At the March for Women's Lives in 2004, I snapped a picture of my friend Gracy and her mother, beaming in their "Fuck Bush" t-shirts, and told them how lucky they were to be there together. (They weren't the only ones—the march was quite the intergenerational feminist event.) Even though I was marching arm-in-arm with my closest friends, it seemed a different and somehow more powerful statement to be able to be there with your mom.
This year, between Planned Parenthood's Mother's Day campaign and AlterNet's mother/daughter feminist conversation, I found myself getting cranky and bitter about not having a mother who's equally committed to feminist ideals. Fact is, I’m incredibly jealous of all you lucky ladies with feminist moms who raged in the 60s and 70s to get us where we are today, who bought you a copy of "Our Bodies, Ourselves," who can share in your disgust for the Bush Administration. My inner five-year-old was whining, "But I want a feminist mom, too."
Donating to Planned Parenthood in my mom's name would be more of a slap in the face than a Mother's Day gift. A few months after the march, I went home to visit my parents in Iowa and was leafing through a stack of mail on the kitchen counter. There, in the Dubuque County Right to Life newsletter, was coverage of the March for Women's Lives. Even the protesters noted how powerful it was to see generations of women marching for choice:
I mentioned their shouting, chanting and gyrating... I didn't mention how sad it was to see parents pushing little children in strollers. It was difficult to watch grandmothers carrying their granddaughters. It was disheartening to see the numbers of people who were there.I didn't tell my mother (an avid right-to-lifer) that I was one of the chanting gyrators at the March. Certainly not because I'm ashamed. It’s just that we've fought about this issue countless times before. It's clear we aren't changing each other's minds, so what's the point of bringing it up again?
My mother raised me not with feminism, but with Catholicism. She would describe herself as a wife, a mother, a Catholic (probably in that order). She agrees with Pope Benedict's assessment of feminism as an "ideology of evil." She doesn't believe in the right to abortion, or in contraception-- even for married couples. When she got pregnant with me (the first of three kids), she quit her job as a business manager to be a full-time, stay-at-home caregiver even though she was earning more than my father was at the time. And she wasn't a Caitlin Flanagan-style work-from-home mother. Her kids were her one and only job, and to this day she's somewhat prickly and defensive of her choice to stay home with us. She always thought working mothers judged and resented her.
I certainly resented her for staying home. I hated that she was always volunteering at my school and driving us on class field trips. I was annoyed she was always around the house, keeping tabs on me and my friends and keeping me from watching trashy TV. I made the classic (very non-feminist) mistake of completely disrespecting and devaluing her choice to stay home.
Today I get frustrated that she seems to think all women have had every advantage that she's had in life, and that all families are economically able to have one parent stay home. I can't believe she isn't outraged by the fact that some of very devoted Catholic nuns—women she's friends with—are unable to be church leaders, simply because they don't have a penis. And because I know my mother is a smart and educated woman, I absolutely can't understand how she finds fulfillment in only marriage, motherhood and the church.
My mom clearly struggles to figure out how I can be happy without these things. She sends me former classmates' engagement announcements and offers reverent descriptions of her friends' daughters' weddings. But she knows I'm not Catholic or conservative, and has resigned herself to the fact that I won't be moving back to Iowa. My parents supported my work for Amnesty International, and encouraged my career in journalism. They didn't say much when I took a job with a women's rights nonprofit. But they won't subscribe to the magazine I work for now. And she doesn't even know I write for this blog. (Maybe she doesn't know what blogs are?)
But despite all of this, I realize Mother's Day is really about loving my mom as a person, independent of her political views. It's an opportunity to say thank you for driving me to the library as a kid, for learning how to make veggie lasagna when I stopped eating meat, for coming to visit me on the coasts. And thanks for loving me even though I'm a feminist.
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I was lucky that my mom raised me as a feminist. I never really thought about it until I read your post.
We went (with my sister, too) to NARAL marches & she encouraged me to send in my allowance to Planned Parenthood. (And she refused to buy us Barbie dolls; and, of course, my parents gave me a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves in 7th grade.)
When my mom started working part-time I was sad because she also patrolled the TV set. I remember being sad that she was going part-time.
I'm not sure we were devaluing our moms as stay at home mothers - we probably just wanted less supervision!
p.s. - Even though mom is a feminist, we still have political arguments!
And growing up we had lots of arguments over chores & TV watching!
Sister, I feel your pain! I, too, am an ardent feminist who has a right-wing, Catholic, vehemently anti-feminist mom. My mom sounds a lot like your mom, in fact -- she stayed at home taking care of us kids until her youngest graduated from college. And she's made it clear the only reason she now works is because my folks need the money (for many years, my dad has been employed only sporadically).
Growing up with a mother whose entire relationship to the world and belief system was so different from mine that was tough, and often lonely. My mother was totally disapproving of me, and I never even met any other feminists until I went to college (I grew up in a small blue-collar-ish town).
As you might guess, my relationship with my mother was rocky for many years. But then, in my mid-20s, something changed. And I must say, ever since then, my mother has been just lovely to me -- totally supportive of the many unconventional choices I've made (like staying single until I was in my mid-30s, and then going on to marry a Jew; and also, at about the same time I married, going back to school to get my Ph.D.). Unlike a lot of other people's moms I know, she never criticizes me (I guess she got that out of her system when I was in my teens and eary 20s, LOL).
I can't say I'm happy that my mom's not a feminist. It might have helped me in some ways, by causing me to be stronger and more independent. But that also came at the cost of a great deal of pain and unhappiness for me.
Nevertheless, we've come to a rappochement. We'll never be super-close, but I do love her, and I know she loves me. It's bittersweet, but that's life, I guess.
Ann, great post! Very heartfelt. I don't think I'll ever fully understand because I was not raised in a Catholic family-- and my parents are very apolitical, at least when it comes to American politics. But it's impressive nonetheless whenever someone breaks so sharply from the way they were raised, and still has strong relationships with their family.
i guess i got lucky!
I, too, was raised Catholic. My mother, when she was fifteen, was taken to another state by my hypocritical, Bible-beating grandmother to have an abortion against her will. Even though it wasn't her choice, rumors flooded the school and church about what she did. To this day, she is looked down upon in this small town community as a sinner and whore. My mom isn't necessarily a feminist, and gets embarrassed when members of the family spread rumors that I'm a lesbian or frigid just because I won't marry, but more and more she understands what I do, and that I do it for her.
I know how you feel. My mother was no stay at home mom, but she's completely anti-choice, uber-Catholic, conservative, homophobic (oh yeah, I'm bi and she does NOT know that), and the only reason she didn't vote for Bush instead of Kerry is cuz she was afraid of my brother's getting drafted - that's it. She looks like she's ready to cry whenever I mention I don't see anything morally wrong with abortion or same-sex attraction/relationships/adoption/etc. I'm going into journalism myself but I get depressed thinking about how she'll want to read what I write and probably be heartbroken over every single word of it =\