Style, Style, and More Style

Just when we thought the pendulum was swinging toward the slacker moms, or at least to the great mass of relatively sane mothers in America, New York Magazine gives us cover story Alpha Mom , about a new Cablevision TV station that's set to give us the best, best, best new absolutely up to date research by experts to tell us how to raise our kids. No doubt there'll be a fair amount of air time devoted to how we should look, dress, do our hair, and accessorize our kids.

Is this what we mothers, fathers and parents in America really need? I don't think so. Thanks to yet another magazine for featuring a motherhood cover story on all the wrong issues.

Alpha Mom apparently is a former Wall Street broker who just couldn't continue her 80 hour a week job once she had kids. Now she works from home, almost as hard, but she has a nanny to watch her son, and her office is near where he plays, so she gets to work and be near him, and life is better. That's a good individual solution for her. However: how much better it would be if Wall Street and the financial industry in general had good jobs that require say 30 or 40 hours a week. Then Alpha Mom could have kept working, and we'd all be spared another media outlet aimed to keep affluent mothers very anxious and off-kilter, and of course, above all, to keep them shopping. Instead of the Alpha Mom channel, what about Political Mom Network? How's that for an idea? Cablevision contract, anyone?

Style Trumps All

In Truth Behind the Mommy Wars I write about how motherhood issues get bumped to the style section, when we should be front page news. The fashion of motherhood trumps apparently boring issues like the huge wage gap we face, or how hard it is to find decent part time work when we want it, or how little support most working mother get, or most any mother, for that matter. I write particularly about the New York Times, and how horrible this newspaper's coverage of motherhood has been, yes, the paper of record that's brought us "opt out revolution" instead of noticing how mothers get squeezed out of the workplace, and this spring introduced us to the awful phrase "issue fatigue" by which it meant that elite ny types are just tired of talking about mothers' frustrations. The rest of us still face them, of course, but urban sophisticates who control the gateways to media find them boring and fatigue-inducing.

I had meant to write a week ago about the newest NYT offering. They take away our female columnists, they don't cover our ongoing issues, but because the lives of socialite mothers are ever so fascinating, we do get a long article about super affluent mothers and the new, members-only gym for mothers and their kids, complete with spa services so that being a mom never means that you can't get a pedicure when you need one. To see the article you need to buy it from the archive, but here's the cite, just in case. Call me grumpy. I like a pedicure every so often too, but honestly, next to real issues like finding good daycare, affording it, more control over work conditions and pay, doesn't that pale? Can't we do our own toes after the kids are in bed at night? And thanks, New York Times, for once again showing us how little regard you have for women and mothers, unless that is, we've inherited huge amounts of money, or married very wealthy men. Thanks for putting us on the style page, that really helps us all, doesn't it now.

Part time work: A hard-won Victory in NH!

In The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars, I write about Jonathan Baird, also known as my brother in law, and his efforts as a legal aid attorney. In New Hampshire, he's been working hard to make some changes in the law so that parents who worked part time and end up on unemployement, and who can't easily apply for fulltime work because they have kids and childcare issues, can still get unemployment. In the past, part time workers weren't eligible for unemployment benefits. In order to get them, you had to be willing and able to accept fulltime work if offered. This made life even worse for part time workers, especially those with very low incomes. First they lose their job. Then, they can't even get unemployment.

Well thanks to Jonathan Baird and his team of Legal Aid attorneys, in New Hampshire, all that has changed now. A new law has passed the State House and Senate, and will be signed by the governor. One thing that Jon taught me when we talked about these issues is just how much effort it takes to change just one little piece of the law, in just one little state of the union.


