This September the Museum of Motherhood is extremely pleased to welcome two new amazing people to our fall semester team. Please join us in our growing excitement to get to work on some great new projects in grant writing and art-sourcing as we dive into more about moms’ lives and work.
My name is Jade Jemison. I’m a 2nd-year MFA student on the Nonfiction track at USF. I write about relationships, reproductive health and treatment, culture, how trauma manifests in adulthood, and the effects of religious upbringings. I also study mother-daughter relationships in Black literature. I study how they are portrayed and how the representation of these relationships affects our community and societal expectations of Black daughters. I’m also passionate about discovering ways to support mothers, provide literature education to them, and the process of creating scholarships for mothers who need childcare (while attending school, conferences, writing retreats, etc).
In this grant writing internship, I’d love to learn about grant writing as a field: how to research grants, how to apply for grants (both in the process and writing), how to manage and reapply for grants, how to identify grants that fit a specific criteria, and how to evaluate grants. I’d love to gain more skills in this area.
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome
Tori Wright – Bio: I am a 26 year old mother of a one year and pregnant with our next little one coming soon. I have a Bachelors degree in Anthropology from Ohio University and currently working on earning my Masters in Museum Studies from University of Oklahoma. For a couple years after graduating from Ohio University I worked as a cultural resource manager, traveling doing archaeology surveys for a variety of companies. I have worked with young children as a daycare worker of nanny since that position while I got married and started my own family. The journey of motherhood that I have personally been through the past couple years has changed my life in ways I could have never imagined. I have seen my sister, friends and close family members become mothers throughout my life, but nothing compares to going through it yourself. I am excited to work with MoM to see how this journey has changed others. As well as working to push the boundaries especially in these enlightened days of what the world thinks motherhood is. The journey is different for anyone that goes through it and art is a wonderful way to be able to express the individual stories as well show the world what it really means to be a mother.
*If you are a mother artist making art, literature, music, or scholarship about your experiences, please write to us. We are working on a schedule of presentations throughout the 2022-23 year.
February is Black History Month! Here at MOM, we celebrate Black motherhood by kicking off our Library Features by highlighting the work of author and activist Kimberly Seals Allers.
Kimberly is a graduate of Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, executive director of Narrative Nation, inc., president and chief health communicator of Shift Health Communication Strategy and author Of “The Big Letdown—how Medicine, Business & Feminism Undermine Breastfeeding,” published in January 2017. [1] Recent accomplishments include a yelp-like app that fights racism from a public accountability perspective. Find out more here [LINK].
Kimberly Seals Allers is passionate about the ways motherhood intersects with race, class, and policy. [2] She had her first baby shortly after graduate school and was very anxious about birthing complications, that, as a black woman, she was statistically more likely to face. She felt her concerns were brushed off by the hospital workers, and then was inspired to invent strategies to improve birth and breastfeeding conditions in America.
Since she kept hearing of more traumatic experiences from black and Latina women, she and her 13-year-old son decided to launch an app calledIrth , that helps people of color find prenatal doctors, birthing doctors, postpartum doctors and pediatricians, by showing reviews similar to Yelp. You can even search for reviews by the race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or income of the reviewer, allowing users to make sure the medical professionals will be inclusive of their needs. Although currently only available in New York City, New Orleans, Sacramento, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, she hopes it will eventually be launched nationwide. She also hopes it will grow to include fertility specialists and breast cancer doctors, and that it will inspire white women to take allyship.[3]
She also wrote The Big Letdown about how breastfeeding is stigmatized in ways that promote unhealthy baby formulas, and how it relates to oversights in feminism and public policy. [4]
By the logic she uses, breastfeeding babies for the first six months of their lives has been proven to benefit their physical and mental health in many ways, including decreasing chances of disease and obesity. It is also proven to benefit the breastfeeder by lowering chances of past-partrum depression, increasing confidence, self-esteem and calmness, improve sense of connection with the child, and lower chances of cancer, diabetes and endometriosis. [5]
However, as women now work more than ever before, many mothers, especially black mothers, have been convinced that baby formulas are better, because they don’t take time away from work. Health care, daycare, and maternity leave have gotten less attention now that women can feed their babies through pumps and don’t need the time to breastfeed. [6]
In addition to the scheduling preference for formulas, breastfeeding in public is typically shamed, as most people have noticed. Even though breasts are commonly shown in advertising and media for straight men’s sexual interest, many people are uncomfortable seeing breasts used for an essential action. The association with sexuality causes anxiety, embarrassment and confliction about breastfeeding in public.
