| A woman who had read my book, Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect
Life, which includes a chapter on women, especially new mothers,
judging each other, wrote to me this summer to tell me about a recent
encounter she’d had at the park.
The woman who wrote to me, whom I’ll call Joan, said that
her 20-month-old had been playing in the sandbox before stopping
to ask her mother for a snack. Ever the prepared mother, Joan pulled
out a Stonyfield Farms organic strawberry yogurt in a tube.
Immediately another mother, whom Joan did not know, piped up from
a nearby bench: “How can you give that to your daughter? It’s
so full of sugar. What I do,” she continued, “is use
a syringe to extract 1/2 of the sweet yogurt from the tube, then
I use a second syringe to inject plain yogurt back into the tube.
That way my daughter has the same yogurt as the other kids, but
I know that it’s not too sweet.”
Joan wrote in her email to me that she was too floored to say anything
back. Let’s consider for a minute— just for fun—
what an appropriate response could be in this situation. More specifically,
what could be an appropriate feminist response— one that fosters
community among mothers?
Here are a few choices I came up with:
a) Thanks so much! Can I borrow your syringe?
b) Would you like the name of my psychiatrist? Zoloft has done
wonders for me.
c) Do you realize that the President of the United States is an
often incompetent, but still incredibly dangerous, warmonger? Why
not use your yogurt time to fight any number of unethical and nonsensical
policies that harm mothers, children, and everyone else? Here’s
the phone number for the National Organization for Women. Or,
d) the all-purpose response to strange statements— for
feminists, as well as anyone else: Huh? Say What?
When another mother makes a statement that feels like a judgment
on our mothering— and Joan certainly took this yogurt-doctoring
advice as a judgment rather than an innocent food hint— how
do we answer back? How do we answer back without resorting to counter-judgment?
Why do mothers judge each other, sometimes on the pettiest details,
in the first place? Why do mothers— at least in my experience
and according to my observations— judge one another at a much
higher frequency than other members of the population judge one
another? Furthermore, if we are living in a patriarchy— a
society based on male privilege and upholding that privilege, which
I believe we are— why do 99 precent of the judgments I’ve
felt as a mother come from other women, other mothers, other would-be
sisters-in-arms? Why are we doing men’s policing work for
them— watching, then critiquing each other’s behavior
so intently, so minutely— Snugli or sling, Aveda bottles or
Playtex, PBS or no TV, soymilk, ricemilk, or cow’s milk? Are
men simply less judgmental? Or is that they typically don’t
pay enough attention, don’t have to, aren’t even involved
enough in the daily household decisions to know the difference between,
say, Aveda and Playtex bottles. Why do mothers notice other mother’s
choices, down to the minutia? Why do we judge those who choose differently?
I believe that at least some of the time, even the tiniest judgments
we make are really ways of asking these two questions: 1) Is that mother selfless enough? And more personally, 2) is that mother sacrificing
as much as I am? If not, I’m not sure I like her,
and I’m not sure I can refrain from saying something critical
to her— just to see if I can get her to feel anxious, the
way I feel anxious.
What exactly
is going on in mother’s judgments of each other, and how is
feminist community-building possible within this all woman sphere
of critique? I think these are essential questions for feminists
because as I see it, judgmentalism among women is one of the primary
things keeping us from truly bettering the social position of mothers.
Which is not to downplay, for an instant, the roles of patriarchy,
global capitalism, and biology in mothers’ lack of social
power. But rather to focus, for a moment, on what mothers, ourselves,
do to each other to impede progressive social change, why we do
it, and how this might change.
Here’s the tricky
part: feminism has always, and must, include judgements— judgments
about what is harmful to women and what liberates women. So should
the solution simply be that good judgments, feminist judgments, are
okay while petty, bitchy, or dare we say, false consciousness judgements
are wrong? So, for example, it’s okay—even necessary—to
suggest that mothers should work outside the home, that housework
is drudgery women should be relieved from doing, but it’s not
okay to criticize someone’s yogurt choice for her daughter?
That the first kind of judgment is noble, structural, and concerned
with liberation while the second is petty. Or rather, that the second seems petty on the surface but is actually linked to a dangerous,
regressive ideology of motherhood that involves constant vigilance
and never-ending domestic work. An ideology that is about much more
than the sugar-content in yogurt because it necessitates a kind of
mothering that so time-consuming and all encompassing that a woman
couldn’t possibly do anything other than mother.
This analysis of what’s lurking behind the yogurt comment
seems perfectly reasonable to me. I am no stranger to judgment and
critical analysis of others. Indeed, if someone forced me to say:
false consciousness or not, you must choose one, must make a judgment
now, I would definitely choose “false consciousness, “
regarding the yogurt comment. I’m not 100 percent sure, but
I’d be willing to wager. Is there a possibility— however
slim, though— that she simply likes to syringe finds it sensual?
