National Agenda for Motherhood is the Focus of Barnard Conference
Prominent Feminists and Motherhood Advocates Discuss Maternal Feminism Oct. 29

Contact: Petra Tuomi, The Barnard Office of Public Affairs, 212-854-7907

New York, NY, October 31, 2002— Feminist leaders and advocates for an emerging motherhood movement opened a conversation at Barnard College on how the women’s movement can be expanded to a new focus on mothers who are at home raising children.

Organized by The Motherhood Project for the Institute for American Values and The Barnard Center for Research on Women, the conference, titled Maternal Feminism: Lessons for a 21st Century Motherhood Movement, was initiated by Enola Aird, Barnard Class of 1976 and director of The Motherhood Project. The goal was to discuss how motherhood fits into the vision of a liberated life for women today in a society which, according to the organizers, sends an unmistakable message that childrearing is less valued than a paying job.

This sentiment was echoed throughout the conference in the remarks of the speakers, including Jean Bethke Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago; Kim Gandy, President of the National Organization for Women (NOW); authors Ann Crittenden and Sylvia Ann Hewlett, and Janet Giele, Professor of Public Policy at Brandeis University. The participants agree that there is a need for new policies and economic and cultural reforms to benefit all mothers. The moderator of the event was Peggy O’Mara, editor of Mothering Magazine.

The "Call to a Motherhood Movement," a manifesto drafted by Aird and The Mothers’ Council, was released by the Rev. Dr. Eileen Lindner, deputy general secretary of the National Council of Churches and a member of the Mothers’ Council. Lindner, who described the "Call" as a "bill of particulars," said, "The timing for the release was appropriate, not just because of the 36th anniversary of the first conference of NOW, but because this is the "perfect storm moment for feminism." She added that the "Call" was issued now because motherhood is increasingly viewed as the lowest state by society, even by some of its practitioners. Lindner urged the audience and panelists to come together for the well-being of all, especially children.

Barnard College President Judith Shapiro, in her opening remarks, made reference to a recent New York magazine cover story, "Who’s The Better Mom?" The article argued that there is a growing conflict between stay-at-home mothers and working mothers and that instead of blaming corporate America for "stingy unpaid maternity leaves…(they are) unleashing their resentment and suspicion on one another." Shapiro said, "Whether or not you actually believe this claim is relevant, what we should pay attention to are the inadequate societal and corporate policies that are set for mothers."

Aird gave an impassioned speech on the need for a motherhood movement not only to improve working conditions for mothers, but to go beyond the economics to improve living conditions. She made the case for the value of the non-quantifiable aspects of motherhood. "We need," she said, "to value the non-measurables of loving, nurturing, and caring for children."

"We need to tame the reach of the money world and extend the reach of the mother world," Aird said.

In a society in which family and civic involvement are not as strong as they used to be, mothers need to lead a movement that can counter the increasingly powerful influence of the values of the money world in our lives. Aird said, "We spend more and more time as workers and consumers and less and less as mothers, fathers, family members, neighbors, and citizens."

In the first of three panels, Giele, a pioneering sociologist, gave an overview of the historical background of the feminist movement, dating back to the 1848 Declaration of Rights by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others. She urged the audience to study the roots of feminism to better understand today’s struggles. She said in the past 30 to 50 years as women sought equal rights, the focus turned away from motherhood. "Feminism became the enemy of motherhood," Giele said. "Since the 70’s women thought that they could have it all, but suddenly realized when they had children that their lives could be limited." Giele agreed that now is the "perfect storm moment" for women to act. "Women are now more educated, poised and higher-achieving than ever to be able to change the world," she said, suggesting better childcare, parental leave, and greater flexibility on the job.

Another historic overview, with an insightful look at the ideas of early feminist Jane Addams, was given by Elshtain, who recently published a book, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy (Basic Books 2002). "The question whether maternal feminism is feminism depends on how one understands feminism," Elshtain said.

Jane Addams was one of the first to approach the question of maternal feminism and struggled with the issue of family claim versus social claim and how to enter the social claim without abandoning the other. Elshtain spoke of "civic housekeeping," a term coined by Addams, which encompassed the health, well-being and education of children. Elshtain said, "In light of Jane Addams, maternal feminism brings together the family claim and social claim."

Hewlett, founder of the National Parenting Organization and author of the widely publicized book, Creating Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children (Miramax 2002), described her own working class background and how the women’s movement had led her to a degree at Cambridge University and later a doctorate.

She started her career at Barnard in the late ‘70s as an assistant professor of economics at a time when it was difficult to both have children and gain tenure in the academy. "I had the tools to handle a career but not the tools for what it took to have a full-time career and be a mother."

In the late 1980s, Hewlett began to study why women paid such a high price for motherhood in the United States, on the average losing 20 percent of their earnings, which she said was not the case in European countries. In 1986 she published a book, A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women’s Liberation in America (William Morrow 1986). Hewlett said that Creating Life was nearly accidental. She was asked by The Harvard Business Review to conduct a study of 20 high-achieving women who had benefited from the strides of the feminism movement, including opera singer Jessye Norman and journalist Diane Sawyer. "After my initial interviews, I found it remarkable that 15 of these women had no children. I wanted to know: was this a choice they made or was there something different going on? I found that there was a sense of anguish and unfairness that many of these women felt, surrounded by men who needed not to choose."

