It turns out that when you lean really heavily on something that you've already written to write a conference paper, and when said conference paper is going to be held absolutely, positively to its time limit, it's relatively easy to get the draft of the first two-thirds of it done. (I can't really write the final third until next week, after I've met with the Director of Institutional Research, since she's analyzing the data for me. I'm also pretty sure that that final third is going to be a bitch to write, so please don't hate me now.) This kind of thing often doesn't work for me, but this time my MLA paper is reporting on a pilot program of courses that we ran last spring and the study of student writing that we did to assess the program. Both the grant proposal I wrote earlier this fall (for more funding for the study) and the MLA paper have to describe the local conditions and the pilot program itself -- which I've had to write up before (to propose the program, to report on it in my annual report last spring, etc.). While they're doing so to different audiences (SLAC for the former, WPA for the latter), the essential building blocks are the same.
Papers are trickling in, as are the course evaluations for the first-year seminars. (I really like seeing the students from my first-year seminar at the end of the semester. There's something triumphant about getting through the first semester of college, and it's nice to get to celebrate that with them.) I'll turn to the papers on Monday and spend two days in a complete grading vortex. Then I'll turn back to the MLA paper on Wednesday, finishing it by Friday so that I can enjoy a few days of real holiday time with G and the girls before heading off to Chicago in late December.
In the mean time, I want to work through my answers to these questions from bluemilk.
How would you describe your feminism in one sentence? When did you
become a feminist? Was it before or after you became a mother?
I often resist definitions, but I think that my feminism rests on three intertwined convictions: that gender is and must be a primary analytic lens ("a" not "the," mind you); that all people have what Martha Nussbaum calls "Central Human Functional Capabilities" and that societies, cultures, and governments are unjust if they systematically block individuals' access to resources that allow them to develop those capabilities; and that I want my daughters to grow up and live in a world where notions of "appropriate for girls" and "appropriate for women" aren't really operative -- and particularly aren't limiting.
It's hard for me to remember a time when I didn't believe these things -- perhaps not quite in these words -- but I know that my arrival at college coincided with a significant feminist awakening. At my undergrad. institution, we called female students "women" rather than "girls," and that was a dramatic shift for me. In addition, that fall was the most active period on campus in my entire four years there around issues of sexual violence. There was a lot of publicity around issues of rape and sexual harrassment, and a number of "Take Back the Night" events. It was a huge eye-opener.
What has surprised you most about motherhood?
I'm really not sure. All of it and yet none of it. Perhaps how difficult it is to strike balances of all different kinds.
How has your feminism changed over time? What is the impact of motherhood on your feminism?
I'm much more oriented on questions of the future than I used to me, and much more aware of how coded all kinds of expectations and ideas are. Perhaps most of all, feminism is now about a strange third category for me. It isn't simply about my choices -- about how I live my life, about kinds of activism -- it's also about how to help my daughters fight resist an incredibly gendered culture of childhood. It's not unlike the impact teaching had on my feminism since, in this instance at least, my role as a teacher and my role as a mother have significant similarities.
What makes your mothering feminist? How does your approach differ
from a non-feminist mother’s? How does feminism impact upon your
parenting?
I think that I worry about the effects of popular culture more than the less-feminist parents I know, and try to establish more of a bulwark against them. I'm also aware of providing a feminist model in the ways that I try to balance career/vocation and family -- a career that 's just as important to our family as G's. And while dividing parenting is a neverending process, we work hard to share it equally: we're both engaged with our daughters' schools, we share cooking and food-shopping, we alternate who puts them to bed, and so on. All of those choices are ones that I think of as feminist. They're also the only thing that makes sense for who G and I are as people and as a couple.
Do you ever feel compromised as a feminist mother? Do you ever feel you’ve failed as a feminist mother?
I don't quite know how to separate these from feeling compromised or like a failure more generally. G was away for four days a couple of weeks ago during an incredibly busy time for me, at the end of an utterly exhausting semester. I always struggle with patience, and I failed completely in the kinds of patience I needed with the girls during those days. That's a failure on all counts, to my mind, although I also wonder if it isn't important for the girls to see that sometimes Mama is tired and overwrought by daily life -- so that their expectations for themselves don't insist on seamless perfection.
Has identifying as a feminist mother ever been difficult? Why?
No. It's too much at the center of things, I think. I'm also lucky to be in an environment where most of the people I know and see regularly have parenting values that are similar to mine. Perhaps the stickiest wicket is with the parents' of some of my daughter's friends, who are imprinting a very different kind of femininity on those girls than I want to on mine. I try to go with gently identifying differences, and so far that seems to be working. The princess thing is one of the hardest to negotiate, as I've written about here before.
Motherhood involves sacrifice, how do you reconcile that with being a feminist?
I think that being a social being involves certain kinds of sacrifice; feminism, for me, doesn't mean an automatic free pass from difficult choices -- choices that at times involve sacrifice. I guess I'd refer to Nussbaum's capabilities list, for one avenue toward reconciliation. But I'd also worry if I felt that I was sacrificing more than G, and I don't think that's the case. We've both made choices. We're both constantly balancing all kinds of demands and desires and priorities.
If you have a partner, how does your partner feel about your
feminist motherhood? What is the impact of your feminism on your
partner?
He's right there with me. I think that our choices require certain kinds of awareness and self-consciousness in him, but I think that overall those are awarenesses and areas of self-consciousness that he's drawn to, anyway. A case in point, that's about partnering as much as parenting: when we got married, we both changed our names. And there was never a moment when he thought that I should simply change my last name to his.
If you’re an attachment parenting mother, what challenges if any
does this pose for your feminism and how have you resolved them?
While there are elements of the philosophy that fit with my mothering, I don't really fit the category.
Do you feel feminism has failed mothers and if so how? Personally, what do you think feminism has given mothers?
I think that feminism has given mothers -- and women -- a better sense of options, and I hope a sense of the struggle and balance that any set of choices embody. I worry that certain strands of feminism have difficulty reconciling the complexity of people's lives, and that the critical judgment necessary for activism can sometimes collapse into a judgmental attitude that divides unnecessarily and counter-productively.
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