‘Croods’: musings on fatherhood

We watched Croods yesterday. Bravo, DreamWorks. You combined evolutionary science with well-timed cultural analysis of a historical shift in parenting styles as we know them. The distantly loving ‘cavemen’ dads of a previous generation are giving way to the protective but more permissive and more nurturing fathers of today – at least in the popular imagination they are. So it’s to be expected that I found myself awash in tears in the last half hour of the movie, holding my 7-year old daughter’s hand, as my heart ached for my own parents. When Grug finds himself unable to connect and communicate with his daughter Eep, I cringed as I recall the innumerable explosive conversations I had with my father (and to a lesser degree, my mother).

The saddest moment of the movie is probably when Grug resolutely steels himself, without hesitation, to toss all the members of his family into the distance over to safety, saying, “All I have is my strength,” accepting that he is just a caveman with few original ideas, little flexibility for changing times, and sparse emotional intelligence. But he loves truly and strongly, and his emotional illiteracy is reflected in his lack of narcissistic self-regard as he does not spare a single thought for himself. I see this in many fathers.

Naturally, as I write this, I am awash with tears again. I think of the stolid, strong, volatile-tempered father, who was absent from home through much of my youth because he was working two jobs and when he returned home, he was tired, sullen, and focused on his dinner. I think of how he was unable to exorcise his childhood nightmares of losing his mother, and thereafter perpetually negotiating access to his father via a difficult stepmother.

Even now, when he sees me off at Lahore airport, he turns away without a word after embracing me tight, unable to speak. No Disney speeches from my abbu. I remember the day when he vented his frustration at our complex relationship in words of hurtful anger and when I shouted that I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just communicate, why he had to always end up hurting me instead, why couldn’t he just say things without erupting like a volcano.

And then in 1993, my parents shuttled from office to office, negotiating with difficult bureaucrats, struggling to help me pursue my dream of an education abroad, even as I sensed their hearts breaking. My parents were now retired, no longer active, and they would suffer no late-in-life move to the West. Like Grug, my father picked me up bodily, and tossed me into the void where he could not follow me.

How does a parent have the strength to do that? As a parent, I don’t know. Maybe I will not learn until a very, very distant day in the future when my daughter, grown up, tells me she has to detach herself from Mama, that she is no longer “hooked” to Mama, and that she has a life to live, a life that is separate from my own. For now, I will plan on college down the street and a house next door (a la My Big Fat Greek Wedding). The Grugs of a previous generation have changed with changing times, and it has been painful. Who knows what changes lie ahead for the children of these fathers?

 

Inward struggles of an academic researcher

I am in one of my pre-creative stages of academic writing. Unless you are one of those horribly prolific academic authors – in which case, stay away from me because I will be unable to control my envy – you know what this means. I have data from a pilot qualitative project that I conducted in Lahore during 4 hot and frantically busy weeks of teaching and advising at a public university. Since the methods were exploratory, the data are, naturally, messy. I know that as a qualitative researcher I should relish the messiness of data, knowing that life is messy and complex and that if the data were tidy and immediately classifiable, red flags and warning bells should go up/off. Still, when I am trawling through transcripts of intense conversations that are widely dissimilar from each other, I do sometimes wish for a closed-ended survey. When you’re grading a large stack of papers, the closed-ended exam is what you’d have, ideally. But it tells you little, unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, and the survey effectively targets that goal. Hence the pilot study.

So at this time, I am staring, through my data, at a variety of paths leading out in a variety of directions. It is also difficult that I am doing international research and that I am woefully ignorant of the work that has been done in Pakistan on the reforms in Pakistani academe. A lot of such work is government documents which is, let’s be honest – yawn. There is so much reading between the lines to do in government documents. And when I come across Pakistani officialese, I find myself completely befuddled. Maybe my training in informal American academic-speak has left me grievously inadequate to the task of formal jargon. This is not to say that I am, like – stupid or linguistically impoverished. I think.

I am looking forward to doing another round of interviews and observations at the university this summer. But since life is complicated, and I have a family which won’t accompany me this time, I cannot spend more than two weeks there. I do sometimes wish I was one of those fiercely independent academics who deal, efficiently and productively, with long periods of time away from their families, and build their research careers on such stints. I am told that when my child is older, this will become easier. As of now, my daughter gazes at me in relief when I return home after a couple of hours’ absence. So the guilt is overwhelming.

