The Agony of Grading

Just finished grading papers from my undergraduate course. I required a first draft and gave them extensive feedback. Here are a few stats:

• 5 out of the 35 felt handing in the draft was optional (it wasn't)
• So far it seems 4 out of the 35 think handing in the final is optional
• 2 students fit categories 1 & 2 above
• Of the 31 I received, 6 were plagiarized
• Approximately 1/3 of the papers were either excellent in the draft or improved--maybe not to excellent but still substantial
• Not counting those who plagiarized, a handful actually got worse and many stayed the same.
• I offered extra credit just for visiting the writing center between the draft and the final--6 took me up on it.

Tomorrow they get the bad news. The last chance to withdraw from the class without penalty is fast approaching and I'll be encouraging several to do just that.

Doula Training Update

To become a certified doula I have to attend childbirth classes and a breastfeeding class in addition to the actual doula workshop I attended. Of course I will also need to serve as a doula for three births (only one of which can be a cesarean to count), read 5 books, write up my birth stories as well as an essay on the importance of being a doula. So it is no small process.

Luckily the program for teen moms in my area makes a lot of this possible and I don't need to arrange all of the logistics. This past Thursday we started our 7-week childbirth classes. The class is actually much smaller than usual, with only 7 or 8 teen moms (and 13 doulas-in-training!). I was hoping to get matched up with one of the girls as a mentor but alas they're aren't enough to go around. Pumpkin did get matched and I'm very happy for her. She is the type of person that needs a connection to make it real.

The first session was more of a meet and greet with paperwork so it wasn't much fun, however next week we get our actual childbirth educator. This morning I went to a 3 hour breast feeding class. Most teens don't breastfeed and while its not our job to persuade them it is our job to support them in their decision and to give them the information they need to make that decision. The discussion today brought back many memories for me. I loved breastfeeding but was not well supported. It came very easy to me, so all of the problems I heard about today were surprising. However I weaned Angel at 4 months even though I didn't really want to and I've always regretted that decision. I had been back to work for 2 months by then and had no support for pumping and storing in the office. It seemed like I was making things worse for all three of us (me, Angel and his dad who was home with him during the day). When I made the decision I was under the impression I'd have at least one more child and thought I'd be in a different position when that happened (one that supported breastfeeding). Unfortunately that never materialized.

I thought I'd share this poem by Sharon Olds on childbirth. Its been on my mind with all that I hear and see in these trainings.

The Language of the Brag

I have wanted excellence in the knife-throw,

I have wanted to use my exceptionally strong and accurate arms

and my straight posture and quick electric muscles

to achieve something at the centre of a crowd,

the blade piercing the bark deep,

the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock.

I have wanted some epic use for my excellent body,

some heroism, some American achievement

beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self,

magnetic and tensile, I have stood by the sandlot

and watched the boys play.

I have wanted courage, I have thought about fire

and the crossing of waterfalls, I have dragged around

my belly big with cowardice and safely,

my stool black with iron pills,

my huge breasts oozing mucus,

my legs swelling, my hands swelling,

my face swelling and darkening, my hair

falling out, my inner sex

stabbed again and again with terrible pain like a knife.

I have lain down.

I have lain down and sweated and shaken

and passed blood and feces and water and

slowly alone in the centre of a circle I have

passed the new person out

and they have lifted the person free of the act

and wiped the new person free of that

language of blood like praise all over the body.

I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman,

Allen Ginsberg, I have done this thing,

I and the other women this exceptional

act with the exceptional heroic body,

this giving birth, this glistening verb,

and I am putting my proud American boast

right here with the others.

-Sharon Olds

Wonders Never Cease

Angel called today and asked if I hadn't received his 2 phone calls from yesterday (I hadn't because the younger generation no longer believes in leaving voicemail but rather "missed call" is supposed to clue you in to call them back--I rarely check my phone for missed calls). He was calling to say that he was thinking of stopping in for a visit this weekend. But now he's not so sure. Seems he has a tickle in the back of his throat and possibly a wisdom tooth coming in.

