Beware School Districts Bearing Gifts
19 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Culture, Education, Politics and Parenting, Uncategorized Tags: chat, children's constitutional rights, due process, email, evidence, kids, parenting, parenting rights, school district
Recently I received an email from my sons’ school telling me that the school district was going to give every middle and high school student their very own email account. The email read:
“In addition to streamlined communication between teachers and students, here are additional motivations for the District email initiative:
·Safe electronic communication system with protective internet filters.
·More effective enforcement of SVVSD Responsible Use Policy.
·Student access to digital communication tools, including instant messaging, real time document collaboration.
·Parent/Guardian access to their student s (sic) email account upon request.
Additional information about this email initiative is available on the District website where you can also access District policies concerning student Internet use. Parents and guardians who wish to exclude their student from this initiative are asked to complete the attached opt-out form and return it to your student s (sic) school by December 2nd.”
How nice, I thought.
Reading the Fine Print
But then, I wondered why would the district give children have a new email account when they know that most kids already have them? What’s in it for them? Safe internet access with protective filters. Great. More effective enforcement of the SVVSD Responsible Use Policy. Huh? What’s that? And why would the district give parents an opportunity to opt out? If it’s such a nice thing, they wouldn’t need to offer an opt-out, right?
NOTE: You can click the District’s link above to see the landing page which contains a link to the “Responsible Use Policy” page. That link takes you here: http://www.stvrain.k12.co.us/policies/E/EHC-E-2.pdf
On the last page of that policy was a statement that made the district’s new initiative make a lot more sense, “That the things that I do using a school computer or network are not private and that my teachers and District staff may review my work and activities at any time.”
According to this policy, to which all students must agree or be barred from use, the district will have access all content of children’s email accounts—including their chats. Legally, that means that there is no privacy between the children and the school district, staff, and teachers. Anything children write in email or type into a chat, no matter when it’s written, at home or at school, no matter what it pertains to, personal or school-related, can be used as a statement against interest, criminally and civilly.
Did You Say Criminally?
Yes! But the district’s policy doesn’t say that. It only says that if a student misuses school-owned technology that they’re at risk of suspension or expulsion. The district’s policy statement doesn’t say that kids could be prosecuted criminally or sued civilly, and that the content of their email can be used against them in court, with many of the due process protections of the Constitution waived by parents, inadvertently, by an act of omission—not opting out.
A quick background on children’s due process rights and the 4th amendment freedom from unreasonable search and seizure: kids don’t have the extensive protections against unreasonable searches that adults have. In fact, school officials need only a reasonable suspicion that a child is up to no good in order to search a locker or personal belongings. And a reasonable suspicion can be established by almost anything, and is quite a bit lower of a standard than the “probable cause” standard that applies to adults. Once a child is searched, any evidence found may be provided to police to prosecute the child in either a delinquency court or possibly in an adult criminal court. That makes sense. School officials need to do everything in their power to prevent violence and crime on school grounds and they should be able to search kids’ locker.
However, school-hosted email accounts are less private even than a kid’s locker, which is about as private as the trash left on your curb. The district’s stated goal is to better enforce the responsible use policy. It will not be long before the district discovers something in an email and hands it over to authorities as evidence against a child. The district needs no one’s permission to do that, has no obligation to consult with parents. The requirement for a reasonable suspicion has been waived along with the child’s right to be free of unreasonable searches.
Inadvertent Waiver
When we allow our children to email or chat on an unsecure, non-private email account for which we have unwittingly waived what few Constitutional rights they have, we put our children one dangerous step closer to “game over”. That is because the district’s opt-out policy skirts the prohibition against unreasonable searches in the 4th Amendment and 5th Amendment right to due process by obtaining parental consent to a search in advance.
Combined with the Zero Tolerance policy, the school district has an obligation to report and punish children for writing that is even remotely incriminating. Parents are waiving the regular rules of due process and evidence, which protect all of our rights, without even knowing that they’re making it easier for schools, police, and the DA to make a case against a child than the same would be against an adult.
