Life
What My Odd Home-Schooling Mom and Angelina Jolie Have in Common
They are both breast-feeding, locavore evangelists.
Nothing brought back the rush of home-schooling memories like New York’s March feature on Cara Muhlhahn, a radical midwife who flits around New York City coaxing babies out of their mother’s wombs au naturel even under high-risk circumstances. She could very well be right about trusting the body’s instincts, but much of the absurdly romantic home-birth pitch—talk of “altered states of consciousness” and “bliss without the pain”—sounds like good old-fashioned nonsense. It also sounds like my home-schooling mother who, when I was a child, never missed an opportunity to recount the horrors of hospitals, doctors, epidurals, and C-sections. The home-schooling moms I knew had a particular affinity for all of those amazing natural sciences that OB/GYNs like to keep to themselves. Nearly two decades later, I discovered that Park Slope moms are burning up with the same fever.
Growing up in a home-schooling family in rural Texas, I got used to thinking of myself as fringe. Like a good number of home schoolers, my parents distrusted television, the food industry, the medical profession, and, well, just about anything that average middle-class Americans considered normal. Most of my brothers and sisters were born in our parents’ bedroom and never made the pilgrimage to the local hospital for vaccinations. We spent lots of our days away from textbooks, trying our hands at growing and raising our own food and tackling grown-up chores. We did not catch many episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or eat many Pop-Tarts.
Needless to say, I was, for much of my adolescence, preoccupied with proving I was “mainstream”—that despite all this natural, organic, precocious living, I was capable of consuming as thoughtlessly as everyone else. Now, as a post-college transplant to New York, I have to do a rapid reverse. Never did I imagine that what I once considered my parents’ annoying “alternative” choices would be lifestyle gospel in New York, praised on the cover of cool magazines, evangelized by all sorts of celebrities. Now, I’ve started to think of my parents and their obscure home-schooling friends living in tiny, isolated American towns as some kind of urban prophets.
When my mother first decided to breast-feed in 1990, it was less than trendy. What was at the time a doctor-recommended but still oft-ignored practice took off in home-schooling circles, just like other “natural” lifestyle choices. It was not uncommon to happen upon a group of friends’ mothers chatting away and suckling their infants—something I never saw “normal” women doing. (And something I never cared to see any women doing.) Even as a 10-year-old, I could sense the sense of superiority directed toward those bottle-feeders who couldn’t sacrifice their personal dignity for their child’s future. Now, as DoubleX co-founder Hanna Rosin wrote in the Atlantic, these women would fit right into the cliques of cool moms who rule Brooklyn playgrounds and deliver icy glares when someone decides to stop breast-feeding. Heck, they would fit right in with Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie.
Eating, for the hip liberal urbanite, is, as Michael Pollan recently commiserated in the New York Times Magazine, one of the most overwhelming, obnoxious, fussy, judgmental aspects of social life. But the culinary zealotry I discovered in New York was completely familiar after having been thoroughly schooled in the holiness of organic ingredients and home-grown vegetables. Once a month throughout my childhood, an Ozark truck loaded with sacks of wheat, carob chips, natural peanut butter, granola, and other such fruit of the earth would roll into Waco, Texas, and a mom in our home-school group would make the drive to pick up the stuff we’d all try to avoid eating for the next few weeks. My family would go on temporary fasts from high-fructose corn syrup to boost our immune systems.
SNL: Equal Opportunity Objectifiers
Jon Hamm spent most of the Saturday Night Live episode he hosted last night shirtless.
Confessions of a Woman Comedy Writer
Allison Silverman accepts one from New York Women in Film & Television (and tells us why it's rare).
Comments
thanks for proving my point
By: rebeccat | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 21:26
alicedorothy15, seriously you couldn't do a better job proving my point if you sat up at night trying! I've breastfed all my children - including out in public - and even I can't get myself worked up into indignation over the author's comments about breastfeeding. You don't even have kids yet and your righteous indignation floweth over! This is a humorous piece which happens to include a couple of lines about breastfeeding and the
(very real) breastfeeding nazi attitude which is fairly common in groups of women where breastfeeding is the expected norm and all you can do is call for smelling salts because a 10 year old kid didn't want to see the women in his social group nursing! LAUGH, dear! It won't hurt you or anyone else to crack a smile at one of your (or my) sacred cows. Life isn't nearly that serious - trust me on that one - apparently I've seen a helluva lot more of it than you have. If you can't laugh at the silliness of the human condition, then you're in sad, sorry shape indeed.
