On My Mind

So this is what's on my mind--how do we take all the thoughts of moms and dads everywhere, their love for their kids, their visions of a saner life of parenting, their frustration at the workplaces and government policies that make this harder than it should be, and move forward toward real change?

At the Barnard event last week, Lisa Belkin put it very succinctly: How do break out of the constant cycless of confusion, hope and disappointment that mothers in particular keep facing in our nation's history?

And me, I've been in so many rooms and discussions over the past five months since my book came out. I've listened to mothers in bookstores, living rooms, radio call-ins, library meeting rooms, and more, talk with great earnestness, and with anger. Yet as one mom said to me after a mother's salon in Maplewood, New Jersey: we talk about this all the time, and nothing changes.

After the Barnard panel, I woke in the middle of the night. The question going through my mind was: what if nothing changes? what if nothing changes, and all the frustrations stay the same? What if mother's american rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness aren't really our rights? What if we aren't fighting hard enough for them, aren't yet convinced that we have the right to something better, even if getting there is complicated?

Last night I had a most excellent conversation with Laurie Pettine. She's an activist with NOW, and she lives in Northern New Jersey with her children. We were both very tired, our talk began at 9 and went late. But it made me think we should always have our conversations about the future late at night. During the day we are so adult and practical, so aware of possibilities and their limitations. At night we feel like college students, up late solving the word's problems, sure we can.

Laurie has been working with NOW, baggage and all, on a Mothers and Caregivers Rights Taskforce. Yes, NOW. The same organization that's been accused in the past of not recognizing mothers and our needs. And the focus on this, the new NOW, apparently is going all the way up to the top.

But the real thing is, Laurie's enthusiasm, and her ability to think as an activist in a new vein, helped get me out of my fear that nothing can change. That we're all smart enough to talk about these issues, or write about them, but not able to think about how social change happens in this country, not able to get past the embarassment of putting a toe on the line.

Could there be a feminist movement brewing that includes the issues that mothers are facing?

In DC Next Week...at the JCC

For any friends and readers in the DC area--I'll be speaking next week at the JCC. The event's on Thursday, September 22. Contact me or hariet@dcjcc for more info. It should be a good event, most of these are, I've found, I'll be talking about parenting, mothers and fathers, work, desire, the usual, but also, what it means to start to become politically active about these issues, to reach out just a bit, in ways that fit into our lives, to summon the courage to make change that goes behind our nuclear families.

Mother Knot

Here's a link I've been meaning to send out for a while, to the interview with author Jane Lazarre on Mothers Movement.org, about her book Mother Knot Still catching my breath from the NY trip, and promise to write about what an inspiring evening it was, in a room filled with Barnard alumnae and other women and a few men from the area, at the podium with three smart and inspiring writers. And ultimately it will become clear, too, why I've posted this interview, aside from the fact that I've always loved Mother Knot, and that I was reading it when I unknowingly became pregnant with my first child, all those years back (look for a post sometime soon called Jean Rosenthal's living room....). At the moment, however, if I can't clear my screen and desk of their many notes and reminders, I will never be able to write. So here it is.

Off to NY

Lots going on, but little time to blog....the story of everyone's life, and to avoid sounding like an addict trying to reform, I promise not to promise to blog more (but I do promise to write about my new fave self-help book, the one about how you can't make a difference if you can't find your keys, and how now most times I do put my keys in the same place all the time so my days are no longer punctuated by key-searches every time I need to drive my car.

I'm off to NY today, excited about doing an event at Barnard this evening with Cecelie Berry, author of Rise Up Singing: Black Women on Motherhood, Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness, and NYTimes reporter Lisa Belkin. I've been on a listserv with Cecelie, and she wrote a blurb for the back of my book, so I'm very excited about meeting her, as well as the others. And Barnard is a place I've spoken before, and where close friends work. The first time I spoke there my daughter had just been born, about 7 years ago. My mother drove in to help watch her during my talk, and several people asked me if she were the nanny. Since I've never had a nanny, and can't afford one, I was tickled, also sad that for most of us family isn't around to help. At the time I was living in Atlanta, so it was a rare moment that I was near enough to my mom for her to help out this way. Info on the event at Barnard.