Hewlett then launched a survey across the U.S. of over 500 40-year-old women who made at least $45,000 a year. "The survey found that 42 percent of these women had no children and only 14 percent by choice. "The more a woman earns, the more likely it is that she is alone. The more a man earns, the more likely it is that he has all kinds of wives and kids." Hewlett concluded: "Something has to be done about this by the private sector and by the government."

Gandy countered Hewlett’s statistics with another survey of 34 million women, 3.8 million of whom qualified as "high achieving." This survey found that high-achieving women were just as likely to be happily married as other working women. Both high- achieving women and other working women were also equally likely to have children, 74 percent in each group. However, high-achieving women were less likely to have children outside of marriage.

An analysis of the statistics done by The American Prospect said, "We need more high- achieving women, not less."

Voicing frustration with what she felt was unnecessarily combative language in the "Call," Gandy claimed that the "mommy war" was a concept mainly created by the media. She called attention to NOW’s achievements, such as the Family Medical Leave Act, and her accomplishments while president of NOW in Louisiana, which included the first domestic violence act and the first child support law in America.

"NOW, if you remember, coined the phrase, ‘Every mother is a working mother,’ " she said.

During the question-and-answer session following Gandy’s comments, her views were echoed by some in the audience and the discussion helped clarify what is meant by motherhood. Lindner explained that it is "not meant to be exclusionary, but as a metaphor."

"Parenting is an activity still primarily engaged in by women," said Aird. "We have no problem with men or fathers being a part of it, but women who are mothers should have a place to say the things they need to say."

Leslie Calman, the former Director of The Center for Research on Women at Barnard, expressed her concern about presenting motherhood as a focus for feminism. "We could be talking about the needs of parents, we could be talking about the caregivers. All kinds of caring labor is devalued in our society and feminists should be working to support women in the broadest possible way."
"Instead of having it all, why are women expected to do it all?," Gandy asked.

Hewlett cited statistics that the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have the highest rates of childlessness in the world and also have the least amount of parenting leave. As a result, "a market-driven employment policy and a traditional division of labor at home, there is little opportunity for mothers to balance their lives," Hewlett said.

Hewlett argued that the women’s movement has not succeeded in creating coalitions for family support. "This situation has forced an effective choice between motherhood and a career. Welfare reform has forced mothers to work an average of 74 hours per week," she said.

Crittenden and Aird discussed the issues necessary to be addressed in the motherhood movement. Crittenden, who wrote a book, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued, said, "The main cause of poverty in the United States is motherhood."
She called for a 35-hour work week and ending mandatory overtime. One of the mothers Crittenden interviewed for her book told of starting a job as a manager at a department store, and two months into working there, was told she had to work nights and weekends. When she said she could not do that because she had a six-year-old son at home, she was fired.

"America only pays lip service to family values," Crittenden said.

She also cited numerous studies that link human capital, which has been shown to constitute 60 percent of the national wealth, with the first three or four years of a child’s life. Investing in the youngest children for the good of the nation, she concluded, means investing in the people who raise them, which almost always means their mothers. "Life does not begin at Head Start," she said. "It begins at home."

Instead of giving aid to mothers, however, American social policy is set up not to count raising children as labor and not to consider stay-at-home mothers in the Gross Domestic Product. Social Security counts the time spent raising children as zero and, in some states, child support for divorced mothers who have stayed at home is calculated according to what she could have earned had she been employed.

Currently, mothers of young children are the lowest-voting group in the country, so Crittenden recommended working to get them to the polls. "The new generation takes the victories of the women’s movement as a given," she said. "It’s not until you have children that these issues start to hit you."

In their closing remarks, panelists responded to an audience member who asked what is going to happen next. Giele and Lindner reemphasized the need for patience as the motherhood movement finds its direction. Giele reminded the audience that the history of the women’s movement is a history of trial and error as each branch has found the most effective path to address its issues. Lindner quoted her own mother, " ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.’ We’re finding the road."

Crittenden said she felt The Motherhood Project needed to learn from the conference, take in what was said and debate and reframe the "Call" accordingly. "Feminism needs a new language. Frankly, we were in a rut." She said she found it difficult while writing her book to use language that appealed both to more radical feminists and to mothers.

Disagreements within the movement are good, according to Elshtain. "We don’t have to get all women to agree," she said. "We need a relatively small number of people who can activate others. The number of active citizens in any cause is always a minority and I would caution against utopian hope as a precondition for moving forward. We need to recognize our plurality."

Gandy said she felt what was needed was an approach that would bring in larger issues and thus appeal to a larger audience. "We have caregivers who take care of parents and children who might not be sick if they could afford health care," she explained.

Aird once again appealed to values other than economic values and concluded the conference, " You can say that the mothers are coming."

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Additional information on this topic:

To watch video of the conference, click here.

Barnard Conference on Motherhood Featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Click here to read the transcript.

To read Mona Charen's column on the motherhood movement, click here.