|
York University's
Keele Campus, which lies a good forty minutes north of
Toronto's vibrant downtown scene, is a sprawling facility surrounded by
an uninspiring landscape of commercial shopping strips and generic
apartment blocks. But as home to the Centre
for Research on Mothering -- the institutional parent of
the Association for Research on Mothering,
the first international feminist organization devoted specifically
to the study of maternal experience -- York U is a priority destination
for scholars, activists, health advocates and others who take the
topic of mothering and motherhood seriously.
Under the direction of Andrea O'Reilly,
a professor of women's studies and prolific writer on the subject
of mothering in life and literature, the Association for Research
on Mothering (ARM) produces a bi-annual journal and, since 1996,
has organized one or more conferences each year. ARM conferences
frequently provide a critical forum for feminist research and theory
excluded from the dominant academic discourse, and the 2005 Conference
on Mothering, Race, Ethnicity and Culture was no exception.
The ninth annual ARM conference (October 20-23 at York University)
kicked off with a special full-day program on Aboriginal Mothering:
Oppression, Resistance and Recovering. Two panels of Canadian experts
discussed the impact of residential schooling on First Nations families
and contemporary cultural issues for mothers in Canada's indigenous
communities.
The second day of the conference opened with a keynote panel on
Mothers and Poverty featuring presentations by Wendy
McKeen from the School of Social Work at Dalhousie University,
historian Rickie Solinger (Wake
Up Little Susie, Beggars and Choosers), and Loretta
Ross, founder of SisterSong
and co-director of the 2004 National March for Women's Lives in
Washington, D.C.
In an examination of changes to the goals and implementation of
Canadian social policy, McKeen reported that over the last decade
Canada's welfare policy has shifted to a more Americanized model,
which she described as a "narrow, targeted and individualistic"
approach to family support and poverty relief. In particular, recent
social welfare initiatives in Canada prioritize investments in children
as an alternative to legislating broader collective responsibility
for the well-being of families. McKeen noted that despite a national
commitment to providing low-cost quality child care, Canada's provincial
governments show more support for allocating resources to health
and counseling programs designed to modify behavior and attitudes
of parents of at-risk children than funding child care. (Sadly,
McKeen's depressing observations about the erosion of the Canadian
welfare state were echoed by a number of social researchers who
gave presentations at the conference.)
Rickie
Solinger (whose new book, Pregnancy and Power: A Short History
of Reproductive Politics in America, was released this month)
introduced her presentation by clarifying that her objective is to
"interrupt" the normal curriculum so that students might
gain a greater understanding of how white and male supremacy is
instituted and sustained in American society. She then explained
how predominant public narratives of motherhood and mothering in
the United States invariably obscure the impact of race and class
on maternal experience, and reflexive characterizations of motherhood
as a uniform experience based on white, middle class norms -- particularly
the assumption that all women in today's society have an identical
array of "choices" regarding whether, when and under what
circumstances they will become mothers -- effectively erase or render
illegitimate the material and maternal realities of poor mothers,
mothers of color, non-married mothers, young mothers, disabled mothers,
queer mothers and many others who don't conform to culturally-defined
standards of maternal fitness.
During an energetic discussion of changing representations of poor
mothers over the last three generations, Solinger related that from
the mid-1930s to mid-1940s, the American press offered a relatively
sympathetic portrait of poor mothers, who were typically depicted
as white, married (but parted from their children's fathers by death,
desertion or misfortune) and non-employed. In the post-Depression
era, public assistance to needy families -- from which African American
families were systematically barred -- was primarily seen as means
of keeping white mothers who were down on their luck out of the
labor force. Solinger suggested that social tensions ignited by
the civil rights movement contributed to a transformation the public
face of poverty in the 1960s, when poor mothers were more often
portrayed non-white and less deserving, even though rates of poverty
and race were unchanged. In the 1980s, the media recast poor mothers
into the caricature of the "welfare queen" -- women who
were almost always pictured as Black or brown, unmarried, sexually
promiscuous, socially irresponsible and out to exploit the system.