I'm also meeting Isabel Kalman, of Alpha Mom TV, for lunch. She's the woman who was featured in New York Magazine several months back, stereotyped as classic socialite affluent hyper mom mom making her kid crazy, etc, etc, we all know how the stereotype works. I do have in mind to write an article called "In Defense of Affluent Moms," since these days, it seems the media only pays attention to wealthy mothers, and when they do so, the general lack of understanding of motherhood just gets disguised as more palatable critique of their upper class trappings. I've been able to look behind the article's bad press, and had the chance to talk with Isabel by phone, and also check out her channnel, Alpha Mom, on Comcast's On Demand, and I really like the segments, which are very down to earth, and quite helpful (thanks to Liz Lange on third trimester dressing and what to do when all your clothes no longer fit, I now know to just get a long black camasole to layer underneath my shirts when my belly button starts to peek out.) More on this later, but I think it's a good media outlet, and perhaps the relative length of video, and the release from the conventions of magazine and newspaper publishing is something that can be more helpful to mothers and fathers who want help and info for caring for their kids.

More later, must toss some toiletries and a change of clothes into my bag and head for the train.

WHYY again, they promise this time!

Marty Moss-Coane herself called this time, to say that my segment will really be on TV this Friday, 10-11 pm. Of course, it was a thrill to just hear her voice, since I'm so used to hearing it only over the radio, and I'm such a big Radio Times fan.

WHYY--Channel 12/PBS in the Philadelphia/Delaware/Southern New Jersey region, Friday, September 2d, 10-11 pm.

Pink Pills?

Well, not sure yet why, but WHYY cancelled me on Friday, I was booted by an episode about rising gas costs (can't argue with the importance of re-airing that) and a back-to-school segment about college students who abuse Adderall in order to focus better and stay up all night to study. I'll let you know if they reschedule my segment. Bad luck with TV this summer, as the Food Network also cancelled me (seems like they decided not to take on motherhood right now).

But today's thought. Why are my prenatal vitamins pink? I bought a new bottle the other day, very ordinary, run of the mill vitamins from the CVS. I swear the last time around, their prenatal v's were yellow, ordinary pill color. Why pink? In my fantasy of having spare time I will write the company and ask. Why do my prenatal pills come in pink?

This comes on the heels of finishing my essay for Andi Buchanan's It's a Girl anthology, which in part was about coming to terms with symbols of how hurtful gender stereotypes and roles can be and staying focused on real issues that are harmful to women and girls, in short, not getting too bent out of shape by my daughter's passing delight in pink-everything and cheerleading. The essay ends perhaps too optimistically, I thought today as I mused over my pink prenatal pills. Perhaps, despite it all, despite all my critique of the way things are, of the culture of gender and motherhood and all the rest, I am too willing to believe that the world is a better place than it might be.

WHYY in Philadelphia Tonight

I'm back from camp Grandma and Grandpa, and have much to say and little to time to sit and do it, in part because I'm totally overdeadline for writing an essay for my friend Andi Buchanan's It's A Girl book. More on all of that later.

Breaking news, though, for Philadelphia-area folks who are interested. My interview with Marty Moss-Coane on Radio Times will be played tonight on WHYY's weekly TV show, 10 -11 pm. I hope they play the part with the call-ins, because those conversations were so interesting.

More later, we've got a day of errands and such ahead, and then my daughter's going bowling with her best friend from school--they haven't seen each other much this summer. A good day to all, and I promise to blog more often from here on in.

The F-word

There's a book by this name; it's my daughter's favorite off my shelf, for obvious six-year-old-going-on-seven reasons. Of course, she thinks its a cover for a fabulous curse word, and thinks feminism is just something her mom and her friends' moms toss about when we're explaining why cheerleading may not be as fun as it seems.