That means that if we don’t opt out, we are handing our children over to schools and police, giving them power that extends far beyond the schoolhouse doors, into their personal lives outside of school, heretofore the province of parents alone. We give up our superior position as parents and abdicate our responsibility to discipline and guide our children—to the government—24/7. It also means that one little slip, and our child’s future could be over, and it is our own hand that will deliver them.
Picture this: Seventh grader who’s very expressive says something a little over the top to another student on a chat—as they’re wont to do. Teacher, who has a bone to pick with student, reads the chat thread and sees that little something. Teacher hands the transcript over to the principal, who may give that information to the Community Service Officer, who files a police report of harassment against the child. Never mind that the other child may not have even been phased by the communication, or perhaps even welcomed it.
The police have probable cause and evidence against the child. Child is arrested, released on bail, tried and the evidence admitted because the parent gave the district permission to invade the account in the first place. Remember that even one conviction can irreparably damage their school career as well as their prospects for college.
Without this email account, the school district, police, and DA have to go through the normal methods of building a case. They have to take statements, go through discovery, and subpoena the email or chat records to get that piece of evidence admitted—and defend motions to exclude evidence (motions in limine). With this ostensibly “public” email account, they can sidestep many of these due process procedures because of the parent’s waiver of their children’s access to constitutional protections.
You May Want to Waive Your Children’s Constitutional Rights
In all fairness, some parents may want their kids to participate in school-hosted and -regulated email, with the full understanding that they are waiving their children’s already limited freedom from unreasonable searches. Some parents know their kids are misbehaving and wish desperately for intervention from authorities. For those parents, by all means, do so. Just know what you’re doing consciously.
An anonymous member of the district told me yesterday that they don’t believe the district has any mal-intent in providing these email accounts and that they trust the district to not use email accounts against kids thought there are no assurances of that nor disclosure of the risks to children of criminal and civil liability in any of the district’s materials. Also the district member said, “behavior is always an issue in schools”. I agree. And I agree that the kids who are bullying, misbehaving, or worse should have to face the consequences of their actions. But I am not willing to hand my children over to the district or police if they make an error in judgment, which they will, that could easily be misunderstood or blown out of proportion, without the protections of the Constitution I have sworn to uphold and defend.
As a parent, I want my children to be afforded every protection the Constitution gives them, even if they make a bad choice. Especially if they make a bad choice. I will not waive their right to make a mistake and to recover from it. I may not bail them out of jail, but I won’t deliver them in handcuffs either—at least not by mistake anyway. And I’m not willing to leave it up to the goodness of the hearts of school officials to decide whether to prosecute my child or not. Because you know that the first time an incriminating email or chat comes up, the district is going to throw the book at the kid with all the firepower it’s got to make an example of him or her.
The district has an obligation to spell out exactly what the risks are so parents can decide based on proper disclosure. Every parent should make this decision with full understanding of what they’re doing. If you allow your child to utilize the school district’s email system, at this time, anything they say can and will be used against them in a court of law.
You be the parent. Keep control over your children and their online lives. Monitor them, teach them what is appropriate internet behavior. But don’t let the schools do it for you. Here’s the Opt-Out form:
Formal Education–The Big Lie (Part 2)
14 Jan 2011 3 Comments
in Culture, Education, Politics and Parenting Tags: Commercialization of childhood, conscious parenting, education, mindful parenting, mindfulness
By Chuck Rylant, MBA, CFP
(This is my blog’s first guest post, by author Chuck Rylant. Chuck is a former police officer, college teacher, financial planner, and most importantly, a husband and a DAD! This post is a great follow up to my post on mandatory schooling. Chuck put into words some of my sentiments about public education, though as I said, I am an “all-in” parent and do have high hopes for our system and how it serves my children. Chuck’s College Alternative is a fabulous idea and, when the time comes, I hope my kids will consider it! Maybe he’ll even start a company to do just that…hint, hint. Thank you, Chuck, for offering your insight and wisdom here!)
This is the second of two parts. You can find part 1 here.
During grade school, I spent more time in detention than I did in class, but by high school I was a little more successful at staying out of trouble. I hadn’t really become a better student, but I figured out the game.
During my freshman year I discovered we could cut classes with little or no consequences. There were a few, but by my sophomore year, I had those figured out too. Soon I made friends with a student aid in the attendance office or had a girlfriend call me in sick posing as my mother while I went to the beach.
Back then I didn’t know as much as I do now, but with the confidence of youth, I thought I knew it all. But now with more experience, “I know what I do not know.” In other words, now I have more knowledge, but realize I do not know it all.
However, with that in mind, I wasn’t completely wrong back then with my pessimistic view of school. The reason I spent so much time in detention was because I was bored. I was board out of my mind and had no qualms letting my teachers know it. For the teachers reading this, I was one of those defiant brats in your class, and to this day, I secretly want to track them down and apologize.
My Strange Parents
I grew up with strange parents and one of the few benefits of an odd upbringing was that I was encouraged to question everything and always be suspect of authority. As a result, I was wary of what was being taught in school and could not see the point of much of it.
“Why do we have to learn this” was a frequent question of mine. Occasionally the good teachers provided reasonable explanations, but usually I was told to shut up and do my work. Sometimes it was put nicely, other times it wasn’t. Growing up with little supervision, I did not respond well to the latter and that almost always led to a visit to the principal’s office.
Now, after having my own children and teaching some college classes, I wish my attitude had been better, but my complaints were valid. One problem with education is the mistaken idea that all kids should be programmed to fit a predetermined mold, and any kid who doesn’t fit that mold is considered a failure and pushed aside. This is a mistake. More
Mandatory Schooling for Parents Who Don’t Like the Word “Mandatory”
10 Dec 2010 47 Comments
in Culture, Education, Healthcare, Politics and Parenting
Perhaps you are one of the many parents who approach parenting not just as something that happens to you, but as a vocation, a sacred duty, a calling. If you are, I like to think of you as “on-purpose parents.”
Whether you planned to have a family or were surprised by it, if you’re an on-purpose parent, you make it your business to raise your kids according to your deepest beliefs, your inner-knowing. You want to raise kids who are awake, aware, creative, civilized, powerful, joyful, giving, self-directed, and above all, free.
On-purpose parents like us want to show our kids how to live a free and abundant life. For us, the word “mandatory” anything feels intrusive and oppressive, after all, we’ve already taken full responsibility for our children. For a grown adult deeply committed to parenting, hearing that something is “mandatory” raises the hackles. Nevertheless, every parent in Colorado must sign an acknowledgment that school attendance is mandatory in this state.
When I signed the acknowledgement, my internal dialogue went something like this, “Hey, who’s raising these kids? Who’s reading every darned parenting book they can lay their hands on? Not you, Ms. Attendance Clerk. Who’s paying the bills? Not you, Mr. Superintendant. Who’s staying up into the night with their child suffering from an asthma attack? Not you, Mrs. School Board Member. Who’s cooking, cleaning, folding clothes, matching socks, kissing boo boos? Certainly not you, Mr. Governor.
The Government Tells Great Parents What to Do
My BFF Alexis, like me, is an on-purpose parent. She’s also an entrepreneur, a go-getter, an inspiration to woman all over the country who look to her for guidance as they reach for their fullest potential. She’s had to make the call about whether to bring the kids with her on her travels or to find someone here to care for them. She decided to bring them with her and show them the world.
And so, the kids have missed a lot of school—really, a lot. Now the school district has served her with a summons to appear for a hearing to force her to sign a contract that the kids won’t miss any more school this year, backed up by the threat of fines or jail. The summons even said the kids are failing to achieve even the simplest of academic goals (despite the note on one’s report card that said she’s doing really quite well).
Wait. What? Forcing? Can they do that? Can a school district ORDER a parent to keep their kids in school?
Skechers Zevo-3: How far is too far for marketing to kids?
11 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in Culture, Family Dynamics, Politics and Parenting Tags: childhood, children, Commercialization of childhood, conscious parenting, Consumerism, cradle-to-grave consumerism, Family dynamics, parenting, politics
One of my very favorite organizations (headed by the remarkable Dr. Susan Linn), Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC) filed a petition with the FCC to declare that Skechers new television program violates the very few rules we have in the United States about marketing to kids.
The FCC has given the public a chance to comment on the petition. Of course, I couldn’t help myself. This is my comment. If you’d like to comment too, see how to file a PDF here:
http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db0922/DA-10-1762A1.pdf
October 11, 2010
Marlene H. Dortch, Secretary
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th St., S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20554
RE: MB Docket No. 10-190.
Dear Ms Dortch:
This provides my comment on the Petition for Declaratory Judgment filed by the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood for your consideration.
I am a mother, an attorney, and a former advertising executive. I worked in the advertising industry for about nine years before I retired to raise a family. My clients included Carl’s Jr. Restaurants, the LA Dodgers, Unocal, and Acura Automobiles among others. As a strategist and a manager, I have effectively leveraged communication for the benefit of my clients. This work I enjoyed. Over time, however, it became all too clear to me that the advertising and marketing industry is not one rooted in a sense of fair play or honor but in profit. The ad industry uses information, a key element to a free market economy, to its exclusive advantage. This information includes the emotional and psychological makeup of a target audience, not simply economic, demographic, and factual information. Feeling that I was compromising my integrity was also a part of the reason I retired from the industry.
During my years in advertising, which were quite exhilarating, I learned that ad campaigns are built primarily around creating and filling psychological needs in the target audience. For instance, in the automotive business, our strategies were based on people’s aspirations for more. “I want to look more [prestigious, smarter, cooler, etc.] than I feel inside.” Our campaigns were intended to make people feel better about who they were when they bought the right automobile.
Internally, though I didn’t much like the thought of making people feel less than they were, then “helping” them to feel better by buying a certain automobile, I was able to justify it because we were speaking to adults with some education.
Kids, Schools, and Shots! Oh My!
04 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in Culture, Politics and Parenting Tags: conscious parenting, mandatory, Mothering, parenting, parenting off the grid, politics, vaccinations, vaccines
In my inbox recently:
Dear Parent or Guardian of (Name),
If your child will be entering 6th or 10th grade this fall, please listen to the following message: All 6th and 10th graders must have received one dose of the Tdap vaccine before they begin school in August. The Tdap vaccine protects against Tetanus, Diphtheria and Pertussis (whooping cough). To avoid any missed school, contact your health care provider today to schedule an appointment before school begins. If your child has already received one dose of this vaccine, please disregard this message. Thank you for helping to keep your child’s school healthy.
You’ve probably gotten this or something like it. Many parents read it and rush off to the pediatrician to make sure their kids have been vaccinated because they think someone will meet them at the schoolhouse door and block their germy unvaccinated kids from getting in. The message to moms and dads is that they have no choice in the matter. But do they?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
When the Government Has a Say
There are two main areas where the government gets actively involved in meddling with an otherwise functioning and health family—education and vaccination. Federal, state and local governments all have laws and regulations about these two aspects of every child’s life. At the local level, these are affirmative laws, meaning that something is required of the family to satisfy a state’s interest in those children.
In the case of education, all children must receive a basic education through 12th grade. The reason for this is to reduce the burden on the country’s budget in having to care for the kids who are unable to fend for themselves as adults. I’ll save the debate of rightness or wrongness for another post as I’ve plenty to say on that too.
The other is vaccination.
The Story of Mandatory Vaccination
In 1905, when vaccines first became widely used, the Supreme Court ruled that the state could force parents to make their children submit to small pox vaccine[i].
