Okay I'm still here in sunny South Carolina, recovering from strep throat and swimming through it all, but that's neither here nor there compared to my exciting debut on the cover of the SF Chronicle this morning. Funny I'm not there to see it in person, but here it is, in hopes that you will fellow swimmers all, take up the cause.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/20/CMGCEPG9UE1.DTL
San Francisco Chronicle
The Motherhood Movement
Can a group like MomsRising finally foment policy change in America by harnessing a citizen army of mothers?
Katherine Seligman
Sunday, May 20, 2007
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Sarah Eisner with her sons, Ben and Wilson, at their Menl... Eisner discusses Ben's over-enthusiastic use of the bubbl... MomsRising and MoveOn.org co-founder Joan Blades at her B... MayasMom.org founder Ann Crady (left) with Maya and Deric... More...
There is a certain irony in a roomful of women who all had to find child care so they could come to a meeting to watch a film about, among other things, the dearth of quality child care in this county. But, having done that, the women filed into Cubberley Community Center in Palo Alto early one evening, stopping at a snack table to grab an M&M covered cupcake or slice of strawberry meringue cake. They were teachers, entrepreneurs, software geeks, bloggers, single, married, working and stay-at-home moms in a mix of business wear and jeans.
They'd come because of MomsRising, a political action group that reaches members through cyberspace, where they can join in on their own time, when they have any. Just click and enlist. If that sounds familiar, it should. MomsRising was co-founded by Joan Blades, who created the now-famous MoveOn.org with her husband, Wes Boyd. What began in 1998 as a casual petition to fewer than 100 friends urging Congress to censure President Bill Clinton and move on to more pressing business eventually ricocheted around the Internet, gathering 500,000 signatures. The couple had stumbled onto, it turned out, an ingeniously simple but potent political tool.
Blades, called by Ms. Magazine the "mother of cyberspace mobilization," has now set her sights on a huge, diverse, some would say unwieldy group -- mothers. It's a group that has traditionally been hard to harness. But it's also a group whose members increasingly say in books, blogs and polls, whether they work or stay at home, that they are overwhelmed and, in many cases, fed up. They are working longer hours and also spending more hours with their children, research shows. Health care costs are rising and quality child care is scarce, despite talk from politicians about "family values" or "family balance." MomsRising, which is trying to build an army of citizen activists to push for paid family leave, flexible work and better access to quality child and health care, is not the first to point this out. The question is whether it can bring the disparate voices together.
"It's past due," Blades said. To her, the timing is right for a renewed motherhood movement that will appeal to mothers or, for that matter, "anyone with a mother." The Democrats control Congress, and the speaker of the House is a woman who declares herself a mother and grandmother first, and brought her children and grandchildren to the inauguration to prove it. "We loved it," Blades said. "We have a big-time mother in leadership, and we are proud of it."
Still, Blades acknowledges that the battle is a tough one. It's loaded terrain, laced with terms like finding "off-ramps" and "on-ramps" to work after having kids or "opting out," a notion that fueled an accusation that the media was depicting so-called "mommy wars" instead of the lack of work flexibility. Issues related to motherhood and feminism -- MomsRising avoids the term because "it means different things to different people," says Blades -- are guaranteed to be hot button. Recent books have talked about the financial penalties women face when they leave the workforce and of the strain they face when they remain. One, Leslie Bennetts' "The Feminine Mistake," which talks about the risk of economic dependency women face if they leave work, received some critical praise but also sparked a backlash.
Then there is the problem that "family friendly" policies in MomsRising's call to action are not usually front-page fodder. And when they are, there is sometimes criticism, says Blades, who admits that she was surprised at some of the reaction to one newspaper story about a MomsRising event that prompted a reader to comment, "Can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em." She responded in a blog with all the reasons that taking care of children makes good economic sense for everyone, including that quality child and health care mean fewer troubled kids and a generation that can pay for civic and social services in the future.
"It's a pocketbook issue," said Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma, who is preparing a legislative package that would make it possible for states to set up paid family leave laws, a key issue for MomsRising. "A great number of people, particularly women, understand we have to bridge work and family. Will that awareness reach to using taxpayer dollars?'' Will companies agree to cut into short-term profits even if it means long-term gains?
"This is a culture with a death wish if it doesn't invest in kids," Blades said one day during a hike near her Berkeley home. "I don't want to live in a place where only the upper middle class and middle class can afford children. This is, to some extent, fighting for our soul."
MomsRising is one of a number of groups reaching out to mothers, but, with more than 85,000 members joining in just less than a year, it's the fastest-growing virtual grassroots effort of its kind. Other forums also have sprung up -- or just recently achieved a place -- on the Internet. Mothers Movement Online, Mainstreet Moms, Mothers Acting Up, Mothers & More (which has been around for two decades), to name a few, offer everything from parenting advice and social networks to information about political issues and opportunities for activism.
