Mama grizzlies: emphasis on “mama”

[This is the second of a five-part series about politics, feminism and reflections on conservative women. Tune in tomorrow for some thoughts on the “new feminism” and “having it all” – that is, motherhood and political life. Cross-posted at Femocracy.net]

Something strange is happening in politics. Motherhood is now a badge of honor, proof of competence, capability of juggling, and toughness. There’s a “mom uprising,” after the men in power ran roughshod over the economy and spent us into a $12 trillion hole. And ever since Sarah Palin uttered the phrase “mama grizzlies,” this has been the face slapped on the “new feminism.”

Except this link between prizing motherhood and American conservatism is nothing new. It’s just been given better spokespeople that now can run for elected office.

Since women like Sarah Palin are bringing different shades of meaning to personal and political, I will share a personal anecdote of my own. I have a friend I have known since I was in second grade. We grew up together. She always came from a conservative family, but never really espoused her own political views. Then she met her future husband and fell in love with him, but had to convert to Mormonism in order to get married. She perfectly encapsulates that idea that it’s the new converts who are the most zealous. I don’t claim to be an expert on Mormonism, but I do know this – they promote very traditional gender roles, and the most noble and sacred thing a woman can do is give birth and raise future Mormons. So shortly after they got married, she got pregnant and soon gave birth – as the rest of us were still in stumbling-out-of-college phase.

She also became a big fan of Dr. Laura. Now up until this time, I mostly ignored Dr. Laura and her ilk – mostly because I found them to be relics from another age, trying to push outdated gender roles that I just wasn’t interested in. But as she posted links and quotes from Dr. Laura, and online raves of her book “In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms,” I decided it was high time I investigate more. So I had a jaunt to my local bookstore with a like-minded friend at we had a read-aloud from some of her collection. A few of the things I learned from Dr. Laura were these:

1.) Being a mother is a beautiful and blessed thing, and no other accomplishment a woman can achieve can equal this.

2.) If you have brought a baby into this world, you should quit your job to nurture your newest addition to your family – I’m looking at you, ladies.

3.) If you don’t quit your job, or feel that having some sort of balance outside changing diapers, making meals, and cleaning house will help your mental sanity, then you are being selfish.

4.) Your husband staying home should be the dead last option. You see, even if you are the higher earner, women are “nurturers” and men are “providers.” It helps the male ego to be the breadwinner, and come home to a wife who puts on makeup, makes him a sandwich, and is always ready for sex. If you wonder why I am leaving out same-sex couples, it’s because there’s no such thing in Dr. Laura’s world, because same-sex parents absolutely ruin kids and there should be a mother and father only. No other family structures allowed.

5.) Don’t believe the militant feminists about women’s equality. They burn their bras, after all, and pyromaniacs can’t be trusted. The true empowerment for women is in motherhood, and submitting to the masculinity of their husbands. Remember, anything but being a stay-at-home mother makes you selfish.

Needless to say, I had other observations, not to mention that Dr. Laura’s ideal world only applies to a select group of privileged people that can support a family on one income. And I wish I had nicer things to say, but I probably exclaimed the words, “Oh, bullSHIT!” more times in a short time span than I ever have before.

Now, I normally hesitate before applying the views of one person to an entire group at large, but this is something I’ve heard prevalently from Dr. Laura acolytes, religious figures, conservative pundits and politicians. The message they always hammered in was: Women’s empowerment comes from raising children. Women should stay home with the children and be traditional wives. [Side note: Please notice that the same people that say this then blame women’s lower wages on “choices” they made like staying home with the kids. Kind of a mixed message, no?] Women shouldn’t try to “have it all,” because this is detrimental to their families. If they let work detract from their family focus, they might raise delinquents who have sex or huff glue or something. Et cetera, et cetera.

I would also like to note here that nowhere did this disparagement for working women occur more than in high-powered careers: In business, in law, and yes, in politics. Remember Hillary Clinton’s cookie-gate? What she said in 1992 was, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fullfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.” Oh my! Read the transcript to get the feel of the debate over Hillary back then, but to boil it down, people were concerned she was an over-ambitious strident harridan that would take over the White House if her husband was elected to satisfy her thirst for power and lack of contentment just being a mom and wife. And talk about mommy wars! As an act of contrition, she had to prove she DOES bake cookies by offering up her own recipe. Seriously. It’s all over the web now, where you can easily search for the cookies our current Secretary of State makes in her very own kitchen!

