Feminism and Motherhood

Rebecca Walker, the daughter of Alice Walker, has a new book that delves into that tricky territory of motherhood and feminism. The Times has had several articles about it the past week.

Motherhood, she writes in “Baby Love,” is “the first club I’ve unequivocally belonged to.” ...

“I keep telling these women in college, ‘You need to plan having a baby like you plan your career if it’s something that you want,’ ” she said. “Because we haven’t been told that, this generation. And they’re shocked when I say that. I’m supposed to be like this feminist telling them, ‘Go achieve, go achieve.’ And I’m sitting there saying, ‘For me, having a baby has been the most transformational experience of my life.’ ” ...

Ms. Walker said she is not suggesting that all women have children, only that those who feel the urge should not ignore it because they fear career derailment or because they had difficult childhoods.

“Mine is the first generation of women to grow up thinking of children as optional,” Ms. Walker writes in the new book. “We learned that children were not to be pursued at the expense of anything else. A graduate degree in economics, for example, or a life of renunciation, devoted to a Hindu mystic.”

Children, she writes, “smelled of betrayal and a lack of appreciation for the progress made on behalf of women’s liberation.”

There's also some Mommy, Dearest stuff in the book. She said that as a child, she came second to her parents' career pursuits. Not surpringly, Alice doesn't talk to her anymore.

I haven't read this book, yet. It sounds very self-indulgent, but I might skim it in the bookstore.

Comments

[jen]

What a shock! The daughter of an artist feeling that her artist parent was perhaps self-absorbed?

But here's a follow-on question: is not obsession with one's role as a mother, and one's own children, its own form of narcissism? And in that sense is it possible that Rebecca Walker is carrying on a grand family tradition of self-absorption?

[bj]

I feel the same way about the book by the son of Nancy Dickerson "TV News' First Woman Star." (i.e. self-indulgent). I guess it's possible that people who really care about something other than their children (curing cancer, teaching other people's children, saving the world) shouldn't have children, or at least two people who care about those things shouldn't. But, my take on both these books is that they're cases of mismatch between children and parents. There are children who are bottom-less pits of need. I suspect that no amount of love would ever be enough for them. And, there are parents incapable of being generous with any amount of their love. When you combine the two, in any form, you get Rebecca Walker or John Dickerson. Maybe Rebecca would have done better with a more involved mother and father, but maybe not.

bj

[dave s]

"No man is a hero to his valet"... Tolstoy's kids and wife were utterly furious at him. My own father has an absolutely saintly image in his church, and much less of the saint is visible to his children. That said, people have kids, do more or less well with them, and if the parents are famous, people pay a lot of attention if it hasn't been so good.

[Alison]

I agree with the idea of planning for children. I think I've even drafted an outline in the unlikely event that my alma mater asked me to talk to young women about life after college. But it is unlikely that anyone would listen. I might even have such unfeminist advice such as "choosing a good provider to marry is not a ridiculous idea.
Money does not provide happiness, but it does provide options."

Incidentally, congratulations on your recent foray back to work. I feel the itch to make a difference, but don't know how to balance it with my home life. I know it's not easy.