Courtroom Mama

Today is a momentous day: it marks the launch of the International Motherhood Network.  I am in Toronto, having attended the sub-conference of the Association for Research on Mothering titled “You Say You Want a Revolution”

Some initial reflections:

I came away from this convinced that there really is no such thing as a pan-mother or pan-woman movement. This is sort of ironic because I came in thinking that there was one.

Almost right off the bat, I was called to question something one of the speakers said.  A representative of NOW said (I’m paraphrasing), The media keep talking about Mommy Wars and I find that upsetting. I have no idea what a Mommy War is, I have never been a part of one, and it just doesn’t exist.

Lucky you, I thought.  As a young poor woman of color, I am constantly having other people telling me “MOTHERHOOD, UR DOIN’ IT WRONG,” not least of which are other mothers.  I think that this is probably nothing new: women mothering from a position of privilege feel entitled and empowered to judge the parenting choices of other women. This particularly rears its ugly head when it comes to drug-using mothers or mothers living in abusive relationships. I hear it so often: I managed to quit smoking and eat nothing but organic macrobiotic foods for MY baby, why can’t she quit crack? Or: She is being irresponsible for staying with that partner; it’s only a matter of time before he starts beating the children, too.

Thanks, but no thanks. Just like I don’t want my damned barista telling me that caffeine will kill my fetus, I don’t need white women with Bugaboo strollers telling me sarcastically that I’ll eventually get sick of cloth diapering.  At 16 months out, we’re actually doing great and managing to put food on the table with the small bundle we save on diapers. Saying the “Mommy Wars” don’t exist because you can’t see them is like saying that white privilege doesn’t exist.  If only proclaiming made it so!

Anyway, back to the conference.

Overall, I have to say that it was really great to be there in the company of other mothers and mother-allies. As a law student, I have been very connected with social justice issues, but very disconnected from mothers and mothering issues.  It’s funny, my passion is uteri but at this stage in my career, nobody is talking about procreative uteri.  I think that this is a huge mistake, and it is not just important by IMPERATIVE that feminists claim motherhood and talk about it before women have children.  I have long thought (okay, maybe since I was working at a state-affiliate ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project with my negative-5-month-old son jumping on my bladder) that if we don’t want motherhood to be a void where feminists go to die, there needs to be a more concerted effort to claim a feminist identity for mothers.

This is what the conference was all about, and I am grateful for that.  I maybe wish there was a little less “sisterhood and the feminine essence of our bifurcated woman/mother self with a subjective embodiment of the Marxist body politic on the pulse of the world” and a little more “so what does this mean for brown moms.”  But that’s why I’m a fetal lawyer and not a political theorist. A not-yet-born lawyer, that is.  Not a lawyer for fetuses.  DEFINITELY not a lawyer for fetuses. But that’s another post entirely.

I hope that the launch of this coalition will help amplify the voices of the countless groups out there trying to empower mamas to create a better world for themselves and their babies. I also hope that this idea won’t be co-opted for eee-vil.  I think that motherhood has been used as leverage for a lot of nasty, anti-woman sentiment (see above: She’s a MOTHER!  How dare she be addicted to drugs!)

One last thing on the conference: someone commented that she was disturbed by the anti-Sarah Palin sentiment, and that the “Point” is to respect the feminine and find the points where we all agree (ironically, she was saying that in the context of a panel presentation by a representative of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Executive Director of which has explicitly called Governor Palin out for her failure to understand how the reality of fetal rights transcends politics and even affects women “walking the walk” of anti-choice rhetoric).

Anyway, I don’t think that that’s the point at all.  I support her right to be out of the home and in the public sphere, and I support the idea of a woman wearing a baby in the White House.  But just because she has a uterus doesn’t mean that I have to be okay with her at all – I can think that she is totally anathema to everything I stand for.  I really don’t cotton to her calling me and mine and my neighbors “unamerican”; she is not “respecting the feminine,” why in the hell should I have to “look for the places where we agree”? I want to raise my son in a country that values ALL people, not just the rich and the unborn. I plan to teach my son the value of what she calls “redistribution of wealth” — giving so that those who have little can get by, and so that the rest of us can have the things to which I feel all humans are entitled (YES, ENTITLED!) like health care, basic sustenance, and a roof over their heads (not to mention a living wage and leisure time). I work my ass off to make a better life for my son and all the other sons and daughters in the country and the world, and ain’t I an American? I don’t need to be “gal pals” with anyone who winks into the camera and tells the nation otherwise.

Meta digression:  I am not sure what you can expect here.  You can probably expect some comics, because my brain works in pictorial tableaux (oh how very!), but mostly, it will probably just be words, words, words. These things, the innumerable “mommy blogs/blawgs” (ugh and double-ugh) can sometimes devolve into a cult of personality, so I plan to keep this as anonymous as possible.  It’s about me, but it’s not about me.  It’s about you, and it’s about us.  I’m a mama, a feminist, a law student, and that’s about all that’s relevant.  Well, there’s one more thing: I’m glad you’re reading.  The internetz are a lonely place.