femmebaby
Love to PunditMom and baby PunditGirl!
“the new, new feminism was born on May 8 and weighed in at 9 pounds, 14 ounces.”
The Frazzled Working Mom
I liked this post from The Mama Bee, which references a post I wrote on the MomsRising blog
Mama Bee writes:
The frazzled supermom archetype is insidious because it suggests to women that they need to consider at least partially opting out of the workforce to maintain their sanity. Instead of advocating for corporate changes that better support working women and their families, mothers get the message that they can’t possibly manage work and home at the same time. That’s particularly worrying because the women most likely to leave their jobs are frequently the ones most qualified to reach executive levels where they could truly impact workplace family policies.
The fact is that many women — myself included — have a host of “home” jobs that we like doing. I enjoy taking care of Baby Bee in the evenings, putting him to bed and playing; I enjoy cooking dinner each night; and I enjoyed breastfeeding during that period of our lives. The responsibilities haven’t been entirely equally distributed between myself and Papa Bee, but that has been my choice. (For the record, Papa does do most of the cleaning, since I’m fairly incompetent in that area.)
Do I feel overwhelmed at times? Of course, but so does Papa Bee. Having a family really can be very stressful. But that would be the case whether I worked or didn’t — there are plenty of the stay-at-home mothers I know who are equally stressed out. So let’s stop letting the media tell us that we’re going to be frazzled until our kids go to college, and start finding real solutions in the workplace that make our lives better today.
A Congresswoman’s breastmilk and other novelties
Cross posted from BlogHer.com:
I never thought I’d see the day when a U.S. Congresswoman’s breast milk was the star of a nationally televised segment, but there we go. On CNN, Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin fed her five month old from a Medela bottle. I’ve never seen a mother in real life actually using those bottles to feed (the flow), so she must have been making a statement: “Hey, this is breast milk, not formula!” This signal is to nursing mothers what Conservative code words about crosses and the like are to right wing Republicans: something you only pick up if you’ve lived it.
Recently CNN featured a piece on the “baby boom among female lawmakers.” Seven, now eight (with Linda Sanchez) women have given birth while in Congress, recently Kirsten Gillibrand and Herseth Sandlin. Even post-Palin, to say new mommies in elected office are a novelty is an understatement. So I’m glad that the media is re-introducing the concept now, while we’re in love with Democrats and Mommy-party governance is not a pejorative. But let’s take a feminist perspective on the CNN piece, just for fun.
Margaret Thatcher famously staged a scene during which she ended a Cabinet level meeting at 5pm to hurry to the shops to get “her Denis” his bacon before the shops shut. Done for the benefit of the press, Thatcher wanted and needed to tone down her Iron Maiden image.
In a way, Herseth promoting her breastmilk on CNN is as much of a canned statement as Thatcher’s. Women politicians are often still a novelty, and as the Politico points out this week, the old boys club is alive and well on Capitol Hill. Erika Falk writes of how media treatment of elected women differs from the way men are covered. Coverage perpetuates female novelty and cultural biases. Women are described differently than men. This maintains the perceptions that women in leadership roles are tokens and focuses people’s attention on more personal aspects rather than on more relevant information.
Most political associations and legislative bodies are skewed groups, with percentages at about 85% men to 15% women. Both houses of the US Congress are at about 17% female– keeping women in token roles. As Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Kanter wrote, tokens are not judged on their individual merits, but are expected to act as one expects their larger group to act, as mommies, for example. They are highly visible, and they typically perform their jobs under public and symbolic conditions different from those of the dominant group.
Let’s talk about the comfort factor. One of the most common threads in the leadership literature is the impact of the “double bind,” in which people like a woman if they see her exhibiting communal traits, but do not respect her as a leader with the necessary agentic qualities. The reverse is also true, that a woman can be seen as possessing agentic qualities, but will not be liked and therefore not seen as a successful leader. I actually see this changing in the coverage of women officials, and I think we can thank Hillary Clinton for it. The thing I liked about coverage of Gillibrand was that her work as a tough lawyer for Phillip Morris showed her as pretty cutthroat and a true corporate force to be reckoned with.
