On feminist mother blogging

Thanks to a comment from Nikola Ellis I was reminded of Jane Lazarre (author of well-known feminist motherhood memoirs Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons [1999] and The Mother Knot [1976]), and I found this interview with Lazarre over at The Mothers Movement Online.

The entire interview is just wonderful but this bit particularly stood out for me, particularly after this episode here concerning whether mothers complain too much and that episode over there concerning whether ‘mummy blogging’ is mindless.

We seem as determined as ever to live up to the impossible and tyrannical idea of the perfectly “good mother,” an idea that has proven itself to be literally maddening. In the 19th century, many women who were new mothers suffered breakdowns, were hospitalized for many years and in large numbers, because of the inability to live up to this false and destructive ideal in actual, ordinary life….

.. We can begin, as we always did, with our own stories, but if the stories and narratives that have gone before are not used, then we are truly sabotaging our own possibilities.This is not to say the effort is any easier now than it was a generation ago. There is nothing more threatening, for me at least, than telling the truth when it might hurt or anger someone I love, and there is no one I love more than my sons, or when it might provoke public criticism and contempt, as honest writing can often do. And we live now in a time of regression and reaction, so I do not mean to suggest any of this is, or ever was, easy. I do have faith, though, in the importance and potential transcendence of personal story telling — in private groups of like minded people, in intimate confessions, as an aspect of political organizing, and in works of art.

You see? Lazarre says fuck ’em.