(She planted me a flower for Mother’s Day, and she suggested that it could be a flower for all the mothers who don’t get Mother’s Day. And then she said, ‘I’m glad that I have a mother for Mother’s Day.’ Which is precisely the point.)

(The rest of the story, here.)

You’ve seen the video. You’ve shared the video. You’ve talked about the video. But do you know the story behind the video?

We’ve been promoting the ‘No Mother’s Day’ campaign – the brainchild of Christy Turlington Burns and her organization, Every Mother Counts – for about a week now, and we’ve seen a lot of dispute and disagreement over it. It is, after all, a controversial campaign that takes a controversial approach to social change: it’s using silence as an action to get peoples’ attention. Not everyone agrees that silence is a useful – or empowering, or effective, or meaningful – strategy, and those who disagree have been vocal this week in making their case. So we thought it was time to let Christy and EMC make their case.

I interviewed Christy about the meaning and intention behind the campaign, and about her hopes and expectations for the campaign, and her team provided me with a little bit of narrative around what they’re doing. The result is this discussion, which I hope you’ll read, and give some thought to, and perhaps even weigh in on…

This past week we (Every Mother Counts) shared a new short social issue film here on Babble that features our dear friends Alisa Volkman and Catherine Connors. The film serves as the cornerstone for a new campaign we’ve launched in the lead up to Mother’s Day which is called “No Mothers Day.” It may sound counter-intuitive at first glance and indeed the campaign has raised a few eyebrows as well as a few critiques on this site. The truth is that was always the intent. Mother’s Day has always been a natural moment for Every Mother Counts, as it is for any organization focused on maternal health. But this year is different. This year we are poised to take the campaign further and hope to engage a wider audience. We are launching a variety of new partnerships, new ways for people to take action and yet- we are facing one major problem—not enough people even know that this is an issue. We did some research and if you look at the numbers across the U.S., people just do not realize that this is urgent domestically or abroad and for those that DO have any sense that it is, most don’t realize how solvable it could be. So, the challenge was this, how do we call people to action if they don’t yet know there’s a problem? And secondly, how do we break through all the noise that comes at us from retailers and all the other causes… What could get attention to begin a conversation that is solution-oriented? No Mothers Day is just that. It is what we hope will become an open dialogue where we all come together and figure this out because we value motherhood. We know this is a big ask and how uncomfortable it may feel. We are moms too and we know hard we all work all year long so now we are asking you give up our one day too? What good will that do many of you have asked? Well, going silent on Mother’s Day may not immediately save lives today but it very well might tomorrow and beyond. All we wanted to do was invite you into a global dialogue that you can have a voice in, but needed to get things a little quiet in order for us to be heard. Our founder Christy Turlington Burns sat down with Catherine Connors to talk about this approach in a bit more detail and to address some of the questions that have been posted about the campaign.

Catherine: So, Christy… obviously I know about the campaign. I was in the video. I get it. But tell us- what do you hope will happen when people see this campaign? What is your goal?

CTB: Well first of all I just hope they watch the video- I really think it does a great job explaining what we’re trying to do. And I hope they’ll share it with their networks as well. I love that we have some comments and questions coming in on the website- that’s the whole idea! My original hope was just that people would consider the facts we present in the No Mothers Day film and then in turn question them. People are thinking about it, talking, reacting. All those people are now aware. And that’s incredible because now hopefully those same people will come join us at everymothercounts.org to solve it together.

Catherine: Right, but going silent won’t save lives, right? What do you say to those who worry this effort won’t really have an impact?

CTB: No if all we had to do was go silent then I think we really could solve this pretty quickly. No Mothers Day was not designed to be an immediate solution. By not answering your phone or responding to email on May 13th you won’t save a life today, but you could be a part of saving thousands of lives from that day onward. Until a majority of the public is aware that there is a problem, we won’t be moved to solve it, and this is the role of No Mothers Day – to get their attention, begin a dialogue and build a community of activists. We believe that once people know the facts, they will want to do what they can and come to us to find ways to engage. We want people to become aware of the problem but perhaps more importantly, become aware that there are solutions and that their participation is needed and welcome.

