some days I just can't stand writing at home, and I need the background buzz. There's a large group of moms with very young children in the back. When another mom comes in with a large stroller, everyone helpfully moves the chairs so she can join her friends in the back.
My friend Dave walks in, with his youngest son. Dave's not a stay-at-home Dad. He has an important job, as does his wife. His son is sick, and I was impressed that Dave had taken the day off. Statistically speaking, mothers are 70 percent more likely to take time off when the kids are sick (you can find these numbers on the New America Foundation's website). Go Dave!
Also, Dave brought his computer and was checking email via wi-fi while his son played at the table. I was writing about an event I went to last night, the first ever author's night sponsored by LiteraryMama.com. Author Faulkner Fox talked about judgment between mothers. I couldn't help but think about the casual judgments a mother would get if she sat at a cafe, with a computer, and a three-year old across from her at the table. Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps I'm remembering one mean thing someone said once and making a generalization. But I don't think I'm entirely wrong. I think women get judged more viciously when we publically combine work and kids. More later on Faulkner's energizing talk on mother judgment and why it's a political issue and we need to stop doing it.
Meanwhile, while I write the reading group guide for my book's website, and jot down my thoughts about last night, take a look at Faulkner Fox's website and her book, Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life.
My friend Dave walks in, with his youngest son. Dave's not a stay-at-home Dad. He has an important job, as does his wife. His son is sick, and I was impressed that Dave had taken the day off. Statistically speaking, mothers are 70 percent more likely to take time off when the kids are sick (you can find these numbers on the New America Foundation's website). Go Dave!
Also, Dave brought his computer and was checking email via wi-fi while his son played at the table. I was writing about an event I went to last night, the first ever author's night sponsored by LiteraryMama.com. Author Faulkner Fox talked about judgment between mothers. I couldn't help but think about the casual judgments a mother would get if she sat at a cafe, with a computer, and a three-year old across from her at the table. Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps I'm remembering one mean thing someone said once and making a generalization. But I don't think I'm entirely wrong. I think women get judged more viciously when we publically combine work and kids. More later on Faulkner's energizing talk on mother judgment and why it's a political issue and we need to stop doing it.
Meanwhile, while I write the reading group guide for my book's website, and jot down my thoughts about last night, take a look at Faulkner Fox's website and her book, Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Moms Talking
Hey, for a good bout of moms talking the talk of the day, post-Judith Warner in Newsweek, check out Chez Miscarriage.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Hip, Happy Housewives--Oh what have I done???!
What happened is my friend Janet emails and says, hey, there's a reporter that just called me and she wants to know about motherhood. For an article about Desperate Housewives. I thought she should talk with you.
The next thing I know, I'm on the phone with Sharon Jayson from USA Today, and for a half hour we talk about whether I think Desperate Housewives is good or bad for women (my answer: not as good as it needs to be). I tell her as eloquently and vividly as I can about the catch-22's mothers are in. We want to work, we want to take time with our kids, we want all these things and more (as the ole Lucinda Williams song goes), and we don't want to be penalized for them. I gave her stories. I gave her statistics. I tell her that I know lots of stay at home moms who find the housewife term fairly retrograde. In a moment of sisterly solidarity, I give her the name of a women in my neighborhood who sells "Housewife T-shirts," as in, housewives, value our labor.
The next thing I know, this is what's being paraded on the doorframes of hotels throughout America: USA Today, February 3d Hip, Happy Housewives. I'll leave the commentary to you. The good thing: my amazon numbers soared from 740,000 to 60,000, at least for the moment, and the book won't even be out till April. Thank you, USA Today readers!
More later. After telling her that it's not about domesticity, I need to go down and make some dinner.....
The next thing I know, I'm on the phone with Sharon Jayson from USA Today, and for a half hour we talk about whether I think Desperate Housewives is good or bad for women (my answer: not as good as it needs to be). I tell her as eloquently and vividly as I can about the catch-22's mothers are in. We want to work, we want to take time with our kids, we want all these things and more (as the ole Lucinda Williams song goes), and we don't want to be penalized for them. I gave her stories. I gave her statistics. I tell her that I know lots of stay at home moms who find the housewife term fairly retrograde. In a moment of sisterly solidarity, I give her the name of a women in my neighborhood who sells "Housewife T-shirts," as in, housewives, value our labor.