But that ruling hasn’t been challenged since and for good reason. No one wants a ruling on whether that’s still good law because the rationale for the Jacobson decision has begun to fade due to the growing understanding that vaccines themselves pose a risk to children and that parents have a right to refuse treatment on behalf of their children.[ii]
Because the safety and efficacy of vaccinations are far from conclusive, a ruling overturning the Jacobson decision could endanger the CDC’s “mandatory” vaccine schedule. More and more parents might then opt out of vaccines if they knew more of the potential dangers and if it weren’t such a social stigma to be unvaccinated.
Vaccine manufacturers “immunized” against lawsuits
Vaccines had such a high rate of reactivity that Congress “immunized” vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits even for their own negligence in developing, testing, and making vaccines. Before this immunity, the pharmaceutical industry had begun to shy away from developing new vaccines because it’s impossible to make one that doesn’t cause injury. Their exposure to suit slowed research and development for new vaccines to a crawl.
Attempting to rescue the industry because of fears our population would be at grave risk without mass vaccination, Congress prohibited lawsuits for vaccine injuries. Forever.
No other industry in the world enjoys this kind of immunity. None. And with it, manufacturers have come flooding through the CDC’s doors insisting that must be vaccinated against all kinds of childhood illnesses that are both mild and catastrophic.
Consequently, through the miracle of modern “agency capture,” the CDC and FDA have become strongholds of the pharmaceutical industry. Thus, the people who stand to profit by mandatory vaccination are often those that set the policy behind it.
To Spank or Not to Spank?
07 Jul 2010 7 Comments
in Culture, Family Dynamics, Politics and Parenting Tags: childhood, children, conscious parenting, corporal punishment, kids, mindful parenting, mindfulness, spanking
The debate goes like this:
Pro: Spanking works. It deters children from doing things that will hurt himself or herself or someone else. If a kid sticks his finger in a socket, slap his hand and he won’t do it again. If she runs across the street into traffic, swat her bottom and she won’t do it again. A parent has the right and duty to use corporal punishment to civilize a child and to make them safe.
Con: Spanking hurts both child and parent. Spanking is a violation of the child’s bodily integrity and shuts down emotional development. Children learn to obey not because they know the difference between right and wrong but because they fear getting hit. Spanking is really a parent’s own temper tantrum and there’s no excuse for a parent acting like a baby. Parents can find other ways of training and controlling the behavior of a young one. A child has a right to be free from the fear of battery and abuse.
My son, on his way to the pillaging.
Massachusetts lawmakers took up the question back in 2007 and even that liberal, pro-child state refused to disallow parents to spank. But 19 countries, including the United Kingdom and Sweden, have banned spanking outright.
The United States, however, is generally pro-corporal punishment as a tool of discipline. One would be hard pressed to find a parent who says they would absolutely never spank their child. Even die-hard pacifists like me can imagine situations where it would happen.
Still, the number of parents deciding consciously to not spank has grown to 50% from 25% just a few years ago.
Parents who do not spank say that the biggest issue is the possibility of escalation. Parents do get frustrated, regularly. And having a hard and fast rule of never spanking helps parents monitor themselves, take care of their internal emotional life, and excuse themselves from the conflict before they lash out at their child.
How could anyone spank a kid with that face?
Parents who believe in spanking say that it’s okay for kids to see their parents lose their cool because that’s reality and kids need to learn to deal with other people’s reactions. More
Who is a Legitimate Mother: Part III. “He who has the gold, makes the rules.”
20 Mar 2010 Leave a Comment
in Politics and Parenting, Uncategorized Tags: breastfeeding, consciousness, Culture, feminism, Mothering, parenting, politics
Women accept diminished value in part because we are in an inferior bargaining position. The glass ceiling still looms. Men are at the highest levels of business, they decide who to pay what. And why would a company pay a woman as much as a man when they know darned well they can get the same (or better) labor for less? Ironically, companies often support unequal pay by declaring that men have families to support, ignoring the fact that many households are headed exclusively, or primarily, by women.