Certainly, my sons would. Anything gooey is of great excitement
and interest to them. This seems like quite a stretch as reasoning
for the woman in the park, but shouldn’t we give her the benefit
of the doubt? If so, what would that mean— giving her the
benefit of the doubt?
My question for feminists who want to build community, is what
we say back to her, more than what we should think internally.
Still, I believe giving someone the benefit of the doubt means,
in this case, the benefit of our doubt about our own analysis. Feminists,
like everyone else, are sometimes wrong. If we want to build community
with other women, I think we have to be open to surprise and willing
to listen. This seems simple and obvious— human interaction
101— but I have found it incredibly difficult to do as a mother
when I myself have felt “under attack” from another
mother’s seeming judgment.
While no one has yet to recommend that I syringe anything, I have
found myself in frequent possible judging situations. I haven’t
known what to do. What a feminist should do, what a feminist who
cares deeply about building community with other women should do.
The scenario would go like this— another mother would say
something that I felt was a judgment on my mothering, on my lack
of selflessness. Something like one of these:
“Don’t you think you should put a hat on your son?”
“Oh, so you use Pampers. Oh, uh-huh. We actually use
the organic cloth delivery service.”
“Oh, your child is with a babysitter on Wednesdays. Oh,
uh-huh. Too bad he won’t get to socialize with the playgroup.”
“You’re a writer? Oh, uh-huh. That must be…interesting.”
Were these really judgments, or was I just being paranoid, touchy?
I was grossly underslept; maybe this made me imagine a cruel intent
that wasn’t there. Part One of myself felt like I was probably
wrong in feeling judged. I was just touchy and tired. Even so, Part
Two of myself felt wounded by the remark because I was less than
confident in my mothering abilities. Oh shit, I’d been
giving my baby straight organic strawberry yogurt. Who knew this
wasn’t good enough? Who knew it was too sweet?My
child’s teeth would rot out, be rotten as soon as they came
in. Oh no, oh no. I felt panicked. At the same time, Part Three
felt that the particular judgment was silly. Who cares? What
difference does it make? I’d think to myself. Finally,
Part Four was saddened and then pissed off. I found the woman’s
words retrograde and dangerous rather than just silly. I felt I
had an analysis of what was going on, even though I couldn’t
be sure that my analysis was accurate. All that had been verbally
exchanged, after all, was one slightly barbed comment.
How much
is reasonable to read into that?Not sure, I’d typically smile through gritted teeth, without
saying anything. Silence was not the way I wanted to act as a feminist,
a neighbor, or a fellow human being. Mentally, I wasn’t having
such a shutdown. Mentally, I went through two comebacks.
Here’s
the first:Bitch. You are a bitch in the same way high school girls can
be. I know this behavior, I do it myself sometimes, and it’s
women at our worst.
Here was my second mental comeback, a bit headier than the first:
You clearly feel less than confident. So you’re projecting
your anxieties out onto me. If you can be the expert, be better
than me in this scenario, then maybe you can feel better about yourself—
if just for a moment. Is it working, do you feel better?And
then to be truly honest, this second comeback would still probably
wind up with the word “bitch” as well.
But I never said either
of these! Just to be clear: I have never used the b-word to another
women in the park. I was silent, but I don’t want to be silent
anymore because the stakes are too high.
.If thousands of mothers
around the world criticize other mothers for not being vigilant enough
about what their children eat, wear, and do— and I think it’s
reasonable to assume that this is happening— then the effect
is women policing women into upholding the status quo of male privilege,
of men only in positions of public power. If women in playgrounds
all over the world make each other too guilty to go full out into
the men’s world, men don’t even have to turn us down for
important positions. We never show up to be turned down in the first
place because other women have made us feel too guilty about not doing
everything for our children. There is no question that raising children
can take all of a woman’s time. Perhaps a more relevant question
might be: should it take all of a woman’s time? And
who decides? How do we help each other make the fullest, best, most
self-aware decisions possible? Rather than decisions coming from guilt,
social pressure, regressive cultural messages on TV and in magazines,
and inflexible workplaces?
I think the solution is old-fashioned consciousness-raising, which
is quite different from either giving a bossy, manifesto-style lecture
or a catty, tit-for-tat counter response, a la: “Oh, you have
time to syringe yogurt? Uh-huh. Isn’t that special.”
I want to be clear here: I do think there is a fundamental and
important difference between feminist critique, on the one hand,
and catty judgments designed— at least in part— to make
an individual mother feel guilty or stupid.
Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, best known for his theory
of hegemony, or the way dominance can be achieved through persuasion
and consent rather than solely through force and coercion, says
that people typically have a contradictory consciousness: we can
critique the power relations that exist and also consent to the
way they are at the same time. Revolution, he says, comes
out of ambivalence, because people, even the most revolutionary
of us, aren’t only comprised of pure, unadulterated critique
of the powers-that-be. That said, Gramsci believes that the structural
critiquing side of our consciousness is the better side, the driving
force toward liberation and social change. This is the voice of
the feminist manifesto: clear, sharp, taking no prisoners in its
analysis of how patriarchy functions to diminish women’s lives
and choices.
