Judith Warner on Mommy Wars

Finally, consensus around the so-called "mommy wars" is starting to be more and more reasonable. Judith Warner last night on her blog for the New York Times, noted:

Now, I’m just as jealous of the yoga-pants-at-9-a.m.-on-Monday-morning crowd as the next frazzled working mom. But, I’m sorry to say, however delicious charting the downfall of the wealthy at-home mom may be, we do have to stop for a little reality check. While the rich, bathed in our attention, are turning necessity into a hand-wringing sociological event, most women in this country are just going about their business, much as they always have.

We — journalists and readers both — simply must, for once, resist the temptation to let what may or may not be happening to the top 5 percent (or 1 percent) of our country’s families set the story line for what women’s lives are becoming in this recession.

Because, the fact is, the story’s not about them.

“This is a classic blue collar recession,” says Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress. Fully half the jobs that have been lost so far have been in construction and manufacturing. Only 5.1 percent of job losses have been in finance and insurance — the kinds of careers that support the opt-out lifestyle.

Exactly. While endless television shows love to debate whether women "should" work, the simple fact of the matter is that women do work. They have for decades; they can't afford not to. We need to focus on the way families really are.

Few Women Can Change America, Sez Rolling Stone

Okay, I know it's silly to attack Rolling Stone's totally arbitrary list of 100 people who are changing America. But really, people. Although there are some really awesome picks on here (including some of my coworkers and coalition partners) the list is dismal in terms of gender balance. Only eleven women qualify as "changers" and one of them is Kate Winslet. The message, apparently, is that women don't change America.

Illinoise on Reproductive Justice

The Illinois state legislature has a really good bill on reproductive justice in the Illinois State Assembly. But I hear that now that the bill has passed out of committee, the anti-choice committee is coming out in full force, and state legislators are overwhelmingly lining up on their side. The bill proposed is the kind of thing we should be seeing more of -- ensuring basic reproductive rights for all women -- but just aren't. Veronica Arreola outlined what the bill would do really well for RH Reality Check:

• Ensure that each individual has as many options as possible when it comes to making decisions about their own reproductive heath care.
• Reduce unintended pregnancies through comprehensive sex education rather than abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.
• Protect and expand access to birth control (including emergency contraception) for all individuals in Illinois.
• Ensure that the government cannot interfere with an individual's right to have a child or to terminate a pregnancy.

Ultimately this bill is about giving women the power to make their own choices about their reproductive health care.

Even if the bill doesn't pass, what is good about these debates that have been repeatedly been popping up in state legislatures all around the country, is that people are beginning to talk -- really talk -- about what they want public policy around reproductive health to be.

Agreeing to Disagree

Future New York Times columnist Ross Douthat says this of the List That Shall Not Be Named:

When I first heard about it, a while back, it seemed like it might be an example of the movement-ification of American liberalism, in which left-of-center types (especially people in the press) who once would have airily dismissed the idea that they belonged to a partisan "team" began attempting to imitate the conservative movement out of horror at its successes. But then again maybe the email list is just a wonderfully high-minded attempt to "illuminate standard political reporting with expert policy commentary," with no partisan purpose whatsoever.

Ah, if only liberals could do something as disciplined as all get on message. When I first moved to D.C. a lot of liberals whistfully talked about trying to be as "on message" as the Bush administration. But if there's anything I've learned in the last two years of blogging (oh my god, it's been two years) it's that if there's anything liberals love more than, say, Barack Obama, it's disagreeing with one another. And not just polite disagreement. Liberals can be mean to each other, really mean.

And I think that's probably a good thing. After all, sometimes when people you might broadly disagree with find holes in your argument it makes it better. It makes your thoughts stronger. Sometimes, it even changes your mind. I don't know if that's what conservatives would do if they were all on a secret email list together, but I think we can pretty much guess that a list of centrists, left-of-centrists, and outright flaming liberals will never be able to get on message. I just don't think it'd ever be possible.

Intellectualism

This opinion column in Inside Higher Ed today is pretty interesting. Scott McLemee is responding to an essay by Washington Post fiction critic Ron Charles. Said fiction critic is attacking college readers for choosing the popular vampire Twilight books over more intellectual reading endeavors.

Charles, I fear, is making the mistake that McLemee says he is. It might be true that juvenile fiction like the Gossip Girl books are popular and low-brow, but that is no different from other forms of popular culture at any point in history. Intellectuals have always been a small and elite segment of society. It may be that popular fiction produces low-brow things like vampire romances, but is that really any different from the yellow journalism or other popular music of the past? If you took a look at everything, and not just the classics that survived time, I think you'd end up with roughly the same proportions of high-brow to low-brow that we have today.