"Most of the country is struggling," said Sarah Eisner, an organizer of the Cubberley gathering, as she welcomed the women. She joined MomsRising shortly after it kicked off last Mother's Day, drawn both by the cause and by the ease of participating. Her friends all received Christmas gifts of MomsRising T-shirts and copies of the group's education centerpiece, a book and documentary called "The Motherhood Manifesto." Then she organized this house party. By her own admission, she's lucky. She quit her high-tech job after having a second child because she couldn't work flexible hours, and joined a company that's producing polycarbonate-free baby bottles. Her work hours now suit her, even if she still feels a nagging guilt that she should be either at home more or at work more. Her schedule allows her to be part of what one blogger calls a new breed of "naptime activists" -- women with a desire to be politically active, but scant time except when the kids are napping.
"It's the old fix," said sociologist and writer Arlie Hochschild, who has written about "the stalled gender revolution." "When you're at a stage to bring about revolution, you're too young to know there is a problem. When you're old enough to know there is a problem, no one is helping you and you are too stuck to be a political activist. What's admirable here is a lot of members of MomsRising are speaking out from the fix. They are doing it anyway. There is a kind of real heroism here."
Woolsey, who is quoted in the documentary talking about her legislation called the Balancing Act, uses some of the same language. She told me she considers MomsRising "my heroes. "They are doing exactly the right thing," she said.
MomsRising mixes a can-do vibe -- its trademark image is an iconic Rosie the Riveter picture with a twist, a smiling baby in the crook of her arm -- with a practical approach. Its six-point education and action campaign corresponds to the letters in "mother" -- maternity and paternity leave; open, flexible work; TV, media and other after-school programs; health care; excellent child care; and realistic and fair wages.
Cyber visitors can sign petitions, post or read personal stories and legislative news updates or find out about giving or attending house parties like the one at Cubberley to see the documentary "The Motherhood Manifesto." It tells the stories of stressed families, like the one headed by a single mom who was asked on a job interview if she was married (no) and had kids (yes). The interviewer told her the company didn't hire women with kids because "they take too much time off work.'' She complained to the state Human Rights Commission and was told that this was perfectly legal. An activist was born. The woman is leading a fight to change the law in Pennsylvania.
Then there is the story of a woman who had to return to work a few days after giving birth prematurely. She only had a month leave and wanted to use it when her baby got out of the hospital. Other tales in the documentary are peppered with troubling statistics -- college-educated women can expect to forfeit about a million dollars over their working life after having children. The United States is the only industrialized country that doesn't offer paid family leave, putting it right up there with Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea (a fact that brought a collective gasp from the audience), and it ranks 37th in mortality rate of children younger than 5. And it talks about the possible solutions, legislation that would, the film argues, end up saving more money than it would cost.
MomsRising, which Blades founded with Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, a Seattle political strategist and writer, hasn't yet met with MoveOn's wildfire response, but it is gradually building its presence. The two bring their experience and combined virtual Rolodexes. At least 50 groups have "aligned" with MomsRising. National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy and Blades' friend Arianna Huffington supplied blurbs for "The Motherhood Manifesto" book. This past fall, Democratic Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and Edward M. Kennedy attended a showing of the documentary, which played to a packed room in the U.S. Capitol, no small feat on a weekday evening when Congress is in session. Blades says she was thrilled to have the senators' support but was equally pleased when someone who'd been serving food turned to her and said, "I've been to a lot of events here, but this one really speaks to me."
The Internet has opened up new ways for mothers to get involved in politics, says Megan Matson, who hatched Mainstreet Moms with friends around her kitchen table in Point Reyes, a group that has spawned local "mmoblets." "I had so many friends with so many skills and backgrounds," she said. "I noticed it at preschool fundraisers. You see these high-price talents unloading into these small events and think wow, you could turn this talent and drive loose and expand the civic arena. And that is turning out to be true." The group worked in 2004 to sign up unregistered single mothers to vote, a year later concentrated on informing parents that they could opt out of military recruitment lists for their children and now is holding "soup and solution" evenings where they screen a movie on the forced demise of the electric car.
Debra Levy, senior manager of the newly formed "power department" of Mothers & More, says she's hoping MomsRising will gain political clout, but is in a "wait and see" mode. Everyone needs an "aha moment" in order to get involved, she said, and she doesn't think most people have had theirs. She had hers, she said, when she left her job as a legal assistant because she couldn't juggle it and her two kids, then found a sense of "tremendous loss." Soon after, she started a Dallas chapter of Mothers & More, a group founded by a postal worker in Elmhurst, Ill., in 1987. The group has 6,000 members, with a growing advocacy, or power, department.