And yet, even in the most adamant feminist, there is still also
the voice of consent to the status quo. The consenting voice, it
seems to me, is even stronger when one is talking about an unjust
situation that also includes love. For heterosexual feminist mothers
in positive relationships with men, the true voice, the whole voice,
is inherently one of contradiction: I love my husband and my children and I hate the inequities between my husband and me.
Even if he is individually the most progressive man alive, society
still rewards him for his maleness in countless daily ways, and
this— it seems to me— is worthy of anger and work toward change.
For mothers who are not feminists— or not yet— the
consenting voice is likely to be stronger, louder than the revolutionary
voice. It seems to me that the way to draw the social critiquing
voice out in the women we encounter all the time— at the park,
at the PTA, on the bus— (and we must do this; feminism needs
all the bodies we can recruit)— is not through talking in
a take-no-prisoners voice but through modeling ambivalence—
speaking honestly and fully. I’m not talking about lying,
feigning interest in syringing yogurt, say, when you would never
in a million years, do such a thing. Rather, I’m suggesting
a kind of opening up of dialogue, through full honesty on our part.
“Wow, you really think sugar content matters that much? Can
you tell me why? I do worry about what my daughter eats sometimes.”
And then the next step is to really listen to her. Hopefully the
conversation will wander away from yogurt, perhaps toward how she
feels about being at home, in general.
Obviously no one is going to be up to this every day. Nor is it
always, or even often, possible, with small children in tow. But
I do believe it’s the way to build a movement, step by step,
conversation by conversation.
What I’m suggesting is nothing new, it’s old, it’s
from the early 70s; it’s consciousness-raising. I have rarely
felt as envious as I felt when reading Jane Lazarre’s 1976
classic The Mother Knot in 1998 as the mother of two young
children myself. Lazarre talked of the flyers she and her friend
posted in their apartment building:
“Tired of being
somebody’s mother or somebody’s wife? Come to Jean
Rosenthal’s house on Monday night. Talk about your real
feelings. Women’s group forming.”
Wow! That’s where I wanted to go— Jean Rosenthal’s
house on a Monday night. It’s where I want to go now in 2005.
Feminism, I believe, also needs to welcome those who are reluctant—
rather than desperate for its message and time spend with its believers,
as I have been for the last 22 years. Those of us who know what
feminism has done for us need to recruit. Not in a crazy evangelical
way, but in a respectful, honest way that involves acknowledging
our own ambivalences and listening fully, open to being surprised
by what a woman might say.
Consciousness-raising doesn’t work so well lecture-style.
Instead, it comes through honest discussion in which people acknowledge
ambivalence, vulnerability, complexity, and torn feelings. As the
feminist, sometimes we have to go first. Acknowledging our own ambivalences
can allow women who have been afraid or unnerved by the contradictions
they feel to speak up.
(This has been the most personally gratifying part of the response
I’ve gotten from readers of my book. If you can be that angry
at your husband— and he seems like a pretty good guy—
people will say, then at least I can acknowledge that I don’t
always love being a wife and mother.)
There is still a place for manifestos, absolutely. But manifesto-like
talk is not typically the best icebreaker with women you don’t
know well, or at all, like those you might encounter in a park.
Neither is silence.
But what do we do if we believe, for example, that it is unquestionably
best for mothers to have some aspect of their lives that is non-child-centered?
Can we never say this to someone who appears— to us, at least—
to be dillying around with yogurt? I have come to believe recently
that a first and fundamental step in feminism is empowering women
to feel entitled to ask the question of themselves: what is it that
makes a rich, full, and meaningful life?
We don’t have to, shouldn’t, and couldn’t possibly,
provide a standard answer to fit every woman. What we can do is
empower each other to feel entitled to ask the question. Sadly,
I believe this in itself is quite a feat. Many of the mothers I’ve
met around the country in the last year as I was on book tour indicated
that they asked this questions before having children, but whatever
those answers were (other than children) fell into the irrelevant.
Mothers ask themselves daily “What is it that makes a rich,
full and meaningful life for my child,” and then
move mountains to make those things a possibility. For themselves,
there isn’t time to ask the question— much less answer
it, then go about enacting it.
I think we make it easier for other women to ask the question by
modeling the fact that we ask it for ourselves and also by talking
about what stops us, occasionally, from feeling entitled to ask,
as well. We need to voice our uncertainties. Not make them up, but
if they are there, go ahead and voice them. Go first. Sharing our
ambivalences puts others at ease and it models complexity: I can
love my husband and be angry about the inequities at the same time.
The implication is: so can you. Life as a human being involves complexity
and ambivalence. And if Gramsci is right, revolution will follow.
I say, let’s bring it on.
mmo : april 2005
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