The mothering guilt is another problem with the pre-creative stage of academic writing. When I was immersed in finalizing my book manuscript (it is on its way, thanks for asking), the work was simple (well – I mean -), I knew what I was doing, by and large. Actually, I had so much to do, I had no time to feel lost. Right now, I am stuck, staring at the different paths. I am at risk, while productively contemplating my choices and the literature, of wasting (well – “waste” is an ugly word) wasting abundant quantities of time wandering in directions that will ultimately prove worthless (another ugly word). I know there is no such thing as waste in the research process. After all, as I stroll into studies of academic climate, and then gaze over into studies of work-life balance, I can only benefit from a wide-ranging appetite for contextual knowledge. But there is no category in my resume that says “Academic Appetite” or “Desultory Wanderings.” If they didn’t result in a tangible artifact, they don’t really count for much. When I am a tenured professor, I can be the expert whose musings and wanderings will be of value – someone who scatters academic value on her way as she ‘wastes’ time.

Between American drones and Taliban guns

I should have predicted it, but it was a surprise to me. I was not quite done being overwhelmed by my emotional reaction to the shooting by Taliban of the 15-year old activist for girls’ education Malala Yousufzai.

And then I found a meme circulating on Facebook that pitted Malala against the victims of US drone attacks. The argument ran thus: Why is there such a unanimous outcry against the shooting of this one girl, when numerous girls have been crippled and killed by American drones in Afghanistan? Why are the lives of drone victims so cheap, but the life of Malala so significant?

As the argument progressed, I heard such phrases as “the BBC blogger,” which portrayed Malala Yousufzai as something of a Western plant. If she was fighting for girls’ education against Taliban (who were against the US military presence), surely she was in favor of the US/West. The images of little Afghan girls in wheelchairs (victims of US drones) and the radiant face of Malala Yousufzai swiftly became pitted against each other in a nauseating battle of pawns.

The meme reads: “Do you know this girl? Have you seen her story on CNN or the BBC? Have you seen any breaking news about her on Geo, Dunya and Express? Have you updated your Facebook status to mention her? Have you seen any tweets about her? Have you ever heard that she was transported to hospital in an army helicopter? No, right? Yes, never – because she was wounded in a drone attack.”

I understand the reaction, on some level. In a college classroom, while discussing the injustice of the French headscarf ban, I heard someone challenge my focus on Western secularism by reminding me of the Taliban attack on Malala. I had been heartbroken over the attack, but suddenly, I found that I was being asked to perform my outrage, to prove that I wasn’t just opposed to secular, Western oppression of young girls but that I was similarly (or more) angered by sexist Muslims opposed to the education of girls.

It is true, of course, that there are plentiful spaces in Western discourse for anti-Muslim fundamentalist outrage. There is reason for suspicion of the ideological machinery that constantly attacks Muslims as sexist and opposed to girls’ education. The Western imperialist project continues to use girls and women as pawns against the Islamic threat.It is likewise true that the victims of drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan are invisible, treated as collateral damage, yet embarrassing enough to be brushed under the carpet. Now we have virtual memes that actually shrug off such cases as that of Malala and challenge the so-called obsession of pro-Western discourse with gender equality.

Of course there are ideological spaces where such groups as the Pakistani Taliban proclaim their opposition to Malala and the “secularism” and “enlightened moderation” that she allegedly preaches. If she blogs against the Taliban role, the argument runs, she is (quite successfully!) whipping up people’s emotions against the mujahideen, so she is against Shariah and a legitimate target for said mujahideen. Apparently, in this argument, Taliban=mujahideen=Shariah=Islam.

In such a climate of constant ideological tussle, the task of upholding equality and opposing oppression becomes charged with unintended meanings. American military and political agendas infect the framing of all postcolonial struggles and debates. And within postcolonial contexts, anti-imperialist agendas constantly hijack the struggles of girls, women, minorities, and the poor. If you are outraged about the treatment of Christians in Pakistan, you must be pro-American; if you are suspicious of gender activism, you must be pro-fundamentalist. Activism for girls’ education or anti-imperialist political activism? Which memes will you post at your Facebook page? Which will you choose?

Meantime, people in Afghanistan and tribal areas of Pakistan struggle to make lives of meaning and dignity. Between American drones and Taliban guns, forced to choose sides, they find themselves to be mere pawns – mere objects, mere jpegs in a Facebook meme.

So have we made it to gender equity? Ask the family

Until we raise boys and men who want to and know how to be full-time caregivers and parents – rather than mere aides and assistants – gender equity at home/work remains both a dream and a joke – in the form of women doing double duty.

