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.
The other day I was vacuuming when my son came bounding into the room. 'Mummy, Mummy, let me help,' he cried. His little hands were grabbing me around the knees and his huge brown eyes were looking up at me. I was overwhelmed by a huge surge of happiness.
I love the way his head nestles in the crook of my neck. I love the way his face falls into a mask of eager concentration when I help him learn the alphabet. But most of all, I simply love hearing his little voice calling: 'Mummy, Mummy.'
It reminds me of just how blessed I am. The truth is that I very nearly missed out on becoming a mother - thanks to being brought up by a rabid feminist who thought motherhood was about the worst thing that could happen to a woman.
You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.
In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life. Far from 'enslaving' me, three-and-a-half-year-old Tenzin has opened my world. My only regret is that I discovered the joys of motherhood so late - I have been trying for a second child for two years, but so far with no luck.
I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. But I strongly feel children need two parents and the thought of raising Tenzin without my partner, Glen, 52, would be terrifying.
30 Comments
Good post NOM. Keep sharing stuff like this.
Thank you so much Rebecca. To acknowledge motherhood as a joy and to further honor the men who are "present" fathers is a great compliment to you and those of us who were marginalized as Dad's by a radical feminist ideology! Thank you again, Rebecca!
I think that there is a yin and yang about the world. A male and a female essence. Biologically life is created by yin and yang. They are two opposites but each is incomplete without the other. The opposites working together give a greater whole. Beyond the biological there is the spiritual male and female essence. Polynesians believed in Oatea and Atanua, the Sky Father and the Earth Mother. Up and down. Oatea was from the Sea, Atanua was from the land. The Sky and the Earth make a whole creation. It is the nature of Atanua, the Land to create life.
I wonder if this woman is having joy being a mother because she is fulfilling a spiritual role.
Awesome point of perspective Tekakaromatagi; thank you.
She's having joy because that's what she wants to do and be, a mother. Her mother had a different perspective. It happens, people, and it has nothing to do with God or the like. Not everyone is meant to be alike or parents. We live in the real world, not the perfect fairytale world NOM wishes we lived in.
Rene: her mother essentially abandoned her at a young age for selfish reasons, then refused to speak to her (and removed her from her will) because Rebecca chose to have a child with her husband. Read the entire article at the Daily Mail.
I would add that a great many women have written similar articles about the problems created by feminist ideology.
I would add (to Rene): why didn't Rebecca Walker deserve the love and attention of her mother - yes, "her mother had a different perspective" as you say, but the fact that her mother is a strident feminist who hates motherhood (and evidently wishes Rebecca had never been born) does not negate the fact that her daughter does exist and deserves to be treated with some degree of decency. So does her grandson.
Having had a mother with similar sensibilities as Rebecca Walker I can say with absolute certainty what Rebecca's mother resented was the guilt that goes along with abandoning the immutable sense of personal responsibility all parents have for their children.
Afterall, isn't that what this whole fight is about; individuals seeking to legislate the absolution of their sins with the hope of quiting their sense of personal guilt for indulging their ego's.
Thanks NOM for the article, Rebecca Walker is a beautiful woman with a beautiful story...
On the contrary;God created marriage.I would argue that He has everything to do with it. No thanks to her mother she developed that natural as well as spiritual part of herself which is the essence of motherhood;loving that little person that grows inside your body;part of yourself.
No, Shirley, God didn't create marriage, man did and for some pretty rotten reasons. Try reading a history that isn't dictated by any religion. AW, Some women just aren't meant to be mothers and as much as you want to believe that every woman has those warm and cuddly feelings, that's just not true. Seems to me that this woman managed to make it through what was a hellacious childhood into the light and I give her full credit for persevering. But don't blame it all on feminism, because that's not the full story.
What a sad world view you have Rene. Family is beautiful.
Family is beautiful. And marriage equality will only make it stronger (as it already does).
Rene said that 1) male human beings 2) invented marriage 3) for some pretty rotten reasons.
Even if each of those three prongs of your assertion was plausible (which I doubt very much) what has that assertion got to do with the article in the blogpost?
You said: "But don't blame it all on feminism, because that's not the full story."
You agreed that it is part of the full story. Well, I think that part is described in the article linked in the blogpost above.
Rene: You say "some women just aren't meant to be mothers", but that doesn't change the fact that (in this case) Alice Walker IS a mother and grandmother nonetheless, and she has certain responsibilities toward her own child and grandchild. She doesn't want to be a mother because motherhood conflicts with her rather extreme form of feminism, as her daughter pointed out - she gave specific examples of how her mother's ideology shaped the problem. How do you possibly defend someone abandoning her own child (and now also her own grandchild) just for the sake of a theory?
On the subject of marriage: when Christians say that God created marriage, we mean that God set forth rules governing a specific form of marriage in the Bible. Yes, various other forms existed before the Bible was compiled, but even those were generally designed to create a stable family structure for raising children. Why is that a "rotten reason"?
AW,
"generally designed to create a stable family structure for raising children. Why is that a "rotten reason"?"
It is a rotten reason because it is based on science, historical fact, and common sense; all of which stand as a painful reminder to the marriage corruption movement of how wrong they are.
A couple points:
1. This op-ed is from 2008. Why post now?
2. Is the rape/impregnation scene in the Color Purple autobiographical?
3. It sounds like this mother-daughter conflict is more about personality than ideology.
4. @AW: God's rules, as set down in Scripture, are for levirate, endogamous polygyny (usually arranged by parents(not by choice), in exchange for a sum of money, livestock, or other wealth. Hardly what we consider normal today.
