Via MAMolina72 @ Flickr.
Welcome to Harpy Seminar, a regular feature we plan to have at regular intervals, unless we get too busy to have it at regular intervals, in which case it shall appear whenever we have time and inclination for it. Each Seminar begins with a question, which we discuss amongst ourselves, and we then edit the highlights of our conversation into a post. Please feel free to join in in the comments!
Ladies, it’s the special weekend when we honor those who bore us: our moms. [PhDork: hey, my mom rarely bores me!] In fact, it’s an extra special weekend, because it was on this weekend many years ago that two amazing women gave birth to BeckySharper and SarahMC (who as children maybe occasionally resented it a teeny bit when their birthdays coincided with Mother’s Day).
So today’s Harpy Seminar is Our Mothers, Ourselves. We asked: “Was your mom a womanist/feminist? Did she intentionally raise you to be one? How did your relationship with your mom (feminist or not) influence the feminist/womanist you are today?”
SarahMC: My mom is most definitely not a feminist. She and my dad are both very conservative Evangelicals; we are opposites, politically. She and my dad didn’t impose any sort of strict femininity on me as a kid, or take me to Purity Balls or anything. But she DID make me do all the “girl” chores around the house. I knew something was off because my brother’s chore (taking the trash out) took up about 1.5 minutes of his week whilst mine (cleaning kitchen floor, doing dishes, dusting, folding laundry…) took up a lot more. And I ended up taking the trash out half the time anyway because he’d just refuse to do it! That will always stay with me – the uneven, sexist distribution of domestic duties that I understood even as a kid. My younger brother got away with so much and was given considerably more freedom than I was too and I’m pretty sure it was because he is a boy.
BeckySharper: My mom is a self-identified feminist. She was raised in a very proper and church-going family, but there was a big bubbling stew of feminism beneath the surface; my grandma was a widow and therefore the breadwinner. So Grandma raised my mother and her sisters to believe they had to be able to support themselves and their children. As a result, my mother and her two sisters are career professionals with four graduate degrees between them. In my house it was a foregone conclusion that I was going down that same path.
PhDork: I don’t know that my mom would identify as a feminist, although I think she is one. We didn’t discuss big-picture socio-political matters in my family home, so I never got explicitly “indoctrinated” about gender issues (or anything else). Nonetheless, I’m sure that being raised by her helped make me a feminist. My parents were pretty good about treating my brother and I the same–the same chores, the same expectations regarding grades, behavior, etc.–and they modelled a pretty decent division of household labor, too, especially for the era, I think. My parents divorced when I was in college, and since then, my mom has gotten stronger because she’s had to, I think, where my dad has sunk more deeply into gender-role stuff with his second wife, so I’m fairly certain that a lot of the equality I saw modelled growing up was due to Mom.
sarah.of.a.lesser.god: My mom is a bit of a paradox when it comes to feminism. When I told her about this blog, she was worried it would be “militant” and that it would freak out any prospective boyfriends. She is a bit uncomfortable with openly declaring herself as a feminist.
BeckySharper: So regardless of how they identified or not, do you feel that they pushed you towards feminism or modeled feminism in their own way?
PhDork: I think one thing my mom gave me was–is–a model of female capability. We didn’t have a lot of money or clout, but we were all pretty smart, and pretty determined. Mom knew how to do a lot of stuff. She could sew and cook and garden and clean anything, but she also worked with power tools, and bargained for services (if I ever have to buy a car, I want my mom there), and even did crazy-brave things, like climbing up on our roof with a hose when we had a chimney fire. And she did all that stuff without pointing out or making a big deal out of the gender of the tasks (I knew anyway, of course). If she didn’t already know how to do something, she learned how to do it. She still does. A few years ago she rented a tile cutter and tiled her kitchen floor. She still gets up on the roof–at 62–to clean out her gutters, and I wouldn’t challenge her to an arm-wrestling match; the lady’s got guns.
She’s not perfect, neither is our relationship, but I can’t say I didn’t have a pretty impressive model of womanhood.