By and large, while women parade their professional careers in the day-time, they remain full-time parents, and by and large, fathers remain relatively part-time parents. For childcare: women are organizers, researchers, supervisors and employers of any child-care arrangement that they can find. For most social classes, such childcare is poor to mediocre in the US if you happen to be one of the unfortunate multitudes who do not have grandparents, relatives, stay-at-home fathers/mothers, etc. that you can rely on. It entails the time-consuming labor that ensures such childcare is effective and nurturing (as a parent who used a few daycares, I know of what I speak). It entails, too, the edge-of-your-seat manuevers that are necessitated by sudden babysitter emergencies – the slack for which is usually picked up by mothers (women still make less money than men, overall, so it costs the family less when women lose wages or jobs.) By and large, the default parent in charge is still the mother. By and large, the individual who takes it for the team is still the mother. By and large, it is the mother who ensures that the home is clean and livable, that the children’s education is supervised, that laundry and dishes are done, and that children’s emotional needs are met.

This is why I say again: Until we raise boys and men who want to and know how to be full-time caregivers and parents – rather than mere aides and assistants – gender equity at home/work remains both a dream and a joke – in the form of women doing double duty.

Women do not need ‘help’ in the kitchen and with the children. Women need mature co-parents and domestic co-workers who can work unsupervised to ensure quality of life for the family. Women’s caregiving remains time-consuming in comparison to men’s. Women do not need someone who can microwave mac-and-cheese if she is not there: they need someone who can prepare healthy dinners, check if a bath is needed and administer that bath, while ensuring that homework is completed and garbage taken out.

Are you raising a boy to be that parent/husband? Or are you raising a part-time family member who is incapable of being centered around care for others? I do not say, one who can love. Wild animals can love and provide for their offspring. Caregiving is not love + paying bills. Caregiving is not buying gifts on amazon.com. Caregiving is time-consuming, sometimes draining, often boring.

Caregiving is a full-time job. Which brings us around to the capitalist economy which seeks to own the individual, whether parent or son/daughter, who has personal needs and relationships that work threatens more than ever to attack from their central positions. The American workplace as it is now threatens equity of any form (including gender), personal centeredness, and connectedness with others. There is an urgent need to contemplate the basis of our economy, and to reflect on the competitive urge that seeks to be bigger yet the expansion of the economy fails to benefit (I’ll say it) the 99%.

Where people in general are dehumanized to mere workers and spenders/buyers, happiness and harmony remain out of reach – for men AND women. And until men and women can all learn to nurture, give, and transcend the self, men and women remain in a tug-of-war that cannot conclude. You can bring the woman into the boardroom, but until you can bring the man into the diaper-changing bathroom – and the diaper-changing setup into the men’s bathroom – you will not truly succeed in achieving gender equity.

PS: This post refers to the majority of American families, not to exceptions for which anyone may provide anecdotal evidence.

Check one: super-mother OR super-professional

Today I was super-mother. At least by my standards; probably not yours. I thoroughly tidied the entire house – of course, you need ONE remaining room, don’t you, to shove all the bits and bobs in? I picked up every bit of paper from the carpets: Raihana is learning to write, draw and cut, and this means the entire carpet looks like confetti. And then there were the various odds and ends that are the greatest nightmare of all. Now, bits of trash are easy: pick up, crumple, toss. But odd screws, purple pencils, binder clips, … those are things that need to be individually placed in specific locales. Dozens of items.

All this, for a playdate for Raihana. Yes, I know it’s just another 5-year old but I don’t want Raihana’s friends’ parents wondering if their child should be wading knee-deep in confetti-covered carpets. She and her friend danced around each other happily, pulling ugly faces and giggling nonstop. The success of the arrangement was most satisfying.

Then I took Raihana to the grocery store, and hauled a ton of eggplant, plums, cherries, honeydew, zucchini, eggs … and so on. No delicious cheese puffs and no candy. In horrific 108 degree heat – horrific because it’s been going on and on for weeks – we headed back home.

Immediately I got to work getting Raihana her meal. I gave her 3 healthy meals today. I cut no corners. No shortcuts. No french fries, no unsavoury wet slaps of deli meats, no crackers, no hot dogs, even. Green beans, broccoli, rice, tilapia, and such like. I timed everything just right. I knew she would be hungry when we were grocery shopping, but I avoided the Burger King nearby, and instead offered her deli bread from the grocery cart. I worked to get her hungry, and waited in the corner to pounce with my healthful meal. It was very successful.

Then I gave her a happy bubble bath, and got her dressed within a few minutes of a home visit by a teacher. I allowed her a little bit of television so I could get dinner together – and that was a fun video on biology. I warmed the spinach-and-chicken curry I’d made the day before, cooked rice, made a salad for Svend – herb mix sprinkled with strawberries, grape tomatoes, sesame seed oil and sunflower seeds – he’d had a long week of fasting and commuting. Then I started work on a zucchini-goatcheese-spinach quiche. (No, this kind of volume is extremely unlike me. This is why this level of self-congratulation and self-satisfaction is unlike me, mostly). At 10 the quiche was ready to be sampled, and to be put away for the next day.