"On the one hand, I'm optimistic," she said. "MomsRising was started by someone with the experience of MoveOn. There is a potential to reach out to a great number of people. But is it the be-all and end-all? I don't know. All the organizations that have existed for longer than we have probably have to come together to make a difference."
Judith Stadtman Tucker, who launched Mothers Movement Online in 2003, said MomsRising is "promising," but any national effort will have to include women from all backgrounds. The problem, she said, is that poorer working women may be too busy to get involved.
"Mothers don't self-organize," she said. "We really have to grab them by the lapels."
Later, when asked how MomsRising will include mothers who are struggling the most, who might not have the time or resources to go on a computer at night, Blades said, "We need more funding. How can we be economically diverse (by relying) on volunteers?" But then with characteristic optimism, she added that the group is still young and members have hosted more than 100 house parties. "We thought MoveOn was just a flash campaign," she said. Though the group has its detractors -- including those who say it delivers more group therapy than political results -- 3.3 million people joined MoveOn by 2005 and the organization raised $9 million for candidates and campaigns. More recently, among other actions, it organized a petition drive and "virtual march" against the Iraq escalation and a move to raise funds for an anti-McCain commercial -- one showing the notorious clip of the senator singing "bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys classic "Barbara Ann."
"We were naive," said Blades about the start of MoveOn. " Nine years later she is no longer so naive.
"Shall we take a walk?" Blades said, shortly after opening the door of her North Berkeley home. Her communications person had warned that she liked to "talk and walk." It's the multitasking that mothers learn, or are perhaps hard-wired to do, in this case getting some exercise while talking about MomsRising and walking the dog before the kids got home from school.
But first, Blades handed me her laptop to show MomsRising's latest outreach project -- a call for decorated onesies (one-piece baby outfits) that could be either bought or made and would then be strung together in public to make a point to the Washington state Legislature, where a family-leave act was pending. "Here, what do you think?" she asked. Then, with a click, she sent the page off to her partner, Rowe-Finkbeiner, who would post it on the MomsRising site.
During the next month, MomsRising members in Washington would send in hundreds of tiny garments for the Power of ONEsie display. By that time they had e-mailed 14,000 letters, made hundreds of phone calls and baked and sent 600 thank-you cookies to elected officials. At the end of April, the Washington Legislature passed and sent to the governor's desk a paid family leave bill giving workers $250 a week for as long as five weeks to care for a newborn or a newly adopted child. "The family leave bill would not have passed without the great work of MomsRising," state Sen. Karen Keiser, a prime sponsor, told the group afterward. If signed, it would be the nation's second, after California's pioneering measure that allows as long as six weeks paid leave.
But on that day when she looked over the project, Blades said it was an example of the kind of small, tangible action that can snowball. Then, because the dog was barking, Blades, dressed in jeans, a long T-shirt and walking shoes, strapped on a floppy sunhat and headed for the door. A slender woman with wispy hair past her shoulders, she set off briskly. She was born and raised in Berkeley and knows the terrain here.
After graduating from Berkeley High School -- a year early because she was ready to get out -- she went on to community college and UC Berkeley, then Golden Gate University Law School. She moved to Alaska, where she clerked for the state Supreme Court, then worked as a family law attorney. It was where she became interested in family mediation, a pursuit that took her to Washington, D.C. She returned to Berkeley to write what became a landmark book on divorce mediation, "Mediate Your Divorce." She also took up collage, and soccer, which is where she met her husband.
The two were frantically working on their software business, Berkeley Systems, when they had their first child. "It was a fragile time for the business," Blades said. "I remember making calls right after he was born." The company eventually hit it big with its flying-toaster screen-saver design. Blades and Boyd sold it in 1997, enabling her to work fewer hours. By the time their second child came along, they were comfortably working on educational software, no longer financially pressed. "I took more time off and I recognized that as a huge blessing," said Blades, now a full-time volunteer whose children are 10 and 17.
In 2004, six years after the creation of MoveOn, Rowe-Finkbeiner sent Blades a manuscript of her book "The F Word: Feminism in Jeopardy." Blades, who'd recently been named a Ms. magazine woman of the year, was intrigued by the book, an exploration of why so many young women don't vote or use the term feminism, despite struggling to find balance in their lives. "I was thinking how feminism, for me, had been a huge advancement," Blades said. "What would cause it to be so unpopular?" As a political organizer, she said, it was the book's data that struck her. More than 80 percent of women had kids, but they made less money than men or women without kids. "Most people would be shocked if they knew about this huge wage gap," she remembers thinking. "There is outright discrimination against mothers. They need a voice." The inequities made it harder for women to be in leadership roles, and the lack of flexibility left few options for women with kids.