SarahMC: I appreciate and love my mom for always encouraging me in my hobbies and interests, whether it was basketball or drawing or acting. I was always more than “good enough” for her, which I know is not the case in every child’s life. And like I said in the Faces Not Even A Mother Could Love post, she always told me I was beautiful and never criticized my looks or pressured me to change anything about myself physically. I think that is so important to a girl’s self-image.
sarah.of.a.lesser.god: A lot of my mother’s actions have influenced my attitudes towards family and what a woman can achieve. After my father left, she was without the primary parent and caregiver for me and my sister — and balanced that with an incredibly impressive law career. She has told me and my sister many times that depending on a man for money and self-worth will get you nowhere. She is unafraid to speak her mind and bristles at the implication that doing so will make her a “bitch”.
One last thing: she has been instrumental in driving home the importance of reproductive rights. She had two abortions, one of which was when she was barely 18 and before Roe v. Wade. She does not shy away from discussing it with me, and that helped me learn never to take that right for granted.
BeckySharper: My first sense of in-your-face feminism involved my mom: I was opening mail with her not long after she and my dad divorced. I was about 7. Some of her mail was addressed to “Mrs. Sharper”. I said “Mommy, are you a Mrs. or a Miss now that you’re not married anymore?” She said, very matter-of-factly: “I don’t like Mrs. or Miss. People should call me Ms. because it’s nobody’s business whether I’m married.” This was about 1980, when it was still pretty radical to go by ”Ms.” Of course, about five years later she completed her PhD and became Dr. Sharper, so never mind. But as a result of that conversation, I have never called myself anything other than Ms–even when I sent little thank-you notes in elementary school I always wrote “Ms. Becky Sharper” on the return address.
In conclusion, we all want to send big Mother’s Day hugs to our moms, and to the moms reading, with a special shout-out to Mother.of.a.lesser.god, whose birthday is later this week!
Tell us your own mother stories, or stories about your adventures in motherhood–the good, the bad and the womanist/feminist–in the comments!
My mom is all mixed-up with respect to feminism (e.g., claims to be pro-choice while worshipping people like Dr. Laura). Of course she is also my very own Mommie Dearest (in the scary, Faye-Dunaway-as-Joan-Crawford sense of the word), so…she’s pretty mixed-up in general! My relationship (or, more specifically, lack thereof) with my mother has definitely impacted my development as a feminist over the past few years. Back when we were in contact, she was very threatened/perturbed by my increasingly liberal beliefs (and my desire to talk about them openly). So being free of her direct influence has definitely given me the space in which to explore these “leftist” leanings without fear of maternal condemnation or retribution.
Also, I just had an early Mother’s Day lunch with the woman who is kind of like a surrogate mom to me these days, and she is unabashedly feminist. So here’s to making your own family with whom to celebrate Hallmark holidays!
“So here’s to making your own family with whom to celebrate Hallmark holidays!”
That is a really good point.
I’d also like to give a shout-out to all the awesome step-moms out there. You don’t have to be blood-related to be a good mom, and I’m lucky enough to have a stepmother who I know loves me unconditionally.
It’s great to hear about everybody’s mamas. My mom is an old fashioned Catholic girl in a lot of ways, yet very progressive politically and especially economically. She is definitely traditional in some ways — she took a part time teaching job so she could stay with us more when we were little and have her summers off, she does all the cooking and cleaning (though now she has a housekeeping service) and keeping the family together and despite her brilliance and higher degrees my father is definitely the breadwinner. Like PhD’s mom, she is very capable and DIY, which is good bc she is responsible for EVERYTHING.
At the same time, she raised us with many feminist values, although I think she thinks of them more as anti-capitalist values. She never ever spoke to us about boys or dating or marriage, which had its downsides but made clear to us that those were not the things we should be focusing on or that gave us value. She refused to buy our clothes retail for years (I come by my thrift shopping honestly), did not allow us to wear brand names on our clothing (“companies should pay YOU if they want you to be a walking commercial), have Barbie dolls (she claims that besides the body image stuff she was concerned about Barbie’s car and dream house [too materialistic] and the fact that she was associated with Ken) wear makeup or watch most TV, and discouraged sexiness in all its forms.
