Feminist Parenting
I am posting this essay that I wrote for my writing class here and, once I am excepted back as a member, in two feminist communities. I was once a member of both community, but left them because my issues as a feminist parent were continually devalued. I conltinue to watch these communites as people continue to have these dicussions within them and each time topic resinates the question, "What does parenting have to do with feminism?" The best way that I know how to explain things is to put them into context through tails of my own experience...
Parenting Posse
Community is no longer defined by the people with in your immediate surroundings. In today’s communication age, due to such tools as e-mail, blogging, on-line journals, chat rooms, and many others, communities have strong bonds of contact. In opening new avenues and means of communication, internationally, people have redefined the term “community.” Now, community and more about interaction, common cause and communication than it is based on physical presents. I belong to many communities: the black community, the queer community, but the most important to me is my role in my feminist parenting community. I could not imagine my life as a parent without a strong group of like minded friends and family who were also parents or care deeply about my children, the children of others and how this directly relates to feminism.
The birth of my son, Dag, was a pivotal moment in my life, of course. This event had a surreal impact on me in the sense of my understanding of the importance of community. My decision to give birth to my son was not made lightly. I did not just wake up one day, at sixteen years old, and say to myself, “Hey, I think I should get knocked up!” I was idealistic and frivolous. I had high expectations of life; and yet, I did not think that the desired goals required much effort. I knew I wanted to live outside of California and obtain a large piece of property. I even knew I wanted children eventually. But more so, I knew that I wanted my friends, with whom I had spent my formidable years actively trying to make a change in the way the world views differences and women, to be there as well. My mother always said, paraphrasing John Lennon, “Life is what happens when you’re making plans.” This was never truer than when I laid on that filthy high school boy’s mattress next to his snoring body that I did not love; staring at the ceiling covered in posters and his drawings wondering what new event just occurred inside me and then denying it. But love is an amazing thing. Amazing, both, in how it can sometimes exist amid a woman and the undeveloped person inside her and how non-existent it can be within the boy who help create it. Love also can be a great basis to a community. I gave birth to my son not with a partner, but with the presents and love of my friends and family. As I forced my child out into the air, my mother, two aunts and fifteen friends pushed with me in the hospital. This is not a journey to be taken alone; yet, it does not require a partner, and just as it is equally it is impossible to raise a child alone. My son is now eight and has the benefited from the love and nurturing of such a community. Because of this he is developing into a nurturing, understanding and righteous feminist man. A partner can be a vital source of cooperative parenting; however, if this is not an available means of support or two parents simply desire a communal approach, many parents turn to friends, family and other parents who understand their views and concerns to assist them in the raising of their children.
When Michael, my partner of four years, and I decided to have another baby we were of the impression, given by our insurance company, that a home birth would fall under our medical coverage. It was not until our third visit with the midwives that we found that our insurance did not cover “lay midwives,” only nurse practitioner midwives. But, we found that most nurse practitioners do not condone home births and are deeply immersed in western medicine; therefore, treating childbirth and pregnancy as a condition rather than a natural occurrence. My parenting friend, of home deliveries and hospital deliveries, knew of my bad experience while giving birth to my son in the hospital; they identified with wanting to give birth at home under my own control. A healthy birth would cost us twenty-four hundred dollars with the midwifery; if we when with the hospital or NP midwife it would cost the insurance company forty-five hundred dollars and our deductible and the compromise would have been comparable to the cost of the birthing centers fee.. Michael’s parents lent us nineteen hundred dollars, but we still had more to make up. I talked with my friends, Michelle and Valentine, about my dilemma with the insurance company. The three of us had been working on a safe sex workshop for the Women’s Health Collective (WHC). Michelle and I founded the WHC and had been running it for the past three and a half years. In the WHC we held monthly workshops and meetings, open to the public, about resources and discussions for women and trans folk designed for people to obtain and share information and experiences with alternative, DIY, low-cost and free healthcare and other resources concerning such topics as sexual/domestic violence, reproductive concerns, pregnancy, mothering, and mental health. Michelle, giving birth once herself in a hospital, suggested an illegal fund raiser at her house. The fund raiser was called “Booze for Babies.” We sold homemade vegan soul food, southern iced tea and Papst Blue Ribbon. The event raised five hundred twenty-eight dollars. As a community of feminist women and mothers, everyone came together for one cause; that cause was a woman’s right to experience a natural childbirth and keeping the control of her body in her hands, not the hands of doctors.
I had decided that I wanted to go back to school and could no longer dedicate so much of my time to the WHC and divide the rest between my family and school. The safe sex workshop was to be my last one. For the first time we held two separate workshop. The first for men, which was an intense lecture on identifying self privilege and defining sexual acts and assault and steps to preventing sexual assault by clearly receiving a “yes” response to sexual acts, and the second was open to all self identifying females which covered many topics of safe sex. At the second meeting I met a woman named Marianne. She had over heard me talking about the ridiculous cost of child birth and my lack of funds. She told me that she was a doula, a doula is a female responsible for assisting a mother during and after labor, and she could help me with some supplies. She came to my house with a box of books, such as “Birthing From Within,” and tinctures, teas, compresses and many other invaluable supplies. We kept in touch and she eventually became a part of my community.
The day my daughter was born, I woke up at three in the morning to take my husband to pick up a refrigerated rental truck. His work truck was broken and it would be days before it was finished. I was tired of being pregnant. My son, husband and I rolled into the car and I dropped Michael of at the car and truck rental on Columbia Street. It was August second; I was two weeks over due. I had been crying all night from exhaustion; I was exhausted from the heat, from the weight and waiting, and with people giving unsolicited advice. On the way back home I started to feel contractions. So, instead of going home I decided to take my son to breakfast and ignore the labor instead.