My point is that Hillary was seen as insufficiently deferential to the rituals of traditional motherhood, and it cost her. And this was used time and time again to sideline women, or to question one’s womanhood if one had ambitions beyond the home. Or it was even used to question her capability, if her attention might be “divided” by working and having a family. And it was done by a lot of the people who celebrate Sarah Palin today, and treat motherhood as a credential and even a prerequisite to political life. I wish I could say this is because society is changing, or that these (mostly) men are evolving, but deep down I suspect it’s just because the new “mama grizzlies” are conservative instead of liberal and (shudder) “old-school” feminists.

I do not wish to disparage motherhood, particularly not in political life. In fact, back in the days before Susan B. Anthony and the suffragists that Palin likes to romanticize, women used this to their political advantage. You see, society designated “the domestic sphere” as the woman’s world, and “the public sphere” as the man’s. Subsequently, women could serve our great nation by giving birth and raising future citizens, molding them into the upstanding gentlemen that would fearlessly guide our country into the future. (When I write it that way, it kind of sounds similar to how I described Mormonism above.) Because of women’s special role as “Mothers of the Republic,” women were also seen to hold the moral high ground. They were also particularly skilled at organizing on the local, state and federal levels, such as women’s clubs that fell under the auspices of the National Federation of Women – and even though they were denied the vote, they learned to adapt and successfully lobbied lawmakers to pass minimum wage laws for women, 8-hour workdays, welfare and other social improvements that men were less successful at achieving in the workplace.

I think Palin unwittingly appropriates motherhood as political power with the “mama grizzlies.” In her words:

“Washington, let me tell ya, you no doubt don’t want to mess with moms who are rising up,” she said. “I always think of the mama grizzly bears that rise up on their hind legs when something is coming to attack their cubs.”

 Leaving aside that what’s apparently coming to attack the cubs is health care, this protective mother that shields her cubs is quite an image. What does it take to be a mama grizzly? The two most often cited are Nikki Haley and Carly Fiorina. Haley has kids, while Fiorina has stepchildren from a second marriage and was unable to have any of her own. She is subsequently anti-abortion, as is Haley. So you should be conservative, anti-choice, have children, and presumably oppose gay marriage. Fertility is front and center. Primal maternal urges are played up. Which seems to be a reversal from when women had to pretend they didn’t have ovaries (this might influence them too much), and were level-headed as opposed to instinctive (too close to emotional.) Caveat: This does not mean you will not be painted with the “hysterical woman” canard, even if you are endorsed by Palin.

 

I’m personally divided on the mama grizzlies. On the one hand, I totally disagree with them politically. On the other, perhaps they can make further inroads into creating space for women, particularly those with kids, in politics. Yet even on this I have mixed feelings. The common analysis of women running Tea Parties is that these are “outsider” groups where women can have a platform when the old boy’s club of the Republican party didn’t allow them to have power. But the rise of these women, and the candidates Palin supports, sort of just feels like the club finally decided to let them in because of the way the electorate is headed – and the same people that cheer for them are the ones that disparaged women running on the Democratic ticket as bad mothers.

I’m also divided over the use of motherhood as a political symbol. Which is not to say that motherhood isn’t a large part of the collective women’s experience. It’s just that as a childless, 25-year-old woman, this doesn’t appeal to me. I may have children one day, I may not – I continue to remain ambivalent. The linkage of motherhood-as-empowerment with conservative politics is just something we’ve seen before, and I’m wary. And a note to all conservatives crowing about the demise of “liberal feminism” – these mama grizzlies aren’t the “new feminists.” This tactic was used over a century ago, before women got the vote. As Jessica pointed out in her WaPo editorial:

Easy: They preempt criticism of their lack of bona fides by aligning themselves with a history that most women are proud of — the fight for suffrage. They claim they’re the real feminists, as Palin did in her speech lauding the Susan B. Anthony List for “returning the women’s movement back to its original roots.” (She wasn’t talking about voting rights; she was referring to the debated notion that first-wave feminists were antiabortion.)

 She does return mama grizzlies to their feminist roots – by making motherhood the bona fide, creating a lovely marble cake of the early women’s movement, traditional motherhood, and social conservative views that might just give you food poisoning. The problem is that she’s fighting against forward momentum and progress. But here’s the rub, conservative commentators: This isn’t new feminism. This is appropriated old feminism, with a modern face. A twenty-first century “feminism” looking wistfully backwards at inroads made a century ago. All the while painting “radical” feminists as frighteningly misguided – even though it was the radicals that created space for women in political office in the first place, and fought to help mothers work outside the home. And I think that a new class of conservative female candidates are invoking it now just speaks to the power of such an inheritance.