A lot of the anti-sex stuff comes from a fucked up place, but in some ways it served me as I waited until 17 to have a boyfriend and lose my virginity, dated women openly with denial, not consternation, from my parents, and went to a womens college. Though she herself is traditional she has been very supportive of all my feminisms in their various forms, encouraging me to keep my name though she took my Dad’s (even she can’t explain why, just says she is a traditional lady but loves that I am not), and never mentioning grandkids.
In conclusion, she has her issues like everyone does, I didn’t grow up with the word feminist, and in some ways she modeled traditional femininity, but she managed to raise and love two total feminist ragers so she must have been doing something right.
oh yeah i forgot to mention she is very tentatively pro choice politically but quite mixed up about it “morally” and would be horrified to know about her daughters’ abortions for sure. however she also instructed us to keep secrets from her about shit she didn’t want to know about so it all works out.
Also! Taught me to hate Phyllis Schalfley by giving me the opinion section of the newspaper to read and telling me who I should ignore! She calls Phyl, “that lady.” You know, THAT lady.
I’m all for creating your own family, but Mother’s Day wasn’t originally a “Hallmark holiday,” though it certainly qualifies now. It was intended by Julia Ward Howe as a political act of women against war, and was called Mothers’ Peace Day. You can read about it here.
I would say my mother is a feminist, she has always worked and kept her own name, but she and my father did not share the work at home.
Despite her anger at her and her sisters having to do all the chores whilst her brother was waited on, and vows she would treat her children differently, she expected my sister and me to do cooking and cleaning whilst my brother sat on his arse. When she needed help she would always shout ‘girls’ if we called her on it, she would say ‘oh, I meant him too!’ My dad was more even handed in his doling out of chores.
Originally, Mother’s Day wasn’t a “Hallmark holiday,” though it certainly qualifies now. Julia Ward Howe intended it as a political statement against war. You can read a little about it here.
I feel really ambivalent about Mother’s Day.
I am conflicted about my mother regarding politics and feminism. I need to constantly remind myself that she is human and that I am too.
I dread mistakes I am making NOW with my own daughter….
I’m totally with s.o.l.a.g.–it’s all about the family you make. And my (unfortunately non-feminist) stepmom has never been anything but 100% unconditionally loving and supportive and fabulous.
@Kirvin: if you want to find your own new-and-improved mother figure, I’m all for that! You’re right, it’s all about the family you CHOOSE. And one of the joys of being an adult is that you can finally make those choices for yourself.
@PhDork: You’re right, I do remember reading about the origin of Mother’s Day at some point; I had forgotten that it was originally intended as an anti-war statement. I kind of lump it in with everything else nowadays, though. I am SO sick of all the promo e-mails I’ve been getting: “It’s not too late to shop for Mother’s Day!” I should check my spam folder for some Rx-drug deals — I could send my mom a bottle of cheap Canadian Valium for Mother’s Day…
As far as the commercialism goes, I do not play into that at all. I like sending people snail mail and feel warm when I get cards myself, so I always send a card to mom. But I wasn’t raised to buy buy buy to celebrate holidays and special events so my mom doesn’t expect gifts and doesn’t really dole them out, either.
My mom is an unabashed feminist. I, too, remember my mother explaining the Ms. designation, and why she kept her own name instead of taking my dad’s. I also used Ms. from a very young age.
Her parents are pretty buttoned-up alcoholic WASP types, but her father was an OBGYN, so they were always sort of shockingly open about sex. One of my clearest memories of my grandmother from childhood was her explaining to me that she had divorced her first husband partially because he was impotent, and that really everyone should “try it” before they get married. My brother told me that my grandfather sat him down at a pretty early age and explained that some boys like girls and some boys like boys and either was okay by him. Either he was just covering his bases, or being incredibly perceptive–as my brother is gay.
Neither of my parents has ever shied away from discussing feminism, sexism, or any of that. I’m currently moved back in with them, and we routinely talk about these things as a family. By talk I mostly mean my parents and brother listen to me screech about the patriarchy and nod in agreement.