Catherine: So what do you say to moms of young kids? Is this really about ignoring your kids on Mother’s Day?

CTB: We understand how important Mother’s Day is to you. All of us are mothers too, and having our children bring us breakfast in bed or making us a special gift is something we’d be really sad to go without. But the scale of the tragedy of maternal mortality is so great, and there are so many families around the world unable to celebrate Mother’s Day, that this is a sacrifice that we’re prepared to make if it raises awareness around the problem and encourages people to provide support and funding to help solve it. What action you choose to take is up to you. Say no to gifts and phone calls, or no to gifts and yes to phone calls, or just go silent on social media – it’s your choice. Or maybe the options we came up with on our Facebook page don’t work for you- that’s ok. Come up with your own way to engage and ‘disappear’. It’s about finding a way to spread the word and join in solidarity with our sisters in motherhood and that can be a very personal choice. Our primary hope is that you spend a few moments on May 13th to think about those unable to do the same.

Catherine: Do you have any advice on how parents might use this campaign as a ‘teachable moment’ with their kids? How are you talking to your children about ‘no mother’s day’?

CTB: I think of everything as a teachable moment so yes, most definitely. If our children ask, as mine have, what we may want for Mother’s Day we can explain to them that many moms do not survive childbirth and that that leaves millions of children without mothers every year. I tell my kids I am lucky to have them and they are lucky to have me.

Catherine: And what next? How does this fit into your overall plans with EMC?

CTB: NMD is a moment in time – it’s designed to get attention. Every Mother Counts is an ongoing advocacy and mobilization campaign. As such, we hope to educate and inspire new audiences to engage on this issue. We hope that No Mothers Day will get people’s attention and shock them with facts, and then in turn, we hope they’ll be moved to do more. Following the No Mothers Day campaign we will have a revamped, action-oriented website with the goal of becoming the epicenter for maternal health information. We hope that those interested in engaging will come to think of us as an action resource center.

Please consider taking part in this campaign (I am, obviously). Even if it only prompts a conversation with your spouse or your kids or your friends, consider that meaningful. Every show of support counts. Every mother counts. Let’s make this count. You can find more information, and the video, at Every Mother Counts. Please check it out.

Today I traveled to northern Uganda, the part of the country that was, up until only a few years ago, ravaged by civil war and terrorized by the LRA. It’s in recovery now – they’re rebuilding, and reconciling, and coping with their fear that it’s not over.

You know what they say here, said one woman to me. They say that Kony is back, and hiding. Or that he’s coming back, soon. Because his work isn’t done. You want chills to run down your spine, you head into the bush of northern Uganda and have that conversation.
Then have any number of further conversations with mothers in that area who lost their children to the LRA, by abduction or machete. It doesn’t matter how many of those conversations that you have. Your heart will have chilled and quailed at the first one.

When I said the other day that I didn’t know how to write these stories, I had no idea. I had no idea what stories were to come.

I had no idea.

I need to sleep on these ones, and decide whether these are stories that I can even hold in my mind (one mother told me that her daughter was lost when they fled their village, in fear of the coming rebels. She lost track of her, her little girl, just six years old, as we all do sometimes. And she was left behind. She was not abducted. She did not live to be abducted.)

You can’t sleep, with these stories. You shouldn’t be able to sleep. I can’t.

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Ah, I am not uplifting. I can’t be, not tonight. But I do have to say, that it wasn’t all fear and tragedy. There’s hope there. There is. There are great programs in play up there, programs in health and micro-finance and gender equality, among others, that are really making a difference, in big ways and small ways and all the ways in between. Women – and men – are being empowered to rebuild their lives and their communities.

And, there was dancing. There was play. And where there’s dancing and play, there’s hope.

(There was play. No hopeful heart can resist play. Mine can’t.)

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This is Concy. I met her yesterday, in Kampala.

She’s beautiful, of course. And she’s composed, and well-spoken. I say that, even though we were communicating through a translator, because she had this voice, and this way of speaking and gesturing and smiling, that made you believe that you didn’t really need the translator to understand what she was saying, even though she was speaking in Swahili and Swahili is really hard to understand if, you know, you don’t speak it. Concy’s words, you could understand. Her words chilled and moved and inspired in the very moments that they passed her lips. By the time the translator got to those words, their work had already been done. They had landed.

