parents

The Woodmans

admin — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

The prize-winning documentary The Woodmans chronicles the histories of a family of artists through conversations, monologues, journals, and both fine art photographs and family snapshots. The film’s narrative, from its start with the marriage of George and Betty Woodman to its finish with their lives today, is marked by their daughter, photographer Francesca Woodman, whose reputation has skyrocketed in the decades after her suicide in 1981 at twenty-three years of age.

After the Tribeca Film Festival screening, director C. Scott Willis, unfamiliar with the art world before the project, told how he met the Woodmans socially. They told him they were the parents of the famous photographer, and Willis made the embarrassing error of asking if their daughter would mind talking to his daughter, who was studying photography. Out of that situation and the Woodmans’ account of what had happened, Willis was inspired to make The Woodmans.

“Why did Francesca jump off a building?” while never voiced, and positioned as one question among many, is addressed in the pained, incomplete way suicide is usually discussed. There is no “interviewer” or even unifying message or theme, just unobtrusive aesthetic shaping of the movement forward of lives.

Francesca’s precocity—many of her photographs were made in her teens—is attributed in the film to her immersion in art as she was growing up. However, the film underplays the centrality of sexuality to her and most women’s lives (Francesca experienced a romantic break-up before her death) and ignores the sexual politics of the declining women’s movement, which coincided with Francesca’s adolescence.

Since both George and Betty have been artists all their lives, there is necessarily much about their making of art. The parental Woodmans speak loftily of exhibiting to a wider public, but there’s material here for an indictment of the art world: the winner-take-all reward system, the commodification of artistic product (Francesca’s photographs financed tuition for a collector’s children), and the competition among artist friends and, yes, family. Yet, the background of well-appointed studios and a house with a pool in Italy could fuel enough lifestyle lust to gentrify numerous bohemias.

Francesca, who with little success tried commercial fashion photography and worked as a photographic assistant, does “talk” about money through a chorus of friends and her fashion photographs. Indeed, her parents bicker about whether being rejected for a National Endowment of the Arts grant contributed to her suicide. (George does mention that his father “helped the couple financially” but disapproved of his son’s marriage to a Jewish woman.) In a film about questions, some fall away in the family drama.

Yes, artists will find much to like in this film—sumptuous art, the quotidian discipline and physicality of art-making, a compelling score by David Lang—but the film also has much for feminists to ponder about the choice to parent.

The mother, Betty, emerges as the hero, directly addressing the responsibilities of mothering as they intersect with the self. She wanted to “experience” childbirth and mothering, but was terror struck when presented with her infant son, Charlie, Francesca’s older brother, who became a videographer; Betty says baldly, “Maybe I’ve been an absolutely horrible mother.”

She made her pots, used in the household but not to be broken, behind the family house while mothering young children. (Avoiding interruptions presents a challenge for any parent, or anyone, working at home.) Visiting art museums, the Woodmans habitually set the children loose with pads for copying art, while they looked at art uninterrupted. When Betty talks about her daughter, she seems more mother than artist. In contrast, George admits that his daughter’s intensity was what made her interesting to him. Originally an abstract painter, he is now working in photography. Near the end, Betty becomes the triumphant artist, when a commission is installed in the American embassy in Beijing.

The Woodmans started with a faux pas and records a generous baring of lives and scars. Finding answers is left for the audience—like life, or art.

Written by: Frances Chapman, May 28th 2010

Anna In-Between

admin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Elizabeth Nunez

Akashic Books

In her newest novel, Anna In-Between, Elizabeth Nunez explores the complexity of relationships between parents and grown children as well as the delicate nature of a marriage and the complexity of place. This moving novel charts the many obstacles that arise when an adult child becomes the caretaker for a parent. Anna is a Caribbean-American in her forties visiting her folks on the island of her childhood when she learns that her mother, Beatrice Sinclair, has cancer—and not just the beginning of cancer, but a fully developed and bleeding tumor that has been ignored by both John, her father, and her mother for quite some time.

Anna cannot comprehend such an avoidance of this life-threatening illness and spends much of the novel in upheaval over the decidedly cautious ways her parents seem to relate. She does not understand their patterns, and she struggles to find a correlation between her own feelings about relationships and the marriage her parents share. In some ways, what her parents see as quiet respect for each other is viewed by Anna merely as caution and fear. She now lives in America where marriage can be temporal and she sees her parents’ restraint as weakness rather than strength.