For Mother’s Day I’m taking my mom on a long weekend get away. She is a director of development in the midst of a capital campaign in a down economy. I’m pretty sure she’d rather me take her to Philadelphia for the weekend and get her drunk than get her a card that sings.
I’ve only recently resumed contact with my mother. When I transitioned, my dad was the one that kept us all together and when he died, my mom get super-religious and said some things that I couldn’t accept, and so I cut off contact with her. Just this year, after 4 years, I called my mom on her birthday. It was actually shocking to hear her voice because she sounded happy to hear from me.
I wouldn’t say my mom was consciously a feminist, but I think my dad was. They both worked full time, they both took care of me and my brother. My mom didn’t take any shit, but then, my dad rarely gave her any. My dad was more nurturing than my mom, I think.
But I remember back when I was around 20, we worked close together so we would carpool. And it was fun, we’d listen to the oldies station and sing along with the songs.
I don’t really know what my relationship will be with my mom. She seems tentatively willing to accept me these days, but she still can’t really talk about it. But I’m glad that I can at least call her now.
My Mum proudly identifies as a feminist and has had an amazing career than has spanned working in women’s shelters, as a social worker and now running projects for young people who have been sexually exploited, families living with HIV/ Aids, and women in prison. However, my parents’ marriage defnitely divides down gender lines: my dad is a doctor and a professor of medicine, and as a result was often absent when we were children. My Mum was definitely one of those women for whom ‘having it all’ meant doing it all.
My parents are happily married, as far as I know, but I have made very different choices in my relationship with my partner. In fact, if anything he tends to do more of the practical day-to-day care for our daughter, as well as more than his fair share of the housework. His own mother was a unhappy housewife whose life reads like the first half of The Women’s Room. Her experiences have definitely influenced him to become the feminist he is today. So big thanks and recognition to my mother-in-law too!
My mom was a professional feminist activist, kept her own last name, worked part-time to stay home with us when we were little, now has a high-powered job, and leaves the laundry and cooking to my dad. She raised two feminist daughters–we are growing more militant (a word I would never use to describe my mom) by the day, and proud of it! We also tend toward being emotionally needy (nobody’s perfect) and she’s always there for us. Hurray for my mom!
My mom is a feminist by many accounts. She always supported me to do whatever I wanted without any ideas that I couldn’t do certain things because of my gender. Her father is still fairly misogynistic to this day and it’s interesting to watch her blood boil over the things that he says.
That said I do wish my parents had done better on the domestic front. Chores are very much gender split but maybe they would say that they prefer that for themselves regardless of gender roles. My brother did not necessarily turn out pro-feminist so it’s nice to have my mom (and my dad) on my side when it comes to what women can do.
I would like to add that my mother never taught me housecleaning. I think it was an oversight, not a conscious choice. Anyway, it’s served me well as a married person.
I both love and despise Mother’s Day, since I have difficult relationships with all of my moms (I won’t say much because I tend to get really bitter about the whole “Isn’t your (only) mother just your bestest friend?” thing; and I refuse to call them stepmoms since that seems to devalue their impact in my life too much) but adore my mother-in-law, her mother, and several women in my own family who I consider to be like mothers to me. The latter showed me that “feminine” doesn’t mean weak and I still consider them my biggest feminist influence today.
But I’ve also gotten in touch with one of my other moms again recently and am just beginning to realize that she was probably the one who planted the seeds of feminism in me. I haven’t gotten up the guts to ask her if she’s a feminist yet, but I suspect from what I remember of the time she was my mom and from her political views now that even if she wouldn’t claim the word, she would still fall ideologically in that category.
For all her craziness, my mom did a good job of teaching me housework. I know how to clean just about anything (including delicate bras, as I mentioned in a previous post). I also value a clean, orderly home. Of course I ultimately realized that, while I do value those things, I am also inclined to be lazy: So I pay a cleaning service to come in and do a thorough scrubbing every two weeks. But if/when the day comes that I can no longer afford such a luxury, I am more than prepared to scrub my own bathtub to shining spotlessness.