Jon reports:
After nine years of efforts and quite a few defeats, UI advocates in NH scored a victory in our Legislature yesterday. HB 170, a bill that extends unemployment benefits to part-time workers with child care limitations, passed our state senate. It had previously passed the NH House. The Governor will sign it.
This session we had two bills that addressed the part-time issue. One was a broader bill that would have covered all part-timers. The second bill (HB 170) was narrower but it had the support of our Employment Security as well as some business lobbyists.
The broader bill went down but it allowed us to look more reasonable with a bill that did not cover all part-timers and had a much lower price tag. HB 170 had some other housekeeping aspects and our Employment Security characterized the bill as a "housekeeping measure".
The NH Senate has a 16-8 Republican majority and has been very tough on many low income worker issues, including killing our fourth attempt in recent years to raise the state's minimum wage. However, this time, largely because of the lobbying efforts of the new Commissioner of Employment Security, we got a 15-9 favorable vote in the senate.
The bill requires workers with child care limitations to be available 20 hours a week in order to collect.

The Lawyers and the Leaders

Yesterday I met with yet another group of lawyers, this one was Flex-Time Lawyers, LLC., they meet in New York and in Philadelphia, and the group's the brainchild of Debbie Epstein Henry (check out the Flex Time Lawyers, LLC website and tell your lawyer friends about it, it's full of resources). As one woman in the group describes her, Debbie is a radical feminist in a corporate logo. The women in the room, and it was all women, and the room was a conference room at Blank, Rome, a top Philadelphia firm. It was all glamorous enough to make we wish I had been a lawyer so I could hang out in beautiful offices. But as my neighbor Kevin, a maritime attorney, suggested later that afternoon, I might feel differently after spending 7 hours straight in the conference room, nice view and all, or after the fifth night running that I stumble home at nine at night. Anyway, in that room, with our nicely catered lunch, the women lawyers talked ruefully about the still prevailing notion, that good lawyers work all the time, and good mommies stay home. (Debbie had told me that just under 4 percent of attorneys nationwide work part time, so indeed, there hasn't been much wiggle room there.) In their different ways, the women attorneys in the room are trying options that resist that, some work part time, some work as inhouse counsel to corporations, some have their own small partnerships, and some are sticking it out at the big firms, for many reasons: the status and prestige, the salaries, and because they just don't want to be pushed out.

No one knows what to do with women lawyers. They're the symbol of feminism's success, aren't they, the ones who made it into the newly opened law schools, who trailblazed their ways into the old boy firms. And although leadership comes from all over, and there are many ways for us to be leaders--many more than we usually realize, I think--our women lawyers are in the pipeline to become our future politicians, and our future judges. These are among the women who will raise money for political candidates, and who will have access to capital, and who will know their way around city government and local powerbrokers, since that's part of what the large law firms do. Our women lawyers have both been icons, and anti-icons. People attack them for their work-family troubles. After all, from many a perspective, it's hard to feel too sorry for a woman who can work, earn a very good salary, and afford a nanny at home. At the same time, as I write in the book, the mommy wars are filled with class envy, and this gets in the way of seeing how our work/family issues are all connected.

I was really struck yesterday by the particular meaning of what these women face. One woman, who had recently written a book about women lawyers, called Woman-at-Law, said that one of the reigning issues among women attorneys is whether they can really wear pants. I believe that this an issue. But can we believe it, damn, it's 2005, and women in the professions are still forced to wonder wonder about the relation of skirts and success. On the happier side, another woman in the room had just earned parntership, and on a part time track (and she was wearing pants, too!). And insightfully, when talking about the mommy wars, one woman said that she thought that currently, and in a workplace setting, that the real on the ground mommy wars were between women working part time and those working full time.

Imperfect Serenity

Imperfect Serenity's the title of a book that my friend Eileen Flanagan is shopping around at the moment, looking for the right publisher. I've been lucky enough to read her manuscript, and it's very powerful and beautiful, a cross between a journal of quaker spirituality and a recollection of motherhood, all done with a political edge. For those who think the rightwing has a lock on religious talk, it's time to think again, and Eileen's work will help us to do that. Our daughters are in the same class at school this year, and I remember one afternoon, tallking with Eileen, about her work, all the kids around, as she looked up at me and said, "It's hard to find discernment with a four year old screaming in your ear." That just about sums up the book: how do you find an everyday spiritual path with children out and about, when so many of our models are of the singular man going off alone, or of silence, or retreat, or uninterrupted leadership. It's a great book.