A sadness and fury falls over Anna as she comes to realize that Beatrice hides from her sleeping husband in a darkened bathroom to say nightly prayers over the rosary. This is her mother’s manner of attending to the illness. Anna’s anger is deepened by John’s admittance that he knew of the tumor, but stayed quiet out of respect for his wife’s privacy. Nunez writes through the view of the father, “Privacy matters so much he will guard his wife’s secret even from herself.”

In a way, Anna’s parents do not have to accept the terrifying potential of the illness if they do not discuss its presence. They may carry on with their quiet and pleasant life in chosen ignorance. Avoidance seems to be a theme in the novel, as Anna’s mother will not go to America for treatment because Blacks are mistreated in the country. While Anna struggles to defend America, she finds herself reviewing the many ways racism runs deep in her new country, and is torn apart by memories of the racism that defined her childhood on a Caribbean island under British rule.

Anna In-Between outlines the many ways Anna cannot comprehend her parents, and sometimes cannot understand herself. She lives torn between the island of her homeland, its tropical mannerisms that revive precious memories, and the life she has built as an American. With starkly poignant language, Nunez paints a picture of Anna’s confusion about her place between these two worlds and how to understand her bond with both lives.

Anna In-Between carries a heavy weight, but is written with a light hand. Nunez knows just how to paint a picture with both depth and breadth while remaining accessible in her use of language. The novel tells a poignant tale that will bring out feelings of intensity for the reader, and these strong emotions are well worth the time invested.

Written by: Djuna A. Davidson, December 11th 2009

Privacy, Please!: Gaining Independence From Your Parents

admin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:19:00 +0000

By Odile Amblard

Amulet

Privacy, Please! is a very entertaining and informative book written for teens, but I think parents will find Odile Amblard’s advice just as useful. This 112-page book is written in the second person, which makes it feel very personal. The lighthearted style makes the sometimes serious subjects—such as alcohol and drugs—less daunting. From high school to college, Amblard covers education, curfews, money, friends, and, of course, freedom.

The illustrations done by Celine Guyot are full of color, and while done in the style of a picture book for children much younger than the emerging young adults this book aims to reach, I find they fit well with the author’s own style and enhance the book.

As my time as a teenager comes to an end, I find I’m a late bloomer as my relationship with my parents is only now becoming tumultuous. Privacy, Please! seems to have come to me at just the right time, and I’ve started to look at my folks in a different light. As I turn eighteen, I can say I’ve read a good number of teen self-help books, and while they have all given me some good insight I have used wisely, or intend to use in the future, none have actually made me laugh (which is a difficult feat). None of them have made me feel as if I’m the one being hard on my parents and not the other way around.

While this book has been marketed as a teen self-help book, I see it has potential to be a parents’ self-help book as well. Parents can see their relationship with their child from the teen’s eyes, as they are basically faced with their teenage selves once again—but this time, from the frightening place called parenthood. I think while everything in this book has value, the real meaning needs to be found by the reader because every teen and every family is different. In my case, I found Amblard stressed balance in relationships. She constantly impresses the importance of communication, for teens and parents to keep some form of open dialogue while also knowing when to give the space needed to grow.

Written by: Nina Lopez-Ortiz, June 12th 2009

Feminist Art and the Maternal

admin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:36:00 +0000

By Andrea Liss

University Of Minnesota Press

As a teen, I imagined I would someday grow up to be an artist. As an eager feminist and first year university student, I took an art history course taught by an incredibly self-important professor. In all of his slide shows, I only remember two images being attributed to women artists. This experience did not encourage me to embark upon an artistic career.

In a world where feminism is often assumed to be irrelevant and the Guerilla Girls have purportedly bequeathed their archives to the Getty Research Institute, a book which showcases any form of feminist work is a welcome standout. Andrea Liss’s Feminist Art and the Maternal places feminist artwork front and center using the creations of contemporary visual and performance artists. In doing so she displays the many ways in which women artists have challenged individual and institutional attempts to define the scope of femininity and families, as well as the limits of women’s gendered work and status in society.

Feminist Art and the Maternal is a fairly accessible text, even for the non-artist or art history student like me. Using the work of women artists spanning the last thirty years, Liss systematically demonstrates how these women have used their experiences of maternal parenting and motherhood as the subject of their work to created pieces that challenge past and current definitions of appropriate gender roles. This happens in many ways, such as breaking down assumptions about family structures or conflating accepted stereotypical images of racialized women with visual statements on sexual orientation, nurturing, and motherhood.

