| MMO:
What is the “Playground Revolution,” and how
do you think it can change the lives of mothers, fathers and families
in the U.S.?
Miriam Peskowitz: The
playground revolution is when we start seeing our individual troubles
as part of something larger, start taking seriously our roles as
citizens in our society, and we start figuring out how to make change.
MMO: You write that—
as a “daughter of feminism”— leaving your full-time
job for motherhood “went against everything I thought life
should be.” But you quickly add that feminism is not really
the problem. Even so, many mothers of our generation feel either
shortchanged by feminism or like they are “letting down the
team” when they discover it’s virtually impossible to
be an “ideal worker” and a hands-on mother at the same
time. What’s happening here, and does feminism have a place
in the “Playground Revolution”?
Miriam Peskowitz: In it’s biggest, broadest, most critical and most utopian
sense feminism still gives us the tools for understanding the plight
of mothers and fathers who parent. When mothers tell me that they
and their husbands had such a mutual relationship before children,
and now they feel they’ve sprung back to a mythic 1950s, feminism
is the only model we have for explaining the gender dynamics of
family life. When a mother tells me that she’s struggling
with a boss who tells her outright that he can’t promote her
because he knows her children are her first priority, feminism helps,
and feminist legal precedents will help if she has to take her workplace
issue to court (though feminism may not help explain why said boss
is stupid enough to be so blatant).
Feminism has many versions and forms. Some are more or less helpful.
Lots of bad-intentioned stereotypes have been slapped onto it; feminism
has been the whipping-girl of the right wing. I still think that
at core, and in the new feminism we are creating as we reflect on
our lives as mothers, feminism offers helpful explanations. And
it connects explanation with a history of activism, of many different
types, from personal resistance and creative ways to live a life,
to local activism, to writing, to large-scale policy and legal change.
And that’s important. Some of what has been missing is that
many of us who are now becoming mothers can barely remember the
decades when our society was more activist, and able to imagine
great shifts in what it meant to be a woman, or a man. I’m
40, I was born in 1964. My first political memory is in the early
seventies. I was in Cambridge, MA, visiting my aunt, when President
Nixon resigned, and we walked outside to see everyone out on the
street, marching. Political signs were everywhere. It made quite
an impression. But I think that the younger we are, paradoxically
the more entitled we feel as women, and the less able we are to
think about how we work to change society.
MMO: What would you
most like readers to take away from your book?
Miriam Perskowitz: I hope the book feels like a Mom’s Night Out where you drink
a few beers, talk honestly with your girlfriends, hear what they
have to say about their lives, and laugh. The moms at my Atlanta
playground used to try and go out once a month, and I treasured
these evenings. I went home feeling buoyed by camaraderie among
us, and felt supported by friends. It’s in this spirit that
I wrote the book, since personally, we need friends, and politically,
we can’t make change alone. I hope after reading the book
a reader wants to tell these stories to her friends, and wants to
track down my blog, www.playgroundrevolution.com and write a note about what she’s thinking about, or be so
inspired by the stories of how small groups of mothers successfully
accomplished small change, that they write and tell me similar stories.
I hope this book can help start a new, national conversation about
motherhood, and that readers will walk away feeling they have something
to contribute to that.
And here’s something even more specific. We need things to
change, and that means taking ourselves seriously as citizens. Sometimes
we mothers can’t take ourselves seriously, and we don’t
take our answers seriously. But who else will understand what we
need? We know that we women can vote, but we don’t always
act as if we are central to the national good. When we’re
talking with friends, or thinking to ourselves about solutions that
will make life better, these ideas deserve a voice. When you read
an offensive Mommy Wars newspaper article or op-ed, write to the
editor. I’m amazed that almost every time the New York Times
publishes a motherhood op-ed, and they don’t do this often,
and they’re rarely very good, many readers write back to criticize.
The letters are often smarter and more sophisticated than the original
piece. Mothers, fathers, parents should feel more empowered to speak
out loud and to see how their voices travel from the playground
into public.
Instead of seething at home, or judging other mothers, let yourself
feel the frustration. Then call your local statehouse representative,
tell them you’re a constituent, that you vote, and that you
wonder what they’re doing to help mothers. If this makes you
nervous, pretend you’re just calling to complain about a pothole
on your street. You don’t have to have the answers. Just ask
the question, and tell your story with detail. After all, they’re
paid to listen to us and make our lives better, right? Hear what
they have to say, and respond. If they have nothing to say, tell
them these issues matter to you. Then, the next day while the kids
are napping, take another five minutes and dial your representative
to the United States Congress, and do the same. And then dial your
states’ two senators, and ask their staff people, and see
what they have to say. When you’re done with them, call your
county commissioner, and your city council members, and your mayor.
And just ask them the question: What are you doing to help mothers?
Then, get all your friends to do the same. Take notes, and when
you’re done, write an op-ed piece describing this quest for
your local paper.
When our elected officials start hearing from their office staff
that mothers are calling in droves, they’ll start to show
some attention. If politicians start paying attention to more equity
and support for mothers, journalists will start to report it, and
bosses and workplace managers will feel some heat, and they’ll
become more amenable to creative work/family balance solutions that
make life better.
And if it’s
hard to pick up the phone, just remember what my friend Elizabeth
always says: when it comes down to political action, it’s
better to feel slightly ridiculous than totally passive. To quote
another friend, Liz, we must play to win.
mmo : april 2005
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