Studies have proven that social status, level of education, and especially, amount of support from friends and family, all improve chances of making healthy infant-feeding decisions;but, even the majority of women who breastfeed still believe it’s wrong to do in front of men.[7] even in Australia, where there is a law banning discrimination against breast-feeding, formula feeding is still more popular due to lack of knowledge on how to breastfeed properly, pressure to return to work, conflicting medical advice, isolation and lack of support. [9] Many argue that it’s a personal choice whether you breastfeed or formula feed, but I’m not sure it’s an informed choice, when so many people are unaware of the benefits of breastfeeding.
Feminism and sociology aim to change this by promoting normalization of female/reproductive body functions. Professionals in this field have aimed to show how much women and breasts are seen as sexual objects, designed to tempt men and boys, [11], and create changes towards breasts being seen as a simple body part. As they might argue, the stigma against breastfeeding is part of the issue of women, transgender people and children being seen as less “natural” and suitable for public exposure.
As Allers herself argues “[t]asking about breastfeeding means talking about women’s bodies, feminism, policy gaps, commercial interests and physician education.” [12] She, and others in similar fields, aim for breastfeeding parents to have support from their partners, family and friends, and eventually, improve birthing conditions, children being treated equally and adequate muttering leaves. [Tap on the image below to read more about Kimberly].
This project is made possible through the MOM Internship Project. To find out more about Violet Phillips or to read about our interns, go to our Internship Page here at MOM [LINK].
March is Women’s History Month! Find out more about The American Women’s History Initiative, which aims to “amplify women’s voices to honor the past, inform the present and inspire the future.” (Smithsonian Institution: Discover more online here). It seems we are all working towards the same goals.
Here at the MOM Pop Up, at Manhattan College in the Bronx, we have installed an exhibit in the lobby of the O’Malley Library. The exhibit is in collaboration with the LWGRC promoting Women’s Week, April 1-6th on campus. We are pleased to highlight just a few of the amazing American women who have helped pave the way for the rights, liberties, educational content, and social justice initiatives still relevant in our society today.
The installation will be onsite through April 4th and was coordinated through the Museum of Motherhood internship program. Please meet our newest intern Hannah Rome (in her own words).
Hannah Rome, Manhattan College Internship with the MOM Pop Up
My name is Hannah Rome and I was born in Northampton Massachusetts. I am the daughter of two wonderful mothers and the sister of two amazing sisters. Being from a small town in western Massachusetts, I had always to experience what it was like living in a big city. That is one of the reasons why I decided to attend Manhattan College
Right now, I am a current senior at Manhattan College majoring in Urban Studies and minoring in Sociology and Spanish. I decided to major in Urban Studies because of my interest in cities and people. I became a sociology minor because of the interesting course list offered at my college. Finally, I pursued a Spanish minor so that I could study abroad in Spain during the Spring semester of my junior year.
During my past four years as a student at Manhattan College, I have earned membership into two honors societies. First, I am a member of Epsilon Sigma Pi which is considered to be the highest scholastic honor that can be earned by a Manhattan College student. Second, I am one of the very first two inductees into Upsilon Sigma which is the Urban Studies honors society.
Alongside my academics, I have worked as a student coordinator at the Manhattan College Multicultural Center since my sophomore year of college. I coordinate a number of events such as HerStory, which is a panel discussion composed of women of color in the arts. I also coordinate a week-long leadership summit for undergraduate students to learn about New York City governance.
About Internships with M.O.M.: Each year the Museum of Motherhood (MOM) welcomes interns from a variety of disciplines. Each internship seeks to balance individual goals and needs with those of the museums’. Study labs, online courses, individual projects, visual displays, research, and guest docent opportunities are just a few of the ways MOM has worked with university and graduate students since 2011. Onsite and remote internships are available for the academic year. Write Director, M. Joy Rose: Museum of Motherhood; online, the MOM Pop-Up at Manhattan College in partnership with the LWGRC, and the MOM Art Annex 538 28th St. N. St. Petersburg: info@mommuseum.org, or to find out more about internships, follow this link.
Also, please see the latest media content featured in the Quadrangle Paper about bringing Mother Studies to the Manhattan College Campus with Professor Martha Joy Rose and the Sociology Department. Click on the photo to read the full story:
