MotherTalk DC
If you have a chance to go to a MotherTalk event, go! I went to the one last night, and had an absolute blast. It was worth staying up way past my bedtime, and walking around in a haze much of the day.
Miriam Peskowitz talked about her anti-mommy wars book, and then read her essay from It’s a Girl, about what’s a feminist mother to do when her daughter is obsessed with all things cheerleader. Andi Buchanan read her essay about her daughter’s use of writing to separate from her. Marion Winik read a hysterical essay from The Lunchbox Chronicles about the 10 stages of dealing with lice, and a tender essay about grieving the loss of the infants and toddlers her children once were, as they grow up.
The place was packed — 50 or 60 women were there (and RebelDad). I saw some old friends, and met some new ones. I had a really good conversation with Devra Renner, co-author of Mommy Guilt, about the tension between wanting to be the best parents we can, but knowing that we’re going to screw up some of the time, and needing to be able to accept that and move on. (Devra, if you’re reading this, here’s the post I mentioned.)
There was an intense conversation about girls’ fascination with pink and princessy dresses, and I was reminded of Jo(e)’s post a while back about the role of shoes in holding girls back. (I concluded that someone ought to market sneakers that are hot pink and sparkly, but have good treads.) Someone asked Marion (who has kids ranging from 5 to 18) about the idea that daughters grow up to be closer to their moms than sons do, and she said that after going through an awful teenage stage where they cursed at her and didn’t want anything to do with her, her sons were now incredibly sweet and communicative and she couldn’t imagine that a daughter could be closer.
A group of us also talked about the spate of high-profile, divisive books about mothers (apparently Linda Hirshman has a book coming out this summer) and whether each book had to be even more shrill than the last one to get published, and whether there was a backlash coming, and if so, would it open the door for non-shrill books, or would publishers just say "we’re all done with books about mothers."
So, check the calendar, and if there’s one in your area, go!
April 30th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
Glad you had fun, Elizabeth. Sounds like it was a good time.
I don’t mind the sahm/”working-mom” debates as long as there’s something substantial to them and they’re not just girl-on-girl ad-sales frenzy, but I’m bothered by what I hear as a growing “friendly writer moms v. mean writer moms” split on the blogs. The group disapproval of the Flanagans and Hirshmans in favor of the Peskowitzes/Gores/bloggers. It seems to me the tone of the arguments & their potential for being upsetting are considerably less important than whether or not they shed light on something real and difficult to articulate. I mean I understand that’s not so if your aim is to find a warm and empowering group, obviously you don’t want to read some harridan if that’s what you’re after, but this is the first time I can recall so much popular feminist debate about what mothers are, what motherhood is, what families are. Worth not taking it personal, in other words.
(soberly, amy)
May 1st, 2006 at 9:00 am
Thanks for the calendar–it looks like there is an event near me soon. I’ll have to check it out.
May 1st, 2006 at 9:27 am
Amy, I don’t really think Flanagan and Hirshman are shedding much light on motherhood, and I think they’re published precisely because they’re “mean.”
This reminds me of the problem that Christian progressives have with getting any media attention. The media is dominated by Christian conservative viewpoints because they incite hatred and division and paralysis on real issues. But Christian progressives are dismissed as being “too nice” to be interesting. My progressive pastor could out-think, out-speak, and out-preach the whole lot of the media favorite conservatives even without his cup of coffee in the morning, but he’d never get any press because he’s not spewing divisiveness and hatred.
So the question is, in order to be taken seriously, do Christian progressives and feminist mothers start to get nasty and facile as Pat Robertseon and Caitlin Flanagan are? Will that encourage discussion? Are media attention and public discussion necessarily linked? How can you stay on the moral high road (using data that relates to your actual topic, thinking through your argument, refraiing from ad hominem attacks) and still gain the public’s attention?
Interesting topic.
May 1st, 2006 at 11:25 am
Amy, i think a lot of the dissatisfaction is that the “mean moms” are the ones being taken more seriously by the mainstream media outlets, and that is frustrating to those of us who really do want to have a well-reasoned and thoughtful debate. I blogged about this before, but it’s infuriating to see people like Flanagan getting the plum writing gigs because she’s willing to attack other moms and feminism in general. should being provocative be rewarded more than being passionate?
May 1st, 2006 at 2:29 pm
What Moxie said about the “mean Mommies” debate. Also: how do we distinguish between the dismantling of particular authors’ arguments (my goal when I’ve written about Flanagan’s work on my blog) and attacks on them as “mommies,” when most of these books mobilize individuals’ family lives and their particular mommy habits as part of the argument? Presumably there are ways, but I do think it’s a very fine line.
I presume that “Caitlyn Flanagan” the author/speaker is more or less a complete invention, by the way. As are all public personas to a greater or lesser extent, of course. But I have a hard time she truly believes that her husband’s care during her cancer treatment was the payback for her hard sacrifices as an at-home parent and wife. I think that’s the sort of hyperbole that flits across your mind before you refine your ideas about yourself.