Sentimental ideas of motherhood are challenged by explorations of the maternal focusing on sensuality or experiences of trauma and loss. Key methods of articulating these concepts and experiences are laid out by the author in each chapter and accompanied by the work of one artist or groups of artists which exemplify each particular method. Highly conceptual artwork—still images, performance pieces, film—and theoretical terminology are explained in great detail, making the social and historical context in which the work was created clear for the reader.

Like the artists whose work is contained in the book, Liss attempts to make a connection between the personal and political by incorporating her own experiences of motherhood into the book. These sections of writing are less successful in that they do not blend seamlessly with the remainder of the detailed text, but stand out in competition to the parallel experiences articulated by the artists in their work, and interrupt the overall flow of the book. While the many black and white images help to illustrate the work of the artists, a larger format complete with color images would have more effectively conveyed details of some of the pieces included in the body of the work.

Regardless, I wish that Feminist Art and the Maternal had been available at the beginning of my short-lived venture into the world of art to give me a broader perspective on art, women, women artists, and motherhood. This book and its subject matter broadens the scope of contemporary art through giving voice to both neglected subject matter in art and its creators.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, June 6th 2009

Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:34:00 +0000

By Suzanne Kamata

Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing

Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering is a collection of essays by twenty different women who are all raising children in a multicultural environment. The children in this book mainly fall into three categories: they are of mixed racial heritage, they are being raised in a country to which their parents have immigrated, or they have been adopted by parents from another culture. Being multiracial myself and having been raised in an army town where interracial relationships, foreign mothers, and multiracial children are fairly common, I was interested to see what Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering had to say.

Overall, I found the stories in the book to be very hit or miss. Some were moving and touched on issues that multicultural families sometimes face. One stand out is “Fade to Brown,” the story of a woman of mixed race who worries how her daughters’ differing skin colors (one is light, the other dark) will affect their relationship with each other and their cultural identity. It’s an insightful story, dealing with real concerns and specific problems that many people of mixed race can relate to.

Other stories in the collection are less on target. For instance, “Dr. Bucket in Bishkek” has nothing to do with raising children in a foreign country or culture. Instead, it is an amusing tale about an English woman’s experiences while being pregnant in Kyrgyzstan. While it makes for a good fish-out-of-water story, the essay has little to do with the central theme of the collection. Many of the stories were also centered more on how the mother was reacting to the family’s environment or circumstance instead of focusing on the children. These stories were more about bad marriages and personal prejudices than about mothers coping with unusual situations.

My main problem with many of these stories is that due to the way they were written, they just did not feel real. Don’t get me wrong—the writing is good, but it’s all very fanciful and poetic, making the work seem more like fiction than a relating of real life events. Instead of flowery prose, I would have preferred straightforward accounts of the obstacles and triumphs these mothers have encountered. In the end, Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering is worth a look for the better stories, but be prepared to have to wade through the bad ones as well.

Written by: Victoria Kroeger, April 28th 2009

Great Expectations: A Father's Diary

admin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:48:00 +0000

By Dan Roche

University of Iowa Press

Memoirs about preparing for the birth of a first child are easily located on library shelves. What aren’t so common, however, are those books addressing the particular experience of preparing for a second child. A second pregnancy is at once sobering and blissful—you know the rough waters that loom ahead, but press on toward the joy that’s also in store—and this paradoxical tone is reflected throughout Dan Roche’s beautifully-written nine-month diary of his wife’s pregnancy. As his wife says of their first child’s infancy, “I felt like I was making it up as I went along. I was off-balance. I guess now I want a chance to bring my attention more to taking care of a baby without feeling panicked about it. I want a do-over.”

Roche writes honestly and insightfully in this slim volume of his hope and apprehension over this “do-over”: the challenges of being an older father (he’s forty-five); the anxious possibility of having a son (will he be one of those little boys who, rather than speaking, will “act everything out physically?”); and the fulfillment parenting his five-year-old daughter has given him. He wonders how his love for the new baby could possibly match that—where will it come from, and will it feel like a threat to the existing love for his wife and daughter?