My mom also taught me how to cook and how to take care of children. I am knowledgeable about both of these things, but I don’t enjoy them. I hate cooking, and I don’t want to have kids of my own. These facts caused my mother much consternation when we were still in contact. I tried to explain that I appreciated her sharing the knowledge with me, esp. re: childcare, because it helped me make an informed decision about what I wanted for my future. (Again, laziness plays a role — I could take good care of a child, but I don’t want to!)
My mom is definitely a feminist, and proud of it. She and my stepdad worked in the same department of the same company from the time I was 5 until the day he died. They went off to work together and came home to talk and argue about work through dinner. While that was pretty boring for me, it also demonstrated their equality in a way that no child could miss.
They were pretty great about splitting chores, especially cooking, which my stepdad loved and my mother tolerated. My mom expected me to do well in school and get as much education as I could.
I think she’s a little bemused now, being the mother of two stay at home moms. It’s certainly not what she expected for us. But she never criticizes, just reminds me that I should be planning what I want to do once my kids start school.
I LOVE my Mom for splitting all the chores evenly between me and my brother growing up – no differentiation between girl/boy chores. We both mowed the lawn as well as helped around the house and we both got crap about it from our friends, but I was totally on my Mom’s side. Yay for equality!
@afteriris: My Mum was definitely one of those women for whom ‘having it all’ meant doing it all.
Yes, that’s how it turned out for my mother as well.
My mother passed away 9 years ago this September, but she was a very confused self-identified feminist. Meaning she didn’t hide her abortions, or deny that if my father hadn’t found out, I would’ve been another abortion; while at the same time using all of her incredible beauty for her own ends. She was very open and almost TOO informative about sex with me, and I presume my brother, but at the same time would tell me to use men before they could use me. She body bashed me at times, told me to be content in my body at other times, and definetly arranged chores along gender lines. She did instill a fierce sense of feminism in me, merely by showing me the paradox of her own feminism.
Actually, considering how equality oriented my house was growing up the chores were split pretty male/female between my brother and me. He did the recycling, took out the trash, mowed the lawn, shoveled. I vacuumed, dusted, did dishes. Though, this may have had more to do with me absolutely refusing to do anything outdoors in sun or snow. Still, it’s weird. My parents split the cooking right down the middle, my mom took up the bulk of the cleaning, but my dad did laundry, and they both worked outdoors.
Is my mom a feminist? I dunno…. Would you say Claire huxtable or Michelle Obama are feminists?
My mother is a very wonderful blend of these two women: educated, accomplished, independent, but also fiercely devoted to husbands, family, clean houses and family dinners.
I never would have ever considered my mom a feminist until about a month ago. My dad needed heart surgery, and the dr recommended a woman surgeon. My dad asked me, “what do you think of a woman surgeon?” my response, “I don’t understand the question…”. My mother snorted, “your fathers just a sexist… He thinks a woman won’t be good enough to operate! He’s a fool… If womrn can out up with men, they can surely cut them open!”
My mom is pretty traditional and I don’t think would identify as a feminist. I resented her for a long time because she definitely focused on beauty and femininity, and I never felt pretty enough for her growing up. On the other hand, she has been nothing but loving and encouraging my entire life, and supportive of all my pursuits – intellectual, athletic etc. I know she struggles with pro-life/pro-choice, and gave up a baby she had in college, when her parents made her basically hide away with relatives so she wouldn’t shame the family. But she’s very sex positive and I never felt I needed to be pure and virginal, which I appreciate! I feel a little sad though, because I’ll be going home this weekend (for Mother’s Day) and its the first time I’ll see her since she had work done on her face. She knew I was against it and didn’t tell me until afterward and I was pretty upset. I’m trying hard to respect her choice and let it go, but it still makes me sad.
I have no idea if my mother would identify as a feminist. She might be just mixed-up enough to do it, although a lot of her actions, from my point of view, aren’t feminist at all.
She’s worked her whole life, but has been divorced for most of that time, and now openly says she wants a rich man who can take care of her and that she wishes she had married rich like her sisters. And tells me I should get a wealthy dude.
