The 'Bad Mother' Meme

Just in time for Mother's Day, Julia Baird writes for Newsweek about "bad mothers" and how they give us all hope that women can be remembered for their careers and not their status as mothers. But her examples are interesting ones (I think intentionally so):

When reporters told Doris Lessing she had won a Nobel Prize in Literature as she was hauling groceries out of a cab in 2007, she said: "I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I am delighted. It's a royal flush." Few would dispute that she is a brilliant writer. Her work is lucid, inspiring, and provocative. But it would be hard to argue that she was a brilliant mother. When she fled to London to pursue her writing career and communist ideals, she left two toddlers with their father in South Africa (another, from her second marriage, went with her).

Lessing is used as an example of a "bad mother" because she made a move that many men have made for their careers: Leaving her children home with her partner while she pursued her own career objectives.

But the "bad mother" meme has been popping up a lot lately. Kara Jesella wrote last year for The American Prospect about confessional "bad-mom culture."While some women, like the ones Jesella wrote about, thrive on the rebellion of being a bad or selfish mother, it's clear that women are judged and judged harshly for their performance as mothers.

One thing is clear, women (and often men) are extremely judgmental about motherhood. Most often this judgment comes among their peers -- whispers behind backs at playgroups or "I would never" emails on listservs. When it comes to women in the public eye, however, the petty comments on women's performance as mothers becomes legitimate discussion in the media, despite the fact that men's performance as fathers is rarely the subject of such discussion. Some of that is due to the fact that some women are famous because they are mothers (see Kate Gosselin or Ocotomom). But I've never understood this weird obsession with rating others' performance as mothers. It seems like motherhood is hard enough as is without others judging you all the time.

Sarah Haskins Passes Off the Golden Tampon

Jezebel Wrongly Claims American Acadamy of Pedeatrics 'Endorses' Female Genetial Mutiliation

I'm a regular reader of Jezebel and have even written for it, but today they majorly screwed up. They wrote a post based on this PR Newswire story that says:

International human rights organization Equality Now is stunned by a new policy statement issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which essentially promotes female genital mutilation (FGM) and advocates for "federal and state laws [to] enable pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a 'ritual nick'," such as pricking or minor incisions of girls' clitorises.

But when you actually go to AAP's website, there's this release that seems to say the opposite:

Ritual cutting and alteration of the genitalia of female infants, children and adolescents, referred to as female genital cutting (FGC), has been a tradition in some countries since ancient times and continues today in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. According to a new policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), “Ritual Genital Cutting of Female Minors,” in the May issue of Pediatrics (published online April 26), the AAP opposes all forms of female genital cutting that pose a risk of physical or psychological harm, and encourages its members not to perform such procedures.

When I put in a call over at the AAP, the woman on the phone seemed just as surprised that I was that such a thing had been reported. I'm still waiting back for an official press person to respond, but the woman on the phone was basically wondering where I had gotten such misinformation.

Maybe next time, Jezebel will bother to check the actual site.

Update: Tracy Clark-Flory actually talked to a doctor over at the AAP and delves into what actually changed about the policy and why it's controversial.

Cross-posted.

Student Must Pay $80,000 Due to 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Policy

Today over at Campus Progress I talked to a 21-year-old senior at UNC-Chapel Hill who came out as a lesbian to her ROTC commander and was discharged due to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Now she may have to pay back nearly $80,000 in scholarship money. Check out the interview here.

The NFL Team Asks Draftee 'Gay or Straight?'

Geno Atkins was asked during the NFL draft if he were straight or gay.

Via Outsports, the new defensive tackle for the Cincinnati Bengals, Geno Atkins, told reporters that the only "unusual" question he was asked during the draft was whether he was straight or gay. Atkins didn't disclose his answer, but it's a bit odd that the Bengals would even ask the question in the first place.

Outsports surmises that this questions was probably just a one-time thing and not standard procedure for the NFL, but the fact that the Bengals even thought to ask is indicative of how difficult for the NFL to accept non-straight players.

In fact, in a 2004 book by then-New York Times writer Mike Freeman, he interviews anonymously a closeted NFL player that goes by the pseudonym Steven Thompson. In an update last year, Freeman noted that homophobia, particularly in the African-American community, is still rampant in professional sports like the NFL.

The parallels between the military and the NFL seem obvious. Both are hyper-masculine institutions that often mistake sexual orientation with the ability to effectively master a physical job. It may be a long time before we see an openly gay NFL player, but I hope it's sooner than I think.

UPDATE: Thanks to commenters for pointing out that the Bengals couldn't have been the ones that asked the question because they didn't meet with him before drafting him. According to this NFL story, Atkins says he "couldn't recall which one."

Cross-posted.

Co-habitation and Abortion

Nearly half of all women seeking an abortion have been in a relationship for a year or longer with the man who got them pregnant, according to a new Guttmacher study. (Flickr/moriza)

Yesterday Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health public policy institute, released a report (PDF) on demographic information of women seeking abortions in the United States. Jodi Jacobson already did a fantastic job of looking at the numbers -- the number of poor women seeking an abortion have increased by nearly 60 percent since the study was last done in 2000. It's not surprising, considering that all women in poverty also increased by 25 percent over that same period of time.

But there was one interesting point that I thought was worth pulling out a little bit more. The study also talks about women who obtained abortions may not fit into the stereotype of a woman who made a mistake on a one-night stand. The Guttmacher study notes that nearly half of all women obtaining an abortion had been in a relationship for a year or longer with the man who had impregnated her. Although unmarried women make up the vast majority of those seeking an abortion (85 percent), 29 percent of those women were co-habitating with their partners.

Co-habiting women also have above-average rates of contraceptive failure and unintended births. Future research might help uncover the relationship dynamics that contribute to these patterns. For example, do cohabiting couples have sex more frequently than other groups, use less effective methods or use their methods less consistently? Does the “less legal” status of the relationship make discussing or agreeing upon childbearing goals harder for cohabiting couples? Are unintended pregnancies more common among cohabiting couples who already have one or more children than among cohabiting couples with no children? At any given point, only a small proportion of women are in cohabiting relationships (8%), but at least half will occupy this relationship status at some point in their lives.

This is interesting because abortion is usually framed as a women's issue (and as only a woman's issue), but the Guttmacher study indicates that abortion is likely more related to couples. The issue definitely deserves further exploration and may even shift the discussion from how women feel about abortion to how couples decide what to do with an unintended pregnancy.

Cross-posted.

What UVA's Respone to Murder Case Says About Sexual Assault

George Huguely playing lacrosse for UVA prior to his arrest. (Flickr / Alan Maglaque / Southcreek Global)

The University of Virginia in Charlottesville had a pretty horrifying case in which one lacrosse player, George Huguely, has been arrested in connection with the violent killing of 22-year-old Yeardley Love, a woman with whom he was romantically involved. The case itself is is still under investigation, but Amanda Hess over at the Washington City Paper's blog The Sexist notes that UVA's response has been, well, kind of dumb:

UVA police have instructed students how to avoid and/or respond to the following: An attack on the grounds of the university. Getting hit by a car. A late-night street attack. An attack by an unknown intruder. An attack through the window. An attack by a prowler. An attack by a peeping Tom. An attack by a suspicious filmmaker.

Police believe that Love was killed by a more likely suspect—a man she knew. In general, women, and particularly young women, are more likely to be killed by someone they know than by a stranger. So why hasn’t UVA included any information here about domestic violence?

Although the case at UVA is extreme -- we're talking about one student murdering another, potentially relating to the romantic relationship they had -- but other kinds of dating and romantic violence are far more common. As I've written before, our language around acquaintance or date rape in particular tends to be rather reductive.

When schools give advice to young women, it tends to be either of the "watch out for strangers in the bushes" variety or it cautions young women not to get "too drunk" and to stay in groups. I tend to think that such "strategies" for avoiding assault lead not only to women living in fear but also indicate that if young women just follow the rules set out for them, they'll avoid sexual assault. The result, of course, is ultimately that women who don't follow the rules have done something wrong.

Ultimately the danger, as Amanda points out, is that young women are most likely to be assaulted by those that they already know and trust. Schools would do well to better publicize domestic violence hotlines and education about how to get out of a relationship that involves violence.

Cross-posted.