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Mommy Wars: This is Why Women aren’t Equal


Dr.Phil pimped the never-ending, though completely effective tool in the continuing subtle subjugation of women, working mom versus stay at home mom “discussion” on yesterday’s episode.

I didn’t see the episode but for this clip. I didn’t follow the Tweetie skirmish. I did follow a bit of the conversation at Jessica Gottlieb’s blog. Yes, the Jessica in the clip. I didn’t learn anything new. I didn’t hear anything I haven’t heard for a decade or more. The argument is tired and ultimately pointless. Why? Because women are idiots. We let ourselves be diverted and distracted like Homer Simpson and with a sprinkled donut.

Watching this Dr. Phil clip and reading the comments on Jessica’s blog just adds to my conviction that women will never be equal on any playing field with men as long as we willingly divide ourselves. Men don’t have to use sexist practices against us. We do it ourselves.

Stay at Home or Work? Diet/exercise or accept fat? Age gracefully or wage war against every wrinkle, peeling them off with our teeth in our en suite if necessary.

Women don’t have the skill set to be a coherent group working towards a common goal. We are mommies or not. Marrieds or singles. Straight or lesbian. White or Black or Asian or Hispanic or Aboriginal. We simply cannot accept that women come in a variety of flavors and leave it at that.

“This mommy war thing is another example of why men rule and women are forever second class,” I said to Rob. “I mean, would men argue about what makes one man a better father than another?”

“No,” Rob said, “if fact it wouldn’t even occur to a man that this would be a topic needing discussion.”

Because when it gets down to it, mommy wars are really part of the larger debate on what it is to be a woman. What defines womanhood? The natural default – imposed on us by religion and culture – is vagina and uterine based.

Am I not more than an incubator with a cunt? This seems to be all that is truly required from my by society. That I continually service others and forget that God (or whoever) gave me a working brain too.

Men, by and large, accept that being a man takes on many forms and that at the end of the day they are united as one gender fighting for the greater advantage of themselves as a group. Of course, they don’t have to wage too strenuous a battle in the western world because women are obligingly taking each other out one subdivided group at a time.

I have played on both sides of the mommy street. The grass is the same shade of green though how green and lush is more dependent on the luck of the socio-economic draw than anything else.

I think what I object most to in this current debate is the fact that motherhood today is being perverted into a child worshipping thing that it was never intended to be. My mother lacked most of the modern conveniences of her day due to my Dad’s cheap nature and the fact that we were solidly lower-middle class descended from farmers. Mom worked. Hard. And she took care of us kids but she didn’t drool over us or think that she’d fulfilled some Lord of the Rings like quest by becoming a mother. I can only recall one mother on my block who parented from a child-centered view, and no one wanted to play with her daughter because she was entitled and had clearly spent too much time being treated as a mini-adult.

My grandmothers worked too. They were farmers. Kids were tended to until they could be tended by older siblings and elderly relatives, or could fend a bit for themselves, and the days were filled with chores. Work. Really hard work.

The idea that women have to choose between work and motherhood hasn’t really existed until the last few decades. And what a boon that has been for those determined to set the clock back on feminism and equal rights. They’ve barely had to lift a finger – just scream “stay at home or work” in a crowded Target (because here is our only touch point – shopping – and why isn’t that common ground enough for us to all just get along?)

I loved Dr. Phil’s comeback line for the beleaguered working mom,

“Step off.”

Because it gets right back to the heart of the matter. This isn’t an important issue. Health care is an important issue. The rising tide of fascism in America is an important issue. The fact that our daughters are being inoculated for HPV while our sons – the equal carriers of the virus are not – is a real issue. The fact that gays are still not afforded the right to marriage despite the fact that it is a state sanctioned function and clearly a violation of equal rights – that is an important issue. We are ramping up a war in Afghanistan to fight terrorists who aren’t there – big issue.

But women are notoriously shallow and unable to leave our high school musical days behind us, and so we glom onto any trivial issue to perpetuate the heated rivalry of days of yore.

We are idiots.

Letters From Widowed Readers


I don’t get much feedback from widowed people on the grief-related articles and posts I write. There are times when my blog stats show an unusually high level of activity for the oldest posts or those that are specifically tagged young widow or death of a spouse. I get a lot of searches on dating and remarriage in general or specifically relating to widowhood. But no one comments and I never know who these readers are or what brought them to my blog.

Sometimes I get emails though and usually they detail the person’s loss and what they are currently experiencing. I always write back. I remember what it was like when I was the only young widowed person I knew. It’s very lonely and isolating. It’s a near constant out of body experience in some ways. At least it was for me.

Which is the point of this post. I only know widowhood and remarriage from my own point of view. I can only tell you how I felt, what I did and what the outcomes of my actions and beliefs were. There is a list of the most common touch-points where losing a spouse is concerned, but that’s all it is. A list. Not even carved in stone or handed to people by an ordained prophet.

Rob likes to half joke that most rules and laws are merely guidelines and that the thoughtful person is wise to remember that when applying or ignoring them. My years in the classroom back this idea up for the most part. Rules/laws are designed for people who don’t – for whatever reason – think before acting or speaking and for those who are heedless of the fact that the world is made up of a lot of other people whose existences should be credited and considered.

