The Motherhood Manifesto

Maggie says:
One of the great privileges of living in this day and age is that I'm lucky enough to know a lot of kick-ass moms. One young mom I know taught yoga all through her pregnancy, had a gorgeous boy, and promptly trounced off to Latin America to do thesis research with her babe on her hip. Another never slowed down her activist schedule during her first pregnancy, had the most beautiful boy I've ever seen, and is working around town to make life better for us all, newly aglow with another baby on the way. Oh yeah, she also took her kid to the World Social Forum in Venezuela this year. How cool is that? These women level me with their strength, inspire me with their bravery, and in their own ways, show me that motherhood is all about possibility, that there is no preconceived outcome or dress code or political stance or required minivan. I need that, all of it, to ever take a leap like that myself.

Such is the state of motherhood today, I suppose, where we've come to view having kids as a wonderful choice instead of a destined lifepath. That means that my friends who've chosen not to have kids are as happy and affirmed by their choice as the ones who are procreating, and each supports the other equally. That's also the state of women today, I think: affirming to a fault, operating within a nest of support, exchanging looks and laughter filled with collective knowledge, and being family.

A new book gets this. Enter The Motherhood Manifesto: What America's Moms Want and What To Do About It, by Joan Blades. Written by one of the MoveOn.org founders, this book aims to be a political clarion call for modern moms. This means calling all moms to organize around issues that moms care about - maternity/paternity leave, health care, child care, etc. - because they matter, not just because they're left-approved.

What interests me about this book is that it cuts across political divides and entrenched stances to arrive at shared issues that millions of moms face each day. Only by discussing childcare and family leave as non-partisanly as it does could this book have a real shot at becoming the manifesto it wants to be. Our problem today is that we're stuck in a sea of political rhetoric that aims to get to motherhood in only two ways: on the right, by rabid right-wing nutcase talk steeped in the notion of keeping women in aprons, and on the left, by overheated abortion rights language that so demands a women's right to choose (obvious disclosure: I am fervently pro-choice myself), it leaves the women who decide to have children off by the wayside. In other words, motherhood is the politically empty choice today, represented on the right by having a child because it's what women do and on the left, by not having one, because that's our right. Myself, my friends, our coworkers, our sisters? Unspoken for. Until now.

The true power of this book is that it speaks to the values of child-rearing in modern America. You know, real family values. The politics of motherhood don't end when you decide to continue a pregnancy or not - that's when they're just beginning. Women's issue groups on the left have forgotten this at their peril, and the right never really will get the modern realities of mothering. By writing from the shared landscape of motherhood, the Manifesto geniusly avoids the trap of gender talk in 2006. It shows us a third way, a better way, to talk about progressive issues in the context of our everyday lives.

Some of the moms I know might be just as apt to align with a shared landscape of women in general, moms or not, or with Chicanas, as they would with mothers one and all, and that's fine. The point here isn't an end product of "Motherhood Power." It's a process, a method of getting beyond the labels that so divide us today. Just like my ongoing rant since W's re-election of "there is no true blue, there is no true red," the Manifesto is less pseudo-talk and more the real deal. When we dismiss labels, when we look at what we have in common, when we start talking to one another, we open the floodgates for positive change.

Those floodgates are scary to some people, though. Sharing issues seems so antiquated to many folks today. Our lives are more private than ever (fueled hugely by suburbia, I should add) that all too often, we don't see that our problems are really universal ones in need of universal fixes. In America, we value ownership so much, eschew the overly personal so much, that we've forgotten how to collectively identify with each other. It's no coincidence that every time a progressive candidate brings up the flight of U.S. jobs overseas, Republicans accuse them of "class warfare." Honestly connecting with folks over real issues isn't warfare of any kind; it's being human. Only out of real human interaction can come family-friendly policies that would make a huge difference to families everywhere: closing the wage gap, enjoying good benefits, having shared spaces in communities where we can engage and build networks... Those are the family values that matter.

What's exciting about a book like The Motherhood Manifesto is that it seems to coalesce around motherhood the way my friends have. Motherhood isn't something specific that we should all do or be. Instead, we should be ourselves, and have children - or not - in that context and in a way that nurtures who we are. Being complete, happy, strong women is the best framework for bringing children into the world. And in that context, why shouldn't we do thesis research in the jungle with a baby or attend an enormous rally with Hugo Chavez and our strollers? Why shouldn't we expect equal pay along with childcare?

Real family values don't stop at the clinic. By forgetting that, the right and the left are missing the real point. Luckily, this book reminds us another way is possible.

PS: Check out the new website and organization born from The Motherhood Manifesto: MomsRising.Org.

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