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The new issue of the Mothers Movement Online is live at last! This edition offers expanded coverage of the MMO's central topic: the objectives and progress of the mothers' movement in the United States. New content includes a moving essay by Gretchen Hunt on why Immigration is a Mother's Issue, a non-nonsense piece by Lisa Frack (of Portland, Oregon Activistas fame) on the mothers' movement's strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, and an informative article by social work professor Arthur Emlen on working mothers' need for flexibility in multiple domains of daily life (Solving the Flexibility Puzzle). In my report and commentary, Power in a Movement, I describe recent developments in the middle-class "motherhood movement" and critique structural and conceptual gaps in the movement's expression -- and the expression of the progressive movement in general -- which are inconsistent with organizing mothers and others for effective change work. (As I explain in my Editor's Notes, I have a reputation in the mother's movement community as the person most likely to pose irritating and uncomfortable questions about the movement's organizational activities and goals. It's an unpopular job -- but someone's got to do it.)

In the Essays section, Kathleen Furin writes about the "Hot Moms" movement. While it's something of a relief to discover that moms are finally considered fuckable in the eyes of popular culture, Furin asks whether claiming our right to pursue hotness is truly a liberating trend for mothers, or simply adds a new twist to the culture of judgment and self-doubt that mothers are already subjected to (MILF: Is the Hot Moms Movement Really a Sign of Progress?). Also in Essays, returning contributor Jampa Williams offers an intensely personal account of the awakening of her opposition to the war in Iraq. Readers will also find short summaries of new resources on public policy, breastfeeding and the workplace; the real rate of economic insecurity among U.S. working families; and gender disparities in American's reports of anxiety about facing economic hardship (in Noteworthy). There are also new listings for several upcoming conferences on the Get Active page. Read and enjoy!

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The new issue of the Mothers Movement Online is live at last! This edition offers expanded coverage of the MMO's central topic: the objectives and progress of the mothers' movement in the United States. New content includes a moving essay by Gretchen Hunt on why Immigration is a Mother's Issue, a non-nonsense piece by Lisa Frack (of Portland, Oregon Activistas fame) on the mothers' movement's strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, and an informative article by social work professor Arthur Emlen on working mothers' need for flexibility in multiple domains of daily life (Solving the Flexibility Puzzle). In my report and commentary, Power in a Movement, I describe recent developments in the middle-class "motherhood movement" and critique structural and conceptual gaps in the movement's expression -- and the expression of the progressive movement in general -- which are inconsistent with organizing mothers and others for effective change work. (As I explain in my Editor's Notes, I have a reputation in the mother's movement community as the person most likely to pose irritating and uncomfortable questions about the movement's organizational activities and goals. It's an unpopular job -- but someone's got to do it.)

In the Essays section, Kathleen Furin writes about the "Hot Moms" movement. While it's something of a relief to discover that moms are finally considered fuckable in the eyes of popular culture, Furin asks whether claiming our right to pursue hotness is truly a liberating trend for mothers, or simply adds a new twist to the culture of judgment and self-doubt that mothers are already subjected to (MILF: Is the Hot Moms Movement Really a Sign of Progress?). Also in Essays, returning contributor Jampa Williams offers an intensely personal account of the awakening of her opposition to the war in Iraq. Readers will also find short summaries of new resources on public policy, breastfeeding and the workplace; the real rate of economic insecurity among U.S. working families; and gender disparities in American's reports of anxiety about facing economic hardship (in Noteworthy). There are also new listings for several upcoming conferences on the Get Active page. Read and enjoy!

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With all eyes on the high drama of the Democratic primary race, Mother's Day has taken a back seat in the news cycle this spring. And that's just fine with me, since I've truly come to dread the mainstream media's perverse fascination with reviving the mommy wars every year. In any case, I'm here to liberate motherhood, not to celebrate it -- and while touching human interest stories about mothers heroically overcoming overwhelming setbacks are, well, incredibly touching, the profiles in maternal courage that predictably surface in the month of May do more to idealize the magical power of maternal stamina than to highlight the reality that every mother in the United States needs and deserves more support from our society than she's getting -- and far too many of us are falling through the cracks.

The mainstream media loves to talk about "work-family balance." It tells personal stories about how hard it is to juggle deadlines and suppertimes, but rarely asks why that balance is so hard, and how it can be changed. Often, motherhood is when today’s young women first face serious job discrimination and the biases against mothers that are built into American culture, family policy and many marriages.

This inter-generational panel discussion seeks to shed light on discrimination against mothers in the workplace and focus on what can be done to change things for the better. The discussion is moderated by E.J. Graff, WSRC Resident Scholar, and participants include Dana Gershengorn, Neena Pathak (’08) and Mothers Movement Online editor Judith Stadtman Tucker.

Working While Mother: What they don’t tell you…and should
May 8, 2008, 12:30-2:00 PM
Brandeis University
Epstein Building, 515 South Street
Waltham, MA

For information, please contact Lisa Lynch, 781.736.8102 or llynch@brandeis.edu

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After more than a decade of fierce opposition split largely along party lines, the New Jersey Senate passed a bill yesterday to provide state workers with partial wage replacement for up to six weeks of family and medical leave. Governor Jon Corzine has promised to sign the bill, which was passed by the state Assembly on March 14, making New Jersey the third state in the nation to enact paid leave legislation (California was the first, with Washington State following suit in 2007). The legislation was sponsored and tirelessly championed by State Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester) with grassroots support from a broad coalition of social justice, labor, and family & caregiver advocacy organizations, including New Jersey Citizen Action, ACORN, NOW NJ, National Family Caregivers Association, Mothers & More, and MomsRising. The final version of the bill passed by a 21-15 vote.

The February/March edition of the Mothers Movement Online is now live and ready for your reading pleasure. In addition to my editor's notes -- in which I own up to the distractions of grassroots activism and the impact it's had on the web site's publication schedule -- the current issue features an interview with Judy Norsigian of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective on the concept for the new Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth Book, Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser's interview with childbirth educator and author Lisa Gould Rubin (who explains why it's problematic to "normalize" one particular childbirth model), and several outstanding essays, including Unforgettable, Cater-Ann Mahdavi's lucid and compassionate account of the life-altering impact of traumatic childbirth.

In the Noteworthy section, you'll find summaries of research and reports on recent fertility trends in the United States, employed mothers' child care arrangements and expenditures, American children's living arrangements in families, and a recent study from the US Census series on maternity leave and employment patterns of first-time mothers from 1961-2003. An unsurprising finding from the maternity leave report is that today's first-time mothers are older, more educated, and more likely to be employed before and during pregnancy than new mothers thirty years ago.

Also in Noteworthy, my report on the latest attempt to meddle with the Family & Medical Leave Act to give employers more control over when and how eligible workers are allowed to take FMLA leave, and a summary of a research analysis by two social scientists from the Council on Contemporary Families, who propose that rather than pointing to evidence of a stalled revolution, the slow but steady rise in men's contribution to housework and child care over the last twenty-five years should be acknowledged as significant progress toward gender equality. Yeah, I'll get right on that -- as soon as I remind my husband (again) to throw in a load of laundry while he's watching the basketball game.

The topic of the April/May issue is The Mothers Movement in the United States; submissions in all content categories are welcome -- deadline for copy is April 25. (For more information about upcoming issue topics and submission deadlines, download the 2008 Editorial Calendar).

After the dust-up over my endorsement of Barack Obama on the MMO web site, I received a supportive letter from a reader in Sydney, Australia on why electoral and local politics really do matter to the future of women and families, and why mothers need to get more involved (in Letters).

Read and enjoy.

-- JST

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