raising children

Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps—and What We Can Do About It

beth — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Given the heavy media coverage about studies that “prove” significant, inborn differences between males and females, it is no surprise that we excuse or accept certain behaviors depending on whether they come from a boy or a girl. We are often led to believe that it is natural for a boy to be athletic and for a girl to demonstrate more empathy because it is part of their biology and something that cannot be helped one way or another. If this were true, we would have to resign ourselves to our appropriate gender roles and stick to the activities and behaviors assigned to us by nature.

Not so, says Eliot. Right off the bat, Pink Brain, Blue Brain shows us that we must examine these studies critically in order to appreciate their message. Eliot goes through various popular studies with a fine-toothed comb and comes away with a vastly different interpretation of the data. Rather than proving innate differences between boys and girls, instead we see that these differences are really not as large as they appear and that the outcomes have been subtly manipulated and phrased in ways that present the results as far more provocative, and therefore popular with the media.

After a close scrutiny of the studies, Eliot goes on to investigate the various claims of the differences between boys and girls starting at conception and ending around puberty. Though she is a neuroscientist, Eliot provides well thought out sociological critiques along with useful explanations of biology. She fuses both the nature and nurture aspects of development to show that gender gaps are not just innate or taught, but oftentimes both. What nature instills, society tends to exaggerate. The consequences are that these gender stereotypes become self-fulfilling prophecies, and this hurts both boys and girls.

Particularly useful to those who strive to raise well-balanced children are the ideas and tips that Eliot includes at the end of nearly every chapter. For instance, she recommends pet care as a way to teach and encourage a sense of nurturing in young boys. Likewise, she suggests getting girls involved in chess in order to help foster a healthy dose of competition and to improve spatial analysis skills. We may have been dealt a specific set of cards at birth, but this by no means should limit us in what we achieve and how we excel.

Written by: Shana Mattson, January 4th 2011

Grow Your Own Tree Hugger: 101 Activities to Teach Your Child How to Live Green

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Wendy Rosenoff

Krause Publications

As a woman with young siblings, I have a vested interest in all materials that help me to have a positive influence on the adults they will grow up to become. I was very excited to see this new title by Wendy Rosenoff, an environmentalist who works with children through the Girl and Boy Scouts. Grow Your Own Tree Hugger contains, as noted, 101 activities that you can work through with your kids to help them better understand the planet and how to take care of it.

I often find it challenging (though necessary) to discuss lofty concepts with kids, and Rosenoff’s book helps because the activities serve as examples or analogies to larger, more complicated issues. For example, it might be difficult to get a child to understand the impact of pesticides and chemicals on our food, especially when these foods look the same as organic ones. Rosenoff suggests that you take two pieces of fruit—one organic and the other non-organic—and put them in the refrigerator. After several days, the organic fruit will be green and withered while the chemically enhanced one will still look new. This is a great, visual way to illustrate how pesticides prevent the natural decomposition process for kids.

Some activities do not actually involve activism, but offer a fun game as a way to encourage open conversation. Rosenoff suggests you make and fly a kite with your child and then use the opportunity to talk about wind power. She also encourages parents to take their kids out to experience nature, something the modern child often lacks exposure to.

In this day and age of the internet, video game devices, and television, some kids don’t spend much time outdoors at all. Rosenoff believes you should take them to examine tree stumps and determine the tree’s age, or get outside and plant something. She even includes recipes that parents and kids can make together with organic ingredients.

In working through Grow Your Own Tree Hugger, you not only inform your kids about the environment and the ways in which they can have an impact, but you get to spend time with them doing hands-on activities that are actually a lot of fun. You will probably both benefit from the time you spend growing your own tree hugger.

Written by: April D. Boland, April 30th 2010

Gay Fatherhood: Narratives of Family and Citizenship in America

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Ellen Lewin

University of Chicago Press

In this well-written ethnography, Gay Fatherhood, Ellen Lewin examines the choices and the decisions of gay fathers in America, focusing particularly on men who choose to become fathers as gay men, rather than coming out after having had children in a different-sex marriage. Lewin, also the author of the 1993 ethnography Lesbian Mothers, works centrally from Chicago but has found research participants of impressive diversity with respect to race, religion, socioeconomic background, profession, number of children, and relationship to community. All of these elements make for a fascinating read.

The central question in Lewin’s book is one that has become increasingly pertinent and visible, particularly in queer communities, as the gay marriage debate advances in the United States. Does “being gay” simply mean being a man who loves and is sexually attracted to men, or does it imply another separateness, an inherent incompatibility, with a world that is and will always be predominantly straight? And does asserting the latter negate the identity of gay fathers, assuming "father," even "parent," to be the province of the straight world alone? Or does a gay man who chooses to be a father give up his right to identify as "gay?" Or does "parent" come to overshadow, to render irrelevant, the identity “gay”? And if none of the above are true, are there factors beyond the sexual orientation and gender of the parents that would specifically identify a family as a "gay family?"

As is often the case in anthropological research, Lewin explores these questions without ever fully answering them. Given the scope and depth of Lewin’s writing, however, no answer seems to be demanded. By simply displaying the complexity of the lives and relationships of gay fathers—relationships with partners, relationships with children, relationships with other parents, extended families, communities of friends, religious communities, communities of residence—she demonstrates that this is not an issue to be bullet-pointed or oversimplified. Lewin uses her ethnography to delve into the lives of gay families, and to show the complex nexus of identity at which they reside, and at which they must, in contemporary America, continue to reside. A true writer and a true anthropologist, she leaves the prescription of actions to her readers; there is no doubt that engagement with her writing will lead to more considered, and therefore better, action.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, March 1st 2010

My Baby Rides the Short Bus: The Unabashedly Human Experience of Raising Kids with Disabilities

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Edited by Yantra Bertelli, Jennifer Silverman, Sarah Talbot

PM Press

My Baby Rides the Short Bus is an anthology of articles written by parents about their firsthand experiences of raising children with disabilities. In addition to their common identity as parents of disabled children, the contributors also share another trait: all of them find themselves outside of the mainstream by virtue of identity or political perspective. Together the articles make up a lively collection of authentic voices that speak to the joys and challenges of being marginalized and/or subcultural parents raising special-needs children.

Many of the authors write about how their non-mainstream identities have affected their experience of raising special-needs children. Thida Cornes writes about how she learned to work within the constraints of her own disability, dystonia (a physical disability that causes muscular spasms), to take care of her son, who has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy. A lesbian minister, Maria June writes about becoming, at age twenty-three, the foster mom of a fifteen-year-old with special needs. Amber E. Taylor, a self-described “black biracial dyke with head-to-toe visible tattoos and a bald head” and an adoptive parent of a son with Down syndrome, writes about the backlash she receives from biological parents of disabled children who think she shouldn’t attend support group meetings because she “chose” to parent a special child.

The authors also write about the process of navigating the many institutions ostensibly set up to help special-needs children, but which often end up sidelining them. Several authors write about the experience of diagnosis: the behavioral testing milieu in which young children, separated from parents and subjected to unfamiliar conditions, unsurprisingly fail to show their full range of abilities, and then are slapped with labels that sometimes sound more like death sentences. Authors who spend 24/7 with their children write about the experience of not being believed by “specialists” about their children's abilities and needs, or being subtly blamed for their children’s disabilities. Expressing the frustration felt by many of the authors, Kerry Cohen writes, “Unless I hate the things that make [my son] different from other children, I will always be a wayward mother.”

But not all the stories are about frustration and tragedy—many of the authors write about the creative and energetic ways they have found to help their children thrive, often in direct opposition to the institutions that are set up to “help.” Karen Wang and Heather Newman write about “unschooling”—creating stimulating and safe learning spaces at home, tailored specifically to their children’s particular needs—while Shannon Des Roches Rosa tells how she co-founded a special education PTA that helps parents of children with disabilities advocate for their children in the local public school system.

As so many of us know from personal experience, it can be very difficult to be part of multiple marginalized communities. As one of the authors, Andrea Winninghoff, laments, “In a community of parents with deaf kids, I will always be the single, young, gay mom. Among gay parents, I will always be the one with the deaf kid that they can’t speak to.” While there are many books available on parenting special-needs children, very few of those books offer an explicitly political analysis of the rights of special-needs families and of the systems that do or don’t serve them, and very few of those books acknowledge the experiences of parents who are out of the mainstream, whether due to race, class, gender identity or sexual orientation, disability, political beliefs, or lifestyle. Frank, engaging, and broad-ranging, My Baby Rides the Short Bus is a rare and precious treasury of these too-often invisible stories.

Written by: Ri J. Turner, February 11th 2010

When She Flew

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:03:00 +0000

By Jennie Shortridge

New American Library

In a fictionalized version of a true event that that happened a few years ago, an Iraq war vet and his young daughter are discovered living in the Oregon woods. When police officer Jessica Villareal hears that a young girl has been sighted in the woods and could be a runaway teen, she asks to be added to the search team. Jessica has always played by the rules, but finds herself heading towards forty and feeling like her job is the only thing she has going for her. She has an estranged teenage daughter and grandson who live close to her ex-husband, Rick in another state. As the story unfolds, we learn that Jessica, who is half-Mexican, is the daughter of a policeman who was killed in an auto wreck while on duty when Jessica was very young. Since then she has tried to maintain a firm grip on her world to keep danger and insecurity at bay.

Throughout When She Flew, we sense that Jessica is trying to find her way back to her daughter and her own lost childhood by trying to help Lindy, the teenage girl. As told through the narrative voices of Jessica and Lindy, we inhabit the worlds of these two separate, but linked individuals. Despite a lack of material resources, Lindy has been brought up by her survivalist father to love and appreciate nature. She has a special interest in birds and is first sighted by bird watchers when she ventures away from the campsite to follow a blue heron she sees by the river.

