One viewpoint from the daughter of a famous feminist

[gardenswithkids]

This article might interest some of you.
dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021293/How-mothers-fanatical-feminist-views-tore-apart-daughter-The-Color-Purple-author.html

**She’s revered as a trail-blazing feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women. A champion of women’s rights, she has always argued that motherhood is a form of servitude. But one woman didn’t buy in to Alice’s beliefs - her daughter, Rebecca, 38. **

Here the writer describes what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a cultural icon, and why she feels so blessed to be the sort of woman 64-year-old Alice despises - a mother. …

 

[pentecostbaby]

What a great article. She’s totally right - I saw this kind of thing every day at the university where I worked and studied.

A woman I really liked, who had her office next door to mine, was a feminist scholar. She had a two year-old son; we talked about him a lot. When DH and I decided to get the ball rolling on our adoption, I talked to her some about parenting. Two days later, she sent me a long email about how “shocked” she was that we had decided to have kids in grad school, that parenting was very difficult, and that it would be hard to finish our degrees and pay for a kid. It was a terrible email; she equated kids with a kind of slavery and said something like, although I love my son, I wish I didn’t have him. She finished by saying I should get my priorities together.

I got my priorities straight and quit my Ph.D program. Last week I turned in my final work and now I’m done. I was so sick of being in such a pro-death, selfish place. I’m glad I’m not there anymore; it’s hard to stare down the barrel of a) being a SAHM, and b) praying DH gets a teaching job next year. But it’s worth it.

 

[RACJ]

What a great article. She’s totally right - I saw this kind of thing every day at the university where I worked and studied.

A woman I really liked, who had her office next door to mine, was a feminist scholar. She had a two year-old son; we talked about him a lot. When DH and I decided to get the ball rolling on our adoption, I talked to her some about parenting. Two days later, she sent me a long email about how “shocked” she was that we had decided to have kids in grad school, that parenting was very difficult, and that it would be hard to finish our degrees and pay for a kid. It was a terrible email; she equated kids with a kind of slavery and said something like, although I love my son, I wish I didn’t have him. She finished by saying I should get my priorities together.

I got my priorities straight and quit my Ph.D program. Last week I turned in my final work and now I’m done. I was so sick of being in such a pro-death, selfish place. I’m glad I’m not there anymore; it’s hard to stare down the barrel of a) being a SAHM, and b) praying DH gets a teaching job next year. But it’s worth it.

 You've got to wonder how an intelligent woman could allow a sick, anti-human philosophy to saturate her brain to the point of dementia. And there are millions like her in America today. All I can think is "Her poor son!!" Give the kid to someone who will love him, please. :(  Rob
 P.S. Congratulations on extricating yourself from matriculation hell. ;)

 

[whatevergirl]

***What a great article, thanks for sharing! How horrible, to have grown up with her mother pumping her full of anti-mothering senitments.

It makes me wonder, what type of childhood Alice Walker had, actually. Something pretty horrible had to have happened to her, I would imagine. I don’t know if a woman could naturally feel such disdain for motherhood.

I agree with Walker’s daughter…being a mother opened my world, and has given me the ability to love beyond my wildest dreams. ***

 

[jwashu]

This article might interest some of you.
dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021293/How-mothers-fanatical-feminist-views-tore-apart-daughter-The-Color-Purple-author.html

Awesome article, my wife and I talk about this all the time. We both grew up in the 70s and 80s where the norm for women was career first, family second. We made choices which mean my wife must work, at least for now, how much better it would be for her to be a SAHM, her raising her children herself. We are lucky though that my mother is in town to help but how many more don’t have that option.

The women’s movement did some really great things and there is still a lot of work to be done in regards to equality in the workplace and other areas but I believe the whole push that women had to somehow take on the more negative aspects of men to be true women to be preposterous.

I also feel sorry for both the author and her mother…