The next thing I know, this is what's being paraded on the doorframes of hotels throughout America: USA Today, February 3d Hip, Happy Housewives. I'll leave the commentary to you. The good thing: my amazon numbers soared from 740,000 to 60,000, at least for the moment, and the book won't even be out till April. Thank you, USA Today readers!
More later. After telling her that it's not about domesticity, I need to go down and make some dinner.....
Friday, February 04, 2005
This is Unbelievable
A mother's work is never done. And now, it will be even more invisble in government statistics.
Just across my desk. It sounds tedious, tiny, and totally unsexy: the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has collected information on women in the workplace since the 1930's. They are the source that tells us how we're doing: how much we're paid, whether we work part time or fulltime or not at all, how these habits change over time. When I was writing my book, I often called the bureau economists to ask about trends on motherhood, family life, and work. It's unthinkable--it's eery, awful--to imagine this data disappearing.
And the timing. Just as the rumblings of a new feminist movement are being heard, a movement that focuses on motherhood, and work, and equity--ALL THE DATA WILL BE REMOVED. There will be no way to judge the progress (or the lack of progress) of women, mothers and the workplace if our govenrment refuses to collect this information.
So, dear readers, here's some more info, patched in from NOW's action alert, and the form for sending protest emails.
** Urge Labor Department to Keep Collecting Data on Women Workers
January 19, 2005
Take Action:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a division of the Department of Labor, has announced that it will stop collecting employment data on women. Please tell the BLS and your Members of Congress that this information is absolutely essential, and its elimination will ultimately lead to an increase in workplace inequality. The BLS claims that the decision to eliminate collection is related to the lack of demand for the numbers, but the real reason relates to conservatives' intention to downplay women's important economic role and the disparities in their pay, promotion and job assignments. By sending messages to your representatives and directly to the BLS, we may be able to stop this conservative move to "disappear" women.
Timing, as always, is vital. The comment period ends on Feb. 22 and we need you to contact the Bureau of Labor Statistics as soon as possible. We cannot allow the government to eliminate this important source of economic data that informs good public policy.
Just across my desk. It sounds tedious, tiny, and totally unsexy: the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has collected information on women in the workplace since the 1930's. They are the source that tells us how we're doing: how much we're paid, whether we work part time or fulltime or not at all, how these habits change over time. When I was writing my book, I often called the bureau economists to ask about trends on motherhood, family life, and work. It's unthinkable--it's eery, awful--to imagine this data disappearing.
And the timing. Just as the rumblings of a new feminist movement are being heard, a movement that focuses on motherhood, and work, and equity--ALL THE DATA WILL BE REMOVED. There will be no way to judge the progress (or the lack of progress) of women, mothers and the workplace if our govenrment refuses to collect this information.
So, dear readers, here's some more info, patched in from NOW's action alert, and the form for sending protest emails.
** Urge Labor Department to Keep Collecting Data on Women Workers
January 19, 2005
Take Action:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a division of the Department of Labor, has announced that it will stop collecting employment data on women. Please tell the BLS and your Members of Congress that this information is absolutely essential, and its elimination will ultimately lead to an increase in workplace inequality. The BLS claims that the decision to eliminate collection is related to the lack of demand for the numbers, but the real reason relates to conservatives' intention to downplay women's important economic role and the disparities in their pay, promotion and job assignments. By sending messages to your representatives and directly to the BLS, we may be able to stop this conservative move to "disappear" women.
Timing, as always, is vital. The comment period ends on Feb. 22 and we need you to contact the Bureau of Labor Statistics as soon as possible. We cannot allow the government to eliminate this important source of economic data that informs good public policy.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Women warriors
On sunday I did my first book event--before the book's even out. I brought along my copy of the bound galleys, and showed it all around, telling everyone that the currently gray cover will be glossy, bright white, and carried laong by a bossy red border! I was invited to speak to a group that hosts homeless families, and who had noticed the work/life balance issues faced by the poor moms and their kids. The group leader--an author herself--knows me and knows about my book. She heard that I write both about middle class and professional moms--and about poor moms too. I was glad to speak to a group that already makes these connections. They were a humane, impressive bunch.