I thought to myself, Lord, I’ve had a good day. Raihana’s had fun. Svend’s had a hearty meal. They’ve both had healthy meals. I’ve cooked and cleaned my butt off. I’ve had a good meal too. And I mean, how much more productive can you get?

And then, as from several incarnations away, a dim thought crossed my mind like a dark cloud floating before the sun.

I didn’t get a lick of work on my writing done today.

****************

When Raihana was at summer school, my schedule was: get R ready, drop her off, get my coffee, and write, write, write, until pick-up time. Frozen fish and fries. Steamed broccoli and boiled eggs. Laundry when necessary. In June, I felt satisfied when I surveyed my steady progress on the manuscript.

But with the 2-week break before the fall, this schedule came apart. I had to rediscover togetherness with my 5-year old. All day. All day, day after day. And it is sweet. Inexpressibly sweet.

Except when that thought crosses my mind.

Now, I mostly prowl around the edges of the day and night, watching hungrily for scraps of time, in 15-30 minute increments, where I can clean up Chapter 2, or prune the Conclusion. I take Raihana to Panera, and while she watches a cartoon on my laptop, I read the manuscript and make notes. I bring her home and stick a DVD in for her to watch, while I get some work done: soon, she will come to join me, rehearsing the show, adapting it to her own imagination, forcing me to engage with her, while I gaze longingly back at the raw text on the screen. Days like today are rare. I can almost never allow myself to immerse myself in my home, its order, food, an organic daily rhythm, Raihana’s needs and her imagination.

That’s when I am reminded of the inescapable dilemma of today’s woman. The precarious balancing act where each end of the balancing pole is an entire life in itself – a full time job. On the one hand, cooking, cleaning, maintaining a household, laughing and playing and reading with the child/ren, observing good bedtime hours, and so on. On the other side, writing a book while simultaneously working on a book review, preparing syllabi, teaching, advising, serving on committees, serving students, networking, conferencing, research, grants, oh and yes, reading books and articles to stay on top of the multitude of disciplines that are all my areas. Both of these must be done at the same time, and in perfect balance. And to have any sense of joy about it, they must be done WELL. If they are not, well, in this economy and this market, you know there is a throng at the gate waiting to devour the scraps that were initially thrown to you.

Of course, to be able to achieve this balance in any degree and with any quality at all, you have to have a perfect constitution: a continually productive mind; a congenial work environment; a strong and fit body; a merely moderate need for food and sleep (there’s not enough time in the day for much, and it’s better if you function like a camel for food and like a bear for sleep: wait till you get the chance.) And we all know that you must also have an audience for your efforts which is inclined to see the good you do, and disinclined to focus on your flaws. Merit is relative. And vested interests are ever present.

I am not the only one who bears the burden of such balancing. I am, in fact, a fortunate one among so many. Svend pitches in whenever he can. But the workplace for men is perhaps even less permissive when it comes to domestic responsibilities (“why? Where’s his wife? Can’t she pick up/care for/drop off the child?”) The matrix, the world of possibility that I am positioned within, is a crippling one.

I hope that one day, Raihana will grow up to not bear the burden of all of this in so inequitable a fashion as women bear today.

I hope that the worker of today, man or woman, becomes whole tomorrow – not divided, torn, and ripped apart at all times. I hope that the worker of today becomes a human being tomorrow – that the domestic, the caregiving, the parenting – these do not become the random bits and bobs of not-quite-trash that we brush under the carpet so that our professional colleagues think well of us. I hope that the worker is permitted real life, family, flaws, hiccups, less than perfect productivity – I pray that labor becomes joy, and I pray that our non-laboring lives regain their forbidden joys some day.

Early bedtimes are not equal to naptimes

Here’s a post about something that will be of zero interest to singletons. A toddler’s afternoon nap is better than her early bedtime. I don’t see the charm of early bedtime. At bedtime, one is already too tired to do anything but vegetate in front of the TV watching netflix duds. Which of course means you sit too long and go to bed late – so that the toddler wakes up bright and early (due to early bedtime, of course) and you wake up dreadfully tired. An afternoon nap, on the other hand, is prime time. It’s day time, you are still productive, and you can get something done while the toddler sleeps. In any case, you can rest a bit in time for the toddler’s next shift.

And there was my uninteresting post.