We still may be getting a visit but he won't know until tomorrow (when he wakes up and sees how he feels). I was rather blase in my response--since it seemed/seems rather up in the air and I don't really want to get my hopes up or change my plans (ok my plans all involve work but still). The most amazing part of the entire exchange was that he got insulted I wasn't acting more excited.

It is an exceedingly delicate balance with grown (or almost grown) children--like dancing on the head of a pin.

I told him I would love a visit from him (which of course is an understatement) and that seemed to satisfy. We'll see what happens.

On rereading this post I realize that there isn't another man in the world I would allow to treat me this way. I did once and that was with...oh right...his father.

State of the Semester

I've really been feeling it this semester--more than the start of any other semester so far. Everyone around me--faculty and student alike--have been reporting the same. However I'm not sure if this is just the normal level of complaining. Every other semester I feel rather good and people around me complain and I--generally--ignore them. Now everyone is either agreeing with me and I'm agreeing with them. I feel like I've joined the pod people in The Stepford Wives, only instead of looking and acting perfect, we're all looking, feeling and acting miserable.

We're in the fifth week of the semester, which is about 1/3 of the way through. I don't think I can really call it the start of the semester anymore, and yet I don't really feel any better. Courses are stabilized now--students know what to expect from us and we know what to expect from them. Committee meetings are up and running; expectations and agendas are set and in motion. I don't think my workload is any greater than any other semester and, quite frankly, is lower than what it should be since I managed to trade a larger class for a much smaller one.

But yesterday something occurred to me. I worked very productively on my research all summer long. I did manage to relax and enjoy myself but I spent fairly full days working on my research and, more importantly, I made considerable progress. I think I developed a subconscious expectation of being able to do "my work" that consciously I know I cannot meet during the semester. My subconscious expectations have been ruling these past four weeks in spite of my best intentions. So I need to find away to adjust the subliminal pressure I put on myself early on in the semester. Acknowledging it is a good first step.

This realization does make me wonder if this means that the more productive I am in the summer the more likely it is I'll be miserable in the fall?

The Single Life

b is away this week. He is UpNorth with his family. We email and/or IM daily. Angel is at school and I assume things are going well because I haven't heard from him in a while. Pumpkin is obsessively studying for the GREs--although not a day goes by without a text message, phone call, IM, and or brief face-to-face visit with her. So I am quite connected through technology but otherwise quite alone. I have to say that so far its been rather enjoyable.

Unfortunately I am completely swamped at work and had a computer snafu this week that set me back even further. [I VERY stupidly upgraded to Snow Leopard without checking for compatibility first. For those mac users out there, Snow Leopard is NOT compatible with SPSS 17--or 18 that is coming out soon--or Parallels. I need both of these to do my job so I had to go back to Leopard and, while I thought I backed up everything first--yeah I didn't. Luckily I am able to recreate everything that is important but it is a pain and time-consuming.] So a lot of my alone time is spent working to catch up, with no real chance of getting a head.

But what am I doing to entertain myself? Mostly I am watching TV (Netflix has brought TV back into my life in a way I totally didn't anticipate). I'm catching up on old seasons of Brothers & Sisters before Season 4 begins next week. I'm working my way through Dead Like Me, which unfortunately won't take too long. And Survivor started this week. I also visited my local used bookstore and I'm currently reading Anne Tyler's The Amateur Marriage. It has been raining here for most of the week but today is actually cool and dry (so far) so I'm off to take Pupzilla for a trail walk. Its been a long time since we've done that together.

What Exactly Is Feminist Mothering?

