Opting Out -- Again?

Miriam Peskowitz has an eloquent response to the recent New York Times feature on Ivy-educated women who plan to give up work for motherhood. And she also links to an excellent piece by MMO editor Judith Stadtman Tucker, who writes, in part:

. . . [I]t's occurred to me that mothers may not be doing themselves any favors by repeating the feel-good mantra, You can have it all, just not at all the same time. Maybe we should be channeling the energy whipped up by all that enthusiasm and self-acceptance into imagining what "having it all" would look like in a more fair and just society. Or maybe we should switch to a new refrain: "Men can have it all, just not all at the same time." Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of Story's report is that of the 138 undergraduate women who answered an email questionnaire about their future plans, only two saw their ideal husbands in a primary caregiving role. Apparently, the 85 students who expect to scale back or interrupt their careers when they become mothers assume the men they one day marry will conform to the ideal worker mold without complaint. And why not? For young men in high-performance professions, having a wife at home full-time assures that when push comes to shove, they are free to put their careers first -- and reap the attendant rewards.

The latest New York Times piece on unbalancing work and motherhood also raises interesting questions about the relationship between the rise of the hyperparenting phenomenon and the reproduction of privilege. A single-minded determination to claw one's way to the top may be tolerated in childless women, but in mothers that kind of thing is still viewed as an aberration -- and a blight on their children's futures. A University of Pennsylvania freshman quoted by the Times remarked, "I've seen the difference between kids who did have their mothers stay at home and kids who didn't, and it's kind of an obvious difference when you look at it." Well, no, it isn't, not after age four or so -- and studies show the behavioral variations of young children who spend more than 30 hours a week in day care fall well within the normal range of development. So what's going on here?

Even taking the Reagan-era-and-beyond backlash into account, it's profoundly unnerving to see how willing some of these young innocents are to toe the conservative line on gender and family. In the weird twists of politics and culture over the last thirty years, women were urged to drop the question of whether the smidgen of social power granted to mothers as the nation's nurturers is really all it's cracked up to be. In its place, we've been invited to behold the best practices of mothering as a means of modernizing corporate culture and contributing to the greater social good. Is it any wonder that a certain cross section of young women perceive motherhood as entirely compatible with their desire to excel? And isn't that what we really want?

Mother Talk: Philadelphia

If you're in the Philadelphia area, we have another Mother Talk event coming up: Thursday, Sept. 29, at 8 p.m. Here's the official invitation.

Mother Talk: Thursday, Sept. 29, 8 p.m. Sponsored by Literary Mama and Time Out!

Please join us for "Mother Talk," an old-fashioned literary salon with good food, good company, and good conversation with local writers Andi Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, talking about Miriam's book The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother? Miriam is a mother, writer, and professor, and has appeared on TV, radio, internet and print media throughout the country, including CNN, KQED’s Forum with Michael Krasney, Seattle’s KUOW and KCTS Connects, Philadelphia’s Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane, and The Atlantic Monthly, Bitch, and Bust magazines.

You can email me at my gmail account (andi dot buchanan at etc.) for exact location and to RSVP.

Judgment call

LiteraryMama contributor and New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Lauck (who has an essay in all three of my upcoming anthologies, It's a Boy, Literary Mama, and It's a Girl) posed a question for her blog readers about the kind of situation many of us have experienced: making a judgment call about another person's parenting. On a flight, she witnessed another mother basically losing it with her toddler. The question was, what should she do about it? Should she leave it alone, or should she say something?

Judging is easy. Why else would talent shows like American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance and whatever the hell that ballroom dancing with celebrities show was (and all the other reality shows where voting and literal judgment determines who stays and who goes) be so popular? You get the rush of being a critic, sitting there on your couch, pointing out who's off-pitch or whose turn-out sucked or deciding who should be voted off the island. But judging well is hard. From the outside looking in, it's easy to decide a mother is doing things all wrong, to feel a bit superior as she struggles in a situation you know for sure you would handle much better.