In response to rebeccat’s comment:
By: alicedorothy15 | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 14:24
“If feminists didn’t already have a reputation 4 being humorless then alicedorothy15's comment would single-handedly have created it! Read again - he's not criticizing nursing and the negative attitude he was talking about comes from moms who nurse towards those who don't. Poor reading comprehension skills mixed with a COMPLETE lack of any sense of humor is not attractive, dear!”
There is certainly nothing wrong with my reading comprehension skills: when the author begins his sentence regarding the indecency of breastfeeding with the phrase “EVEN as a ten year old,” it implies he still feels the way he did as a child. And there is nothing funny about disguising a story that reinforces negative stereotypes about homeschooling parents as obnoxious and fussy and painting all nursing mothers as indecent, judgmental ice queens as a humorous social observation. Observations about society can be funny – but my sense of humor does not involve laughing at other people’s chosen lifestyles, which usually reflect deeply held personal beliefs. Is that what your sense of humor involves? Is that really humor?
I don’t think there is anything funny about perpetuating stereotypes, whether it be about “breastfeeding Nazis,” “holier than thou hippies,” “alternative lifestyles,” “humorless feminists,” or anything else referenced in this post or comments that follow. I have never ascribed the label feminist to myself but as a woman I am incredibly insulted by the comment the author made that a woman must sacrifice her dignity to feed her child if she chooses to nurse. If that makes me a feminist, I am proud to be one – despite the extremely negative stereotype rebeccat reinforced in her comments, implying that I am an angry, unintelligent, humorless and unattractive feminist (and I thought I was repelling all those men with my hairy armpits, Birkenstock sandals and granola bars! Thanks, rebeccat “dear” for pointing out that its really just my inability to find degrading negative stereotypes amusing that keeps the men away! I’ll be sure to tell my husband that he’s a fool for finding me and my lack of a sense of humor attractive enough to keep me around).
i think a point was missed...
By: Jewellya | Thu, 11/05/2009 - 08:09
regarding the breastfeeding commentary that's got so many hung up...
.
"(And something I never cared to see any women doing.)": It's in past tense, in the context of when the author was a child, presumably around 10 years old as he immediately mentions following the parenthetical. when I was ten, no matter how natural and casual the woman was, i found it very confusing to see a woman breastfeeding when I had been told girls didn't take their shirts off in public, only boys could do that.
"...I could sense the sense of superiority directed toward those bottle-feeders who couldn’t sacrifice their personal dignity for their child’s future."
Again, spoken in the "voice" of a confused pre-adolescent who had not yet figured out the public vs private navigation of nakedness. Bottle feeders "couldn't sacrifice" as in can't, unable to, the presumption being that if we all could we would (therefore breastfeeders are blessed with a Gift of being able to. For some, it goes to their heads)...."personal dignity": the stereotype of what bottlefeeders think of breastfeeders...used in a manner to celebrate the breastfeeding culture by showing how ridiculous the stereotype is.
AND IT WAS TWENTY YEARS AGO!
*i just realized the author is male, but that doesn't change anything that I've said, except a pronoun.
BF
By: feministworkingmom | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 11:39
Breastfeeding is not weird, and should be done when and where needed, even in public, other people's discomfort be damned. HOWEVER, the cult that has grown up around it, the breastfeeding nazis that denigrate, insult, and humiliate those who don't breastfeed is morally repugnant. Women should feed their children. Period. How that is accomplished is none of my business. When the lactivists whine about not getting respect and then blantantly insult and disrespect any woman who chooses to formula feed, I have no sympathy for them. They have lost both my support and respect.
breastfeeding fetishes
By: kyoungers | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 00:39
Mr. Sessions, ignore the criticisms regarding your distaste for watching women breastfeed. You are allowed to find public breastfeeding unappealing. I do too. It doesn't mean we think women shouldn't be allowed to breastfeed or that they're bad people - it just means that we don't want to watch it. I don't want to watch reality TV or Looney Tunes, either. That's my right.
If feminists didn't already have a reputation 4 being humorless
By: rebeccat | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 00:07
Then alicedorothy15's comment would single handedly have created it! Read again - he's not criticizing nursing and the negative attitude he was talking about comes from moms who nurse towards those who don't. Poor reading comprehension skills mixed with a COMPLETE lack of any sense of humor is not attractive, dear!