This week I received the proofs for a chapter I have coming out in a book celebrating the 20th anniversary of Sara Ruddick's Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politic of Peace. The chapter represents a stretch for me in terms of professional writing and I'm happy with how it turned out. This same week I also read this post over at Hoyden About Town and this response post at Blue Milk--both on the practices of feminist mothering (you may want to take some time right now to read them...I think you will enjoy the posts and the comments). I also took part in a survey on feminist mothering that I saw referenced on Blue Milk. Needless to say all of this has gotten me thinking about feminist mothering this week and I have to say: I'm very confused. Did something happen to feminism generally and to feminist mothering specifically while I was busy doing other things?

For those of you who haven't read Maternal Thinking, Ruddick makes the claim that (a) engaging in the practice of mothering (which she does NOT define as exclusively female) creates a unique way of thinking--the same as the engagement in any other practice creates a unique thought process (i.e. lawyers end up thinking like lawyers); (b) maternal practice ultimately consists of three factors--preservation, nurturance, and training; and (c) since the definition of training is preparing your child to be socially acceptable--as defined by the social groups to which the mother is a member--there are multiple instances where the tasks are in conflict and mothers must figure out how to resolve these conflicts. For example, raising your son to be a soldier, if this is the socially acceptable adult role in a woman's social group, is in direct conflict with the task of preservation. It is the resolution of these conflicts that forces mothers to think and, thereby, creates maternal thought. Now Ruddick also speaks of maternal inauthenticity--when these conflicts arise and mothers are not true to their own beliefs. However she notes:

"It is not when they submit or are prudent or timid that mothers are inauthentic. It is when they loose sight of the cost of prudence, deny their timidity, and tell their children that unquestioning obedience is actually right. Inauthenticity is a matter of form, not content."

To me, being authentic in this sense is feminist mothering. It is not whether we do or do not make concessions to the established order--to the institution of motherhood, as Rich would phrase it--but when we are false with our children and pretend what we believe is not valid, is not true.

However my other run-ins with definitions of feminist mothering this week seem to center on what I would term mothering (or even parenting) tasks--not practices--and many of these tasks seem to be related to styles of parenting (i.e. attachment parenting--which I freely admit I don't know enough about to discuss in an intelligent fashion) or even to other belief systems and practices (i.e. environmentalism). Now I have nothing against either attachment parenting (what little I know of it leads me to believe I would have endorsed it when Angel was small) or environmental practices but I don't think that is what defines feminist mothering (assuming we believe this term is meaningful--as opposed to their being people who are feminist and who mother--which is more how I think I would describe myself).

I also need to say that this post is not in response to either Lauredhel's or Blue Milk's thoughtful posts or any of the comments on their blogs, but rather as a response to the original post that generated their posts and, mainly, to the survey on feminist motherhood that I completed. I can do no better justice to the original post than Lauredhel herself, so I will put that aside. However the survey bothered me and I feel I can discuss it here. Again, I must start by applauding the researchers' efforts to study feminism and motherhood but I found it incredibly difficult to answer the survey. Below is a description of my main problems:

• The survey represented motherhood as only consisting of the mothering of young children and did not acknowledge that some of us are mothers of grown children, yet our practices and attitudes may still hold some value.
• Items of mothering practices revolved around specific tasks like breastfeeding, bed-sharing, and keeping children on a strict schedule. Given my definition of feminist mothering above, I don't see that there is necessarily any association between these tasks and a person's identity as a feminist. Take breastfeeding, for instance. The question asked (as I best recall) what length of time you felt breastfeeding was beneficial (it also asked how a "typical feminist" would respond--more on that later). Now there is quite a lot of data out there on the health benefits of breastfeeding for both mother and child and there are also recommendations for length of breastfeeding. However there are many reasons why woman either choose not to breastfeed or stop breastfeeding earlier than recommended time frames, would this mean she is not a feminist?
• A significant portion of the survey was devoted to the percentage of time the person spent engaged in household tasks, including but not limited to early childcare tasks (i.e. diaper changing, getting up in the middle of the night). While I understand that equality in household and childcare tasks is a feminist issue, I don't think it is associated with feminist beliefs or identity. That is, there are many women who identify as feminist and who hold (so-called) feminist beliefs but still end up engaged in more than 50% of these tasks on a daily basis. I believe the reasons for this involve deep-seated gender constructions that we all hold (even us feminists) and, more importantly, shape our institutions. Rallying against them is a battle most of us (especially those with small children) are too tired to take on on a daily basis. Now keep in mind that the stated purpose of the study is to learn more about how women feel about the relationship between feminism and motherhood. I'm not convinced that looking at associations between feminist identity, mothering practices, and time spent engaged in house/childcare work is going to provide that understanding.
• What exactly is "a typical feminist"? By asking me to rate responses to all of these items as a typical feminist would, you are assuming that I believe feminist are a homogeneous group. Would a feminist believe that?