After I spoke, the women in the group had their chance. It's chilling to hear women speak honestly about our experiences. One of the older women said that she thinks life is getting harder for women and for mothers. We're going backwards, she said. After the talk, another woman, in her young thirties, followed me out. She's the mother of a toddler, her family isn't rich, she works part time, but she loves being a mom, loves being with her son. It's the story I'm used to hearing. "We don't expect this," she told me. We don't expect that becoming a mother will so radically change how we work."
If times are bad, and they are, we need warriors.
One such warrior is Lisa Belkin, the New York TImes writer. This is the same writer who started a national discussion about work and motherhood with her October 2003 NYT Magazine article, Opt Out Revolution. Her column this sunday, Envisioning a Career Path with Pitstops was brilliant, smart, crystal clear: some women get a tiny bit of flextime during their days and weeks, but what mothers and father who want to parent need is flexibility over the life of their careers. Thank you, Lisa. We need to hear it. And we really need to hear that someone with a national platform like you do is willing to write these things, week after week.
After I spoke, the women in the group had their chance. It's chilling to hear women speak honestly about our experiences. One of the older women said that she thinks life is getting harder for women and for mothers. We're going backwards, she said. After the talk, another woman, in her young thirties, followed me out. She's the mother of a toddler, her family isn't rich, she works part time, but she loves being a mom, loves being with her son. It's the story I'm used to hearing. "We don't expect this," she told me. We don't expect that becoming a mother will so radically change how we work."
If times are bad, and they are, we need warriors.
One such warrior is Lisa Belkin, the New York TImes writer. This is the same writer who started a national discussion about work and motherhood with her October 2003 NYT Magazine article, Opt Out Revolution. Her column this sunday, Envisioning a Career Path with Pitstops was brilliant, smart, crystal clear: some women get a tiny bit of flextime during their days and weeks, but what mothers and father who want to parent need is flexibility over the life of their careers. Thank you, Lisa. We need to hear it. And we really need to hear that someone with a national platform like you do is willing to write these things, week after week.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Pink, Reprise
My best friend Laura is among the characters in the book. She's an eccentric soul, and among the sweetest, smartest and most generous people I know. In the book, she's at her day job, a feminist theorist/professor who helps us think about what "choice" really means.
Laura's other brilliance, her afternoon job, if you will, is that she's an extraordinarily talented second hand shopper. My closets are full of her finds. If you read down below to "Pink," she's the friend who sends me a pink cashmere sweater, hounded from Bargain Thrift, to help me sort through the gender ambivalence of pink. Laura's also a one-woman PR machine. She's been guiding her friends to my blog. One of them emailed her and said she particularly liked the "Pink" entry. Hearing that, Laura shifted into gear, figured the last pink cashmere was five years back. She showed up at my house tonight with a second cozy pink cashmere, of course, from our favorite junk store. It was especially poignant since Laura's leaving town for four months, and I'll miss her. L--this entry's for you!
More tomorrow on:
my first (pre)-book appearance;
and the weekend's media on motherhood, including, how can one NYT reporter willfully get mom blogs so wrong;
Finally, kudo's to Lisa Belkin's NYTimes column on how parents want day-to-day flexibility and we also want career path flexibility, and an end to the rigid professional paths that don't excuse time off for childraising.
Laura's other brilliance, her afternoon job, if you will, is that she's an extraordinarily talented second hand shopper. My closets are full of her finds. If you read down below to "Pink," she's the friend who sends me a pink cashmere sweater, hounded from Bargain Thrift, to help me sort through the gender ambivalence of pink. Laura's also a one-woman PR machine. She's been guiding her friends to my blog. One of them emailed her and said she particularly liked the "Pink" entry. Hearing that, Laura shifted into gear, figured the last pink cashmere was five years back. She showed up at my house tonight with a second cozy pink cashmere, of course, from our favorite junk store. It was especially poignant since Laura's leaving town for four months, and I'll miss her. L--this entry's for you!
More tomorrow on:
my first (pre)-book appearance;
and the weekend's media on motherhood, including, how can one NYT reporter willfully get mom blogs so wrong;
Finally, kudo's to Lisa Belkin's NYTimes column on how parents want day-to-day flexibility and we also want career path flexibility, and an end to the rigid professional paths that don't excuse time off for childraising.
Sunday, January 23, 2005
The book is up on Amazon!
Exciting book news:
The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars is available for preorders on Amazon.com and on Powells.com. In real life, the book will be out in April, once these snows are behind us and the daffodils are in bloom!
The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars is available for preorders on Amazon.com and on Powells.com. In real life, the book will be out in April, once these snows are behind us and the daffodils are in bloom!
Things Need to Change More Quickly than This....
A big thank you to Martin Kafka, who read through the whole blog, and took the time to email and update me on whether conditions for parents at the university I had worked at have changed in the six years since I quit in disgust.
And the answer is: NO!
There is a committee of the faculty senate that has suggested some changes, like undertaking a study to see what other universities provide for family leave, clarifying the options available, consider more creative uses of "leave time" etc, things that sound very abstract, especially since most universities and colleges have been hesitant to offer specific helpful aids to parents. Here, I must say that although academics are always sounding the alarm about how corporate universities are becoming, this is one instance where some lessons from the corporate world would be more helpful. Some large companies are lifetimes ahead of universities in paying attention to family leave and family responsibilities.
There are some more specific things that the report suggested, like providing emergency back up childcare. I heard an NPR report recently in which a representative from Lands End was talking about the back up childcare center they built, in which workers can use, perhaps 21 days a year, or some number decently close to that. They also suggest that the university should expand it's commitment to oncampus childcare.
(To link to the report, click this entry's title.)
So, in short, nothing has changed. Six years. Thanks Martin, for the bad news!
And the answer is: NO!
There is a committee of the faculty senate that has suggested some changes, like undertaking a study to see what other universities provide for family leave, clarifying the options available, consider more creative uses of "leave time" etc, things that sound very abstract, especially since most universities and colleges have been hesitant to offer specific helpful aids to parents. Here, I must say that although academics are always sounding the alarm about how corporate universities are becoming, this is one instance where some lessons from the corporate world would be more helpful. Some large companies are lifetimes ahead of universities in paying attention to family leave and family responsibilities.
There are some more specific things that the report suggested, like providing emergency back up childcare. I heard an NPR report recently in which a representative from Lands End was talking about the back up childcare center they built, in which workers can use, perhaps 21 days a year, or some number decently close to that. They also suggest that the university should expand it's commitment to oncampus childcare.
(To link to the report, click this entry's title.)
So, in short, nothing has changed. Six years. Thanks Martin, for the bad news!
Friday, January 21, 2005
Pink
Yesterday one of my students dropped by for some help on an exam. He and his partner just had a baby. He's an exhausted new father.
He tells me he's appalled at the pink clothes everyone is sending for his infant daughter. "What about me makes them think that I want my daughter clothed in pink?" he asks.
I admit, I've come to terms with pink. I grew up, like many, knowing that pink is evil. Pink is the antichrist of gender equality. All of our problems derive from, or are encoded by.....pink.
So, yes. I too, at the beginning, was appalled by the ubiquity of pink, at baby shops divided by a sea of blue and pink, by the difficult search for, oh, green, yellow, anything not pastel. I was horrified by the frills. Someone sent us a satiny pink dress, even, with a peter pan collar that ended in lace, and matching satin baby slippers. We opened the package, and wondered what they were thinking.
I slowly got over it. I realized pink is not the enemy. Pink is cute. And on my daughter's darker coloring, certain pinks look great. My best friend Laura even sent me a pink cashmere sweater she found at a second hand shop in Germantown. She told me to put it on, that I had to get over pink. The problems are out there, but don't blame pink.
I've tried to come to terms with pink, aesthetically, anyway. I have to admit, the culture of pink still scares me. I worry about our girls, about the messages they receive. I worry that not enough has changed, that their futures will be limited. I'm not doctrinaire, actually, and I have come to love what pink does. I love not having to shun such a delightful color, to wear it happily. Bu still, I worry, and I don't know whether I worry about this one too much, or too little.
When my daughter was in pre-K, for Halloween all the girls dressed in versions of pink. Ballerinas. Fairy Princesses. Ruling Princesses. Fairies. Butterflies. I have several years of preschool pictures and parties in which 8 girl toddlers are all wearing pink.
How does this happen. These kids all have progressive parents who hate pink, who know about the pink problem.
Is it the return of the pink repressed? The 70's ban on fairy princess costumes, coming back to haunt? What is that propels groups of girls to run in pink?
