On being a feminist mother, or really just a deliberate and purposeful one

All the men or potential men in my home are asleep now. This is the rare moment I find to write out the myriad threads of thoughts that wind through my head all day.

Much of it is about being a woman and a mother in today's day and age. I distinctly remember preferring the company of boys over that of girls when I was young. I just found dolls and dress up and girly things rather boring. But I think if I delve a bit deeper, I have to acknowledge that I thought boys were just better. If I wanted to be great, do something of substance, I had to be like a boy, or at least run with the boys. Girls were silly and frivolous. They were pretty. I was smart. They were petty. I was generous. They were bound by convention. I was unique. All this to prove that I was different than other girls so that boys would like me. This is woven into my childhood. It is taking decades to unravel myself out of this internalized misogyny.

Being a mother makes you realize that childhood is not actually so innocent. We raise our kids inside this matrix of cultural norms and conventions that should be examined constantly and critically because look at the world we all have made and are continuing to make. While you may not acknowledge or realize it, none of us are untouched by patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy and the commodification of the human experience.

And so I am always thinking about how I present myself to my sons, how I relate all of us to the world, how I respond to their inquiries about what they see around them, how I give space to their self-expressions, and what I make normal for them.

I don't have parenting goals. My children will grow into who they are. My hope is that they will always see equal value in every human being, but I myself am this continual quest as well.

And here is a poem I've been working on.


 

Untitled, or Whenever anyone says I’m a good mother, I think

  

I am not raising my sons

to be men.

I cannot teach what

I do not know.

The truth is

I cannot fathom their future.

There have been so many things

that I did not know,

could not possibly have known,

until I became their mother.

I am not raising my sons to be men.

That is not the point.

I tell them, I love you more than all the leaves on all the trees in all the forests in all the universe,
and they say back, I love you more than all the leaves on all the trees in all the forests in all the universe

plus one.

It’s now only a game to them,

I know, but

what an exquisite, fundamental game.