Stride Rite makes a variety of pink sparkly sneakers on the same tread/sole as their boys’ sneakers. So does Payless Shoes, actually. I don’t think that’s such a problem anymore, the bigger issue is that girls get the message very often that sneakers in general aren’t “pretty.” Something I might worry more about except that most of the girls I know dress pretty casually and are active in sports, hiking, etc. (Well, I do worry about it, but I try to keep my anxiety about marketing and pre-teen girls under control with frequent reality checks among the families in our community.)
May 1st, 2006 at 2:56 pm
I’m nearly halfway through Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bee Moms & Kingpin Dads (and plan on hijacking Elizabeth’s TBR this week or next when I finally finish the book – LOL) and while the book is not focused on the SAHM/WOHM debate, there is a section in the intro chapter on moms called ‘The Great Mom Divide.’ From her qualitative research, Wiseman lists what she hears from women who work about women who stay at home with their kids and vice versa. In the conclusion of that section, Wiseman writes, “Can we please declare a cease-fire?” After listing the ways that both SAHM and WOHM can get it right and get it wrong, Wiseman concludes, “Both options for parenting can be great and both can spell trouble. The only way to be sure you’ve made the right choice – again, if you’re lucky enough to have the choice – is to explore these very difficult issues.”
In general, Wiseman’s book is focused on encouraging parents to “reform” themselves to speak out against bad behavior in a constructive way (and giving them a tool to do so) so they can get out of the social status race and set a positive example for their sons and daughters. I think that message could be part of the answer for everyone seeking to a response to the media myth of the mommy wars and the Caitlyn Flanagans of the world. And the book is geared toward dads, too.
Btw, I got my daughter the cutest pair of pink, yellow and green sneakers from Stride Rite this spring. They look like jelly beans on her feet. They’re so girly. And they do GREAT on the playground, climbing ladders and ropes and running around.
May 1st, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Also: how do we distinguish between the dismantling of particular authors’ arguments (my goal when I’ve written about Flanagan’s work on my blog) and attacks on them as “mommies,” when most of these books mobilize individuals’ family lives and their particular mommy habits as part of the argument? Presumably there are ways, but I do think it’s a very fine line.
See, I don’t think this is hard. Academics do it all the time. If you have stats and/or coherent, examinable thesis plus illustrative families, that’s one thing; no stats/thesis and a collection of illustrations, bupkes. The illustrations are supposed to be supportive, not the main action. Otherwise they may be very interesting, but they’re unhelpful in shedding light on any larger problems.
So whatever fictions or partial fictions Flanagan comes up with re her own life, this is not as important as a) what’s her broader argument; b) where is the broad support for it. I think you can safely ignore them or read them as autobio unless they’re just a part of that support.
The public wants to watch Fear Factor, so I think you’re already talking about a small segment of the population seriously interested in these questions. But we’ve got an intensely interested small segment, so we may as well do it seriously, I think, without being distracted by fashion and personal sensitivities. I have a feeling that the effect of public semi-interest in this stuff is not really going to be important in any lasting way.
From what I’ve read of Hirshman’s, btw, I don’t agree with the assessment, Moxie. To me she sounded furious, but quite lucid, and helpful in reminding readers of old fights not yet won. Helpful in part because of the shocking anger.
I do see what you mean about the ‘be mean to sell’, too; conflict will always be hot. But this is the beauty of teh internet. You don’t have to be saleable to blog, or to be read. Enough people, and enough tastemaker people, read this blog for it to get NYT publicity.
May 1st, 2006 at 4:17 pm
My one year old daughter has lots of pink sneakers (including an adorable pair of pink Converse hightops that are a little too big still) so I’m not worried about her ability to run and play. I worry, however, that the bigger problem of the princessy thing is focusing way too much on little girls’ appearances early on. I would much rather the emphasis be on what my daughter does than on what she wears.
May 1st, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Well, Amy, I disagree with Hirschman’s assertions about the relative value and importance of sequencing among upper middle-class women. And I believe I’ve stated that, and suggested ways Hirschman’s analysis may fail to address specific issues, without attacking Hirschman’s character. Flanagan I place in a slightly different category, since I’m hard-pressed to think of any of her articles lately that was particularly thought-provoking or insightful regarding the way women, mothers, or parents live. She has a hobby horse and she’s riding it, to fame an fortune apparently. But mostly it seems to me that Flanagan has been throwing out the sorts of radical statements one makes in a coffee shop during grad school just to spark debate, without requiring your statements to have much factual basis. It can be fun, but it pretty quickly devolves into an echo chamber. And I think Flanagan gave herself away a bit in that regard when she edited out most of the most memorable (not coincidentally inflammatory) parts of her magazine articles when it came time to collect them in her book.
Of course, I’m sure I speak for many blog writers when I confess that I don’t think Flanagan’s doing anything that half a dozen good blog writers of my internet acquaintance aren’t doing ten times better. So I’m sure that informs many of our responses to her.
Honestly, though, I don’t think I’m wrong to like less the arguments of people who so clearly don’t like me. And I’ve been in academia long enough to know that it’s not just bloggers who fail to get past attacks on their choices when it comes to critiquing others’ work. Or, to put it another way, I don’t think it’s just naive Mommy bloggers who would like their debates to start from a place of mutual respect.