But does any of the media coverage matter if women accomplish important tasks while in office? There is the “New Hampshire” effect and this is what gives me hope. New Hampshire with its female majority has introduced a trifecta of paid leave and work family bills. This message is being carried to the federal level: “Our approach to policies that were important to us before become even more important, whether it’s early childhood development and how you fund it, child-care, quality child-care, child nutrition, prenatal care,” said Herseth Sandlin.
So, the time is right for breastfeeding Congresswomen; hopefully the novelty will wear off. I’ll close with the words of Michelle Obama at a recent Corporate Voices for Working Families meeting:
“We need to discuss flexible work hours that give employees greater ability to attend to important family responsibilities like child pick-up, something as simple as that; doctors appointments for those not just with kids, but for people with elderly parents. We’re finding more and more that families are in that crunch, as well.
We need to discuss paid leave for birth or adoption of a child and when there’s a serious illness that arises.
We need to discuss quality on-site child care, something that keeps many of us up at night as families; you’re just wondering where are we going to put our children where we feel like that they’re being safe — that they’re safe and being loved. That will relieve many of the stresses that parents feel on the job throughout the day.
These types of policies can be the key to whether a family remains economically viable or slips into financial uncertainty.”
PS: Ellen Galinsky is offering us the chance to ask Michelle Obama questions about work and life policy solutions, based on the First Lady’s talk last week.
Greider on the cost of prosperity
“The Future of the American Dream”
The cost of all our prosperity-
What families, even those who are prosperous, typically lose in the exchange are the small grace notes of everyday life, like the ritual of having a daily dinner with everyone present. The more substantial thing we sacrifice is time to experience the joys and mysteries of nurturing the children, the small pleasures of idle curiosity, of learning to craft things by one’s own hand, and the satisfactions of friendships and social cooperation.
These are made to seem trivial alongside wealth accumulation, but many people know they have given up something more important and mourn the loss. Some decide they will make up for it later in life, after they are financially stable. Still others dream of dropping out of the system. If we could somehow add up all the private pain and loss caused by the pursuit of unbounded material prosperity, the result might look like a major political grievance of our time.
More important than all the other losses is that people are also denied another great intangible–the dignity of self-directed lives. At work, at home and in the public sphere, most people lack the right to exercise much of a voice in the decisions governing their daily lives. Most people (not all) are subject to a system of command and control over their destinies. They know the risks of ignoring the orders from above. Not surprisingly, many citizens are resigned to this condition and accept subservience as “the way things are,” and their lives are smaller as a result. Many find it hard to imagine that these confinements could be lessened, even substantially removed, if economic organizations were informed by democratic principles.
I’m thinking about a question I’m supposed to answer soon on cnn.com: in these times, should we be launching a mission in space to fix the Hubble? And I was thinking about iconic images I’ve seen in the past of early space launches, and how I felt in 6th grade when I heard about the Challenger going down. Those were times when we could all coalesce around something like space travel: watch it all together on TV, mourn the loss of a crew together. Get excited about America’s future together. Now, I’d bet most Americans don’t even know the shuttle is launching because our news consumption is so diffuse. The days of shared experiences around national events feel over. In part because of what Greider discusses (families simply have no time to digest and share experiences like a space launch), in part because of our new media landscape.
Yes, Mrs. Obama!
“Twenty-two million working women don’t have a single paid sick day; that means they lose money any time they have to stay home to take care of their kids,’’ said Mrs. Obama, who was addressing the eighth annual meeting of Corporate Voices for Working Families, a group that represents about 50 companies and focuses on helping employees better balance work and family.
“We need to discuss flexible work hours that give employees greater ability to attend to important family responsibilities like child pick up, something as simple as that,’’ the first lady said….
“This isn’t just about family balance,’’ Mrs. Obama said. “This is about making workplaces stronger and more effective and keeping and attracting the most qualified people.’’
from the NYT Caucus blog.
About Me
Morra Aarons-Mele utilizes social media strategies to help employers, employees and communities connect. She also consults with leading organizations on how women can use the internet for professional and personal development. In her spare time, Morra enjoys blogging about women and politics. Read her full bio >>
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