Reflections on Introduction to Mother Studies Course – by Zairunisha Jnu

Zairunisha photoAbout a month ago, I posted my reflections on the summer intensive course taught through the Museum of Motherhood. I invited my comrade, Zairunisha Jnu, to do the same and offer her impressions from Introduction to Mother Studies.  Zairunisha is a PhD. candidate in the Centre for Philosophy, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.  She is presently working on her research project entitled ” Rhetorics of Choice and Coercion on Motherhood: Revisiting Bioethical Debates from Feminists Perspectives.”

Here is what she said:

I am a student of philosophy and my research area focuses on issues in the field of bioethics with special reference to the impact of new reproductive technologies on motherhood.  During my studies on my research project, I hadn’t studied motherhood in such a broader perspective before doing the Mother Studies course offered by the Museum of Motherhood. The Introduction to Mother Studies course provided a panoptic platform for mothers, students, scholars, professional, etc. where the participants are encouraged and motivated to critically examine, analyse, and correlate problems faced by mothers in their day to day lives from various perspectives, especially from a sociological lens within historical, economic, political and sociological frameworks. Also sometimes we were asked to try to find out solutions to the problems and challenges.  

For me this course was very enlightening in the field of motherhood. I have a knowledge of mother-related problems, issues not only from an American perspective, but an Indian perspective too. Different tools and methods of teaching for instance video lectures, mind blowing movies, news reports, reading materials, writing assignments (hardest part of the course 🙂 etc. made a great combination of practical and theoretical knowledge which encouraged and forced me to rethink about the situation of mothers in the society and question on the pre-established image of women and the role they perform in the family.

As I mentioned above that I am a philosophy student, just familiar with the name of some feminist thinkers such as Adrienne Rich, Sara Ruddick, Patricia Hill Collins, Barbara Katz Rothman and a few others. I have come to learn more about their work and contributions through the Mother Studies course importantly on mother, mothering and motherhood.

In the book Of Women Born, the issues of sexuality, childbirth, child care, and women’s health, Adrienne Rich questions and critiques male-centric cultures and practices. The article “Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice” by Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried and others, focuses on women’s awareness in the field of reproductive rights and gender inequality. Additionally, Barbara Katz Rothman’s book, Recreating Motherhood shows the perpetuating condition and coercion over ignorant women still continuing in modern technological time and world. It is so hard for competent women to save themselves from the milieu of the society and perform their choices as a free being where mothering is always considered a personal activity and unconsciously become political matter. The crude reality is, only society will decide about you, being a woman  how threatening it is! Nevertheless in this scenario, Mother Studies offers a positive approach and hope for action.  

In this manner, I agree with Jenny’s view that the emerging Mother Studies course is a revolutionary step in the way of making the personal political and academic. It was such a wonderful and unique experience for me working together throughout the coursework with our teacher and classmate/friend. I am keenly looking forward to the possibility of a workshop regarding Mother Studies where we can meet again and explore more prospects and opportunities for our Mother Studies work.   

Written by: Zairunisha Jnu
Arranged by: Jenny Nigro, MoM Online Intern

Reflections Of A Multicultural Mom

Art by Louise Camrass
Art by Louise Camrass

By Margaret Rapp

From Mom Egg Review Vol. 13

On my son’s third birthday, he got chicken pox. We cancelled his party, but I still gave him the present he most wanted – a Barbie doll. Although I am a “modern” Mom, I was a little uncomfortable giving him a Barbie, so I gave him a Barbie and Ken; and, since he is an inter-racial child and I wanted to be politically correct, I gave him a black Barbie and Ken (although Barbie did have a blonde streak in her hair). My son loved his gift and I can still see him, sitting in front of his cake with a birthday hat on, his face speckled with pox marks, holding up his Barbie (Ken had already been relegated to the unused toy box).

For the next two weeks, while he was recuperating, Barbie was his constant companion. When he went back to daycare, he wanted to take his Barbie for show and tell. While I had my misgivings on how the other children would react –would they make fun of him—I stuck to my feminist principles and didn’t discourage him. That afternoon when he came home, he threw his Barbie angrily in the corner. My first thought was that he had been teased or called a sissy. Then he tearfully said the words that are still imprinted in my mind. “I want a white Barbie.” He had never used the word white to refer to a person before. Years later, I learned that it was actually Jessie, a black girl who lived down the block, that had taunted him about his “black” Barbie.

