May
10
May 10, 2006
I recently received an email that read “Demand a CEASEFIRE in the ‘Mommy Wars’ this MOTHERS day!”
Normally I tend to delete emails that yell at me in ALL CAPS, but I opened this one, which informed me that I should eliminate the headline grabbing media fiction designed to divide women, and tell the heads of CBS, NBC, and ABC to move beyond the false rhetoric of the MOMMY WARS. I could do all this by signing a petition, apparently.
I don’t know anything about the organizing group other than what I skimmed on their website, but my personal feeling is that I don’t see what possible good it does to send a petition to ABC to “denounce mommy wars jargon”.
If the so-called mommy wars are loosely defined as the political and social clashes over parenting choices such as working outside the home or not, that’s not something that was created by the media. It’s just not that simple. I applaud the noble notion that all of us mothers are banding together to collectively say that hey, all this stuff about us disagreeing over each other’s choices, it’s bullshit! Quit talking about it because it’s not true! – it would be great if I actually believed it.
It’s not just the choice to stay home or work, everything is up for grabs in the world of raising children and people attack each over all kinds of issues. There are loaded topics that almost guarantee a volatile response if you state a preference on the matter: La Leche League, Bugaboo strollers, cry it out sleep theory, practically anything Dooce allows comments on.
Who are we kidding by telling ourselves this is a fictional conspiracy dreamed up in order to boost ratings?
The word war is clearly a load of rich, creamy hyperbole, but are mothers uniformly supporting each other’s decisions and respecting individual situations? Of course not.
Caring for a child is such a terrifying endeavor because the stakes are so high. We put so much energy and focus and fear and hope into the choices we make for our children, how is it any surprise that given the diversity of parenting options that we are sometimes at odds with each other? How is it anything other than a basic human instinct to disagree over that which we feel most strongly about?
It might be nice if we could say “stop running news segments on subject X” and it would make the problem go away, but to me this seems like putting our heads in the sand and waving a pointing finger in any direction other than ourselves.
If someone publishes a book about how women are throwing away everything feminism has done for them by choosing to stay home with their child, or a book about how women have abandoned family values in pursuit of material gain, of course something like that’s going to get a bunch of media attention; either subject is going to piss a shitload of people off. Should I sign a petition to ban controversy? Should I demand that my thinking never be challenged by being presented with a different point of view?
I think the term “mommy wars” is about as charming as a sidewalk loogie, but the social conflicts are real. As mothers we have to navigate the murky waters of trying to find the best solutions for our families by coming to terms with our personal needs (or setting them aside for a while) within the fundamental confines of our situations, and the truth is, people judge us for the decisions we make. As hard as those decisions are, and even though we make them with only good intentions, we still have to deal with criticism. It happens all the time. NBC didn’t tell me I had the wrong values for choosing daycare, another mommy did.
At the end of the day, each of us has to take responsibility for what we believe and the actions we take. Advocating for women to sign a petition that deflects blame rather than meet these issues head on doesn’t seem to do us any favors.
May
9
May 9, 2006
There was a spider in my bathroom when I went to take a shower, I meant to sweep it from the ceiling but forgot, and the next time I looked it was gone. That’s okay, spider. You keep your distance, I’ll keep mine.
Contractors came to our house and started hammering, the sound echoed down the hall and JB said I can’t believe Riley is still asleep and I said I can’t believe it either and we ate breakfast and I read the comics pages and finally walked down to listen outside Riley’s door and I heard a quiet steady rattle as he turned a toy over and over and the hushed vowelly sounds of his contented babble and I opened the door and dramatically stepped in and I said Well HELLO and he turned his bright face towards me and smiled with his entire body.
Who’s a wriggly, I asked him. You’re a wriggly. You are. Yes.
It was sunny and cool and the shaded cement floor chilled my bare feet when I stepped into the carport to take out the trash. A pair of starlings chattered at me from the overhead power line, a truck ground and grumbled nearby, my son pressed a button on a toy from inside the house and through the open door I could hear the furrow of concentration in his brow. Ba, he said. Da.
His father bundled him into the truck with the bag of bottles and jars of food and I said have a good day, JB said you too and we kissed and I said bye Riley, bye. The house was strange and echoey in their wake, washcloths and toys and bibs strewn as if from a great height, but I could take my time now and so I did, stood in front of the mirror and bared my teeth in a sharky grin and looked at my face, the tiny radiating creases around my eyes and mouth, the bacon-spatter of freckles, and it was familiar and okay – let’s shake hands, face – and I slid on some lipstick in a shade called plumsicle and carefully blotted with a piece of tissue and left a plum-colored artifact of myself behind, crumpled.
I drove down a street in my neighborhood flanked by wetlands and the car in front of me screeched to a stop, the car next to that one braked and did a fast jog around something in the road and I slowed in time to see a mother duck waddling busily across the pavement, and bumbling behind her were at least seven baby ducklings, yellow-speckled and tufty with new feathers and moving in a disorganized line that compressed and expanded as they hurried to keep up, stepping on the backs of each other’s feet and holding their tiny wings out as if for balance.
I crossed the 520 bridge and the sky looked like a production cell lifted from The Simpsons; oblong white clouds formed entirely of Bezier curves, pressed flat against a Prussian blue backdrop.
I was playing Liz Phair and it was early and my voice was scratchy from too many cups of coffee and I sang the lyrics (watching the lake turn the sky into blue-green smoke) in perfect pitch, low and level, and I stopped at a red light and for a second I turned my head slightly so the person in the next lane wouldn’t see my mouth moving, but then I noticed she was singing, too. I thought, what if she is listening to the exact same music, queued to the exact same moment, her mouth forming the exact same phrase as I am (in 27-D, I was behind the wing), wouldn’t that be something. And the light turned and we all drove forward.
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