There's also an F-word online magazine that everyone should be looking at and sending round, because it's by the truly energetic and visionary young philadelphian Melody Berger, recent Temple University graduate, and fellow inhabitant of our fair and gritty city (though tale has it she's headed for the Bay Area). It's been praised on Salon and snarked by the National Review, so there you have it.

And mother writers, note that the next issue is on motherhood, ideas and articles still welcome. Here's the call:

The F-word: SECOND ISSUE:

We're going to have one! :-) Over 22,000 people checked out the first
issue, and, based on their helpful feedback, we've been brainstorming
away all summer.

And we're looking for more submissions. (tell everyone you know).

The theme is "motherhood"... but there's a very strong "body wars"
undercurrent throughout. ('cause I don't know about you, but the
supreme court sheise is terrifying me just a wee bit)

IDEAS DUE: August 29th
ARTICLES DUE: October 15th

Mommy Too!

More on mamazine. Here's the direct link to the interview with Jennifer James, publisher of Mommy Too! There's been a bit written lately on the question of is there a mothers movement (and look for a forthcoming article in Brain, Child, on the topic). I was struck by one of the points Jennifer James makes in this interview, that yet again, best intentions (perhaps) aside, most coverage of a "mothers movement" has focused on white women. I can tell you from personal experience that of all the attention my book received, very few reviewers or interviewers ever mentioned the fact that it's one of the few that crosses the color line, that includes long sections on black mothers experiences in our country, of racial tensions in the second wave women's movement that resulted in the issues of middle class and predominantly white women's issues becoming primary. Or that the book interviewed wealthy women alongside welfare-receiving moms, and took all of them very seriously, or that one of the most affluent mothers in the book is African-American, and the welfare moms were mostly white. And believe me, writing this part of the book was the hardest, getting all these mothers' experiences between the same covers. It's just that hard to get messages out that cross these racial lines, messages that are inclusive, that try harder, and don't easily accept our nation's segregations. (Readers: tell me that I'm wrong, tell me media that's done a good job of this so we can all know about it.) So read Jennifer James' interview, and let us know what you think.

Mamazine

Hailing from Sacramento, CA, check out the new Mamazine, a new, non-commercial venue for writing and news about mothers' lives, for you to read, and for you to submit your own writing, too.

Self-description: "Where mamas can get real and get happy."

I like: interview with mother-writer, travel-writer, job-hopping writer, and fellow Seal Press author Ayun Halliday; interview with Jennifer James of Mommy Too, in an article titled "Making Sure Mamas of Color are Seen and Heard"; and a section of grandmamas' writing, and don't we need those older moms in the mix. And more generally: good and honest writing about motherhood, warts and all.

The Debate over "We"

There's an interesting debate going on in the parenting blogs, started by Suzanne at Mother-in-Chief's August 9th entry about how we mothers are underemployed. Elizabeth at half-changed worldpicked up the debate, by worrying that this kind of language makes working mothers nervous, and lots of other bloggers have weighed in.

Part of my frustration about Truth Behind the Mommy Wars not getting enough attention is that its numbers and stories and insights haven't become part of our general knowledge about motherhood and work. So let me add some info to these debates.

First, in support of Suzannne's use of the word "we": 37 percent of mothers work part time. 25 percent are at home, and many, many of these mothers say they would like decent, fairly paid part time work in the professions in which they were trained. Many part time working moms are doing much less interesting work than they want. That's bad for them, and it's bad for our economy and for the productivity that the US needs. So say that out loud--37 percent of mothers in the US work part time--that's 2 percentage points less than fulltime working mothers. 37 percent.

Second, I"m tired of hearing people say, well, it's your choice to do less paid work, many of us can't even afford this. Okay. People: the numbers are clear. Most at home mothers are not affluent, despite the ongoing media attention to mothers in wealthy neighborhoods. Most at home and part time working mothers in our country are part of families that have LESS money. They are making choices about how to live their lives. And often these choices are economically counter-intuitive. They are living with less, and often at great sacrifice. Because our media fills us with stories about hyper moms in NY and DC and suburban Atlanta, and forgets the rest of the country's mothers, we forget this too.