Without giving the entire plot away, the title of the book _When She Flew_ symbolized, for me, how both the younger and older female characters of the novel eventually find the courage to leave the safety of the known and find their own “truths” about life and their place in the world, even if they doesn’t always conform to societal expectations. The novel asks thought provoking questions about our assumptions when it comes to raising children. Pater is raising his daughter outside of the confines of conventional society, but would Lindy be better off with a foster family, or in an institutionalized setting? These characters stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page. Once I started reading this book, I found it hard to put it down.

Written by: Gita Tewari, January 12th 2010

Just Like Family: Inside the Lives of Nannies, the Parents They Work for, and the Children They Love

admin — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:18:00 +0000

By Tasha Blaine

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Like Tasha Blaine, I once took a job working as a nanny. Also like the author, I thought it would be a relatively easy gig that would allow me the freedom to write while working in a nice, supportive environment. We both quickly realized that working as a nanny is one of the most intense, draining, undervalued, and emotionally taxing jobs in our modern society.

In Just Like Family, Blaine combines her personal insights, her MFA, and several years of research to closely follow the lives of three different nannies in three different cities over the course of one year. The portraits she paints read more like a novel than the sociological study they really are, and that makes her book as entertaining as it is informative. There is Claudia, a young mother who came to New York City from Dominica and still dreams of a career in nursing; Vivian, a college educated career nanny in Massachusetts running for nanny of the year; and Kim, a nanny with twenty years of experience who accepted a live-in position in Texas on the eve of her second divorce.

It is the intimacy of these stories that make the book so compelling. That level of absorption allows a unique opportunity for Blaine to educate readers about how complicated it is to work in such an emotionally intense environment. A nanny is not only charged with raising young children, but must navigate the complexities of another family from the inside, all the while enduring the stresses and hardships of a primary care giver in a society that still holds childcare near the bottom rung of the economic food chain.

Whether or not to have children, and then how to go about raising them, will be a central issue of feminism as long as a feminist movement is necessary. Childcare is simply not very highly valued here in the United States. It is not monetarily valued, and it is not socially valued. The author Ann Crittendon said that someone once asked of her, “Didn’t you used to be Ann Crittendon?” when she was home with her first child. I know how she felt.

When I decided to stay home with my twins, I found that even those closest to me suddenly treated me as though I’d died and been mysteriously replaced by a cardboard mommy cutout. Having no idea how completely consuming it is taking care of small children, they assumed my sudden loss of interest in pop culture (and personal hygiene) must have had more to do with my giving up on life than with not having time to spare for it.

There is a widespread cultural bias against the work of childcare that completely ignores how much time and energy it takes to raise a child. And in a culture where human resource and intellect is fast becoming the most important currency, it is astonishing that childcare is dismissed as something less than absolutely crucial to our survival. If I could afford a nanny, believe me I’d have one, but I’d be a much better employer for having read this book.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, August 3rd 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

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

Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood after a Lifetime of Ambivalence

admin — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:05:00 +0000

By Rebecca L. Walker

Riverhead

After reading the first few pages of Baby Love in the aisle of a midtown Manhattan Barnes and Noble, I bought a brand new hardcover copy. In recent interviews Walker has said that this is the book she wishes she'd had to read when she was in her twenties. I thank her for writing it. While much of the memoir focuses on the minutiae of Walker's pregnancy—foods eaten, clothing purchased, websites trolled and unnecessary arguments had—her larger commentary on the absence of intergenerational discussions between older and younger feminists about childbirth—save the advice that we have plenty of time—is what most interested and inspired me.

Rebecca, now at thirty-seven, is the daughter of feminist icon and celebrated author Alice Walker. Their tempestuous relationship underscores much of the text, and the trials of motherhood—chosen (Rebecca's) and seemingly ambivalent (Alice's)—and illustrates the complexities of the discussion Rebecca wishes feminists were having both amongst ourselves and, indeed, out there with the rest of the world. "Fertility is finite" she warns, and she encourages young women to take heed and plan having babies just as ardently as her mother's generation urged us to plan careers and develop ourselves into whole people. Her musings on motherhood have gotten her a lot of flack in the press recently. Most infamously, the chapter about her relationship with her stepson, Solomon, has gained attention for her assertion that the love one experiences for a child one has carried to term and given birth to differs from that of a child who has become yours through adoption or marriage or family arrangement. Rebecca Walker is not comparing one love to the other, but is merely saying there are different kinds of love, and all should be valued equally, even in their difference.

Walker's second memoir concludes with the birth story of her son, Tenzin, named after His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the statement "I have no regrets." Ultimately, Walker is encouraging young feminists to be as decisive about our choices to mother or not to mother as we have been about other parts of our lives. In a time when birth in the U.S. has turned into such a profitable industry for insurance companies, hospitals and advertisers, women's reproductive choices—from abortion to the choice to give birth and mother—are as important as ever. Baby Love calls our attention to a hardly discussed topic among young feminists: breaking through the ambivalence around motherhood that is fostered through the constant conflict between second wave feminism telling us that we have plenty of time and the larger establishment pushing us to be mothers because we can, instead of because we choose to.

Written by: Aisha Domingue, July 9th 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