So this post has turned into a bit of a rant and I feel bad if it sounds like I'm trashing this research. There is so little research out there on this subject and I do not know the specific aims of the study, nor do I think I was the correct demographic for completing the survey, so I don't want to appear unfair. It was more that trying to answer the questions was frustrating for me and it brought to the forefront these questions I have about the concept of feminist mothering. It seems I thought I knew what it meant, to me at least, but now I'm thinking there is another definition out there and it seems a bit too narrow for my comfort.

Angel Update

The start of sophomore year is sooo very different than freshman year--for both of us. This year he is in a different (bigger & better) dorm room and his roommate is one of his frat brothers rather than one of the lacrosse players. [The young men in this college mostly fall into one of those 2 categories from what I can surmise.] Last year his dorm room was the hang-out room for the lacrosse guys. Angel liked them well enough but probably not enough to enjoy giving up his room to them. This year I hear his friends are always around, making it challenging to get schoolwork done, but it doesn't sound like a complaint. While Angel was growing up our house was NEVER the hang-out house. Angel rarely hung out.

He originally signed up for 18 hours of classes (something I thought was NOT a good idea) to make up for the previous term where he only took 12 hours (something I thought was NOT a good idea). However he decided to drop a course because he thought he would have trouble getting everything done. He is taking a creative writing course and that's the one he seems most excited about (or at least that's the one he talks to me about). They read a Hemingway short story the other day, which he really liked (I HATE Hemingway). Now he has his first story to write for next week. He is also taking Spanish, which was the bane of both of our existences when he was in high school. Luckily it seems fairly familiar to him now.

He found a job, running food at a local pub. He started on Friday but then got a call for a second interview at a country club. At the country club he would be serving at events--which is what he did in his last job and what he prefers. I've actually heard from him several times this week because he needed to discuss pros and cons of each job and figure out how to extrapolate himself from the pub job, should the country club become an offer. Angel is very loyal and hates the thought of quitting right after he's agreed to work there.

Probably the strangest bit of news I heard from him this week is that he has a reputation of being a d**chebag among his friends. It seems my son has developed an attitude. Now this may sound like a problem, but it seems that his friends prefer him this way and when he's not coping an attitude with them they ask him what's wrong. Angel was ALWAYS the gentle soul; the kind friend; the team player. It seems that he took too much abuse from his friends the first semester of freshman year so he started developing this other persona. He feels its working for him.

I know young adulthood is about trying on different personas and exercising different aspects of your personality. I also know that he'll probably experiment with a lot of behaviors I haven't seen at all or much of before. And while I'm not worried about him becoming this way permanently (actually I'm impressed that he recognizes what he's doing) I do think it speaks to the rigidity of masculine norms. I find it distressing in general that kind and caring young men don't fit in and that they need to act like jerks to be liked and respected. I can only hope that in time he realizes he doesn't like being this way and that popularity is not worth the act.

It took me many years to learn to surround myself with people who bring out the parts of me that I cherish and avoid the people who bring out the worst in me. I can only hope he comes to the same revelation.