Bewilderment is sometimes religious: the horrors of child abuse

28-year old Melissa Huckaby kidnapped 8-year old Sandra Cantu, raped her with a foreign object, and murdered her. Sandra’s body was found stuffed in a suitcase, in an irrigation pond. When all the amazement over a woman (and a mother) being a rapist and a murderer was done, we are left with the tragedy, the terror and the brutalization that Sandra underwent.

Every day, all over the world, children are raped. Children are brutalized and beaten. Children are exploited for sex. Children are used for labor. Children are forced to beg – many of those are maimed so that they may bring in greater earnings. Children are sold into slavery and prostitution. And while we may prefer to treat this as a problem of poor brown folks, the problem is here too.   Children are starved to death, powerless, with food just feet away from them. Children are deprived of normalcy, innocence, happiness.

As a parent, as a religious person, as a human being, in witnessing such crimes against innocence, I cannot escape that horror that shakes me to the core. Having been raised in the “developing world” – as it is optimistically described, despite the tentacles that continue to probe its insides, I know how much worse the fate is that awaits victims of brutalization.

It is difficult, often, in the face of such agony, to face the world that contains such horrors. It is difficult to make sense of anything at all.

Many times a day, when I look upon my 4-year old daughter playing with bubbles in the bathtub, the intense and horrific images of Shaniya Davis’s fate pass before my eyes.  As I hold her to comfort her grief over a lost stuffed toy, I see the bizarre image of pimps kidnapping children, orphaned in the Pakistani earthquake. I cannot stop thinking about parents selling their daughter Sumayya (7) so they could build a new house.

I do not understand. I cannot bear to have my daughter shiver in the snow. Her fear of a “How to Train Your Dragon” battle scene cuts me to the quick. But there are mothers who force their daughters into beauty pageants. There are mothers who abuse, neglect, beat, starve and sell their children. But most mothers would lay down their lives for their children. A mother’s heart breaking for her child’s pain, fear, suffering, hunger, cannot understand – a mother’s heart breaking for any child because all children must must must have innocence, peace, happiness, play, food, sunshine, and free air. And too, too many children do not. I do not understand a world where children suffer, are brutalized, are beaten, are raped, and die terrible deaths.

As a religious person, this I find to be a mystery I cannot fathom.

Suffering can cultivate strength in some people. In the Surah of the Cave, we read of how Khidr teaches Moses lessons about the ultimate wisdom of Fate, teaches him how suffering and death may serve a higher purpose and may bring about ease in the future.

Rape and abuse, as far as we know, do not have salutary effects upon a child’s future.

With the scale and degree of suffering, misery, victimization that we see today among children, this is a hidden blessing in no shape or form. This is a grotesque, satanic, evil inversion of the very nature of humanity.

The revulsion that you and I feel when we hear of Shaniya Davis’s rape, or the little orphan Aisha being sold into prostitution is, I think, entirely religious. The horror at sharing species with a being who would use physical power over a child to force her into sex is not a “secular” or anti-religious impulse. It is an instinct that attacks, from the very gut, behavior that is unnatural, behavior that is the total inversion of what it should be – protective of childhood innocence. The philosophical incomprehension is spiritual, at some level. There are other ways of religiously processing such horrors and surviving their impact, but this is one.

But it is hard to not understand. The intense physicality of child abuse is of a nature that does not allow us to retreat from it. It’s not like famine due to natural causes, or like the destruction wrought by a tsunami. It is ugly. If we do not understand its occurrence in the same world that we occupy, how can we accept the world in which we live? How can we accept or trust or face fellow members of the human race, who would use small children in kiddy porn to make dollars? How can we understand?

As a mother, I have gradually come to the conclusion that it is not for us to understand.

It is not decent for us to indulge, to luxuriate in the ultimately patrician pastime of making sense of these horrors. A God’s eye view is not for us. The only option that remains for us is to fight these crimes, comprehending or not. Whether we can sociologically process root causes, whether success ensues or not, whether we can prevent one Huckaby from victimizing one more Sandra Cantu, we should not waste time pondering the damned shame of such lives and such deaths. Reflecting upon such things overlong, and comforting ourselves with explanations or fine chocolates, this is effort that should be spent upon fighting abuse, kiddy porn, war, poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, lawlessness, any of the potential factors involved in human misery.

This, I think, is the only truly religious response to such things.

I will survive (homeschooling)

I confess that I am a closeted lover of home-schooling. Though my own circumstances seem to make it an impossible option for me, I would dearly love to home-school my 2-year old. So far she has only tasted daycares, and that alone has caused me to revolt against the idea of institutionalized education for children – in general. This song, an edited version of “I will survive” struck a chord.

Prayer of a feminist

God, grant me the strength to live in a world that does not acknowledge me as a full human being and yet to know, with fullest unshakeable conviction, that I am.