"We've been told it's our choice," Blades said, walking up a flight of stairs, "but we don't have the choices we want." She paused briefly and even the dog trailed behind. "This part gets kind of aerobic," she warned.
She decided to write a brief position paper which she called "The Motherhood Manifesto" and sent it to two friends. One was Huffington. Soon after, at a gathering of "high powered progressives" at her house, Huffington talked Blades into discussing the paper. Then she turned to her, Blades recalled, and asked, "What are you going to do about it?"
Blades in 2005 asked Rowe-Finkbeiner to help write a book that would lay out the problems faced by parents, as well as possible solutions. Rowe-Finkbeiner didn't need much convincing. She was the director of an environmental political action committee until her son was born 10 years ago with primary immune deficiency. She left her job because she couldn't find adequate care for him. Once home with him, she started looking for some kind of network, but couldn't find anything. There must be other women in the same situation, she figured. So she fell back on the familiar -- doing research. "I'm a geek, a numbers person," she said. "And I had to know how many mothers there were at home. I called the U.S. Census (Bureau) and they didn't know. I said, 'How can you not know?' They said it was unpaid labor and it's uncounted."
But Rowe-Finkbeiner's research led her to other figures. She found that while women without children make 10 percent less than men, women with kids make 27 percent less and single mothers make as much as 44 percent less. "It made me think about balance," she said. "We are so far behind other industrialized countries."
Her work with MomsRising allows her flexible -- if long -- work hours, and time to be with her son, who is now healthy, and her daughter, who is 8. She and Blades usually communicate via e-mail, grabbing phone conversations when they can. As with many of the mothers I interviewed for this story, there were intermittent interruptions by kids and dogs. ("No, you can't bring the dog inside," she told her son a few times. "Yes, you can go hug him outside.")
It's the multitasking that Blades was talking about. When we got back from the walk, she went to the kitchen to turn off a pot of artichokes she'd set to boil before we'd left. She had just enough time to down one before heading off to an appointment, then spending an afternoon with her children.
When the movie ended, some of the women in the Palo Alto audience said they were struck by how many families were struggling with health care and feeling torn, as they did, between the demands of work and home. They'd grown used to juggling too many things, and were afraid to ask for help. And they were surprised at how many other countries offered benefits out of reach to them in the United States.
"This has been an unspoken issue for so long," said Jennifer Antonow, who stays at home with her two small children after leaving the software firm where she was vice president of marketing, but didn't have the flexibility she needed. "This might be the first opportunity to make a difference and get our voices heard."
There is a "certain amount of meanness in America," said another woman. "We value people who can take care of themselves."
"I've never been an activist or considered myself a feminist, but this is different," said Ann Crady, a mother of two and the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mayasmom.com, a networking site where Eisner posted the Cubberley gathering.
The two share office space with a handful of other startup companies in a renovated garage in Palo Alto. A week after the MomsRising event, Eisner and Crady were still energized.
Eisner had made plans for another showing of "The Motherhood Manifesto" and was thinking about a local onesie campaign. There was a potential for contacting people at Stanford University, she said, and at the Palo Alto school district. The work of MomsRising had reignited her interest in political action.
Unlike Crady, Eisner was an activist in her college days, even getting herself arrested at a protest against the first Gulf War. "Finally I got sick of myself," she said. "I graduated and said, 'I'm not going to whine anymore.' "
But after earning a master's degree in engineering at Stanford and entering the business world, she started noticing that women were having kids and having trouble coming back to work. She left her own job, then while working next to Crady, discovered MayasMom and became "an addict." It seemed a perfect home for MomsRising because of the potential to reach women across political lines.
Crady left her job at Yahoo, where she ran the business department for one of the search and market groups, even though the company offered her a part-time schedule. She felt, she said, that starting her own company was "in my blood." She probably spends more time away from her kids and works longer hours than she did before, but her kids, including daughter Maya, whose artwork adorns a wall, visit often. After they go to bed, Crady said, she frequently finds herself working again.
Now that she is a Chief Executive Officer and a mother, she said, she can see both sides, how it's hard to have some people working crazy hours and others who can't put in the time. She has several full-time workers and a few who work parttime or at home. She sees the need for reasonable child care and schedules that let employees have time for their kids. And she understands the push and pull between work and home, the "mommy guilt" that still dogs her.
"The issues really resonate for me," she said. "We need to change. I almost felt like I had to apologize for having kids. The internal conflict caused me not to be the most dedicated worker. I should have been better to myself. But that's the life of a mom. You are always in conflict."
E-mail Katherine Seligman at kseligman@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page CM - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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