I knew I’d forgotten something yesterday!

• Feminist Mothers – “Renewed feminist vigour at this life stage is not just anger at not being able to ‘have it all,’ as those who fear feminism would have us believe. Actually, it’s coming in contact with the body-hating language of obstetrics and wanting to fight for more woman-centred birth choices. It’s having salespeople ring during the day and ask when your husband will be home because they assume that you can’t make financial decisions. It’s the judgements complete strangers make about the rightness or wrongness of using childcare (or not). It’s hearing friends and strangers praise your husband for ‘babysitting’ but look expectantly at you if your child makes an inconvenient noise. And for me, a lot of it is about breastfeeding.”
• Father’s Rights Activist Assholes – “Oh, yeah, the mom should have set up shit for the kids. Not the dad. He had to get another woman pregnant. Of course, the kid should only wear raggedy, cheap clothes and used shoes. It’s so cheap to raise a kid. God, these women drive cars! Those bitches! The kid should walk or hitchhike. The mom? That conniving bitch should crawl. It’s like these assholes don’t think about how you can’t separate the kids’ expenses from the mom’s. The kid’s food, obviously, should be for the kid alone. The mom should starve. The electricity? The gas? The heat? Well….let’s just ignore that. It’s just too inconvenient for dad to think about anybody but himself.”
• Raise The Change – Raise the Change is committed to respectful and open discussion about political and cultural topics that affect us as women, mothers and global citizens. Our worldview is liberal and progressive.
• Taking Octuplets Away Not the Answer! – “But there are millions of people all over this country receiving some sort of financial assistance — disablity, welfare, you name it. And many of those families continue to have kids (gasp!). The difference is, they have them one at a time, falling under the radar of the rest of the country. There’s nobody outside their door (or on national television) calling to have their kids ripped from them.

  “She couldn’t possibly give them all the love they need.” If you are a person who has uttered the above statement, come closer so I can slap you. Have we forgotten that in countless cultures around the world, it is customary for big families to all co-exist under one roof? Are we going to seek out all of them and pull them apart, just because it doesn’t seem to fit what we think is ‘normal’?”

• Start ‘Em Young – “I was so pleased when I found this list of primary, targeted words guaranteed to widen every little princess’s vocabulary just enough for her to play with and absorb these crucial messages which will help her form the limits of her intellectual boundaries in years to come.

  Thank goodness the set excludes any complicated words like Doctor, or Car, or Career, or heaven forfend: Reading. We don’t want our little ones to get silly ideas in to their heads. The right social conditioning from as early as possible will present the world with compliant, self absorbed, distressed, depressed and anorexic teenagers who are all the more willing to spend, spend, spend on hopeless diet cures, makeup, hidden, guilt ridden chocolate (one of the special words placed here!) and anti-depressants which will really make life worth living.”

• Babies Having Babies – “Because let’s face it: While girls becoming mothers at age 13 is frighteningly frequent, boys becoming fathers at that age is considerably more rare. Usually the father of a 13 year old mother’s child will be older than her – and very often he’ll be so much older that it was rape in the eyes of the law. ut somehow that’s not an interesting story. Young mothers isn’t really what this is about, is it? It’s about the young fathers. Note the focus on Alfie Patten’s oath to be a good dad. What newspaper would report that a 13 year old girl made such an oath? I can’t think of one. But I can think of plenty who’d suggest she did it to get welfare, and that she’ll be a Welfare Queen for the rest of her life probably with an additional 5 children in as many years. In Alfie’s case Social Services are merely quoted as “keeping an eye on the kids, and standing by to help should it get necessary”.”
• Motherhood and Identity – “The construction of identity fascinates me, all the more so because I don’t fully understand it, even in myself. We communicate as much about ourselves by what we leave out as by what we include. Some women are entirely in favor of equality, of fighting sexism, of women’s liberation… and do not identify as feminist. I am a woman who spends the day more or less at home, engaging in the unpaid and largely unsupported employment of raising my child, while my male partner works outside the home to make money for us to have a food and a house and health insurance… and I do not identify as a SAHM. There must be some connection there, something to help me promote the feminist movement, but bugger me if I can make it today.”
• Woman Centered Vertical Birth – “This beautiful ritual to celebrate the beginning of life not only affirms the significance of caring for the mother but has “helped reduce Caesarean sections from 18 to 8 percent at the hospital.” and “The hospital has an infant mortality of 7.8 per 1,000 live births, less than half the national average, which stands at 19 per 1,000.”

  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if western hospitals could be this attentive to birthing women? And if everyone recognized birth as the time when life begins?”

• Failed Feminists Put Children at Risk – “More disturbing is Lewis’s baby fixation. She fantasises about being “in the kitchen with a baby on [my] hip” saying “children bring more happiness than work ever can.” Apparently, she hasn’t gotten the memo that children are not pets, or accessories, but human beings.

  In Lewis’s imagination a child would make her life perfect and happy and rosy – which terrifically wrong-headed. There is nothing inherently selfish about wanting to have a child. But there is something wrong with wanting a child to make you happy. It isn’t their job. And, purposefully or no, children have plenty of scope to make mums unhappy, whether they’re throwing up on an new outfit or robbing the family silver to feed a crack habit. People who can’t grasp that having children is risky business should keep out of the gene pool. And Lewis doesn’t.”

• US Group Lists Feminist Books Suitable For Kids Aged 0-18 – “If you’re shopping for feminist-friendly books for the under-18 crowd, the 2009 Amelia Bloomer list looks like a good place to start.

  The evaluated over 400 fiction and non-fiction books this year, selecting books suitable for all age groups. It’s broken down using the grade system in US schools, which can be a bit confusing, but it seems to start out with books aimed at the youngest age bracket and get older.

  They say:

  Exemplary books that celebrate the strengths of girls and women and nourish their potential are needed now more than ever. The Amelia Bloomer Project produces an annual list of books for young readers, birth through age 18, that contain significant feminist content. We need not just cardboard “feisty” or “spunky” female characters, but tales of girls and women who have broken barriers and fought to change their situations and their environment.”

• Sorting the numbers (and raising feminists) – “As for raising feminists – she already says she wants to be a feminist when she grows up. I’ve pointed out that she can be one now. But all the feminists I know are people with a strong sense of themselves, a sense that they can, and will, change the world, even if it is one teaspoon at a time. I can think of no better way to raise feminists than by helping them to have power and the ability to do things, right from the start.”