She slapped a People magazine about teen pregnancy down on the table when I was 9 and told me “THAT’s why you don’t have sex until marriage”. I think that was (is) at the root of a lot of deep-seated insecurities and fears I have about sex, although I am working on them.
And she is constantly bemoaning the fact that I don’t take enough of an interest in my appearance and am too bookish. Subtext: How Do You Expect to Catch a Man.
In short: we are polar opposites. It’s infuriating. But I am trying to understand that she is a product of a specific (pretty messed up) background and to have compassion about it, but it really makes my life difficult sometimes because I really get the feeling that she has no understanding for the kind of person I want to be.
As a child, I really respected my mother’s feminism, and became a strident feminist at a very, very young age. She never let me dress really girly (even though I REALLY wanted to) and never even taught me how to put on makeup, because she doesn’t know how.
My siblings and I never really grew up with chores. If we do chores, we do them as a family.
But I don’t know, she just has all these inconsistencies about the way she feels about gender (ex: she and my dad go to the gay parade every year, yet she tells the kids she takes care of that boys shouldn’t wear nail polish). And it’s assumed that all of my siblings and I should have babies, since my mom is obsessed with babies. Also, since my parents immigrated to the US 12 years ago, she’s become an unfulfilled housewife type. This happens to a lot of women I know who move to another country because of their husband’s career and get stuck there. Not feminist.
So yeah, who knows? Overall, I’m a feminist because of her, but in recent years, my understanding of feminism has become more complicated, and she has come off her pedestal. This is the same process I went through with the Spice Girls.
My mother is a wonderfully encouraging parent and has set a good example of not putting up with bullshit, supporting herself financially, and speaking her mind. However, though she supports some “women’s issues” (legal abortion, equal pay, etc.), I don’t think she would consider herself a feminist. My mother is very dependent on men in the sense that she measures her worth based on the men she has relationships with, and therefore feels worthless when she is single. I’ve been happily single all 18 years of my life, and I am so independent that it’s really hard for me to understand where she’s coming from. In high school, she pressured me to date all the time, but she’s eased up a lot. My mom also refuses to believe that she is capable of doing more “masculine” chores, like working with computers or fixing things around the house. She’s very smart, and could figure these things out if she tried, but she would rather have a man come do them. (I usually end up going “MOM I CAN DO IT!”)
It’s actually my dad, who is DEFINITELY not a feminist, who has helped me to be such a strong young woman. I honestly believe that my dad has treated me almost exactly as he would have treated a son growing up, and I think that’s awesome. He shared his interests and talents with me, regardless of our different genders. He tried to get me interested in sports, cars, and rock and roll. He taught me how to change a tire and play the guitar. He engaged me in intellectual conversations. My dad is probably the reason I am so independent and well-rounded, and the way he has treated me my whole life might be the reason I am a feminist.
My mother is what I would call a feminist although like some have said already I don’t know if she would call herself one. She left a small village in Ireland in the 60′s where the only options available were teaching or joining the convent or a combination of the two. She moved to London, qualified as a child protection social worker all off her own finance and has worked like a trojan ever since. She got a mortgage on her own (no mean feat in the 60′s), did everything by herself. After her marriage to my dad dissolved she raised me and my brother completely alone and has done a magnificent job. I could not even begin to list her fantastic qualities, but she has always been there for me, my brother and all of my friends most of whom have lived with my ma at some point or another, usually when their own marriages broke down. When I confessed to her as a scared 21 year old that I was pregnant and I was planning to have a termination she said (with real feeling) “You poor, poor thing” and was such a support to me in every way. Yes, she does have a few Irish mum traits. My brother will always be able to get away with stuff that would result in the snort heard around the world if I tried it. But she has made me a very strong, analytical person and is a source of inspiration to me every day. This has turned into a bit of a love letter now, but hey ho. I adore my ma.