May 1st, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Oh, and Fear Factor isn’t in production anymore. TVGuide reports that NBC may burn off the remaining thirteen episodes over the summer, but that hasn’t been confirmed.
Aren’t most Americans watching crime procedurals these days? American Idol? And Grey’s Anatomy?
😉
May 2nd, 2006 at 12:19 am
Honestly, though, I don’t think I’m wrong to like less the arguments of people who so clearly don’t like me.
Like less, or be less willing to consider with serious, open interest and acknowledge truth in?
(Why is your being liked so important in these debates?)
Ftr, I think CF’s a felicitous writer who’s full of baloney. I’m objecting to dismissing her or building arguments against her out of a sense of being personally attacked (or done out of publicity), rather than on the merits.
May 2nd, 2006 at 8:53 am
My problem with Hirschman is that the stats she draws on to illustrate her points aren’t relevant to her points. She uses women married in the NYT Styles section as a sample of the women who would be CEOs, when that’s not the group she should be looking at. She bases a huge part of her argument (I’ve only read that one article) on that sample, and it’s not a relevant group to her argument. To me that’s shoddy research, and makes me not take her argument seriously. I also think her anger is misdirected and her proposed solutions are insulting and out of touch.
I’m fine with angry women. I just want them to make sense and have the facts or arguments to back up their anger.
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:33 am
In a debate about the relative merits and values of SAH and working mothers, as parents or as feminists or as contributing members of society, I am going to be disinclined to value the arguments of people with open contempt for one group or the other. I will doubt their data (on the grounds that their open dismissal of one group or another means they’re less likely to have paid attention to data supporting arguments on behalf of the disliked group) and I will distrust their analysis.
I don’t trust researchers with so overt an agenda against one group or another, in any social analysis. They aren’t scientists, they’re talking heads. And the rules for engagement in talking-head world don’t concern fact or insight. Two groups stake out or create controversial positions, the groups scream at each other, each gets a mild cardiac workout and the brief thrill of having “sparked debate,” and no one changes his or her mind. To such depths has 95% of all social and political analysis sunk. And the trend seems especially acute in the realm of feminism and the so-called mommy wars.
What makes the “nice” writers about motherhood attractive is not, per se, their “niceness.” It’s their desire to present ideas in a less bombastic context, in the hopes of creating common ground not simply so that we can “all get along,” (I find these sorts of pleas a little irritating precisely because I find them so disingenuous) but rather so that we can try some new form of discourse, one that might actually lead to people changing their minds. Not to mention, changing their lives.
To put it another way, at this point in American life, given the state of public discourse, I don’t believe there’s anything intellectually lazy or dishonest about rejecting messengers for the ways in which they deliver their messages. Style reveals substance, and the substance stinks.
In another vein, I don’t find anyone anywhere in my blog reading who supports or tolerates arguments against working mothers. When peer-reviewed journals publish studies suggesting, for example, that kids in daycare may do less well socially or academically than kids at home with their mothers, long articles on Salon, Slate, and trustworthy feminist blogs carefully dismantle the faulty assumptions of those studies. Christian-evangelical bloggers who write contemptuously about working mothers are held up for ridicule, deservedly so. But when someone like Hirshman marshalls dubious evidence to support the claim that stay-at-home mothers are undermining feminism, strongly suggesting in the process that stay-at-home moms have squandered their educations and their human dignity, stay-at-home moms are asked to pay attention to the nuggets of truth in Hirshman’s piece.
And my answer is, quite simply, no. Especially not in a context in which it’s been asserted, openly or covertly, that one of the characteristics of stay-at-home parenthood is the atrophy of one’s analytical prowess.
May 2nd, 2006 at 4:52 pm
Hey Elizabeth,
Thank you for directing me to that past post. As you can guess I am reading here. : )
I’ll comment more later, but just wanted to say it was fun meeting Elizabeth and attending the MotherTalk!
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:36 pm
It is now later…
Regarding the idea of “mean” vs “nice” motherhood authors. Do you think it is more an issue of books which focus on problems are more sexy to the media than books which focus on solutions and advocacy actions? Have we reached a point in our society where individual and group apathy has saturated our ability to take solution based research seriously? Or will anyone who chooses to break from the pack of negativity be trampled by other people who tell us “nooo, we mothers are supposed to be miserable and wring our hands and sit in a corner. Didn’t you get the memo?”
I am also in agreement that attacking each other, including the “mean” authors will not move anythign along in a forward direction. I woulld like to see more people saying “you know what? My life isn’t perfect, no one’s life is, let me take a look at things I can possibly do to improve things, and if I can’t do it by myself, then I am gonna join forces with other people and get things done.” In Miriams’ book as well as mine, we discuss how not all families have the same resources, but what we all could have in common is hope and help. What do you think? Too pollyanna?
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:36 pm
Just to clarify, attacking is not the same thing as accountability. I am not against anyperson holding another accountable for what they write, claim, talk about etc. Attacking others, a la Hirshman and Flanagan, is unproductive. Holding them accountable could be productive. N’est pas?