Roche not only reflects eloquently on birth, he is forced to confront death as well, with the sudden passing of his mother-in-law and the slow and painful demise of a beloved pet. Dealing with this subject, he’s thoughtful, yet acknowledges his ultimate powerlessness; it’s the same way he addresses the gender question. Roche struggles with his initial aversion to having a son: it will be so hard to raise a boy “ruled by empathy rather than ego,” he laments, and girls, anyway, are “new and interesting” to him. He talks himself through this internal struggle with humor and pragmatism.

Parents will recognize themselves in Roche and empathize with him, feeling all over again the emotions swirling around an impending birth. But this book doesn’t just speak to parents; anyone interested in relationships, the universal themes of love and death, or the joys of childhood can find something of value here.

Written by: Anne Wilmoth, April 19th 2009

Labor Pains and Birth Stories: Essays on Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Becoming a Parent

admin — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:36:00 +0000

Edited by Jessica Powers

Catalyst Book Press

There is no older and greater story than childbirth. Pregnancy. Fertility. Life.

For women, who carry the impossible miracle of bringing life into the world, birth and labor reflect the diverse experiences of our lives and livelihood. Our process through medical care, partners, health, choice, and mystery are as different as the children we birth.

Labor Pains and Birth Stories is a small mirror of that richness. With twenty-nine compelling essays of pain and strength, each glimpse these writers provide validates the awesomeness and depth of the process of pregnancy. Written from mostly women authors, Powers weaves together a tapestry of debate, conflict, joy, and uncertainty all through the common practice of story-telling our lives.

One of the most compelling essays is "La Promesa de Esperanza," written by Noemi Martinez, which stands considerably unique in its own corner with its sorrowful honesty and bravery. Martinez is a single mother of two, who embraces her tangled web of religion, abuse, and isolation: "This birth of myself into who I am now was a process of layers being built and torn down, reconstructed. Pieced together now, I’m an installation, a collage."

Another distinct essay came with an emotional avalanche. The book had to be temporarily put aside as I wept into Elisabeth Aron’s words, "The Birth Story of Miles," who tenderly remembers the joy and grief of her journey with her son Miles. Her writing is simple and knowing; every detail delivers a clear stroke of her memory, and even readers unfamiliar with pregnancy and birth will connect with this exceptional piece.

The backgrounds of these parents show the diversity of their stories. The undercurrent of their stories hints at class differences and whether they could afford international adoption or uninsured fertility treatment. Their individual voices speak a multitude of languages: different cultural practices and observations, how their pregnancy was viewed by their communities, how much support and education they were given throughout their process.

Not only are the individual literary essays gifts for those seeking comfort and company in their own birthing experience; the collection as a whole can be used for critical analysis as to how the world not only accepts children, but how we treat and care for mothers as well.

Written by: Lisa Factora-Borchers, April 9th 2009

When Mothers Kill: Interviews from Prison

admin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:48:00 +0000

By Michelle Oberman, Cheryl L. Meyer

New York University Press

Perhaps predictably, _When Mothers Kill: Interviews from Prison_ is not a fun or heartening read; it is a somewhat scholarly book featuring in-depth accounts of women who have murdered their own children. Yet, if you’re interested in law, crime, parent/child relationships, or social psychology and can find a way to emotionally detach while digesting these stories, this is an excellent reference and review of these very specific types of crime.

Moving away from the sensationalized stories covered by the news, When Mothers Kill is an intense and necessary factual review of a variety of maternal filicide cases, featuring anonymized interviews with convicted, incarcerated women. Co-authors Oberman and Meyer are experts on the subject, the team behind 2001’s Mothers Who Kill Their Children: Understanding the Acts of Moms from Susan Smith to the "Prom Mom", and are professors of law and psychology, respectively. Through their growing body of research, readers can begin to more sympathetically understand women who kill their children, whether the crimes were intentional, accidental, or somewhere in between.

While this book is fact-driven and based on horrific real-life accounts, it quickly becomes a page-turner. In a culture that feels like its veering towards natalism, I found this work of non-fiction an odd, somehow appropriate balance. Understanding motherhood as difficult and complex isn’t savory to many, especially in a society that is quick to blame mothers for events and circumstances far beyond their control. Many of the women in this book come from families of abuse, cycles of neglect, and displaced love (many holding their own conflicting feelings about motherhood), and that should be validated and understood instead of condemned, as we can be so quick to do.