She spoke about her children – she has four – and her businesses – she has two. She told us about being HIV positive, and pregnant, and about the hysterectomy she was going to get after this baby, her last baby, because she was done, she said, and it was her choice to be done, and she chose to be done, because she could. Her fine dark hand slashed through the air, in the motion that we associate with axes dropping. Done.

She would make that choice, she said, because that was the only way to make the choice to control her own reproductive future. Men don’t listen, she said. They do what they want, and don’t do what they don’t want, and what they want is to use women as their property, and what they don’t want is to use condoms. I am no-one’s property, she said. I have my own property. All mine. And so she would have her ovaries cut from her body, because doing so would be the only way of insuring the integrity of her ownership of them.

I choose, she said. Because I must.

Once upon a time – twenty years ago – she watched her brothers make a choice, and claim ownership of their lives. We spent every night in the bush, she said, to hide from the rebels who would come at night. They were Kony’s rebels, she told us, soldiers of the LRA, and they came to make their own property claims.

Every night, she said. Every night, we hid. Every night we hid and we slept where we hid, in the bush.

One evening, they were in the garden, her and her brothers and their family. Rebels were coming, someone shouted, and they ran. Her brothers stood their ground.  She argued with them. I told them, you must run. They said, ‘we will not run.’ They said, ‘we will choose where we sleep. We choose to sleep here.’

She was not so brave. She ran, and hid nearby.

The rebels came and asked my brothers why they were there, why they did not run like the others. ‘This is our property,’ they said. ‘This is where we sleep. We choose to sleep here.’

The rebels laughed, she said. They said, ‘so you choose?’

They laughed. And then they brought down their machetes. First across the head of one brother, and then across the head of another.

‘You have your choice,’ they said. ‘Now, yes, you will sleep here.’

She was the first to their bodies. She has never forgotten. Choice took on a new meaning that night.

Her life is very different now. It’s been difficult, but she’s persevered. She’s received maternal health care, prenatal support and treatment for HIV and PMTCT through CARE programs. Her businesses were started, and have grown, through the support of CARE’s micro-finance initiatives. She owns the home that she lives in. She is independent. I don’t need my husband, she said. He doesn’t own me. She makes her own choices. She does not want to be punished for them. She resists that. She owns herself. She owns her own self.

This is the life that she cherishes, now, and the life that she wants for her children. To be the owners of their lives and selves. To be proper, in the true sense of the word. To be able to make their own choices, and live with those choices as their own. This is, I think, a goal that we – we inhabitants of the Global North – take for granted. So it is that we can witness political debates on our own soil about the proper rights of women over their own bodies, their own reproductive systems, their own fertility, their own lives and not understand, not appreciate, what’s at stake. We are so privileged, so informed, so aware and yet so blinkered by it all that we just don’t get it. We don’t appreciate the extent that Concy’s goals – to be self-determining, to be the owner of her self, and to see her children enjoy such self-ownership – are key to a healthy society. Or, rather, we appreciate it, but we don’t appreciate it – we take it for granted that our self-ownership is just always there, always something that we have, no matter how much we chip away at it, and no matter how much, in particular, we chip away at women’s self-ownership.

To hell with that. I want my daughter to own herself as fully as any man owns himself. I want her to grow up in a world where her self-ownership really is a given, and one that she understands and celebrates – one that we all understand and celebrate. I want her to not have to fight for her right to make her own choices. I want the stakes around those choices to not be so high.

I want her, like Concy, to own her own strong self, and damn anyone who would have it otherwise. I’ve always wanted that, but I want it now in a much keener and more deeply felt way. I want it now in a way that feels more urgent, more needful, more now. And I know why I need to fight for it. Why we need to fight for it.

And for that, I thank Concy. Thank you, Concy.

—

Catherine is Director of Blogs and Social Media at Babble, but her super secret mommy blogger superhero identity is Her Bad Mother. Don’t tell anyone.