We went to the Cricket Café for a leisurely breakfast. I had to stop eating every few bites and curl into my contractions for five to ten minutes. My son kept telling me that I would be fine and that he was very excited. I still did not think I was having the baby. Braxton Hicks had fooled me enough times to teach me to not get my hoes up. Afterwards, Dag and I went to the grocery store and bought things to make soup and bread for midwife, friends and family upon their arrival. When we arrived at home I called Michellene at work to tell her my contractions were ten minutes apart, but not to come over yet. Michellene was my friend who was acting as my lay doula. I then called my husband and told him the same, that my contractions were close and not to come home. Michael, sensing the denial in my voice, came home anyhow.
Michael walked in and tried to console me. Being I needed no consoling, he busied himself around the house, doing dishes, mopping the kitchen floor, making space for the birthing tub, what ever he could do to keep his mind from reeling bad scenarios. Periodically, he would check in on me, only to find me rearranging furniture as Dag busied his thumbs on the GameBoy. This would upset him but instead of arguing a losing battle he would pick up the other end of the furniture or the whole piece saying, “Where do you want it?”
Soon, Michellene showed up. She took one look at me and said I was five minutes apart. I told them I was leaving to take Dag to art camp and Michellene insisted she come with me. I drove down town to the PNCA, contracting and grunting the whole way, scarring Michellene. When I dropped Dag off I told him that I promised not to have the baby before he got back. At home Michael’s calm exterior masked the fear and turmoil swirling around within him.
Michellene and I decided to play a game of Scrabble. In between plays I would bend and groan as Michellene kept track of my contractions. She would occasionally ask me how far apart I thought they were and every time I would answer, “Five minutes!” We made words like penis, hormone, semen, horny and fetus. Towards the end of our game I had a large contraction. Michellene looked at me disagreeably, “That was no five minutes! Do you want to call your midwife now?” I grumbled “Just finish the game!” back at her. I played the best game of my life; I beat her with a whopping 256 points. By then it was time to pick up Dag and I knew it was a bad idea. Michellene volunteered to pick him up so we called Thea, Michellene’s eleven year old daughter, and Ali, my friend visiting from Texas, to tell them to come over.
When Michellene returned with Dag, Thea and Ali had already arrived by the MAX and I had called the midwives. While I folded laundry with Michael and Michellene, Ali and the kids set up a tent in the backyard, eating veggie jerky and vegan marshmallows. I often paused to walk around followed by Michellene or Michael. They would let me put the weight of my body on them as I let out long moans. As Ali left to take the kids for a walk the midwives came up the front steps. I shuffled around the house, trying to be a good hostess, offering drinks, food or something to read. We filled the birthing tub and I got in. I labored hard for ten minutes and asked Michael to get in. He slipped in behind my back. As I contracted I pinned him against the wall of the tub. Thirteen minutes later Holland was born. My daughter lay on my chest, without breath, like a noodle. “Sing to your baby,” Laura said. I sang her a song by Mia Doi Todd, “Today not age made for maddens. But, you are the age of a madden...” Holland took a deep breath and cried. Suddenly Ali and the children walked up panting. They said they heard me and started running. We moved the baby, Michael and me to a futon mattress on the floor. Dag weighed the placenta and helped examine it for healthy signs. We all watched at the midwives weighed and measured our new member of the community. Michellene made soup and bread. We stayed up late watching Holland sleep and twitch.
The nest day Michellene came back. She straightened up the house and made our family dinner. The next day my friend, Lynn, and her daughter, Avalon, came over and did the same. The day after that, Maria and her daughter, Ramona, came over and did the same and the next day Sara and Jake came. Everyday, for a week, friends and family poured into our home to help. The birth of my daughter was a success due to the dedication of my community. Without them, I may have had my rights as a woman and a mother stripped away by the institutions of western medicine.
Now our family lives communally with Michellene and her daughter. We cook meals together, watch each others children and treat one other as family. Michellene is my sister, just as Thea is Dag and Holland’s sister. As a parent, it is virtually impossible to survive and function in this society without the support and understanding of other parents and friends of the same morals and concerns; the support of ones family is a welcome bonus. It is important to have a community to share knowledge, share reasonability and swap horror stories, to help each other understand that we are not alone in their frustrations and fears of parenting. In my feminist parenting community my role is constantly evolving and changing as my child grows along with my experiences and knowledge. I am a mother, a teacher, a nanny, an aunt an advisor and friend. Our community consists of mothers, fathers, grandmothers, parents who have given their children up for adoption, women and men who have never experienced birth or do not have children, doulas, midwives, adolescence, queers and straight; yet, each one of us has a deep concern and respect for our children their future impact on this crumbling world. In this community we are there when a baby is born, we care for it and raise it with their parent/parents as if it were our own and support that family in every facetted possible, because my community understand that it takes a village to raise a child.
Global Parenting
In a global context, my community is responsible for raising progressive, enlighten and open-minded adults. As the people of this world continually destroy the world turn a blind eye to the building of an international elitist community of money grubbing war mongers, it is left to the parents of the next generation to arm our children with the political and social tools in order to, one day, grow up and withstand the societal turmoil and tear down the corporate ladders, which our hypocritical tyrant government contributed to creating, under which we all reside as humans. We raise our children without hate, aid them in developing clear eyes, and provide them with truth which is something that most adults shun from. We do this because our children, and our children’s children, deserve a life unsoiled by deception, war and a constant feeling of anger or despair. By raising our children this way the hope is that they will find their own way to wake the common people of this world from their slumber of oppression.
Feminist parenting is not exclusive, it is open to anyone willing to share love and contribute to a better future.
Happy Mother’s Day!