Of course they pay women less! If industry paid us comparable wages, we might be able to support our families and undermine the economic superiority of those in power. This is not to say that men do this on purpose but that our social structure encourages it on a subconscious or semi-conscious level. In response, in the 70s, second-wave feminism developed consciousness-raising groups, a watered down version of which exists in diversity and corporate sexual harassment training today.
The beauty is in the details.
American society has a pressing interest in maintaining the constructs that decide who is a legitimate mother (read a legitimate woman), and who is not. Social conservatives often bemoan the loss of the traditional family unit (which, by the way, is a local structure that doesn’t precisely apply in every society). The traditional American family unit is a male head-of-household model with wife and children following at his heels. Rarely do such households include more than two generations, parents and children, or more than one family unit as in communal living.
Who does this structure serve? And how does this impact our children? And why does it matter?
It matters because understanding the structures in which we operate is critical to ensuring that our children grow and prosper. It matters because for too long families have lived in isolationist, hierarchical fashion, with the man as king of the castle with privacy as the supreme law. What happens behind the closed doors of the home, stays behind closed doors. No one, save the government and only when there is clear evidence of a crime, may peer into the inner workings of the family unit. It matters because so long as we are silent about our families, we are powerless in the world. It matters because as the mother goes, so goes the child.
We know this through the many studies that show a correlation between maternal health and infant health as well as economic indicators that tie women’s poverty to children’s poverty. Children of mothers who are de-legitimated (because of marital status, poverty, education, or mere gender) endure the social sufferings of their mothers. Thus, the child of a single woman of color is less likely to be honored, educated, and raised to his or her full potential than is the child of a white married woman. This child is far more likely to receive all the benefits and protections society can offer while other children are less valued and less supported. What happens to these castaway kids?
We know the answer intuitively, as well as objectively. These children are the have-nots of the world; they are the ones most likely (though by no means guaranteed) to lose heart, to be abused, to drop out, to become abusers, to be incarcerated, to be put in foster care, to have their parents’ rights terminated. In short, by ignoring the pressures on the mother, we perpetuate the ills of the child and thus the ills of society and the world. American society aims the energy of its wrath at the mother and her “badness” for having had a child and failing to live up to a social expectation; rather than question the origin and legitimacy of this expectation, or directing its energy to promote the well-being that mother/child pair.
Society goes as the children go. We only harm ourselves and our children’s future by not being fully aware of the structures that determine our roles, rules, and outcomes. Our children will grow to repeat them, often in unhealthy ways. Our daughters will be consigned to smaller lives than they are capable of and will stretch out against those constrictions in ways that don’t serve them. Our sons will be deprived of female partnership in all its powerful aspects; feminine wisdom, intuition, multi-tasking, cooperation, nurturance, health and healing, endurance to name but a few. Our men will continue to be separated from the feminine, a lonely place to be for sure. Our society will continue to fail to fulfill the promise of the founding fathers and mothers, and to be embroiled in unbalanced global resource conflict (but more about that in another post). Our children will have to deal with the crippling effects of social isolation, intolerance, dissociation, and economic inequality.
Ultimately, both men and women are responsible for the world our children receive. At the very least, we should understand it and be able to describe the visible and invisible forces at play so our children can understand what they’re inheriting.
The next time you see a mother and experience a judgment about her, think deeply about the social constructs in your mind that give that judgment energy. Ask whether the judgment is legitimate, rather than whether she is legitimate.
What do you think?
Next up, more about how women can shape our experience through consciously building our life structures!
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the presenters at the first Motherhood Conference (sponsored by DU, University of Dublin and Whittier law schools) for their insight into the history of motherhood and tireless work in feminism–of which I have been woefully ignorant for too long–Rickie Sollinger, Kris Miccio, Penelope Bryan to name just three. Deep gratitude to my law school professors who have rounded out my understanding of the world, and sometimes left me picking my jaw up off the floor; Penelope Bryan, Rebecca Aviel, Jan Laitos, Nancy Ehrenreich, Catherine Smith; and to my sisters who have gone before me: Linda, Kathy, Mary, Anne, and Mimi.