I could end this by damning pink. Except I can't.
Halloween 2003. Kindergarten. The girls are still wearing pink, or at least, versions of princessdom. My daughter is Belle, clothed in billowing yellow. As I watch the kids in their parade, I start up a conversation with the mom and dad of a fifth grader. I make a joke about all the pink. It's a progressive school. Everyone knows the code of pink. But exactly what is that? Am I 20 years out of date? If I bum too much about pink and other symbols, I might lose sight of the real problems, like is my daughter being taught Math well enough, and why do the boys in her class play chess in the morning while the girls color? The recent cultural debates about females, innate sex differences and math talents (see below) haunt me as I watch my daughter learn math.
"Don't worry about it," the mom said. "Look."
I look. The PreK had passed. The kindergarten and first grade had passed. In front of our eyes were the second graders, and the third, and then, the fourth.
The other mom was absolutely right. The color had changed. Dramatically. No more pink. All of a sudden, it's black. After second grade, the girls, nearly all of them were wearing black. The lower school kids all march with their partners from the middle school. The middle school kids are too cool for costumes, and they wear their usual shades of dark. The palette moves quickly from perky princess pink to deep black. In my daughter's class, the girls are now versions of vampires, vantessas, black cats and witches. As with the pink phase, all the types overlap. Don't ask me to point out the vantessas (a new word to me) from the witches, that's a whole other comment on the culture of six-and-seven year old best friend girls.
I'm still concerned about the gender culture our girls are growing up into. I'm focused on how well they are being taught, and on how to help my daughter sort out the different messages on Princess Diaries 2. But after seeing how quickly it's overtaken by neo-goth black, I'm no longer scared by little girl pink.
He tells me he's appalled at the pink clothes everyone is sending for his infant daughter. "What about me makes them think that I want my daughter clothed in pink?" he asks.
I admit, I've come to terms with pink. I grew up, like many, knowing that pink is evil. Pink is the antichrist of gender equality. All of our problems derive from, or are encoded by.....pink.
So, yes. I too, at the beginning, was appalled by the ubiquity of pink, at baby shops divided by a sea of blue and pink, by the difficult search for, oh, green, yellow, anything not pastel. I was horrified by the frills. Someone sent us a satiny pink dress, even, with a peter pan collar that ended in lace, and matching satin baby slippers. We opened the package, and wondered what they were thinking.
I slowly got over it. I realized pink is not the enemy. Pink is cute. And on my daughter's darker coloring, certain pinks look great. My best friend Laura even sent me a pink cashmere sweater she found at a second hand shop in Germantown. She told me to put it on, that I had to get over pink. The problems are out there, but don't blame pink.
I've tried to come to terms with pink, aesthetically, anyway. I have to admit, the culture of pink still scares me. I worry about our girls, about the messages they receive. I worry that not enough has changed, that their futures will be limited. I'm not doctrinaire, actually, and I have come to love what pink does. I love not having to shun such a delightful color, to wear it happily. Bu still, I worry, and I don't know whether I worry about this one too much, or too little.
When my daughter was in pre-K, for Halloween all the girls dressed in versions of pink. Ballerinas. Fairy Princesses. Ruling Princesses. Fairies. Butterflies. I have several years of preschool pictures and parties in which 8 girl toddlers are all wearing pink.
How does this happen. These kids all have progressive parents who hate pink, who know about the pink problem.
Is it the return of the pink repressed? The 70's ban on fairy princess costumes, coming back to haunt? What is that propels groups of girls to run in pink?
I could end this by damning pink. Except I can't.
Halloween 2003. Kindergarten. The girls are still wearing pink, or at least, versions of princessdom. My daughter is Belle, clothed in billowing yellow. As I watch the kids in their parade, I start up a conversation with the mom and dad of a fifth grader. I make a joke about all the pink. It's a progressive school. Everyone knows the code of pink. But exactly what is that? Am I 20 years out of date? If I bum too much about pink and other symbols, I might lose sight of the real problems, like is my daughter being taught Math well enough, and why do the boys in her class play chess in the morning while the girls color? The recent cultural debates about females, innate sex differences and math talents (see below) haunt me as I watch my daughter learn math.
"Don't worry about it," the mom said. "Look."