My concern was whether I was interested in these cases as a way to hope for rehabilitation or because I wanted to voyeuristically peer at these women, probably not nearly as removed from me as I’d like to believe. And maybe that’s why this book is important: it reminds us that motherhood is indescribably difficult, that to have survived our own childhoods is sometimes an amazing feat, and to make it out with everyone in one piece is a substantial victory.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, July 31st 2008

Reclaiming Feminist Motherhood

admin — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:48:00 +0000

Interview with Amy Richards

In 2003, _The New York Times Magazine _published “The Opt-Out Revolution,” by Lisa Belkin, a now nearly infamous contribution to the never-ending “mommy wars” collection of work. The cover story asserted that the nation’s most educated career women were “opting out” of their professional lives to become full-time stay-at-home moms. A revolution it was not—as the piece focused narrowly on select female Princeton University graduates and failed to document a real sea change in the landscape of American motherhood.

Yet seven months after its publication, feminist activist and writer Amy Richards attended a get-together with other feminist moms who couldn’t stop talking about the piece—despite the fact that their lives were, as Richards writes, the “living rebuttal” to Belkin’s claims. Richards - a founder of the Third Wave Foundation who cowrote two popular feminist works (Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future and Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism) - realized that these moms were devaluing their own realities and valuing another’s opinion simply because it was “codified in prestigious print.” Yet she also understood that there was a pressing need for real dialogue about one essential question: “What is feminism’s relationship to motherhood?”

Four years later, Richards answers the question in her latest book, Opting In: Having a Child Without Losing Yourself. The book is both her rebuttal to Belkin’s “Opt-Out Revolution” and her exploration of what it truly means to be a feminist mother. She examines feminism’s relationship to motherhood and asserts a philosophy of feminist parenting that values women’s individual, unique choices over any monolithic expert advice. Elevate Difference recently interviewed Richards, who lives in New York City with her partner and two sons, about her latest work.

Opting In addresses the divide between “feminism” and “motherhood” that has been present in the movement for quite some time. When did that divide become clear to you as a feminist activist—and what propelled you to do something about it?

Since the mid-’90s, I have had an online advice column, Ask Amy, located at Feminist.com. I frequently received questions to the tune of “can stay-at-home mothers be feminists?” or “how can I be a mother without giving up my own identity?”

Simultaneous to receiving those questions, I was traveling the country more and more, lecturing on college campuses, and I was struck by how many younger people had their lives all planned out: “babies and then career” or “career for a few years and then baby.” I was especially shocked that they were factoring babies into their future planning. Of course, when I was in college, I thought about it, but I just assumed it would happen. I took from that that most younger people wanted both or wanted it all and really assumed they could have it all, though maybe not at the same time.

While I was having these conversations, I was also becoming more enmeshed in my life as a feminist activist and started to pay attention to why mothers might feel excluded from the feminist movement. Certainly feminism had prioritized mothers and motherhood historically, but had it perhaps done so at the expense of some mothers (i.e., the way to be a good feminist was to work, have a midwife, and never allow pink or blue into your house)? Most mothers can’t and/or don’t want to adhere to all or any of those standards and thus felt confused about how they fit in as a feminist.

What was particularly challenging for this generation is that not only were women still struggling with society’s definition of what it meant to be a good woman (i.e., marry and procreate), but they were also struggling with feminism’s definition of what it meant to be a good woman (i.e., reject societal expectations).

You write that being a feminist parent was easier to define for your mother’s generation, in the Free to Be You and Me era of parenting. How is defining oneself as a feminist parent today a more complicated endeavor?

In past generations, being a feminist was more specifically about going against what was a prescribed role—for men and women alike. If you were a man, that meant rejecting some of your masculinity, and for women, that meant embracing your masculine side. There was the feminist hope that nurture had a lot more to do with “us” than we initially thought. Now, a generation or two later, we are seeing more scientific research that points to gender differences, thus requiring feminism to switch gears. It’s not about being the same or even having access to the same things, but about equally valuing our differences and our strengths.

Also, feminism initially was more explicitly about ensuring that girls had access to “boy things” (gym class, competitive sports, advanced math classed, competitive jobs). Today, even with that, inequalities persist because we have only made masculinity more valuable by giving boys and girls access to it, but that leaves femininity still marginalized. I also think it’s so much harder today because it’s so much easier to point out what’s wrong than it is to propose how to make it right—and that’s where we seem to be stuck.

As you detail in Opting In, an abundance of so-called “mommy wars” books are published in the mainstream today, and most seem to capitalize on women’s anxieties about motherhood and work. Why does this subject get so much media play, and, at the same time, still provoke people on such a deep level?