Today, Solinger concluded, welfare is used as "a form of degradation"
and poverty is commonly understood to be "the wages of bad
choice making." While race remains a factor in the cultural
image of America's poor, the failure of marginalized women to be
"discriminating choosers" -- particularly in the expression
of their fertility -- foregrounds the U.S. poverty debate.
Loretta
Ross proposed that race and class are always at the center of
reproductive politics and, as did Solinger, emphasized the importance
of recognizing racism as a dynamic of power inequities rather than
a matter of individual orientation. Ross discussed the necessity
of acknowledging the complex history and function of white supremacy,
which she defined as an "interlocking ideology" that
incorporates racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ableism and other
systemic biases which exclude or oppress groups of people. "You
can't understand women of color's activism without understanding
how white supremacy affects women of color's reproductive politics,"
Ross announced, and she stressed that white supremacy shapes ideology
on both left and right ends of the political spectrum. For example,
Ross noted that conservative and neo-conservative rhetoric has historically
problematized the fertility of poor women and women of color and
promoted efforts to regulate it. But she also observed that the
pro-choice movement, which remains the centerpiece of the women's
rights agenda, has been ill at ease with the position that poor
women of color have an equal right to be a mother as well as the
right not to be one. "Pro-choice language is alienating"
to women of color, Ross explained, because "it's all about
her fertility, and not her life." Rather than focusing on a
single legal or policy solution to guarantee the reproductive rights
of women in marginalized communities, the Reproductive Justice movement
led by Ross and other forward-thinking reproductive health activists
locates the right of women of color to reproductive freedom and
self-determination in a larger framework that marries principles
of social justice, reproductive rights and human rights.
Other highlights of the 2005 ARM conference included a presentation
by O'Reilly
on her analysis of mothering as a site of power and resistance in
the work of Toni Morrison, and a Friday evening keynote address
by Dorothy Roberts on racial injustice
in the child welfare system. Roberts, author of Shattered Bonds:
The Color of Child Welfare and Killing the Black Body,
reported that nationwide, children of color are four times more
likely to be foster care than white children; in some regions African
American and Native American children are dramatically over-represented
in the foster care system in proportion to their presence in the
population. "This reflects a tremendous dissolution of Black
families," Roberts said, and she pointed out that as more Black
than white children entered the child welfare system, spending priorities
shifted from providing in-home services and support for at-risk
families to moving more children into foster care and fast-tracking
termination of parental rights to free children for adoption. The
level of intervention by the child welfare system in poor African
American communities is both racist and punitive, Roberts warned,
and requires serious attention from feminist activists. "The
voices of mothers of children in foster care are lost," she
said, and added that these women and families "need the support
of a bigger movement."
Over the course of the conference, break-out sessions covered the
topics of transnational mothering; motherhood, race and culture
in literature; interdisciplinary perspectives on mothering (including
a discussion of racialized images of mothers in Disney films and
the language of maternal power in hip hop lyrics); mothering and
work/mothering as work; historic and international perspectives
on motherhood and poverty; bi-racial mothering; experiences of immigrant
mothers; and the complexities of race, ethnicity and culture in
infertility, childbirth and postpartum depression. Many presentations
and the dialogs that followed offered interesting and original insights
into the diversity of maternal experience and the intersections
of motherhood, race and class and women's social inequality in historical
and contemporary contexts. The weekend also provided an opportunity
for conference-goers to connect with like-minded mothers and scholars
-- it was my personal pleasure to meet and talk with several MMO
readers and contributors who also attended.
ARM has scheduled two conferences for 2006: a Mother's Day symposium
on Carework
and Caregiving (May 5-7), and the Tenth Annual Conference --
"The
Motherlode: A Complete Celebration of Motherhood" -- in
October. Rumor has it that the Motherlode conference will be the
mother of all motherhood events, and O'Reilly and the ARM staff
are planning to invite prominent keynote speakers from each of the
nine previous conferences. Calls for submissions for both conferences
are currently open -- more information about upcoming ARM events,
new and back issues of the ARM journal and membership rates can
be found on the York University Centre
for Research on Mothering website. mmo : november 2005 |