Beloved, protect me from grasping hands that seek to draw themselves upon my canvas.

Cherisher, grant me the strength to make it through puberty. Let me escape becoming an object in my own sight as soon as my breasts appear.

Friend, enable me not to be erased by the desire to be desired. Let me not build myself on foundations of water. Help me not fill myself with the emptiness of men’s desire.

Sustainer, as I grow to maturity, give me the courage to see beyond the imperfect world of injustice that human beings have created, and give me the vision to see the dream of beauty and justice that saints and visionaries have dreamed.

Omnipotent over tyrants, enable me to sustain my spirituality as I traverse the spaces of a world that tramples on my dreams – tramples them like a crazed elephant that knows not what it does.

Compassionate One, come to my aid when I meet love and injustice together. For in my world love rarely comes unaccompanied by the other. And if I want love from a man, it usually means encountering rejection of part of me.

Creator, grant me the strength to channel Your Attribute of Creation when I give birth. Support me through nine months of creation, and through hours of labor that rip my body apart.

Sustain me when a helpless infant is placed into my hands before I am even recovered from labor and blood loss.

Keep me from coming apart when an infant’s unending needs become my responsibility alone, and the father is responsible for playtime. Support me through nights of lost sleep and days of endless work. Help me be patient and eloquent when I’m told “This is what all mothers do, day in and day out. Mothers enjoy it. What’s wrong with you? Why are you depressed?”

Strengthen my heart when I am obliged to hand over my baby to strangers for care so I can go to work. And Creator, create a world where childcare does not have to mean abuse, neglect, and bottles propped on pillows.

Give me many times the focus and strength of a mere man so I can make a home habitable and a child happy and healthy, while I also work fulltime.

Give me the creativity to excel in sales, academia, cleaning, engineering, … even while my supervisors do not acknowledge when I excel.

Give me the strength to complete a day of work, before I hurry home to plunge into preparing a meal. And then give me the fortitude not to collapse inwardly upon myself when I deal with the man who buries himself in a TV show while I feed the children and tidy the house.

Originator, give me the fortitude to not smack them when they sneer and call me the weaker sex.

And Beloved, let the eyes of others see my dream. Let the minds of others see the possibilities of equality. Let men and women see full humanity shared by both, without either losing any part of it.

Compassionate and Just One, let my daughters see the world I dream of – in reality.

The War of the Walkers

Excuse the sensationalistic title but it’s been a while since I blogged and I might as well be punchy for a change. I just moved to Oklahoma to start a tenure-track position, and am exploring the new environment, the new culture, and a new house. The move and adjustment have given me very little time. I have dedicated most of my “spare” time to unpacking boxes, caring for a toddler, and completing academic projects.

The whole endeavor – trying to track a 2-year old’s whereabouts as well as work on a book project, while unpacking boxes and categorizing objects into closets and shelves – makes me look somewhat unsympathetically upon Rebecca Walker’s wholesale attack on her mother, Alice Walker. This is not because I am a fanatical feminist. As a Muslim woman, many mainstream feminists may indeed find much wanting in my feminism. And given my religious background, I do not feel the need to parade fanaticism in anything.

But I find Rebecca Walker’s “analysis” to be far more personal than political (piggybacking off of Svend’s analysis); I do not find that her factual evidence is establishes a convincing case (that Alice Walker was a bad, uncaring mother and a hypocrite vis-a-vis her own values and principles. But worse, I find RW’s analysis to be deprived of context and distressingly devoid of awareness of her own background and advantage.

It is not a bad thing for analysis to be personal. “Too personal” is how masculinist, hyper-rational cultures discredit discourse that they disagree with. But RW’s analysis in the “Daily Mail” article smacks of narcissism and lacks reflexiveness. Her subjectivity is frequently presented as sufficient evidence of her mother’s inadequacy. “When I hit my 20s and first felt a longing to be a mother,” she says, “I was totally confused. I could feel my biological clock ticking, but I felt if I listened to it, I would be betraying my mother and all she had taught me.” I know plenty of women in their 30′s who are deafened by the sound of their biological clocks but their circumstances (not their excessive independence) do not permit them to have children. At the same time, we know that plenty of teenagers and women mistake other personal issues for a biological clock’s ticking, hurry off to have babies, and destroy their chances for happy lives by having children too early. RW’s confusion is not adequate evidence that AW’s parenting and her principles corrupted her.

And then, she outgrew her “confusion” before the clock blew up, didn’t she? Is it she alone that takes credit for that? To rephrase an Islamic principle, whatever good in her, comes from herself and whatever bad happens, is from mom. So what’s new. Modern children have learned to blame their parents for every personal and physical flaw they may have, and to accept no responsibility of their own. Thank you, Freud.

