New Mom laments the loss of her progressive community [View All]

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The Invisible Mom: A Hidden Crisis in the Progressive Community

By Mik Tulumello

When I was pregnant I had these great visions of what it would be like to be a parent. Bringing the kid to see all of my friends, Halloween pumpkin carving, camping, going to peace rallies with the new community mascot, having an excuse to go to the playground, and generally reliving childhood. Somehow the pictures in my head always involved sunshine and friends.

Well, maybe I was a bit innocent, after all I should have expected some rainy days in Binghamton. But one thing I could not have predicted was those so-called friends fleeing my life like rats from a sinking ship. Granted, I probably should have seen the storm clouds on the horizon when I invited a friend to my baby shower and was told "Why should I get you a present for selfishly adding to the population and contributing to the destruction of the planet?" I debated on asking him just who he thought was going to be changing his biodegradable reusable diapers when he's 85 in some nursing home, but I figured why waste the energy, after all there's a whacko in every bunch.

A couple months later the baby arrived. I was constantly exhausted and sleep deprived, but I still visited people and determinedly hung on to my social and political life. True, I felt a slight twitch developing every time the baby cried and some said "been there done that" or "How can you handle it? It must be so hard."

Then a very strange thing happened. Around November, when she learned to crawl and yank things off of shelves, I ceased to exist. People stopped calling me and when I called them they were Very Busy With Work.

Funny how life keeps going on even when you don't exist. Once in the center of my activist crowd, I now only kept in touch with a few friends. One, (strangely enough an apolitical former republican), is my most regular visitor, in spite of the fact that she probably has trouble getting up the gas money to get here, and her car breaks down regularly. Last time she and her boyfriend showed up, they brought a used sandbox and some play sand for my daughter. She loves it and I love them.

I did keep up my political work in the form of painting a mural with students in a poor community. (I received a very small grant to do it- not nearly enough to afford to pay for my childcare, not to mention my own time) So I had to figure out how to deal with the child care issue while I did this. Guess who came to the rescue? The apolitical former republican and one other apolitical working class friend did the lion's share of the volunteer child care. Only one person in the progressive community helped out and due to her work schedule that was only once or twice.

I still go out to events but the frequency is less and less. After all, why go out when there are no other kids (their moms were probably already driven away) and your partner is the one who plays the music? It gets boring being invisible in public anyway, and the people I formerly felt such a sense of solidarity with, when by some trick of the light they do see me, appear pretty uncomfortable and embarrassed and tend to stammer on about how busy they have been. After all I am a mom with a toddler who they haven't seen for a year. Translation- Awkward Social Situation, (or A.S.S. for those who do a lot of abbreviating)

So what, you might ask, does this have to do with politics? In reply I would have to ask you, would this have happened to me if I was a right-wing fundamentalist? The answer is a resounding NO. I would probably be hanging out with the church folks, baby in the care of a group of bubbly Teenagers for Jesus, while I chatted with other moms and stuffed envelopes for Franklin Graham events. There would be round after round of backyard barbeques and bible study groups. I would be willing to bet I would be feeling more, and not less, accepted and central to the community then I did before I had the baby.

I will now make a prediction. As long as it manages to continue to avoid being family friendly, the progressive community will always be a fringe group. Because this community is not willing to create a welcoming space for, and invest hands on time in families, there will be very few kids growing up with progressive traditions of activism in their households. Parents will have no time to be activists, and their kids won't get to be around a community where they see that as a valid role they can play. We might help win the next election, but we won't win the hearts and minds of the young.

The other day a gay friend asked me if we were going to the peace picnic. I said no, because their would be no other moms with kids there and my partner is an organizer and he's playing music. The end result is that I would be invisible and alone frantically trying to keep my kid from yanking things off of peoples plates and crawling under tables, so why not just go to the playground instead? for practical purposes I was going to be alone in either situation, and so I preferred the environment where I could at least enjoy my child.

"That doesn't sound like fun," she said. "I'll ask the Pride Families Coalition if they are going and get back to you." The gay community gets it. Why don't we? They don't take families for granted because they have had to work so hard for the right to have and keep them. They have figured out the lesson that every child is a community treasure and an investment in the future.

Bottom line, if the progressive community wants to be around in twenty years the bulk of its membership has to stop viewing kids as a greenhouse gas-spewing problem, and start viewing them as the generation that is going to need the tools and the education to clean up our generation's socioeconomic, environmental and political mess if it wants to survive. We can't just degenerate into a bunch of misanthropic, workaholic curmudgeons whose best hope for the future is that everyone gets some superplague and dies. It's creepy and people don't get it.

For those of you who are now squirming with shame over the way you have treated myself or some other mom like me, it could be too late to win our friendship back,(and believe me if you ever do have a kid you will come groveling back begging us for playdates), but on the positive side here are some things you can do as an individual to get your community back on track:

Spend time with a mom or dad and get to know their kid. It might not suck. You might figure out that kids are interesting, easily amused little beings that like to learn new tricks and - bonus - you get to play in the park and no one will think you are a dork. When was the last time YOU got to go trick or treating anyway?
Make sure the political events you help organize are kid friendly. Connect parents with each other before hand, and recruit people to help with childcare if possible so the parents can participate.
Help out-The effort it takes is minor but it can make someone's day. This should seem pretty obvious but in reality most of the "help" people give moms is in the form of criticism. The other day I was at the farmer's market trying to get my veggies and my kid was continuously escaping my clutches and making a beeline for the road. Some woman (I believe I have seen her at teachers for peace) yelled at me for letting the kid go in the road and told me I better hold her hand. If you ever tried to collect vegetables with one hand and hold a struggling child who wants to run with the other you will know this is a nearly impossible task requiring superhuman strength. Yelling is not the kind of help I can use. The kind of help I CAN use is for the person to spare the criticism and offer to either grab the veggies or hold the kid.
Invite yourself over. Parents understandably prefer not to go to your house because they know that if their kid has a run in with your computer or your depression-era glass collection, you will hate them, and chasing a kid around a non-child-friendly house is torture, and anyway, our curfew is 8pm. So invite yourself over. You can stay until after we put the kid to bed. We will love the adult company and if you bring enough beer, we'll even teach you the latest songs from sesame street.
Introduce your friends with kids to each other whenever possible so they can get some much needed support from each other.
If you are hosting a baby or young child at your place, there are a few things you can do to make a pleasant experience possible for everyone. Do your best to get the obviously dangerous and expensive things out of reach. Schedule dinner early, and try and have whole milk in your fridge. I have also been to several dinners where my kid has had nothing to eat because the crunchy vegetable tempeh stirfry was inedible for someone with no molars. Effort is not required here. Spaghetti with sauce on the side is a good choice. After all, that kid is your guest too, and you wouldn't serve a vegetarian a steak would you?
Before you lose your patience with the crying and the antics, remember that you were a kid once and people put up with you, so you actually do owe these critters some tolerance.

And if, even after reading this you do find yourself saying, "Well of course we don't see her, she never comes to any meetings, if she doesn't care about the issues why should we care about her?" Try remembering that every time you see my partner coming to meetings and parties that's MY sacrifice. I'm the one home with the kid. It is because of me he has the time to do the things he does. I'm the invisible mom in the room.

For those of you that do not have kids, never lose sight of the fact that these little people are the future and when you ignore them they are getting their education from somewhere else, like TV commercials or that nice fundamentalist family down the street. It IS actually up to you whether or not they grow up with the right values. It does take a village to raise a child, so maybe you should have the strategic sense to make sure it's your village.

peace,

Mik
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