Scrounger:
Re: #4 on you list. Regardless of the conditions, it has always been a man and a woman; never two people of the same sex. It has always been about the complementary nature of man and woman.
Motherhood is a blessing and a privilege. My understanding of the nature of God, and my relationship with Him, has been much enhanced by taking the opportunity to become a mother.
But I couldn't be a mother, without my full partnership with my husband.
Marriage=man+woman
@resist, that's true. The Bible never countenances same-sex marriage. Some other cultures have allowed it, however (Indians of the Great Plains come to mind). My point is that opponents of marriage equality often cite binary (male-female) traits of Biblical marriage, but never the other stuff that went with. When NOM advocates legalizing Levirate marriage, let me know, OK?
Scrounger: the vast majority of the people in the Bible (and in Jewish society of that era) had one spouse (regardless of the arrangement for some of the early patriarchs) within a type of marriage that was remarkably similar to what we have today, aside from the inevitable cultural differences. And the prototype which the Bible gives is the relationship of Adam and Eve, which was one man and one woman (and yes, I know, someone will loudly object that they weren't married by a priest in a church or synagogue, didn't exchange gold rings, no one was there to throw rice at them, they didn't have a car with "Just Married" written on the back window, and they didn't receive an electric crock pot as a wedding gift.... but that's a silly argument). The bottom line is: the basic form of marriage - a union between a man and a woman - was established in the Bible, and frankly was the norm in virtually all pre-Biblical pagan societies, too.
@AW: yes, but the exclusive norm. Btw, what do you think accounts for the cultural difference between the modern west and Biblical Israel?
Scrounger: Well, for starters, we're not a group of nomadic sheep- and goat-herders armed with spears and bronze swords. Certain cultural differences are going to be inevitable, but the basics of marriage are much the same.
OK, I read the full article. It sounds like one person is very hurt. She felt abandoned and uncared for. I feel sorry for her. However, it also sounds like she publicly blamed her mother for her feelings. I don't blame her mother for disowning her. All I read was the venting of a very sad, lonely and spoiled little girl who still feels her mother MUST treat her the way she thinks she should be treated.
@AW: Exactly! Nomadic societies that rely on a pastoral economy have always allowed polygyny, as an adaptation to their circumstances. It didn't mean that every man had multiple wives, just some. As the people of Israel become more urbanized, polygyny (and levirate marriage) disappears. As we now live in a post industrial economy, where marriage is usually an individual choice (as opposed to arranged), many of us who support legalizing SSM feel that there is no reason to proscribe SSM. It doesn't mean that everybody will marry somebody of the same sex, just those who want to. Most, like me, will still marry opposite their sex.
Mark,
Isn't that exactly what you are fighting for? You, of all people, should be sympathetic to Rebecca's story considering the fact that you are here demanding society give to sexual deviants what Rebecca's own biological mother refuses to give to her.
You cannnot find it in yourself to feel personal outrage at the thought of a mother refusing to recognize her own daughter, yet you come in here and demand society afford said recognition to individuals who cannot find it in themselves to acknowledge the laws of nature.
Mark; you are projecting!
Well, marriage customs might have changed throughout the ages, but the man/woman integration has always been a core value. For one thing, it protects child-bearing women through presumption of paternity, and it protects paternity rights of married men. Single men and women don't have those protections, should they reproduce, and SSM nullifies the expectation of it, leaving all men and women vulnerable, married or not. SSM also obliviates the rationale to exclude siblings from SSM, or even opposite-sexed siblings from man/woman marriage. It also negates the rationale behind prohibiting groups from marriage.
Gets really messy.
Randy E King
I am not "demanding society give to sexual deviants" anything. I am, however, demanding that all Americans are given the same rights.
Oh, and homosexuality is not sexual deviancy, just to let you know. Do you even know what the term means?
Mark,
Devance: any behavior that violates social norms, and is usually of sufficient severity to warrant disapproval from the majority of society.
Pervert: a unusual or abnormal sexual act that is habitual.
And you will be happy to know that your demands have been met and we are all now free to marry any individual of the opposite sex that meets legal requirements.
You can go away the victor with a sense moral of accomplishment; you go girl.
Scrounger: The thing that _didn't_ change was the requirement that marriage (and sex) be reserved for opposite-gendered couples, for moral reasons. A society's economic system has nothing to do with that issue, nor can you keep changing sexual mores just because we have a different technology level or economic structure. I would add that even in early Biblical times, many people married out of love rather than for economic reasons, in fact the early books of the Bible itself mention cases like that. As for polygamy (which is a different issue than same-sex marriage since polygamy involves marriage between men and women) : for an idea of why the Bible once allowed polygamy early on, there are accepted revealed sources outside the Bible that have long been used by the Catholic Church and which shed light on that matter, such as St. Hildegard's revelations in which Hildegard says that God told her that polygamy was allowed for the early Israelites only out of dire necessity, because there were so few people - a family with multiple wives will produce children far more efficiently since the births will not be spaced so far apart (think about it). It's also likely that the early Israelites had significantly more women than men, due to the fact that in ancient battles it was common for the defeated army to be nearly wiped out, meaning that even one major defeat could result in the loss of a large percentage of a tribe's male members. Women would not have been subjected to such high mortality rates (death from childbirth would be much lower overall than combat losses), hence it's likely there were a lot more women than men, hence polygamy would give the tribe a more feasible method of sustaining itself. Judaism would not have survived if the earliest Jews had been wiped out by their many (and much larger) enemies, hence polygamy was permitted to allow them to survive. But this type of survival-based exemption for the early Israelites has no possible application for same-sex marriage, since homosexual sex does not produce children and our society is not a small tribe struggling for survival against larger groups.