Who is a Legitimate Mother? Part II. Becoming Illegitimate-Divorce.
19 Mar 2010 6 Comments
Divorce is one of the most dramatic social changes a person can endure–man or woman. At this point in our society, the benefits of leaving an unhappy marriage outweighs the social costs. If they didn’t, the divorce rate wouldn’t be so high. Still, women and men who’ve been through it know that the family’s supporting structures collapse at divorce–perhaps not as dramatically as they did 50+ years ago but they collapse nevertheless. Women, in general, experience this on a deep emotional level as a distinct, desperate drop in social status but sometimes have difficulty pinpointing the source of the social pain of divorce. I experienced a dramatic shift in my social status when I left my marriage. And this is how it felt:
I was a privileged mother. I was married to a successful man. We had ample resources and an enviable public life. I had an education, a career, seemingly endless opportunity. I was a pillar in our community. And I had two incredible sons; handsome, highly intelligent, capable boys. By this description, you might ask, what’s the problem? I had everything women are told they are supposed to want out of life. But I was not as happy as many women with a lot less.
Our marriage was not the joyful companionship I wanted or was told would be mine at matrimony. It was not an equal partnership. About five years into it, and for reasons I won’t belabor here, my love for him died a sudden and painful death. I held on for seven more years believing that we would could become the kind of couple who were truly united in an intimate, vulnerable way. When that did not materialize after years of trying, I gave up. And in one heaving sigh I said, “I want a divorce.”
I moved out within a month, our divorce was final 100 days later.
My life changed overnight. Aside from dealing with the gut-wrenching issues in divorce, my community and social structure changed. Family relationships changed, friendships changed, even my acquaintances changed. The local women began to eye me watchfully. Sideways glances told me they were wondering if I was a danger to their marriages, being a divorcee, seeking a lover to fill the void my husband left. Was I going to go after their husbands?
But a more subtle question simmered. In my leaving a seemingly perfect marriage, was I breaking the collective silence that traditional marriage was not all it’s cracked up to be? Wary eyes told me that–in addition to fearing a new, single woman in town, my fellow women feared that their secret dissatisfactions and complicity in their servitude was going to be exposed. “Please don’t tell anyone how unhappy, unfulfilled, alone I feel. My economic life depends upon it.”
I had become an illegitimate mother.
The school principle stopped asking me for input. Neighbors no longer asked me to dinner. I was not invited to the local gala Halloween party for the first time in years. Some people stopped speaking to me altogether. Fortunately, I had also started law school at the same time so I was too busy to take this deeply to heart. Still, I was excluded from many activities in my community and I knew it.
This experience unveiled one of the many ways women’s interests conflict with society’s interests, and women, being the pragmatists that we are, cooperate in order to reduce that conflict. When I stopped cooperating, society brought down a rain of penalties on me. Of course, I would do it all over again, because as a white woman of adequate means, thanks in part to divorce law that did not leave me out in the cold, I had somewhere to go–unlike my mother and millions of mothers in America today.
The only reason I am aware of this brooding question is because I started getting phone calls from local women–and a couple of men–asking how I did it, how I found the courage to leave, how I thought they could do it. There were plenty of women who felt as I did but fearing the loss of shelter, food, clothing, sank back into the quiet background of their family lives. Other women ask me privately to describe the experience of law school, of returning to society to claim my own personhood, of being a mom AND a woman. The more I told my story, the more I realized that a good portion of my sisters (my tribal sisters) want more for themselves as I do. They want to count as mothers and as people with something to offer the world, something creative, abundant, wise, and valuable.