And until it's published, all of us can have some access to her thinking, since she started a new blog called, eponymously,Imperfect Serenity (imperfectserenity.blogspot.com) which I've really been enjoying. Today's post starts: "Three converging activities have got me reflecting on how to practice the Quaker testimonies of Simplicity and Equality as a middle class parent: 1) we’re cleaning out our basement; 2) Bob Geldof is planning another rock extravaganza to help the poor in Africa; and 3) I’m reading God’s Politics by Jim Wallis." Go and enjoy; I know I learn much from Eileen everyday.

Brooklyn Reading, Thursday June 2

It's time to take the F train out to Cobble Hill to read at Book Court, 7 pm on Thursday, June 2d. Any Brooklyn readers? Any readers with friends in Brooklyn? Tell 'em to stop by so I won't be yet another lonely writer out on book tour, peering anxiously at the bookstore door.

And dear readers, I'll announce in a few days why I've been so lax with my blogging lately. Stay tuned!

Seattle

Back from a long, jam-packed three days in Seattle, where I both talked about my book, and heard people's stories, most of my readings and events being times for us to talk aloud in public. Here are some of the more poignant moments, good and bad.

At a reading last wednesday night at Third Place Books in Ravenna, a new mother was there who had recently moved to the US from Vancouver. She was shell-shocked, not just because she was the mother of an infant, but because she couldn't believe the lack of support for mothers in the U.S. And she wasn't just talking about general, informal support. She was referring to solid things like paid family leave, and state-supported daycare. When a few days later I was in Vancouver and some of the islands of the coast, I found the same thing among mothers who had moved back and forth between Canada and the US--a sense of shock at the difference.

At a luncheon I did last thursday at the University of Washington Law School, I learned lots about how women in their twenties are doing motherhood. I was surprised, because when I was a graduate student, there were no women at Duke law school who were pregnant. Yet, things have changed, and women headed for a professional track no longer feel that to succeed they must put off childrearing till they've acheived professional success. I think this sense of entitlement will be part of what fuels change (and more on this, later). At UW, I learned that 10% of the students enter with kids, and by the third year, 20% of the students have children (this includes men and women). During my talk, someone referred to the remote room, and after, the organizer of the talk brought me to see it. When the new law school was built several years back, it was designed so that every classroom is high tech and wired for video and sound. On the second floor, there is a room filled with four stations, each with headphones and a TV monitor, where students can watch and listen to the lectures. So, if they need to breastfeed, or they have infants, or their daycare falls through, they can sit there, with kids, and still see and hear the lecture. There are two lactation rooms, one with a monitor, and plans are underway to install a hospital grade pump, so that nursing students need only bring their own tubes, and they can nurse quicker and faster than ever. There are some cribs, a small bed and toys, a refrigerator and some other kitchen appliances. What struck me is how easy it is to make student-parents feel welcome, and to do something so simple that immeasurably improves their lives. What struck me, too, is how it helps student-parents feel a sense of community and support, rather than the marginality and isolation they feel elsewhere. Kudos to the University of Washington Law School for setting such an amazing example.

A Wild Things' Mother's Day

Wild Things is the name of the girls softball league in my town. Lest we think that all interventions and change must be large and dramatic, let me tell you what happened yesterday. First, as we know, I got up early to be on CNN. Probably there's a limited ammount of times in a life that one can write a sentence like that, so let me enjoy it now. By ten-twenty, the black town car (yes, they sent a car service for me, again, not an everyday experience around here) had delivered my back home to my family. By dinner time we will have hosted a lunch for my in-laws, and I will have appeared at a wonderful Mother's Day bookparty and tea, and been part of a terrific discussion by activist women about motherhood.

At noon, however, we were off to Wild Things practice for the annual mother-daughter softball game.