I can relate to a lot in this post. Funny story; my mom, who had 9 kids and was nursing them through the 70s and 80s, used to leave her breasts out to air after nursing regardless of who was around. As I had a 14 year old brother when my youngest sister was a baby, he and his friends frequently walked in, not only on nursing, but on a 43 year old woman with her rather deflated breasts hanging out all the time. Poor kid! I'm pretty sure at that age he was of the "would rather not see any woman breastfeeding" camp. LOL.
I now homeschool my kids and there is such diversity among homeschoolers, but you do see a lot of crunchy granola stuff that many Park Slopes moms would have a hard time keeping up with. If you want to start a fight, ask a diverse group of homeschoolers about teaching kids evolution or creationism - blood may be shed. But ask that same group of homeschoolers about alternative diets to treat allergies and behavior problems and the conversation could go on for hours! I suppose it's the lack of trust in authority which most homeschooler's share, but it is kind of funny to see uptight, trendy parents in urban centers picking up many of these trends.
And like the author, I have often been struck as an adult by how many of the things my parents did which seemed either normal or really odd were actually trend setting and considered perfectly normal today. I guess it's just a little unsettling and shocking to see your parents as trend-setting when you've boxed them in as unremarkable at best or weird at worst. But I'm glad that there are always people with us who will buck trends and be willing to stand against the tide. I hope that one day my own kids will see shades of that in me and their dad as well! :)
I have been a huge fan of
By: alicedorothy15 | Tue, 11/03/2009 - 18:57
I have been a huge fan of this website since its recent founding, particularly because of the stated mission: "We tackle subjects high and low with an approach that's unabashedly intellectual but not dry or condescending." However, this post is devoid of intellectual content, relying instead of condescending and ridiculous stereotypes about woman and "alternative" lifestyles. It is downright insulting, largely due to comments the author made about breastfeeding being "something I never cared to see any women doing" and that some women "couldn't sacrifice their personal dignity for their child's future." It is exactly that sexist, insensitive, uncompassionate, inhumane attitude that makes breastfeeding an "issue" open to debate in the first place. I may not be a mother yet but no woman should have to hear such immature, irrational comments because she decides to feed her child in a completely human, natural manner, especially if it is just because a part of her body that nourishes her child embarrasses someone else for no rational reason. How dare you assume that your personal comfort, preference and irrational body hangups should come before another human beings basic survival - breastfeeding is about a child eating a meal and nothing else. Furthermore, the idea that a woman has to SACRIFICE HER PERSONAL DIGNITY to feed her child is infuriating. There is NOTHING undignified about being a mother who cares for her child by breastfeeding. How disappointing that you give this person space to perpetuate meaningless stereotypes and claim there is something indecent about feeding a baby.
The only time I considered
By: vickib | Tue, 11/03/2009 - 13:39
The only time I considered homeschooling my son was when our school district made it difficult to get him services when he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. My cynical opinion at the time was that, because he scored off the charts on the standardized tests, it was in the school's interest to keep him in regular ed. (He was having an emotional "meltdown" every day, and once almost burned the school down, literally)
Since I'm a public school teacher, myself, I figured they could pay me my regular salary to deal with him, since they wouldn't. They eventually made it right, and now he's a successful college student. He and I would have driven each other insane if I'd tried to homeschool.
I also think that parents who opt out, either at home or in private school, aren't doing their communities or their children any favors. Public school symbolizes our greatest unrealized potential as a society. If the wealthy, elite, religious, and iconoclasts among us participated in public education along with the "unwashed masses," I am convinced public education would be more effective, and there would be less bigotry and conflict in our society.
Nice Article, But...
By: ameliapeabody | Tue, 11/03/2009 - 11:43
Much as I like to read stories from former homeschoolers, the extent that this author reinforced common stereotypes annoyed me. I homeschooled for much of my middle-school and all of my high-school years, and yes, I watched television and had friends and ate junk food on occasion. I studied science using books, not kitchen supplies, and had a perfectly well-rounded education. Maybe this is because I didn't homeschool for religious reasons, but I just wish people wouldn't think of homeschoolers as strange.
Hello Editor
By: teaspoon | Tue, 11/03/2009 - 10:37
Please fix the oversized link on this page. It hurts my eyes to try to read the whole article in blue.