
"To me, if a woman doesn’t have a child, she has only an abstract ability to pass judgment on issues where motherhood is concerned."
"To me, if a woman doesn’t have a child, she has only an abstract ability to pass judgment on issues where motherhood is concerned."
The American way is "never giving up, hoping for a miracle," said Dr. Porter Storey, a former hospice medical director who is executive vice president of the hospice group that Morrison heads.Sound familiar?
"We use sports metaphors and war metaphors all the time. We talk about never giving up and it's not over till the fat lady sings .... glorifying people who fought to their very last breath," when instead we should be helping them accept death as an inevitable part of life, he said.
"Once upon a time, the conveniences of modern life (processed foods, Lysol spray, disposable diapers, clothes dryers, polyester sheets) liberated women like my mother from their chains. But now, their granddaughters are clamoring to clap the shackles on again. Someone’s got to mash the organic applesauce, hang the diapers out to dry, and breastfeed the kid. No matter how enlightened the parental units, that someone will generally be Mom.She has a point. You know, as much as I wanted children, I have to admit -- at times, I find myself relieved that I didn't. I know parenting is hard work, but yes, the bar these days does seem to be set incredibly high.
"It seems to me that if you had deliberately devised a plot to oppress women, it couldn’t get more diabolical than this. Highly educated, progressive and enlightened mothers don’t need men to oppress them. They’re perfectly capable of oppressing themselves!
"...it occurs to me that the high moral bar we’ve set for modern motherhood is a tremendous deterrent to motherhood itself. Any thoughtful woman would have to think twice, thrice, or three times thrice before committing to a task with such demanding standards. Can you blame them for deciding not to? If we want to raise the birth rate, perhaps we need to lower the bar."
"Progressives celebrated Gillard’s selection, and her pro-choice stance, while conservatives deplored that she is Godless, husbandless and childless. Which is nothing new. Gillard, 48, has long been attacked by the Liberal opposition (in Australia, Liberals are the main right-wing party) for not starting a family. One Liberal senator said she was unfit for leadership because she is “deliberately barren.’’ A Liberal frontbencher claimed she couldn’t “understand the way parents think’’ because she has no children. Even her sexual orientation has been questioned, despite former romantic links to a union official as well as a fellow politician, and her current four-year relationship to hairstylist Tim Mathieson."
QUOTE: ''Women are not breeding machines, you know.'' —Gillard’s 81-year-old father, John, on the slights his daughter has endured for being single and childless in public life.
This has the makings of a horrific story -- and it is, in some respects. But it's also a fun read that frequently had me laughing out loud. I knew that Alison had become a standup comedian in the years after "Little House," and her sense of humour -- obviously well honed as a defense mechanism -- shines throughout the book. She gives full credit to Nellie for giving her a safe outlet for acting out all the pain, anger & frustration she felt during her bizarre childhood.
There's something else that Alison has struggled with. When I picked up the book, I read on the jacket that Alison "lives in Los Angeles with her husband." It suddenly occurred to me that I had never heard anything about her having children. I wondered it that would be mentioned in the book. There is exactly one sentence, toward the very end, that explains a lot (p.266):
"As if my mother's death wasn't depressing enough, after a couple of years of trying to have a baby with Bob to no avail, the doctors had officially informed me that the chances of my producing a child through the usual means were essentially slim to none."
But then she adds:
"Yet despite all these circumstances, I was strangely happy on my fortieth. Not exactly dance-in-the-streets happy, but I knew things could be worse, and I felt grateful for all I had."
Later, on page 294, she notes:
"I always manage to find ways to be happy, even when things are awful. It's more than just a "well, the show must go on" attitude. I just always see the humour in situations, no matter how dark. My husband says I'm the only person he knows who can figure out how to have fun doing absolutely anything... I am just ridiculously, stupidly happy. I am often cheerful to the point of being annoying as hell. I don't know if this is a sign of good mental health or recovery, or if it means I've finally snapped and just gone the rest of the way to completely batshit crazy."
One of the things that Alison believes contributes to her happiness is her volunteerism & activism -- first on behalf of AIDS patients (prompted by her friendship with actor Steve Tracy, who played her TV husband Percival & later died of AIDS) and then on behalf of victims of child abuse.
I think there's a lesson in there for those of us struggling to find purpose & meaning in a childless life. I wish she had given us more of her thoughts on infertility & childless living, but I suppose she & her editors felt the book already had enough drama & personal confession in it. In a way, she communicates a lot with just that one sentence, and in the way that she has lived her life, finding her own way to happiness, despite everything she has dealt with. Even if you weren't a huge "Little House" fan, I think you will enjoy this book. I did!
"Revisiting cultural touchstones from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Survivor to Desperate Housewives, Douglas exposes the women in these shows as mere fantasies of female power, assuring women and girls that the battle for equality has been won, so there’s nothing wrong with resurrecting sexist stereotypes—all in good fun, of course. She shows that these portrayals not only distract us from the real-world challenges facing women today but also drive a wedge between baby-boom women and their “millennial” daughters."I grew up in the 1960s & 1970s, proud to call myself a feminist (then & now). I've found it disheartening that many younger women today tend to shy away from the "f" word and seem unaware of both how far we've come & how far we still have to go. Douglas makes a compelling (albeit sometimes convoluted) case for how the media has helped to bring this situation about.
"Losing your man is a tragedy, but remaining childless is a thermonuclear disaster. It's as if the makers of Pampers, Gerber's, and Legos owned these magazines. Babies are always "a bundle of joy," only produce "baby bliss," bring "new meaning to life," and make the man love the mother "even more now than he did before." Babies always bring couples "closer together." Clearly, no projectile vomiting, sleep deprivation, thwarted adult conversations, or fights over whose turn it is to go to the playground in these households. If you have twins, you get "Twin Bliss!" "Twins are double the work but twice the fun," confides In Touch; here, Charlie Sheen, former party animal and client of Hollywood hooker Heidi Fleiss, announces, "The Twins Made Me a Better Man."
"...pregnancy has now become compulsory for female stars: they must have a baby to fulfill what is allegedly every woman's dream to be a mother. If they don't have children yet, we are assured they desperately want to in the future. If they have one, when is the next one coming? If they have two, what about three? Julia Roberts was constantly hounded about having kids until her twins arrived. George Clooney, by contrast, is not hounded about when he will reproduce. Jennifer Aniston's breakup with Brad Pitt was blamed on her alleged refusal to have children, as was her breakup with Vince Vaughn. We are back to the 1950s -- you are not a real woman if you don't have kids."Douglas's argument tends to take some convoluted twists & turns at times and, as one reviewer I read said, I sometimes felt like I was being bombarded with one example after another. Nevetheless, it's an interesting theory and, as with her previous book, it's fun to get a new take on your favourite old shows.
Thank you, Emily, for posting about this article on Facebook!"The assumption persists that every (married) woman will have a child, even those who aren't interested. So you can imagine how that might feel for those who are. But, then, articles about infertility online, for one, often elicit ungenerous commentary that basically boils down to "boo-fucking-hoo." Our nation's collective pop-culture "bump watch" being on permanent orange alert (what Rebecca Traister called "pregnancy porn") doesn't help, either.
"Speaking of culture, it's not overflowing with positive, nuanced or compassionate images of women struggling to conceive or seeking fertility treatment. (One word: "octo-mom.") Also, if you totally forgot that there was a dramedy about a fertility clinic on NBC called "Inconceivable," good."
More to come, soon. I promise!