I look. The PreK had passed. The kindergarten and first grade had passed. In front of our eyes were the second graders, and the third, and then, the fourth.
The other mom was absolutely right. The color had changed. Dramatically. No more pink. All of a sudden, it's black. After second grade, the girls, nearly all of them were wearing black. The lower school kids all march with their partners from the middle school. The middle school kids are too cool for costumes, and they wear their usual shades of dark. The palette moves quickly from perky princess pink to deep black. In my daughter's class, the girls are now versions of vampires, vantessas, black cats and witches. As with the pink phase, all the types overlap. Don't ask me to point out the vantessas (a new word to me) from the witches, that's a whole other comment on the culture of six-and-seven year old best friend girls.
I'm still concerned about the gender culture our girls are growing up into. I'm focused on how well they are being taught, and on how to help my daughter sort out the different messages on Princess Diaries 2. But after seeing how quickly it's overtaken by neo-goth black, I'm no longer scared by little girl pink.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
It's Not about Biology
We moms and women have been getting it from all directions lately, and the hit we're taking is biology. Suddenly, all over the media, it's the return of biology as the arbiter of women's and mothers' destinies.
Last Thursday it was Maureen Dowd's column Men Just Want Mommy that inexplicitly let stand a statement that powerful men marry less powerful women because of an evolutionary demand. Instead of dealing with complex issues, biology comes to the rescue. She shoud come visit my neighborhood, where every married woman I knew is married to a similarly smart man. Also, women live with each other. Men live with each other. That seems more evolutionary to me, in the best sense.
Score: D on explanation, D on sociology.
Then Saturday it was David Brooks' column, Empty Nests, and Hearts. Women should marry and have babies in their twenties when our bodies are most up for it, and think about our careers later. Now, the government can help by offering tax credits and tuition credits for mothers who have done this, and now are ready to go to graduate school and start a profession. Excellent marks for making the link beween motherhood and public policy. This doesn't happen often enough. However, poor grade on telling us that we should have babies to help the nation.
Score: A on public policy link, D on sociology.
Then there's the Lawrence Sumners debate at Harvard. The reason that women haven't succeeded in careers in math, science and engineering is due to innate sex differences. Biology again. It's not about sexism, it's not about men in those fields keeping women out. It's biology. Gender bias has nothing to do with it. And then there's those 80 hour work weeks. I interviewed a woman for my book who quit her engineering job when they refused to let her pump, after her first baby. She wanted to work, they wouldn't accommodate, she was the only woman in the firm. So much for biology, sounds like old-fashioned sexism to me.
Score: D, all round.
Miriam's non-biological answer: It's as if folks are tired of dealing with all the real social issues involved, all the patterns, all the inequities. So they just resort to biology as a quick and dirty explanation of why we can't make life better for all of us.
Last Thursday it was Maureen Dowd's column Men Just Want Mommy that inexplicitly let stand a statement that powerful men marry less powerful women because of an evolutionary demand. Instead of dealing with complex issues, biology comes to the rescue. She shoud come visit my neighborhood, where every married woman I knew is married to a similarly smart man. Also, women live with each other. Men live with each other. That seems more evolutionary to me, in the best sense.
Score: D on explanation, D on sociology.
Then Saturday it was David Brooks' column, Empty Nests, and Hearts. Women should marry and have babies in their twenties when our bodies are most up for it, and think about our careers later. Now, the government can help by offering tax credits and tuition credits for mothers who have done this, and now are ready to go to graduate school and start a profession. Excellent marks for making the link beween motherhood and public policy. This doesn't happen often enough. However, poor grade on telling us that we should have babies to help the nation.
Score: A on public policy link, D on sociology.
Then there's the Lawrence Sumners debate at Harvard. The reason that women haven't succeeded in careers in math, science and engineering is due to innate sex differences. Biology again. It's not about sexism, it's not about men in those fields keeping women out. It's biology. Gender bias has nothing to do with it. And then there's those 80 hour work weeks. I interviewed a woman for my book who quit her engineering job when they refused to let her pump, after her first baby. She wanted to work, they wouldn't accommodate, she was the only woman in the firm. So much for biology, sounds like old-fashioned sexism to me.
Score: D, all round.