People love to see women fight—and that’s certainly part of the reason. We also want to see people’s facade of perfection cracked open. That’s the same motivation behind ogling over celebrity magazines or watching reality TV; we want people to be exposed, and that’s what we are hoping to find.

Sadly, I think we also devour these books - and the hype and controversy surrounding them - because women and mothers are terribly insecure, and socially we have been shown that to make ourselves feel better, we have to make other people feel worse. I don’t agree with that approach, and, more importantly, I want to understand it. And the way I have come to understand it is that many women prefer to shirk their own perspectives in favor of what the books say or what the experts say. They depend on them to say what they are too insecure to acknowledge on their own.

Your overall message in Opting In is that change begins with us—and that what is most important for mothers is to figure things out for themselves. Why—after so many years of the feminist movement—do these points even need to be made?

Most women have an easier time believing in change for others more than they believe in it for themselves—hence the popularity of “helping” women in other countries. If we look outside of ourselves, we are exempt from evaluating ourselves. Also, I think feminists initially thought that we would change the world, and now we realize that we also have to change ourselves—an evolution of an age-old problem.

Carol Gilligan’s book In a Different Voice really helped me understand this. She was documenting the status of women post Roe v. Wade—a decision that ostensibly gave women autonomy over their own bodies, a very radical act. But years after that decision, why did it feel like we were regressing? Yes, in part it had to do with a radical-right surge in this country, but it had to do more with women not really believing they were entitled to the change they were advocating for.

We suffer too much from a nice girl syndrome—wanting to please others and not wanting to ask for more, assuming that actualizing that might invalidate someone else.

While your message is that change begins with us, you do not abandon the call for systematic change in society for all families. What would radically improve parents’ lives in the United States?

The Family and Medical Leave Act should be expanded to companies with twenty-five or more employees; as is, it only covers for companies with fifty or more employees. As California has done, and New York has proposed, we need to extend this to paid leave. At a minimum, employers should have to pay into Social Security, even if their employee is taking unpaid leave.

The government should subsidize childcare—not in the form of marginalized publicly funded centers, but in the form of sponsorship to attend private groups. As is, publicly funded day care is so bad that it is known to do harm to children, while the best centers are those with a balance of paid and subsidized spots.

Pressure employers—though tax incentives—to provide options for more work/life, not exclusively work/family, balances. But more than “providing” any of these options, the government must mandate the changes it does enact. What makes Europe so ideal when it comes to the status of child-rearing is less that options are available and more that most people take advantage of them.

The dilemma between working and staying home to raise kids is really a privileged one, as you point out that many women, even if they want to, simply cannot afford to stay home full-time to raise their kids. Your book—and, through example, your own life—illustrates a middle way. What does that way entail?

If both parents are balancing work and family, it’s likely that you will have to sacrifice some financial security, but that can be balanced with the emotional security you gain from being with your family more. For me, personally, I also have to sacrifice some perceived middle class “needs”—how many music lessons, how many summer camps. For women, in particular, we need to relinquish control, and for men, they need to take control.

But what will make a middle way possible is belief that both work and family are essential to men’s and women’s lives. As much as we fought for women to have access to the workplace, we have to ensure that men have more access to home. That is, assume it’s a must for men, as we have always assumed it’s a must for women.

You quote many mothers in your book, but the voices of poor mothers—and mothers who live at the very margins of our society—seem to be missing in the text. How did you make decisions about whose voices to include in Opting In?

Though few poor mothers’ voices are in Opting In, their experiences are. Plus, part of my intention was to stop assuming that the only way to close the economic divide was to give poorer people more resources and access. Yes, we need to do that, but that only ratchets up, and we simultaneously need to put pressure on richer folks to do with less. It’s not enough to give poor people access to excellent public schools without draining the importance of private schools. Another example is giving fertility help to middle class families without examining who can’t afford it. Often that leads right back to a conversation about health care and who does and doesn’t have access to it.

In essence, I want richer people to own the fact that their privileged choices are at the expense of others. In my neighborhood, which is statistically one of the poorest in Manhattan, I increasingly see more expensive strollers. On the one hand, I think, “Great, good for them for having a fancy $800 stroller,” but my more pragmatic side thinks, “Damn those rich people for making them so popular, something they can readily purchase and others have to go into debt to get.”

Your chapter “Friends Forever” on how motherhood changes friendships and the not-so-subtle level of competition that exists between many mothers is something that many women can relate to. Why is true mutual support for parenting choices something that is hard for some feminists to give to one another?

