MMO: Commentary & Opinion

Governor Schwarzenegger vetoes families
By Kristin Maschka
Governor Schwarzenegger, as your boss, we'll be glad to let you use a day of leave to take care of your kids. As long as you make sure the rest of us can do the same.

Women, work and fair taxes
By Jean Kazez
Stepping back into the shoes of single me, it's hard for me to work up a whole lot of sympathy for the woman with the too rich husband.

Family politics:
How Democrats can reclaim family values and the White House
By Erica Etelson
Thanks to the emergence of a progressive parenthood movement, the one set of issues that could make or break any presidential bid is family policy.

Walkin’ in New Orleans
By Pat Gowens
In December, I finally made it to New Orleans for 12 days to help stop the war on the poor. And they sure need help!

Hollywood hooters
By Heather Janssen
I kept asking myself, why this strange obsession with what Angelina Jolie does with her body, and, more specifically, her boobs? She's made a name for herself being the mother of children in dire need, and I just wanted to know if her altruistic efforts included whipping out a tit here and there to nourish her newborn.

Feminist motherhood … say what?
By Michelle Levine
I usually don't even know what day of the week it is, but I can remember exactly where I was six years ago when I realized I had "gender issues." That was the phrase I settled on because I certainly did not identify myself as a feminist.

A new day for the school year
by Megan Beyer
I thought I would not miss the chaos that characterized the last ten years of school mornings.

Hire the squeaky wheel
By Kelly Ault
The mother's movement has the right mix of elements to secure social change: inter-generational history, visionary organizations, charismatic leaders, ground-breaking research, compelling message, intrigued media, thoughtful commentary and most important of all, millions of people who would benefit. But to truly achieve equal rights for women in the home, workplace and community, it needs to make some serious noise.

Asking for trouble:
The truth about career women and marriage
By Judith Stadtman Tucker
In "Don't Marry Career Women," Forbes editor Michael Noer zeros in on research and economic theories implicating wives' work in the erosion of husbands' health and happiness to highlight the downside of coupling with women who expect to work full-time, earn good money and are professionally ambitious.

Don't give up: A neo-elite manifesto
By Nandini Pandya
I agree with Hirshman to the extent that I too believe that it is vital for women to stay in the workforce after they have kids. My take diverges from that of Hirshman when it comes to assigning blame to just the women who drop out.

Show Some Mommy Skin
By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
When BabyTalk magazine ran a cover photo of an infant latched onto a fully-exposed breast, all hell broke loose. What's interesting about this particular fracas is that we are currently in an extremely pro-breastfeeding time.

You said it, sister!
Readers respond to Ann Crittenden's "The Price of Motherhood"
"I had to own that book… it has profoundly influenced my way of looking at what I do."

Sex and the Third Grade Girl
by Eileen Flanagan
Teaching my daughter to know and draw her boundaries seems like one of the best things I can do as a feminist mother.

Access: Abortion, emergency contraceptives, contraceptives
by Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
Twenty-three years after Roe, access to abortion is constricted in the U.S., and other legal health care -- including emergency contraception and oral contraceptives -- is no longer universally accessible. The confirmation of pro-life appointees to the Supreme Court may make matters much worse.

Am I raising feminists?
by Anjali Enjeti-Sydow
Once grown and independent of my lessons and teachings, will my daughters deny the existence of the glass ceiling and the power of the patriarchy?

Childhood Obesity --
Would you like some hypocrisy with that?
by Staci Schoff Carsten
"It's easy for Americans to focus on childhood obesity. When we see obese adults we have a hard time sympathizing, because we know that no one is force-feeding people Big Macs. But with kids, we can blame the TV, bad parenting, bad school lunches, McDonalds, advertising -- the list goes on. We can feel sorry for kids, because it can't be their fault so it must be someone else's. And there's no end to the people we're willing to blame."

Playing the part: motherhood and identity
by Aviva Pflock & Devra Renner
"Various aspects of motherhood and identity ebb and flow in order to meet the needs of caring for our children. But certainly there are experiences we have as mothers that also prompt a change in the shape of our identity."

Too little, too late:
Katrina blows the lid off America's care crisis
by Judith Stadtman Tucker
"As long as the teeming multitude of America's impoverished and dispossessed were conveniently out of sight and out of mind, policymakers -- and the voting public -- weren't forced to contend with the possibility that the American Experiment might end in cataclysmic failure. Of course, all that's changed now."

Human Rights, Inhumanly Denied: A Battered Mother's Story
by Sonata
The family court system, with its phalanx of abuser-identified court personnel, is the ultimate abuser in the life of already abused mothers and children.

What’s in a name?
by Spenta Cama
Apparently, a lot. I always knew I’d keep my surname no matter whom I married. But going against the grain creates confusion and can even provoke anger.

Reproductive rights, quality of life, and economics
by Neesha D. Meminger
The right to live a life in relative safety, with ample food and clean water, access to a good education and health care must also be addressed in the debate about the right of life to exist.

The Post-Election Talk
by Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
My kids still have their entire adult lives ahead and I want to fortify them with the belief that they can help steer the world toward true peace and democracy. So, what do I want to convey to them? What brilliant hopes might I offer on a day that I deem so dismal?

Mr. Yucky
by Margaret Foley
My daughter has an interest in politics... Sometimes she’ll tell me that she’d like to discuss the Bush administration. She’ll provide her own list of its mistakes, based on what she’s been told or heard, as filtered through the mind of a kindergartner.

There has got to be another way
by Neesha Meminger
The thought of my child spending her final moments alone and full of terror is unbearable. Yet, this is exactly what mothers in many parts of the world are forced to endure. A choice as heinous as that of deciding which of your children lives leaves no room for anyone to judge. What would you do?.

Why I went to Afghanistan
by Masha Hamilton
My desire to go to Afghanistan was fueled by a longing to know, as much as possible, what it means to be an Afghan woman today... Occasionally I felt a jolt of fear as I prepared for the journey. So much was unknown, and so much of the news from there was bad.

A Season to Bleed
by Lizbeth Finn-Arnold
By offering women an alternative to monthly menstrual periods, pharmaceutical companies “promise a pill that will ‘liberate us,’ yet completely ignore the way this magical pill can negatively impact our cultural perceptions of what is normal, natural, and acceptable for women’s bodies.

Does Gender Really Matter?
by Spenta Cama
What better message could I send to my baby than he is a unique individual who can do and be anything he wants irrespective of the gender constraints society may attempt to place on him.”

Wake Up Call
by Sara Eversden
Policies supporting a flexible work environment may be on the increase, but I question how frequently those policies are successfully implemented.

Once Upon A Time, We Too Were Legitimate
by Tere McDowell & Insanity House, Inc.
"We are thirteen million women raising approximately twenty million children as single parents. We are the failed representations of womanhood and motherhood, of American families and American society. We are the women and mothers to be scrutinized and scorned. Questioned and pitied for our failed lives. How did this happen?"

Opinions— everybody’s got one! Share your opinion about motherhood, culture and society our readers. For more information, visit the submissions section of the MMO.

editor@mothersmovement.org