I received an email the other day from a widowed person who’d read my piece on DoubleX about remarriage. This person was recently widowed this past summer and found him/herself in a relationship now with an old friend. Not something anticipated or sought, it just happened.

Back on Ye Ole Widda Board there is a particularly annoying woman who rails against the notion that a relationship can simply happen without conscious effort on the part of two people – but since she is mostly full of her own self-importance, I will almost respectfully disagree. I know when I was a truly single girl, I hated being told that relationships come – not to those who wait, but to those who aren’t really paying any attention at all. I still don’t like to admit that for most people, this is true. All that’s required for a relationship to “just happen” is an openness to the idea and being in the right place at the right time. This widowed person was at a social gathering, struck up an old acquaintance and soon found there was more to be had. And that indeed does happen though I think that love is a place where two people land after the initial excitement and overall wonderlicious giddiness rather than someplace they fall.

This person wanted to know if there were others who’ve experienced the arrival of a new love on the heels of the loss of a spouse. And I assured him/her that it has happened. Some worked out. Some didn’t. The odds are the same for the widowed as the never widowed really. Being widowed young isn’t a special handicap, it’s just a different life experience than most people are handed these days.

I was telling Rob about the email and I admitted that I am not comfortable giving advice on the subject of falling in love again or remarrying. A shocking admission, especially to those who think they know me from the widda board days. Back then I was quick to defend those who dated and seriously recoupled, but not for the reasons people ascribed to me. And it really had nothing to do with my own situation or a belief that remarriage was the gold standard for healing. Grief isn’t healed. It’s incorporated into who you are. And if you believe that being partnered is important for you to be the best you can be then that is your truth. Why it would matter to anyone else is beyond me.

In my reply I mentioned that I felt that grieving and falling in love again were separate issues. One really has nothing to do with the other although like most things in life, they will affect each other on occasion.

I always think that making a new relationship a priority through communication – especially of expectations and needs – is crucial, but that is true regardless of circumstances. As is the fact that a person’s intimate relationships are not a matter of public debate nor should outside input be allowed unless specifically requested and then with the understanding that it might be completely disregarded.

And I was honest with this person about how hard it is to fall in love again. It is not for the flowers and paper hearts crowd because there is real work involved. Of course, anyone who thinks love’s basis is romance and chemistry should steer clear of it, in my opinion.

I am not wise. I have lived through a lot of things. Some experiences have made me a better person and some are simply events that have added to the body of who I am.

I pointed the reader in the direction of some blogs and the widda boards (with a cautionary note there because at Ye Ole Widda Board, early daters are routinely fileted – flayed? – by the Widda’s Who Protest Too Much) and wished him/her luck. Not because I think luck is needed. Relationships succeed or fail based on two people’s ability to parlay mutual attraction and interests past the biology that blinkers us all. No, I wished him/her luck because that’s what you do. Share your experiences and allow people to learn from their own.

Blogging For Money


I haven’t got the contract yet, but I am almost officially writing for money on an education blog that is in the launching stages at Care2. I found out about the opportunity via the SVM Network, which is where 50 Something Moms blog originates. One of the editors at Care2 was looking for teachers who were interested in writing about education issues and I raised my hand in a cyber-like way via email. A short exchange and a phone interview later, I was offered a job that pays per post – not a lot – but with opportunities to boost my bottom line via page views and comments.

The editor was a bit embarrassed about the pay, but as I have been blogging for little but personal gratification and the chance to get my name out, I was happy for any writing opportunity that wasn’t based on a barter system. I am not enamored at all of the way bloggers exchange posts for stuff/free product. A little too colonial for my tastes. However, I am aware that the practice of giving away content – as I do here on WordPress and for the SVM – drips of indentured servitude as well.  I try to view the time at Moms Speak Up and Care2 as internships. I was writing for publications. I had to interview and submit writing samples. I was not self-publishing.  They are valid mentions when discussing my experience as a writer.

“What would you write about if you were to blog for the site today,” she asked me.

“Reform,” I replied, going on to explain my background and how much of my career was more cutting edge than a person might expect for a middle school teacher in Des Moines, Iowa.

I might roll my eyes a bit when the next new great and wonderful thing in education is something I have seen under a different name twice already, but I am a firm believer in pushing the envelope and was nearly always one of the first early adopters of things that moved the profession and the level of my teaching forward. Next to current events and politics, there is nothing that works me up more than education reform. There is an editor at the Des Moines Register who will be glad I have my own forum now because perhaps I will leave hers alone.

This is a real job though. It’s not going to be just me spouting my opinion – although I will be opinionated because I can’t help it most of the time. I am going to need to read and fact check and find sources. I began my college career as  a journalism major, ironically, and now I am back around to the beginning. I am committed to one post a week. I have a one post minimum every two weeks at 50 Something still. There is the memoir, and NaNoWriMo, to contend with too. If there was doubt about my status as a writer, this puts it to rest. I am a writer and soon I will have a paycheck for the governments of Canada and The United States to fight over to prove it.