As for her facts: AW traveling to Greece for two weeks and leaving a teenage daughter behind appears to me to be extremely careless, but parenting takes many forms. Moreover not all parents see teenagers as dependents. One may argue that this is clueless, careless and even criminal, but it whether it was “just plain selfish” is a matter of opinion.

RW blames AW for shuttling her, two years at a time, from one parent to the other. If she has the leisure to examine other children of divorced parents, she will discover circumstances far more terrible that children must grow up with. And why is it that Alice Walker and not Dad takes all the blame for this situation?

RW blames AW’s ideology for the fact that she started having sex at 13. RW is not the first teenager in the world to start having sex, and parental disapproval or approval or permissiveness do not play the role in the process that parents would like it to. AW believed that RW should have control of her body, and she did not prevent her from having sex. To me, as a believer that chastity gives you control of your body, Alice Walker was wrong. But it is not difficult to understand, in the 1960s (or even today). AW accompanied RW as she sought an abortion, and tried to be supportive, but this is not enough for RW. Well, one asks, does RW wish her mother had waited 2 years or 3 or 4 to give her permission? Which age would have been just right?

RW is devastated when (she breezily mentions) after an interview where she criticizes her parents, her mother calls her to express her anger. What is she supposed to do? “Go on, honey, drag me through the mud as much as you like because after all, I am a feminist and you should have the power to call me names?” One would like to have such lofty spiritual ideals but most parents would probably react to public calumny. RW never stops to consider how AW might feel about her interview, and merely calls her to ask for an “apology.” The narcissism is blinding. AW writes her an extremely hurtful letter, distancing herself from her daughter. Who’s more hurtful and selfish? RW seems to expect more from AW – after all, she’s the mother, right? – but why? And for all this, RW blames AW’s feminism rather than her personal qualities, or perhaps a combination of her flaws and those of her daughter’s.

Parents are human, and universally imperfect. Part of the process of parenting is the haunting realization that one is in charge of a child and one will never be able to care for her and raise her perfectly. I would like to find RW in the moments when she is sleep-deprived, hungry, anxious about the bills, and Tenzin bounds into the room and clambers up on a shelf that SHE left there by mistake, grabs a piece of crystal and tosses it to the floor – just as she is getting ready for bedtime. Moreover, RW may occasionally wonder what Tenzin will say about her writing and her frequent public appearances when he is grown. Parents lose it every now and again. Parents are exhausted at times. Parents struggle with balancing work and family. It is easy to preach universal principles at people: “Prioritize your children over everything,” “A family that prays together stays together,” and so on. How we put them into practice makes them ours. Many parents do an outstanding job. Many parents do an average job. Many parents suck at parenting. And yes, many parents don’t give a hoot about the quality of parenting they offer. Such parents may be feminists and anti-feminists, Republicans and Democrats, pro-choice and anti-choice, and from all religious and racial backgrounds.

RW is angry with AW for raising her with her convictions, i.e. that children are millstones for women, and that women don’t really need men. RW wants to prove that the opposite is true. RW should remember that she has ONE child, not eight, and that she is living in relative prosperity, not struggling to make ends meet in a dead-end hourly wage job at Kroger, and that she does have her partner to share the task of raising Tenzin with her. She seems to imply that most heterosexual women choose to have children without their fathers, and that it’s generally the fault of their rabid feminism and rampant independence that they don’t keep the men. She does not seem to see that there is no imminent civilizational pressure on men to choose between career and fatherhood, nor does she seem to question this.

Because of her agenda, RW doesn’t acknowledge that the painful “millstone” notion may have a kernel of truth to it for many women. It’s not the child’s fault, of course. But the woman who marries a caveman under social pressure, quickly has 6 kids only to be dumped and to struggle to raise them in a sordid inglorious fashion that brings Child & Family Services to her doorstep all too often – may argue that RW doesn’t know what she’s talking about. For RW not to grant these realities is to merely oppose AW’s black with her white, and these extremes are not helpful. We mothers would lay down our lives multiple times for our children: to acknowledge such sad things is not to surrender the glory of motherhood. It just aint no picnic, no matter how much you find fulfillment in it.

“Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness,” RW declaims. “It is devastating.” I hope that RW has statistics in her book, because for my part, as a woman academic, I still see yet another generation of women who mostly fail to get tenure because they are responsible for bearing, rearing and caring for the children. It is this default responsibility for children that is unjust to women’s life chances and careers. Sacrifice and compromise are, of course, an integral part of our lives, but sacrifice and compromise are, inevitably, the lot of women rather than men. In this respect, RW refuses to recognize the facts, and AW takes them and writes poems that call her child a “calamity.” (RW, a poem is a poem. Of course it must have been devastating, but it’s a personal expression of her experience.) Unfortunately, our culture still does not recognize child-rearing as work because it does not bring immediate financial returns. Women are penalized for having children, often both at home and at work but most often at work. This is undeniable, and it is possible that Rebecca Walker’s circumstances allow her to escape this lot. But surely some recognition of the lot of mothers is to be expected from – well, a rather fanatical advocate of motherhood.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that children are a treasure. I believe that parenting – fathering and mothering – are spiritual and emotional experiences that should be experienced by people. But because I have a fiercely protective instinct towards children, I believe that there are people who will not benefit from parenthood, nor will they offer much to their children. There are people who do not miss parenting, much as RW would like to deny it. There are people who would prefer to use their good china and sleep in on a weekend and meditate instead of waking up bleary-eyed at 6am with the toddler, and hurry off to prepare the children to school, and then to soccer practice and music lessons and eventually collapse into bed, only to be woken by cries in the nursery. There are people who find the struggle empowering, it is the essence of life for them. But for some, it is not. For some, it reduces them. You should do what you can do.

I find Rebecca Walker’s dogmatism – Thou shalt procreate – quite disturbing. I do not see much wrong in some people choosing not to have children. In fact, there are people who one would rather not see having children, for the sake of the children. If a woman finds total fulfillment in spiritual and intellectual endeavors, or in gardening and entertaining, should she then MAKE herself have children? Would that be beneficial for her or for her children? If a man/woman was scarred from his/her life experiences and was at risk of being a very bad parent, should s/he then avoid it, for ethical reasons or force him/herself to procreate? There is not one single reason for not having children, and RW seems to live in too small a world – her own – to empathize with this. And her “hurry up and listen to your biological clock” is infantilizing.

I do not, also, see any wrong at all in some people adopting orphans instead of procreating (quite the contrary). And whether they have the “same feelings” as they would towards biological children is inconsequential, as long as they strive to be good parents. I’ve seen enough dreadful biological parents and enough stellar adoptive parents to know not to be dogmatic about that.

In other words, Rebecca Walker’s absorption by her own personal experience is excessive. She does not show much ability to transcend and grow from the personal. She says she is “happy” as a mother and that she “loves” her mother, and other writings show this, but her words in this article betray bile and even somewhat adolescent anger.

Feminism has made life easy for women. There is no doubt about this. Even the female poster-children for anti-feminism owe much to feminism for making their careers possible. What RW is denouncing is not “feminism” but bile, not independence but wholesale rejection of men, not un-maternal feminists but child neglect which can happen to anyone.

RW appears to forget that she was raised in relative prosperity by a famous mother and a White lawyer. Her mother, AW, was raised the “impoverished eighth child of sharecroppers from Georgia.” She mentions this, and she refuses to dwell on the enormous consequences of this background – racial, economic, gender. AW married in 1967, when slavery was in the not-so-distant past. RW writes today, 4-5 dramatic decades later, as if her motherhood and her embrace of a partner are simply her personal achievements and qualities. She writes of AW as if she, as a feminist, should operate above her context and pure of her background.

I am not trying to absolve AW of blame. Her behavior as a mother must have been painful to RW, and her neglect of RW must have been extremely difficult. Welcome to the club, RW. Who doesn’t have complaints about how their parents sniffed at their accomplishments, criticized them for their flaws and left them alone when they needed support? Who hasn’t been “lonely” growing up with parents? To paste all these flaws on to “feminism” seems to be part of an agenda rather than honest, reflexive examination of one’s past. But few of us are capable of such honesty when we examine our own biographies. Our own biographies are epics of tragedy, pain, and climactic success/failure. There must be drama in our lives, and its conclusion must be comprehensible.

What is sad to me is that RW seems to consider “a happy family” a choice. In our patriarchal world – still a patriarchal world – there are far too many reasons why this may be a struggle, an unattainable goal, for far too many women. RW’s vision needs to be broader to be broadly applicable. It is too colored by self. It is too reactionary. This is too bad, because it could offer much that is helpful to feminism. Scholarship asks for honest examination of all sides of a debate, and RW does not offer this. She offers an agenda.

It may indeed be that Alice Walker is a selfish, self-absorbed individual and a terrible mother, who never was meant to be a mother, who never wanted to be a mother, and who did a below-average job as a mother. But the jury is still out. In Rebecca Walker’s court, she is judge and jury. But to this reader at least she does not make a convincing case.