And third, if the workplace doesn't offer part time work at fair wages and conditions, then none of us has a choice. If Suzanne is frustrated with free-lance work, it's in part because that field has come to rely on a huge stable--and I use that word accordingly--of mothers who write, and will write for very little money. She's resisting that, by writing quite honestly about how her time and money (as in money spent on baby sitting) were abused. Others can tell her to keep trying, and perhaps she will, but that doesn't change the structure of a journalism industry that pays writers very little, gives them no benefits, and often puts them through the wringer and doesn't respect their time and talent. Yes, there are exceptions, but that doesn't change the structure.

So read the book and get the numbers down, because we need to be able ro reframe these debates--all mothers are 'We" and all mothers have different needs, and these issues affect us all, and dads too.

Liberal Press/Mess

Now, I'm no conservative, so you wouldn't expect a rant on the liberal press to come from me. However (and apologies in advance, I have just a few minutes to write and there will be no links--I'll write another post later; we're at Camp Grandma and Grandpa, which means I 'm still the one taking my daughter to the pool in a few minutes, only with her grandma in tow!), what I've noticed is that the national press that really is the voice of liberalism, in it's classic form--I'm thinking here of the NY Times and of the Atlantic Monthly--have been with few exceptions, relatively horrible for any good coverage of issues about motherhood, fatherhood and parenting. The NYT we know about. Yesterday on the beach I was reading through the AM (I know, I should have stuck to Harry Potter, which everyone else at Menhaden Lane seemed to be reading). One article, by Sandra Tsing Loh, reviewed a recent memoir by a mother who's one child had died, horribly, and young, of cancer, and after, she left the other three children with her husband and the au pair, and ran of to writers colonies in northern california, where she also met the love of her life, married him, and now sees her kids mostly during the summer.

That's her story. And though STL puts some barbs as well as sympathies into her retelling of it, I will leave her story as that, as one that is hers.

The problem comes in when STL suggests that this is the modern paradigm for motherhood, that perhaps we don't need to be the custodial parent, and perhaps that's the solution to the problem of having kids and having time for our careers and creativity.

Okay, there's a few more pieces here. The AM this month, clearly having decided that tales of affluent motherhood are the way to reader's hearts, had another piece, about single mothers who use sperm donors. Now, I've read versions of this story before, but what fascinated me was that in both pieces, the only mothers that matter are ones who are affluent, have lots of mobility, are well educated, well appointed, and exist within a certain post-sex and the city fantasy of womanly life. Hey guys, wasn't that just a tv show? Are our urban centers really filled with Mirandas and Carries? If so, how come I don't know any? And really, what about the rest of us moms? Clearly we don't show up on the reader/audience radar for this sector of the liberal press. And the crazy thing--it's not like women like me are so far off from their stereotyped reader--I mean, I'm well educated, socially mobile and all the rest. If I'm not even included, then we know how truly narrow the imagined mother/reader is.

That's one piece of the whole. The other comes here. I joined the organization Mothers & More several months ago. I think it's important to support motherhood organizations--all of them, and I've been very pleasantly surprised. I know that M & M has a reputation for being a bunch of midwestern stay at home moms, and I'm here to report that nothing can be further from the truth. Each day I receive in my email inbox a digest from their POWER loop. Very often this includes lots of links to articles in newspapers around the country that have something to do with motherhood. And here's what I've noticed. Our nation's papers do cover motherhood, and they often do it much better than our premier newspapers. I've read short articles about whether there's a mothers movement, updates on work/family arrangements, reports on chambers of commerce and business communities that are trying to roll back FMLA, and on and on. As Rebel Dad says, the Boston Globe has actually been quite good on fatherhood issues. So out here in America, beyond the narrow class confines of the Times and the Atlantic Monthly, we are getting some of the info we need. And of course, Mothers Movement Online has been diligent beyond our best imaginations about collecting all of this in one spot each month.