Mom is my feminist hero, and since I’ve become more radical in the last few years I’ve heard more and more righteous stories. She’s never been physically around as much as some moms, I think, but that’s because she’s been working her ass off as a chemical engineer for 30 years and has made her way to very high powered positions in big companies. When I was in high school (read: too old for after school day care programs), mom and dad didn’t want to leave us home alone so Dad quit and started consulting from home (which means he’s been semi retired for about a decade). Mom? Would never. She loves her job and takes pride in it and taught us to never take shit from anyone who talked down to us for being women (I have two little sisters). Once I said I was bad at math (untrue, I was just frustrated with AP calculus and it was a bit of high school hyperbole) and she flew off the handle.
Despite being in a weird Catholic place with regard to sex and the body, she was pretty open with me during major points in puberty and took me to the doctor when I started having sex so I could get on the pill.
There are some things I see as contradictions about my mom’s feminism, but she’d hardly be human if she didn’t have contradictions. Politically, I don’t get her at all. Maybe because she and Dad are from the Reagan generation, or they made it to the minor leagues from the working class, or because it’s fashionable in the town where they live, but they’re really active in the local GOP. This is a cause of conflict for Dad (who gets pouty when I complain about the patriarchy), but if it bothers Mom then I haven’t heard about it.
I know Mom has had to sacrifice a lot for her feminism; she is a total black sheep in both her and especially in Dad’s family. She hasn’t had a lot of enduring friendships, which might help to explain why I have very few friends–I never had a real model for what a woman’s long term friendship with another woman looked like until I was already a teenager–and I think that’s because there are many things which a feminist simply cannot abide that are ubiquitous in so many social contexts. She and I are closer now than ever. That may have to do with the fact that I’m living away now, but it is also I think that she sees me as an ally lately. That makes me immeasurably proud.
My mother was one of only six women to graduate as a doctor at a time when women were not encouraged to go into medicine. She worked all my life (my dad recently admitted he wouldn’t have understood a woman who didn’t want to work interestingly) and is a firm believer in women’s rights – as a doctor she has pushed for contraception and abortion rights in addition to working for needle exchanges and in AIDs research.
Growing up we followed her example rather than having open discussions about feminism and certainly differences were made between me, my sister and my brother, we were all expected to go to college and to get good jobs, we were all treated the same.
That said my mum recently said she felt she should have talked to me more about what it meant to be a feminist growing up, possibly she should but we have great conversations now and she set a fine example in my opinion.
that should be no differences were made between me and my sister. Also my mum does call herself a feminist. Probably the only thing in which she is traditional is cooking – I don’t think my father has cooked a meal that isn’t breakfast in 35 years of marriage.
between me and my sister and brother. God my typing is shit today.
[...] depictions of motherhood: ur doin it rong. via diana-b. @ flickr As we’ve already noted here on Harpyness, Mother’s Day is upon us. Naturally, this is giving people license to [...]
Way late to the party as usual (how DO you awesome women have the time to be so consistently, well, awesome??!!) Anyway, my mom is most certainly a feminist and will proudly tell you so, although I sort of doubt she would have described herself as such in the very early ’70s when she was a stay-at-home mom raising me, her only child (her and my father wanted 10!).
Her mother, my Italian Catholic Nana, would NEVER describe herself as a “woman’s libber” (I don’t think she would’ve even known what to do w/ the F-word, God rest her soul). BUT she was crazy adamant about women having control over their reproductive systems. “Who is some old man in a funny hat in Rome to tell ME how many children to have?!” She stopped going to church over this issue (she was one of 11 children of an immigrant couple, and she also often railed against the preferential treatment her brothers received as she was growing up). She was an incredible woman.
My dad also considers himself a feminist (and although he often FAILS, he does try). He was raised by exceptionally strong women (his mom and grandmother) after his father left the family and (here’s why he sort of fails at feminism) he finds women to be superior to men. He’s cute, and his mother is one of the most incredible women I’ve ever known, as is his little sister, my Aunt, a fierce feminist whose raised two pretty cool young men.
I wasn’t really able to fully articulate my personal feminism until college, but it was there, lurking in the background, my whole life, thanks to the brave women who raised me.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the Harpy Mommies out there and thanks for sharing on this great post!