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Mother Talk/Mommy Wars

March 27th, 2006 Caroline

It’s been so busy for me since the Berkeley Mother Talk that I almost forgot to write about it. But what a great night! Another rich discussion among a diverse group of women; I could get used to evenings like this. We met this time at Literary Mama columnist and reviews co-editor Rebecca Kaminsky’s home, with Leslie Morgan Steiner, editor of Mommy Wars, as our guest of honor.

I’d met Leslie just that afternoon at a reading for her book. Leslie, Jane Juska and Anne Marie Feld (holding her toddler on her hip) all read from their wonderful essays, and gave a good sense of the book’s range: one writer still relatively new to mothering and not currently working outside the home (Anne Marie, whose newborn was in attendance as well, in a sling around her husband’s shoulders); one writer right in the thick of paid work and mothering (Leslie); and one, Jane, whose son is grown now, her busiest days of working and mothering behind her. The bookstore crowd was mainly Jane Juska fans, older women who have gotten past the most intense mothering years and are, I hope, enjoying easier times now, perhaps as grandmothers. The reading provoked an excellent discussion of the many different options we find today compared to previous generations of mothers; society’s assumptions about mothers and work have shifted, and while the “mommy war” is a media construct, the struggle each of us faces to find the right ratio of mothering and working, for ourselves and our families, continues.

At Rebecca’s that evening, a different, younger group gathered: some women from the San Francisco Mother Talk earlier this winter, many Literary Mama editors and contributors (including Heidi Raykeil, in town promoting her new book), a couple new faces. Leslie kick-started the discussion by reading from her very personal introduction to the book, and we discussed this notion of the mommy war. Most of us are too busy just trying to get through the day to judge others, let alone worry about how our choice are judged. Leslie herself thinks of the mommy war as an interior struggle, and the essays in her book reflect that; they are long, thoughtful essays about each woman’s motherhood journey. As at the bookstore earlier that day, the book inspired an intense discussion about the choices we’ve made, the pressures on us, and the frustrations we all feel with the lack of societal and governmental support for our decisions.

I’m not the first to point out the exasperatingly hypocritical gap between the family values rhetoric of our government and the row of zero’s on my annual social security statement, but obviously there’s one place to start: recognize that every mother is a working mother. Let’s make the mommy war something real: a committed effort by all mothers to lobby for the support we need from our government, our employers, and our families, to recognize the work we do and try to make this job just a little bit easier.

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