Even in 2010, women can still be valued more for their reproductive labor than their feminine wisdom, strength, intuition, and companionship; and are undervalued economically in industry. We are generally paid less in all forms of industry because the economic world is a masculine world. A woman still makes less than 80 cents for every dollar a man makes, a fact that highlights why we are economically dependent on men if we wish to have children and raise them ourselves. Women often cooperate in the illusion that traditional marriage is perfectly fulfilling and desirable in order to maintain the delicate balance of power that is the foundation of traditional marriage. Of course, for plenty of families, this model works very well, particularly with a male partner who honors his vow to “love, honor, and cherish.” But for others, it is a gilded cage.
Next Up: Who is a Legitimate Mother: Part III. “He Who Has the Gold, Makes the Rules.”
Who is a Legitimate Mother? Part I
15 Mar 2010 3 Comments
I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that the world is not as it seems–that there are forces at play of which I am only vaguely aware–that affect me as a person, as a girl, a young woman, a wife, a mother, and even now as a student of the law. When I became a mother, I felt keenly aware of vast amounts of social pressure and expectation that falls upon mothers, as Christine Gottlieb of NYU School of Law observed recently at DU’s Motherhood Conference. There were pressures to have my child in a hospital, in my home; to breastfeed, not to breastfeed; to circumcise, not to circumcise; to sleep with my baby, to make my baby sleep in a crib. The players? Doctors, husband, parents, in-laws, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, co-workers, friends, television shows, commercials, and complete strangers. But those were the influences of which I was aware. Countless others outside my direct experience were busy setting expectations and asserting pressures that I had no knowledge of, no framework for understanding.
Only after I had had my second child did I start digging deeper to uncover and face these forces consciously. And that digging eventually led me to law school.
I’m a mom. That’s what I do. That is how I identify myself. But I am a single mother. I am unmarried. I am white. Without knowing any more about me, what would that say about me? It begs the question of why I’m alone, why I chose to have kids, what kind of person am I? Am I stupid for having had children? Am I uneducated? Did I lack other opportunity? What happened to the dad, or (gasp!) dads? Most damningly, am I a woman of loose morals?
What labels do you go by?
White, African American, Latina, Asian, Indian, Native American, Eskimo? Single, divorce, married, separated? Living with kids, without kids? Highly educated, high school educated, drop out? White collar, blue collar? Upper, middle, lower class? Middle age, young-middle age, not-so-young age, old age? [By the way, I put them in the order society values more or less, but you knew that already.]
The pressures and expectations we experience as mothers are directly and inextricably intertwined with the labels we bear. The degree to which society accepts or excludes us is an algorithm of these variables. What an adult black mother with a college education experiences in society is nothing like what a white teen with two years of high school experiences. What a low-income mother experiences is nothing like what a well-to-do mother experiences. What a married woman experiences is nothing like what a single woman experiences.
We know instinctively that American society decides who is a good mother and who is a bad mother–and that our opportunity to participate in social life is linked to our obedience to this algorithm. A woman who “should” be a mother is expected not to exercise her right to choose. Her offspring is a valuable resource to society. This is the good mother. A woman who should not be a mother is expected to exercise her right to end her pregnancy (or for pro-lifers, abstain from sex, or for the misbehaving, relinquish her child for adoption). This is the bad mother. Bad mothers are single mothers, mothers-of-color, teen mothers, and disadvantaged mothers. Her offspring are a drain on society and are not deserving of being raised to participate fully in American life.
In a tangible way, privilege in a America is about the right to have sex. It is no surprise that those who most vocally demand that women’s right to choose be ended are those that themselves are privileged. It is rare to meet a young, underprivileged black woman who is opposed to abortion or reproductive justice but not at all surprising to meet a young, well-to-do white woman with a big belly whose mother proclaims her daughter’s pregnancy is sacred and should not be judged. I dare say that same woman would not so defend a black girl’s pregnancy. The abortion debate is less about the sanctity of life as it is about maintaining the social strata placing some women above other women as proper mothers; permitting some women to have sex, while damning others for it.
Next Post: Who is a Legitimate Mother? Part II: Taking the Plunge, Changing Classes