After the game, Andy Lamas, leader of Wild Things, gathered all the girls, and all the parents, and had us sit down under a large shade tree. He passed out pages from the New York Times, pages that were filled with Mothers Day perfume and jewelry ads. Nothing wrong with presents for mom, he said. But why is this all we read about? Then he passed out red pages to everyone, and on the red pages he had typed Julie Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, written in 1870, way at the beginning of Mother's Day, when the full name was Mother's Day for Peace. It wasn't always about jewelry, he told the girls. Mother's Day was once political. The moms wanted peace, too.

My daughter that it was silly, but after dinner, as her dad went upstairs to draw her bath, we did our after dinner sit-on-lap (will we do this when she's 18 and taller than me, I wonder?). She threw her legs over mine. The red page was on the other side of the table. Read it to me, she said. And we did. And we talked about all the things that mothers day can be, and how this day, and all of life, really, is both about us, and bigger than us, all at the same time.

So for all of us who need this memory to become a new reality for this year and all the years to come, Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, 1870, with special thanks to Andy Lamas for all he does for girls, and for the example he sets for us all.

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender to those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the sumons of war,
let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God--
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

CNN--Sunday Morning at 9.30!

That'll be me, being interviewed by Betty Nguyen on CNN Sunday Morning, 9.30, so turn on the TV!

My line this mothers' day: give those mothers in your life flowers and breakfast in bed and a gift certificate to their favorite spa or store. Then go out and fight like hell so all of us can have paid family leave, an end to the 15% wage gap for mothers, better part time work opportunities with decent pay, grants for childcare if they need them, and an easier chance getting back into the workplace if they want to take time out. And health care for the family that's not linked to where we work.

This mothers day, let's make it real. And let's start telling our stories as mothers and fathers, and saying what we want.

Mother Talk, meet Mothers BookBag

I've mentioned MotherTalk before, and its dream of getting mothers together to talk about motherhood, and to see it in a more communal, collective vein, as part of a new consciousness raising. I've talked about my dream that we mothers and fathers get together and figure out what needs to be changed, and how to do it, that we raise our voices in public, that we love our kids, that we see the cultural conundrums we're in, and that we take the bull by the horns and move ahead.

That's where a new blog and idea comes in, and I want to help promote it: Mothers Book Bag. It's put together by A Mama's Rant, on behalf of the motherhood organization MOTHERS, as a way to get parents together, reading books about motherhood, and talking. Quoting Ann Crittendon, she describes it's intent:

"I'm thinking that we should encourage everyone out there to begin to organize themselves into book groups choosing books around mother's issues. In other words, instead of just having a list of books to read or books we recommend, why not have a book suggestion for groups to read and discuss, with a focus on airing their life experiences and hopefully brainstorming on how to improve things."

The site includes instructions on how to get a book group started, for those of us who like how-to's.

Since so much of the media on mothering doesn't want us to consider the politics of it, and so does want us to keep spinning in the same route, getting together on our own, whether under the guise of reading groups, CR groups, or both is our next step. It doesn't matter what we call it.

Buses

Buses, yes. In the book I write about how it's just hard to get traction on the motherhood/parenting/fatherhood question. There are so many moving parts. You need fixes in government policy, like taxes and social security credits. You need workplace changes, starting with a general understanding of the real labor that parenting takes. You need economic and finance changes, so that houses aren't so expensive, and so we can all live on less. And then there's the schools issue, which has some of us working really hard for lots of money to buy houses in good public school districts, or living in cities and often paying through the nose for private school when urban districts are in disarray and hard to navigate. And that's not even the half of it. It's hard to know where to start. One can start big, with federal legislation, but that's complicated, especially with politics as they are right now. Or one can start very small and local, but raise the same issues.

Back when I was in Durham, and at a party at author Faulkner Fox's home, one of the mothers told a story about how her son was starting middle school, and she had just gotten him enrolled at a charter school, because the general middle school was deemed too rough. She had been at home all these years and was ready to go back to work, but she had just learned that the charter school didn't provide bus service.

That's all the detail I know. The group talked about it for a while, and then the discussion moved on to something else. But the conundrum stayed on my mind for a long time after.