I know from writing the book that it's not the classic liberal or democratic voices that are helpful on motherhood issues, and that makes it more interesting for those of us out here to be very creative in how we work to create change and improved structures for family lives.

Ok, the pool calls, my daughter calls, packing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches calls. Links and more later, spell and grammar check too. Tell me what you think.

New Blog

From time to time I get link requests, and here's one especially I'd like to support.

The first is Play is the Work. This is a blog by two moms, one in Seattle and the other in San Francisco. tag line: "The blog for parents who want to worry less and play more." Unlike some of the slacker mom stuff that was coming out a year ago or so, this blog's attitude is about worrying less, and still really being affectionate toward your kids. The slacker mom material always seemed so harsh, to my ears anyway. This blog is about kindness. It's connected with a small media company called BrainCandy that these two moms have created. I think their product is alternative video for young kids. So go check them out, they're trying to start and sustain forward-thinking conversations about parenting, and tell Sam I sent you.

And also, Suzanne over at Mother in Chief needs some cheering up. She's been moving back into the paid workforce, through free-lance writing, is trying to make the pay from her job equal what it costs to do time-consuming writing work; in short, she's dealing with something similar to many of us who do writing, or part time work, or who move back and forth between paid and unpaid work. So give her some cheer, tell her it will be okay, and that if you lived near her you'd stop by to babysit, or do her laundry.

Food Network

Fun announcement here: it looks like I'll be a guest on the Food Network. Rachel Ray, who does 30-minute dinners, and also that show on traveling to fabulous places on $40 a day, is hosting a new show, called Day to Day with Rachel Ray, which focuses less on food and more on a range of women's issues. I'll be on a segment about motherhood, and we're taping on August 2d, though the show will air sometime this winter. That's all the detail I know.

If anyone's up for some fun, the audience participation part looks like it's still open! Check out the Food Network's page for the new show.

In Praise of Working Mothers

In the past two weeks I've had three press calls. One was for a terrific article on whether there's a mothers' movement, and what it looks like, by Katherine Ellison, author of The Mommy Brain, in this past Sunday's San Jose Mercury News.

The other two were about working mothers. In both, and especially for the ten-minute radio spot I did, the hosts or reporters were very anxious about working moms, and about the guilt they feel. In both, my constant refrain was: Working Mothers Should Not Feel Guilty. We should feel, and rightfully, mad, frustrated, tired, torn in many directions, ambivalent, and all sorts of other emotions. But we should not feel guilty. Working dads don't feel guilty. Guilt does not help. Turn that guilt around, feel it as the anger that it is, and call your elected officials and tell them that you're mad at how hard the workplace makes family life. But don't feel guilty. The most important thing as we all make more room for mothers and fathers to follow the life paths they feel best about--whether it's being home with kids, working part time, working full time, and doing all of the above--is that we not let any of the gains of the last women's movement be lost, and important among those gains are the right to work, and have interesting, fairly paid work, and to work on equal terms to men.

Yes, we are now trying to change the workplace so that it's more amenable to raising children while we work, whether while we work full time, letting us back in after we take time off, valuing our part time labor--whatever it is. But in all of the searches for alternatives to fulltime work, we must also and always defend working mothers, and understand what's hard about that, and what many working moms need in the way of support. This is what it means to cast the old Mommy Wars model aside, the way I write about in the book. That instead of just defending our own choices and lives, we make sure our empathy has room for all of us.

And isn't it a sign of our conservative, crazy times that I even have to write an entry like this? That working moms even feel guilt instead of anger? So share the empathy, no matter what your life looks like at this moment, no matter how many hours you're home with your kids or at work. and remember the big picture, that we are defending women's and mothers' rights to work--rights that were hard-won--and demanding that they more truly fit our lives. And keep telling each other that we should be angry, and vocal about it.