Recently in Media Trends Category
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,
For information, please contact Lisa
Lynch, 781.736.8102 or llynch@brandeis.edu