I hate the word “bi”. Like in I am the mother of a biracial child. I keep expecting to see a child that is painted black on one side and white on the other like those mimes you see in the park standing like statues. It comes from that puritanical Calvinism where everything in America is bifurcated, cut in half, polarized. Like either/or, good/evil, black/white. And you are always expected to come down on one side or the other.

Murphy Brown was very big on TV when my son was small. After his Dad took off, I played the Murphy Brown role – the fast talking, independent woman who raised a child on her own. It worked very well until they found out I had a mixed race child. Even then, it could work if they thought he was adopted. Once they found out I had him the old fashioned way, I was relegated to the welfare Mom role –the woman who was too stupid to keep her legs together and was dumped when she got pregnant.

I know that my son has spent much of his childhood longing for some traditional nuclear family that he will never have (as do many children from both black and white homes). But our society is much more multicultural now than it was when my son was born twenty-six years ago. These days he self identifies as a German Haitian Dominican Jew. And we do have a “biracial” President.

My son is grown now – a muscled young man with light golden skin, deep dark eyes and the somewhat rounded features that compliment his dimpled smile. His dark curly hair is slowly turning into male patterned baldness — a trait which I find attractive but I suspect he is embarrassed by as he has taken to wearing a hat. He lives with a friend in Harlem and writes lyrics for a pop singer that plays the small downtown clubs. Like most starving artists, he walks dogs to pay the rent, It is hard to believe that he is actually a grown man who has to lean down to hug me instead of looking up at me. So why am I still so worried?

Sunday afternoon a couple of years ago, my son called me from the police station. He was picked up at 6am in Harlem in front of his house. When he protested that he had rights, he was arrested. After two days he was released. He spent two days in jail, lost two days work for which he was not paid, his only good winter jacket was torn when he was roughed up and he saw a homeless man beaten down by police while he was in the holding cell.

The particulars of why he was arrested aren’t important. The charges were dropped, the judge apologized. His legal aid attorney told him he should file charges for false arrest. He made some halfhearted noises about filing charges, but never followed through. He seemed defeated by the whole experience. When I told people what happened, indignant at my son’s mistreatment, the first question they asked was what did he do wrong? After a while, I kept quiet about it, ashamed that he had been arrested. I began to believe he had done something wrong. And I wondered if he would have been arrested if he had been white.

Two months ago he told me he was frisked again in the same neighborhood on his way to work. This time, when the arresting officer “copped an attitude” when he tried to find out the reason he was stopped, he didn’t say anything and let her frisk him because he didn’t want to be late for work. I didn’t know if I was more relieved that he had chosen the pragmatic approach to stay out of jail or saddened that he had learned the lesson society expected him to learn – that he is a second class citizen who knows enough to shut-up and keep his head down. And he was still late for work.

Recently my son told me he was glad that he had been raised in an “alternative” family. He felt that it gave him a more worldly and tolerant outlook on life. What I learned is what it feels like to worry every time my son walks out the door.

About the Author: Margaret Rapp–My life time commitment to feminism and feminist writing is a direct result of my experiences living as a single mom in New York City. I have met many interesting and diverse women I would not have met except for this one commonality and their stories are reflected in my writing. I continue to write short stories and plays for various reading venues in New York, blog on DailyKos and hopefully will get my novel “After the Music Died” published this year. Read more about MER/ Link is HERE

About the Artist: Louise Camrass — Louise was born in London in 1969 and is an artist using paint, charcoal, film/video, clay and performance. Her work charts the human experience. Sex, death, the poetry of our lives. Always responding to the people, places, atmospheres around her, she works with whatever medium suits the moment.
She is currently painting, inspired by the colour and atmosphere of Venice, of memory and times past.
This is also reflected in recent video which expresses the pathos of moving between past and present, the non linear nature of time. Read more at ProCreate Project/ Link is HERE

On becoming a mother from www.louisecamrass.com on Vimeo.

M.A.M.A. – Mothers ARE Making Art – New Installation(s)

WHAT: The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are partnering for bi-monthly on-line presentations featuring M.A.M.A. – Mothers are Making Art.
WHEN: The 1st and the 15th of each month words and images will highlight the joy and the challenges of being both a mother and an artist.
WHERE: Online is the place! We will host works of art about mothers and mothers-to-be; featuring academic and creative writing in order to promote women internationally and generate cultural exchanges and opportunities.