If anything, access to high-brow literature, music, and other forms of entertainment has become easier over time. There are fewer barriers to entry for becoming an intellectual than there were in the past, although intellectuals still tend to be a fairly homogenous group. Rather than criticizing the masses for their love of vampire fiction (some of which intellectuals read as a "guilty pleasure") I think we ought to spend our time thinking about how to increase access to the so-called intellectual society.

More Divisive Women's Poltics

Megan Carpentier does an excellent job of breaking down (and taking down) Deborah Dickerson's quasi-defense of her accusation of "feminists under 30" of as "Pole-dancing" sluts that don't fight hard enough for feminist causes.

As I once outlined, older feminists have a sense of entitlement. They somehow "earn" their right to lord criticism over us young feminists and pretty much whine when we target criticism back at them, as Dickerson's post so aptly illustrates. She actually tells us to "Grow up, girlies."

That doesn't mean I don't appreciate all the accomplishments that second-wave feminists have made. Today, thankfully, sexual harassment is shamed in the workplace instead of being celebrated, even if it hasn't disappeared. Women can legally claim maternity leave, even if it's often unpaid. And the sexual revolution, something second wavers worked extremely hard for, has allowed women to be able to be sexual as well as serious, even if the stereotypes about sluts (ahem, Ms. Dickerson) haven't gone away.

But now, what young feminists want -- and it's important, as Megan pointed out, to acknowledge that few women actually identify as such and that has always been the case -- to be treated as equals in the movement. Just because we are young doesn't mean we somehow care less about pay equity, contraception and abortion access, representation of women in the media, domestic violence, or any number of issues that feminists should care about. But by marginalizing us off the bat, Dickerson is sending a strong message that older feminists don't think much of us and simply aren't interested in hearing what we have to say. And they can't deny that there are a lot of problems with the way her generation of feminists have done things.

By delving into personal attacks, Dickerson isn't helping things. What we need is not to accuse different generations of feminists of slacking -- what we need is to work together to make things better. That means actually listening to each other on substantive issues and staying away from this silly mud-slinging.

Let's Fight Over Breastfeeding

I get tired of The Atlantic trying to start fights among women. That seems to be most of the motivation behind publishing "The Case Against Breastfeeding" by Hannah Rosin. She writes that she's tired of breastfeeding and her research shows that the benefits of the laborious process are inconclusive. (Of course, there's a response from an editor of an upcoming anthology about breastfeeding on Salon's Broadsheet, where she accuses Rosin of "cherry picking" data.)

Look, I can see both points of view here. Breastfeeding is supposed to be really good for babies, especially in their really formative first months of life. It helps with brain development, nutrition, and building a relationship with the mother. But I've also seen mothers get exhausted of always being "on call" to feed their child -- or pump in advance. It's tiring and I'll even side with Rosin in saying that it's a little unfair because fathers can't provide breast milk. (If you've ever wondered how difficult it can be, I suggest you read this New Yorker article from a while back by Jill Lepore. She notes that most breast pumps -- a necessity for working mothers who want to breast feed -- run around $300.) And Rosin is also a little right that even if breastfeeding is for the best, in a developed Western country the differences between feeding a baby breast milk and feeding a baby formula probably aren't going to be incredibly significant.

So why bother getting into this divisive argument? Some women want to breast feed. Some don't. Some can't. What's important isn't arguing over the minutia of difference between studies but rather to stop making women feel like bad mothers because of how they choose to raise their children. Rosin says other mothers make her feel guilty, so she turns the pointed finger back on them. It's not surprising women might get defensive at her article if they've chosen to devote a great deal of time to breast feeding.

What I found most interesting about Rosin's article was a point she mostly glossed over:

In the U.S., breast-feeding is on the rise—69 percent of mothers initiate the practice at the hospital, and 17 percent nurse exclusively for at least six months. But the numbers are much higher among women who are white, older, and educated; a woman who attended college, for instance, is roughly twice as likely to nurse for six months.

In other words, whether or not you believe breast feeding is best for the child, it is ultimately a luxury for mothers today, one best afforded to women of a certain socioeconomic class with flexible jobs. The point should not be that we are pressuring upper-middle-class women like Rosin into breast feeding their children, the point should be that women who might want to breast feed simply can't because they don't have the luxury to do so. We should instead be working for ways to ensure the option of breast feeding for all mothers.