Women naturally see another woman’s choice as a challenge to her own. And sadly, few women are confident enough in their own choices and, instead, hide behind the supposed experts or have to resort to being extra-righteous about their own choices, rather than be sympathetic to why we can’t all make the same choices.

I also think that women can, and should, raise the bar for their friends, and so some of the pressure is coming from a more thoughtful place; we want women to raise their expectations. The challenging of their choices can be an attempt to get them to demand more.

Your book is part memoir and includes passages about your own choices about pregnancy, parenting issues with your partner, and your feelings as both the daughter of a single mother and the mother of two sons. Will you speak about the importance and role of personal disclosure in your work as a feminist activist and writer?

Speaking personally is more difficult than having political opinions. You are certainly vulnerable. Initially, this was hard for me, because I want to be liked, and I know that some of my personal experiences might make people not like me. But I quickly learned that speaking my truths both made it easier for other people to do the same and, ultimately, made me feel better, because what I used to think was an exception I soon learned was more commonplace.

Also, my goal as an activist is to progress the conversation—about women’s status, around abortion, around what it means to be a parent - and in order to do that, we need to have more honesty. In the short term, speaking truthfully can be painful, but in the long run, I think you realize how it serves everyone to have it exposed.

You’ve been a feminist organizer for fifteen years and have spoken to countless women and men across the country. What do you continue to find remarkable about the feminist landscape in our country?

The treatment of Hillary Clinton has really exposed how much people don’t respect women, and it’s not shocking at all to me that elite women are her biggest haters. They are threatened by her. If a woman can have a successful career, keep a relationship intact despite big bumps, and raise a child, that raises the bar for other women to do the same.

I think that as much as some women want equality, they also like the short-term comfort of inequality—less is expected and, thus, they have to produce less. And this is what I see women struggling with. As oppressive as it was not to have choice, this generation is struggling equally with how difficult it is to choose when you have a range. I hope that women can believe in the change they advocate for others.

Photo Credit: Victoria Cohen

Written by: Ellen Papazian, May 26th 2008

Little JULES Necklace

admin — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 16:06:00 +0000

By Little JULES

Upon discovering the absence of a company creating jewelry for babies that actually fits their tiny limbs, mother and designer Tania Condon began making bling for babies, starting with her own son, Julian, whom she has since named her company after. Compliments abound and Condon realized she could take her talents to a new, entrepreneurial level, and that's just what she did. Little JULES came to fruition bringing durable and stylish accessories for little ones and has since expanded to include not just moms and dads, but also the family pet… both small and large dogs!

The Little JULES Necklace has three main styles that you can mix and match: engraved (with name and/or birth date of baby), feet stamped and hand stamped. It is made of sterling silver with a disc pendent (approximately 5/8” in diameter) on a 16”, 18” or 20” sparkly ball chain. I wore mine and immediately began getting compliments. One woman even stopped me on the subway to inquire about the necklace and its tiny baby feet. When I explained that I don't actually have a child, she thought the tootsies might be mine, but I explained that they belong to Julian, circa infant stage.

So if you’re looking for a personalized gift for a friend… or a friend’s child… or a friend’s dog, Little JULES will hook you up with a stylish and unique gift.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, March 18th 2007

Boys will be Men: Raising our Sons for Courage, Caring and Community

admin — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 13:11:00 +0000

By Paul Kivel

New Society Publishers

This book should be required reading for the entire population; it is an essential read for any parent or educator. Paul Kivel is an activist, writer and violence prevention educator whose plan for a positive feminist future starts with the boys. This book is a beautiful example of the often overlooked concept that feminism is for the dudes, too. Kivel acknowledges the inherent privileges men have in our society, but also asks them to question and protest the inequality in which those privileges are based.

Boys Will be Men is not a traditional parenting book. There are no easy instructions or steps to follow in order to raise your son to constantly challenge injustice in peaceful, positive and courageous ways. Instead, Kivel often poses questions for the reader to consider and also questions to ask children. Upon reflecting on these questions, the reader will have profound responses and, undoubtedly, it will urge them to take on the tough task of raising a caring son willing to transform his community and society at large.

Paul Kivel’s book will resonate with anyone who dreams of or works towards a society free of all social, political and economic injustices. His meditations on these possibilities are touching, inspiring and poignant.

Written by: Jen May, February 5th 2007