WHY: We are determined to explore the extraordinary experiences of mothers and how, by means of channeling these new and powerful energies a person can cultivate both motherhood and art. However, support is needed and awareness must be raised to facilitate this process and to finally empower it.

We strive to give voice to all women, make acceptable room for “feelings,” sensations, and interpretations without judgment; we want to make space for mothers in the arts to display their work and move a conversation about “the art of motherhood” forward. DOWNLOAD THE PRESS RELEASE.

@ProcreateProj  @MOMmuseum @TheMomEgg #JoinMAMA

slide5This month features Lynn Lu (Pictured on homepage and above here) and Beck Tipper, whose writing is highlighted on the M.A.M.A. page here.

Paradoxes for the Virtual collaborative Skype performance with Birgitta Hosea on YouTube [LINK].
Lab451LONDON; Camden Image Gallery; London, UK. 2015
In a game of Exquisite Corpse, Lynn Lu (live) and Birgitta Hosea (projected from SKYPE) explore intimacy and the generation of interpersonal closeness across a virtual divide through a scored series of shared confidences.

-PREGNANCY AND AFTER MOTHERHOOD INSPIRED SEVERAL OF THE LYNN LU PERFORMANCES AND INSTALLATIONS-

Lynn Lu received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University with a major in Sculpture and a minor in Graphic Design in 1999. In 1998, she studied with Christian Boltanski at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and at the École Marchutz in Aix-en-Provence. She earned her MFA in New Genres at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2002, and completed a PhD program (ABD) at Musashino Art University in Tokyo in 2008, on a full scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2010 she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Since 1997, Lynn has exhibited and performed extensively in the United States, Singapore, Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Australia, New Zealand, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Poland, Belarus, Czech Republic, Turkey, Greece, Argentina, and Canada.

See more about Lynn at ProcreateProject.com

On My Experience of Motherhood Studies

PatriciaHillCollinsYou may have seen some of my blog posts over the last several weeks that came from the response papers I wrote for the Introduction to Mother Studies course offered through the museum. With a capstone paper using research on current topics related to reproductive technology, the class culminated three weeks ago last Sunday afternoon. I promised myself that I would not begin watching the newest season of Orange is the New Black until the course finished, and I have since been relishing these moments of TV consumption.

Other than satisfying my Netflix addiction, I have been able to reflect back on the course since finishing it. I was a Sociology major in college but took a lot of classes in the Women’s Studies department. Adrienne Rich and Patricia Hill Collins contributed foundational texts to our study in Introduction to Mother Studies. The names and works of these scholars were familiar to me from undergrad. However, studying them in the context of Introduction to Mother Studies, I began to see them in a new light…as mothers. Because of the strength of their words and power of their knowledge, I had always identified them as feminist first, whatever else second. But in a movement where “the personal is political” has been a rallying cry, perhaps for them, they would see themselves as mother/sister/self first, feminist second.

In “Beyond Mothers and Fathers,” Barbara Katz Rothman, a pioneer to the movement, said: “Mothering is an activity, a project…[M]otherhood…is not just a physical or emotional relationship – it is also an intellectual activity.” Scholars and writers have known this and have been doing Mother Studies work for a long time. Whether we have seen it as such or not, the personal has always been political. When women gave birth in their homes attended by practiced midwives, and then again when slander campaigns saw the shift to in-hospital births, Mother Studies was in action. When white middle-class housewives’ alienation derived from raising children in suburban America gave way to the rise of second-wave feminism, Mother Studies was in action. When the eugenics movement created a legacy of racist and anti-poverty sterilization policies, Mother Studies was in action. When images of the super-mom were contrasted with social commentary on the decline of the American family, Mother Studies was in action. When feminists came to the defense of Mary Beth Whitehead, a surrogate who refused to give up her baby, questioning what makes a mother, Mother Studies was in action. We are not recreating the wheel. Our Introduction to Mother Studies is the first time that we are calling it such and the first time we are carving out a space for it as a legitimate discipline. We are making the personal political…and academic.

Find out more about classes in Mother Studies online here.

By: Jenny Nigro, MoM Online Intern