Miriam's non-biological answer: It's as if folks are tired of dealing with all the real social issues involved, all the patterns, all the inequities. So they just resort to biology as a quick and dirty explanation of why we can't make life better for all of us.
Friday, January 14, 2005
Promises!
Friends, I begin the new year with a promise to blog more often, much more often, and here goes.
One of the many things I do in the book is write about people and organizations who are trying to make life easier for mothers, fathers and families. This morning I had coffee with Dana Barron, who directs the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Pennsylvania. Among the many hats she wears, Dana researches work-family issues for women of different classes: poor women, affluent women, middle-class women. She's concerned about how these issues work out across America's very diverse communities. Dana strongly believes that academic life should be linked with communal life, and has made connections between her research center and local organizations like the Third Path Institute. They're at www.thirdpath.org.
Third Path is pushing 'shared care' as one response to the struggles many of us face about work, family and time. For this group, shared care describes families in which parents are the primary caretakers of their kids, and they also are actively engaged in other work. It's about creating a life that doesn't have to be split between the either/or of work and family.
I visited their website for a while. I'll tell you what I liked. It has a vision. When you read the book you'll know that I'm big into visions about how we're getting out of the work-family mess. The usual, magazine-type banter on balancing work and family usually focuses on the family side of it all. We moms get household tips and are advised on how best to manage our time and direct our families so that we're as efficient as possible. Now, I love household tips, too, especially those promises to accomplish the impossible, like getting rid of the piles of paper that live on my kitchen counters.
But honing our households can never be enough. It can never fully solve the real problems, and we know that.
Third Path emphasizes that workplaces need to change, yes, but untill they do, we--families, moms, dads--can be as creative as possible. We can take what control we have to create what we can. Their vision is hopeful. They want to support families in figuring out our visions of family life. What do we want? Are we working enough? Working too much? Are there parts of work that might be more flexible? How do we get the support we need from family and friends?
What I found most reassuring was this: They believe we have agency, even in this most fraught and often overwhelming area of work-family life. So check them out.
And for any lawyers reading, their first annual conference was last May: Having a Life: Creating Work-Life Balance in the Law, May 2004. The conference site contains lots of stories about and strategies for dealing with family life and a legal career more creatively. Pass it on, because like many professions, law has been hard on lawyer-parents who want to parent more actively, moms especially.
One of the many things I do in the book is write about people and organizations who are trying to make life easier for mothers, fathers and families. This morning I had coffee with Dana Barron, who directs the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Pennsylvania. Among the many hats she wears, Dana researches work-family issues for women of different classes: poor women, affluent women, middle-class women. She's concerned about how these issues work out across America's very diverse communities. Dana strongly believes that academic life should be linked with communal life, and has made connections between her research center and local organizations like the Third Path Institute. They're at www.thirdpath.org.
Third Path is pushing 'shared care' as one response to the struggles many of us face about work, family and time. For this group, shared care describes families in which parents are the primary caretakers of their kids, and they also are actively engaged in other work. It's about creating a life that doesn't have to be split between the either/or of work and family.
I visited their website for a while. I'll tell you what I liked. It has a vision. When you read the book you'll know that I'm big into visions about how we're getting out of the work-family mess. The usual, magazine-type banter on balancing work and family usually focuses on the family side of it all. We moms get household tips and are advised on how best to manage our time and direct our families so that we're as efficient as possible. Now, I love household tips, too, especially those promises to accomplish the impossible, like getting rid of the piles of paper that live on my kitchen counters.
But honing our households can never be enough. It can never fully solve the real problems, and we know that.
Third Path emphasizes that workplaces need to change, yes, but untill they do, we--families, moms, dads--can be as creative as possible. We can take what control we have to create what we can. Their vision is hopeful. They want to support families in figuring out our visions of family life. What do we want? Are we working enough? Working too much? Are there parts of work that might be more flexible? How do we get the support we need from family and friends?
What I found most reassuring was this: They believe we have agency, even in this most fraught and often overwhelming area of work-family life. So check them out.
And for any lawyers reading, their first annual conference was last May: Having a Life: Creating Work-Life Balance in the Law, May 2004. The conference site contains lots of stories about and strategies for dealing with family life and a legal career more creatively. Pass it on, because like many professions, law has been hard on lawyer-parents who want to parent more actively, moms especially.