But who among us would want to be judged by our worst parenting moments? Even those of us who can feel confident that we're pretty good mothers have had those dark moments of saying something we knew we shouldn't have said, handling something the exact opposite way we would have handled it on a better day, making a situation harder than it would have been had we a clearer head, more time, less stress -- pick your poison. Fourteen-hour days with young children can be detrimental to your thinking process.

Jennifer describes the scene she witnessed on the plane and asks readers what they would do in her situation, then, in a separate entry, finishes the story and shares what she decided to do.

We all make judgment calls every day about our own parenting and others'. And we all bring our own past to bear on our present parenting -- some mothers might be more sensitive to any semblance of maternal neglect due to childhood experiences with a self-absorbed or unavailable parent; some might be more hyper-aware of issues of enmeshment due to growing up with a hovering, correcting parent. Our personal family histories and experiences inform us as parents, and as judgers of other parents. The difficult task is judging wisely, being able to assess a situation and come to a conclusion that is not somehow entirely wrapped up in blame, defensiveness, or self-protection.

A mother I know told me years ago that she had come up with something that helped her deal with her extremely difficult children (who have now thankfully moved beyond that difficult phase): she told me that when things were tough and she was ready to lose it with her kids, she pretended that there was someone else watching her watching her and judging her actions. This, she said, helped her parent better, thinking of a stranger being present to dispassionately observe her. I think it's a good technique, to take you out of the moment where you're maybe crossing into territory your saner self would never want you to go. But the truth is, we don't have to pretend: people are watching us as we mother, and their observations aren't always as dispassionate as we might like.

So, now: read Jennifer's entries. What would you do?

An interview with Barbara Katz Rothman

This week we're running a fascinating conversation between LiteraryMama contributor Deesha Philyaw Thomas and CUNY professor of sociology Barbara Katz Rothman, author of (most recently) Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption.

DPT: You have what is, in my experiences with white people, a not entirely popular view of white-skin privilege. You observed that such privilege can be taken for granted but "adoption, mothering across racial borders . . . give[s] you perspective," makes you aware of it. It's easy to see why those benefiting from white-skin privilege can be oblivious to it, but why do you think some people deny or are even hostile to the idea that they enjoy this privilege? And, particularly for white parents raising black children, what is the significance of recognizing such privilege?

BKR: It's very easy to not notice the privileges we have -- people don't think of themselves as, say sighted, until a blind person enters the room. Then the social privilege of being sighted -- the ways that we have organized our social world around assumptions of sight -- becomes obvious. If you have a blind friend coming to your home for the first time, or a blind colleague coming to your office for a meeting, the social privileges of sight start becoming clear to you.

This is much the case with the privileges of whiteness -- when you are sharing your life with someone who does not have those privileges, you will come to see what they are. When that someone is your child, you had best be one step ahead, seeing what privileges might be denied that child, and working to smooth the way. Sometimes that means becoming politically and socially engaged, but it also means the daily things you will learn.

Read the entire, thought-provoking interview here.

New Poetry Chapbook from Ona Gritz

LiteraryMama contributor Ona Gritz has a new chapbook of poems available!

Ona has shared the truth about mothering her son with Literary Mama readers in poems such as The Impatient Mother and Shared Custody. Now she turns her honest eye to explore the experience of loss and daughterhood. In Left Standing, a chapbook from Finishing Line Press' New Women's Voices Series, Ona uses her gift for creating evocative images to bring the reader along on a journey of loss and renewal.

If you are in or around NYC, you can catch Ona reading from Left Standing at Morans, 501 Garden Street in Hoboken, NJ, on September 19th at 8 p.m. Also featured that evening is John Amen, editor of The Pedestal Magazine.

You'll have a second chance to hear Ona reading on September 23rd at 8 p.m. at Symposia Community Bookstore, 510 Washington Street in Hoboken, where she will read with poet and memoirist, Dan Simpson.

If you can't make it to one of the readings, then don't miss the opportunity to read her newest work in Left Standing. The book is available online through Finishing Line Press or by sending $12.00 check or money order to Finishing Line Press, PO Box 1626, Georgetown, KY 40324. You'll be glad you took this journey along with Ona.