In all our discussions of parenting and work, most of us would never point to buses as a culprit in the lack of support so many of us feel. They're not the main problem, by any means, but what I've learned is that the parenting problem is the sum of lots of small ways that parents don't get the help we need, of things that one by one feel small and petty but which add up to a climate that undermines us. You can't go after a climate, but you can take it apart and try to fix things one by one. I look around, and many mothers and fathers end up delaying a return to work, or feel like they can't go back to work, or that their part time hours are compromised, because of difficulties in getting the kids to and from school. Again, it's fine for many of us. I don't mind dropping my daughter off and picking her up. But that day when I tire of working from home all by myself, and I want an office job--well I'll be mighty glad that the school provides buses.

The mother seemed resigned to the situation. I understand that. We live in political times where we doubt that ordinary citizens can make change happen. And we are told again and again that motherhood, fatherhood, and family life are private, individual, and can't be fixed ever by group or governmental efforts of any kind, which is just plain ideological and wrong.

After the discussion, I kept wondering. What would it look like to raise a fuss about buses, to call the school district, to write to the papers, and not to limit the discussion to the simple "I want bus service" but to link it to the whole structure (or lack of structure) that supports (or doesn't support) parents and work, that makes it harder to do ordinary things, like get our kids to school. What would it look like to say, families need buses because in lieu of bus service, it's the mothers (mostly, and the few at home dads) whose lives balancing work and family are made more difficult. Because the savings on the part of the school is made up for by the unpaid labor of mothers and fathers, to raise the bus issue as a parenting issue.

I think sometimes we're afraid to make those links. We're afraid that someone will say we're insane, that there's no linkage, that a bus is just a bus. It's that small fear, or perhaps not a small fear, or being ridiculed or having someone say "you're wrong, that's silly" that keeps us from raising issues in the most immediate ways we know how, by calling school and city officials, by talking with our friends, and by writing letters to the editor.

Still, a bus, it turns out, is not just a bus, but one of many microcosms of the frustrations that families face.

And I wish that mother luck.

Philadelphia Launch--this coming weekend.

For any Philadelphia readers and visitors: this weekend I have two book events.

The first is Saturday April 30th: a reading/signing at Robins Bookstore, 108 S. 13th street, near Sansom, at 4 pm. Rumor has it a friend of mine's bringing home-baked chocolate chip cookies to match the book cover! My readings tend to be less me reading and more everyone talking, so come out and talk.

The second is a book launch party on Sunday, May 1, 2-4. It's a private home, and to protect the privacy, I don't want to list it here in cyberspace. But: if you're interested, and it is a big open book party, email me and I'll tell you the address.

Read below about Elizabeth from Half-Changed World, and I've really been enjoying daddy chip and daddychip2, so check them out and tell 'em I sent you!

Half-changed World/How to be happy

Elizabeth from Half-Changed World showed me the way to this post, which I really like, so, continuing the "what is a satisfied life" thread, here to read and ponder:



How to be happy


In the online edition of the Washington Post, there's an interesting article today on Six Ways to Be Happy with Your College Choice. It could just as easily have been called Six Ways to Be Happy With Your Work-Life Choices.


The list, based on a book called The Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz, is:


1) Listen to your gut instincts -- don't over-analyze.
2) Count your blessings.
3) Be happy about "good enough" and don't worry that you might not have achieved the absolute maximum level of happiness.
4) Regret less.
5) Remember that the grass is always greener on the other side, and don't take it as a sign that you've made the wrong choice.
6) Avoid conversations about your choices with people who don't follow the above rules.


Or as our grandparents might have said "you pays your money, and you takes your choices."


It's good to remember that choices are rarely permanent -- you can stay home for a while, then go back to work, or vice versa -- but it doesn't do anyone good to constantly second guess themselves.


**

Something about the grandparent quote got to me: I could actually imagine my dead grandfather telling me that. Now at the same time, I can hear my part in this imagined conversation. I would be saying that choices are more complicated, that we don't have all the choices we want and need. But there's something about this post, in it's distillation of "live your life" that appeals to me.

Having it All 2/I Love Seattle

Well I had a terrific time on KUOW the other night, and it whet my appetite for my visit to Seattle next month for several readings and luncheons and a book salon and even a TV appearance. There just is such a difference between the east coast jadedness I'm used to, and a certain pacific northwest smartness, and a utopianism I really appreciated.

So what does it mean to have it all? At show's end, Jeannie Yandel, the producer, asked us to think about alternative phrases. A sequenced life? (referring to working and family-caring and working in sequence, but not at the same time). That sometimes describes it, but many women and men move in and out of the workplace, they carousel, and they do part time work. A reflective life? A thoughtful life? These get at the comined spiritual and intellectual senses of really calling our rhythms into question, and considering how they fit into the structures around us. The next day, a Seattle woman and new friend emailed to suggest that we call it "a satisfied life." There's something fitting about that. It doesn't have to be about a megalomania. Life doesn't even have to be excessive. It echoes some of the pop-psychology literature on how it's okay to be a good-enough mother. We're used to thinking about 'satisfactory" as not so great, like getting B minuses in college. It's satisfactory, but not anything to write home about. We've got to change that sense. Real life isn't college, and it's not graded on a curve. It's good to be satisifed.

Tomorrow I'll pull out my notes and write about the discussion, becuase it was so interesting to me, in part because men and stay-at-home dads called in and we got to hear a bit of what was on their minds. As I go about undermining the mommy wars and the tendency to divide women into camps against each other, I also want to make sure we don't start building up oppositions between at-home mothers and at-home fathers.

A good night to all.

What Does it Mean to Have It All?

That's the question I've been asked to reflect upon tonight at 8, pacific time, on Seattle/Puget Sound Public Radio's KUOW Presents (see to stream it to your computer/).

What does it mean to have it all? I did a quick jotting-down of notes. Having it all seems so quaint, an old-fashioned term that's more a problem than an ideal worth holding on to. It seems to have emerged during the 70's, when feminism was in part boiled down to a vision in which women could have kids, and have an interesting, well-paying job (the interesting and well-paid job was the ideal, anyway, we know most jobs fall short). But anyway, having it all was family and work.

From the perspective of 2005 and mainstream culture, that seems awfully simple and easy. Now 'having it all' means the family and the job--which must be a great job-- and it means having a great, in shape body, and being fashionably dressed, and driving a fancy car and owning a house in the right neighborhood. It's turned into a much more material vision of what life needs to be good. A much more narrow vision.

And a nearly impossible one, what with longer working hours demanded from all our jobs, and less support for children than we need. Not to mention how damn expensive that dream's become. having it all is less about the relative simplicity of family and job for women, and more about how women and men both need

So what does it mean, now, to have it all? Even that's not how I'd answer it, I think first we need to take the question apart even more. Were really talking about figuring out what gives life meaning, what makes it worth living. Just as I detest the word 'balance' that's used as shorthand for all that, perhaps we should also get rid of having it all. Having--posessing? All--everything? What does possession have to do with it? Why understand what we want in those terms. What happens when we get rid of the catch phrases and instead put the desire back in: What do I want? After all, there's so much cultural pressure these days. The standards are ever raising. If mothers and wives once just had to keep their homes relatively clean to pass the neighborhood gossip's eye, now you've got to follow the latest decorating and interior design trends. If once you just had to get the basic foods and vegetables on the table, now you've got to be a foodie too, and it all must be organic and expensive, not to mention locally grown and not wrapped in plastic. And the cultural standards for raising and educating our kids are through the roof: ivy-education for all? As if that's what all our kids want? What would it mean for all of us to be able to be more critical of all the pressures and class-related competitions and ambitions, to locate them, to anaylze them, to put them up for question and in the midst of all this, say: now what do I want? What really makes me happy?

I have other thoughts, too, on how for many of the women and men I interviewed for the book, working less and attending more to family meant investing more in public life, in civic life, and in neighborhood life, and that I think this is very positive, Left out of any of the having it all definitions is the sense that part of leading a good life might be feeling part of one's community, and participating in something that's bigger than our family lives, and that's not paid work.

But for now, it's off to school pick-up!