Democratic Motherhood?

A nicely argued article by Dana Goldstein at the American Prospect.

The Mommy Mantra.

Pelosi and Clinton's pandering to outmoded gender stereotypes doesn't assuage doubts about women ascending to the highest reaches of power. It reinforces them. When Clinton and Pelosi claim political capital due to their experience as mothers and homemakers, they are selling their ambitious selves -- and, indeed, all women -- far short. Women don't deserve to be in politics because we're more compassionate or nurturing than men. We deserve to be there because we are human beings, and especially because we are human beings who, regardless of our choices about if and how to become mothers, continue to live under a social and political system that denies us many of the same options men have enjoyed for generations.

If women want to get out of the nursery and into public office, we ought not to have our leading female politicians sending the message that scrubbing dishes and changing diapers are prerequisites for politicking. This applies doubly when those women are Nancy Pelosi, a millionaire fundraiser and daughter of a big city mayor, and Hillary Clinton, a former high-paid attorney who raised her daughter with ample help from the doting staff in the Arkansas governor's mansion and later the White House. Today, 87 years after women won the right to vote, women account for just 16.3 percent of Congress, 24.1 percent of governors, and 23.5 percent of state legislators. Obviously, traditional gender roles need to be further upended if we hope to move toward parity in politics and every other profession. And nobody knows that better than Clinton and Pelosi, who have spent lifetimes playing hardball with the boys on an uneven field.

That's why the "I am mother, hear me roar" strategy seems not just inauthentic, but also uninspired. History shows that women gain influence when they separate themselves from constricting domestic ideology -- not when they internalize it. The suffragist movement was born from Northern women's grassroots leadership in opposing slavery, but didn’t come to fruition until after World War I. Activists like Alice Paul, who led daily protests in front of the White House, were able to point to President Wilson's priority of supporting self-governance abroad and ask why American women were excluded from such privileges at home. Such appeals to human rights -- as opposed to a reliance on feminine mystique -- are at the core of the American feminist movement.

[via Feministing]

The title refers to the concept of Republican Motherhood, a phrase coined by historian Linda Kerber to describe the role women played in the early republic as first teachers of children in instilling democratic values and principles.

It was all well and good and led to an expanded role for women, but there is criticism, too, of its being a dead-end for women rather than a springboard for political participation, as it serves also to reinforce traditional gender roles, the same prescriptive notions we are fighting today, two centuries later. Must women bake cookies and/or hold newborn grandsons (or appear to do these things) to pass political (or is it social?) muster? Feh.

Comments

[ja]

V. interesting. The whole question of the mommy-track is one that I think might be insoluble until we we can somehow move away from the notion that the primary caregiver for children has to be the mother.

This article also made me think about why whenever I get mailings from my local politicos (men, natch) they always have pictures of their doting wives and 2.7 children. NSA always asks what the correlation is between lively sperm cells and being able to lead the city/county/state/country.

[Diane]

Great stuff. I was disappointed when the great Ellen Goodman did the mommy thing on Pelosi, but being Ellen Goodman, she made it not nearly as offensive as it could have been.

One of the things we said over and over during the 2nd
Wave period was that women, by virtue of running homes, had great organizational and diplomatic skills. That is still true, but we should not be saying it in this century.

[Congogirl]

This is the article that I believe poor Ben Shapiro intended to write.