I have, in my tenure as a mother, done quite a few things that other human beings might find discomfiting. I’ve sucked mucus out of my child’s nose. I’ve sat with a puking baby in a bathtub. I’ve breastfed another woman’s child. I’ve spend whole days with saggy cabbage leaves plastered to my engorged and ravaged nursing chest units. I’ve caught shit in my hand. I’ve caught vomit in my hand. Why, just the other day I held on to Jasper while he vomited – great, endless streams of vomit – directly into my lap. No, I didn’t run away screaming. You don’t run away screaming from uncomfortable things when you’re a parent. Parenthood is itself just one long discomfiting experience. It is what it is, and you accept it for what it is.

Well, mostly. There are still some things that I wouldn’t do, like ever. ‘Kiss-feeding’ my baby is one of those things.

This isn’t a judgment on Alicia Silverstone, who is now possibly better known for being the celebrity mom who chews food for her kid than she is for having starred in Clueless (which is, if you ask me, a travesty.) I really do try to avoid passing judgment on other parents. I’m not always successful, but I do try, usually by resorting to the hoary old position that ah, well, to each one’s own. Which I’ve done in this case. Kiss-feeding is just not for me, and that’s fine, that’s fair, it’s all good – because what works for Alicia doesn’t have to work for me for it to be a valid choice, right?

Right. Sort of. Mostly. For sure yes, for the most part. We really should, I think, tread carefully in the arena of judgment. That doesn’t mean, however, that we are obliged to not have opinions, or that we must refrain from asking questions about whatever practice is in question. And in this case, I do have questions. Among which:

1) Why? No, seriously: why? When Jasper was 11 months old, he was mashing bananas and avocado and mushy noodles and cereals and teething biscuits into his face. He was teaching himself how to eat. To the extent that I helped him, it was to mush some stuff up – with a fork or spoon or something – for him in advance, or help him wield a spoon on his own. It simply would not have occurred to me to chew up that avocado and deliver it directly from my mouth to his, because, you know, I’m not a bird. I have hands, and opposable thumbs. Why would I use my mouth?

2) Are there not reasons to NOT do this? Like, you know, the small matter of the amount of bacteria that can be found in the human mouth? It’s said that bites from a human being are more dangerous than those of any other creature, because we just carry that much bacteria in our mouths and so are that much more likely to transmit something horrible. I know that mouthfeeding isn’t biting, but still – it’s delivering the contents of my mouth to my baby’s mouth, which I’m not entirely sure is a good thing.

3) There’s no way a dad could do this, right? Because it looks a little, you know, inappropriate, what with the mouth-to-mouth element and all. I’ve been known to to argue for acknowledgment of the erotic character of our relationship to our children (‘erotic’ in the classical sense of the Platonic erotic, which is the yearning for connection with beauty – not ‘erotic’ in the modern sense of ‘sexual’) but despite – or perhaps because of – my understanding of the place of the erotic in love for our children, I think that there is a line of appropriateness across which we should not even appear to venture. Mouthkissing – maybe – represents such a line. Maybe. I’ve certainly planted smackers on my babies’ lips – and vice-versa (Jasper loves to grab me by the face and plant one on me.) But is transferring the contents of one’s mouth to one’s child’s mouth not a different thing? I’m not sure – but I did have the immediate thought, upon watching the video, that if a guy did it people would freak out even further. And any (non-biological) practice that is a practice that not every parent could participate in is, I think, something to discuss. Does it mean that it’s something we should discourage? Or something that we should encourage?

4) Do we help the cause of getting conversations about parenting into the mainstream of popular culture by pushing forward examples of extreme parenting? Is this – ‘Look, guys! Crazy moms chew their babies’ food and KISS FEED THEM’ – helping to advance conversations about parenthood that situate parents as normal adult human beings, just like everyone else? Or does it keep the conversation stuck in the space that generates responses like STFU Parents? Or, or… should we be talking more about these practices, the better to normalize all approaches to parenthood, and to normalize discussion of those approaches?

5) Is this extreme parenting? I’m judging again, aren’t I?

End of the day, I wouldn’t do this. Which, again, doesn’t make it wrong, by any stretch of the imagination. But I do think that it’s worth discussing why we are – why I am – discomfited by it, and worth interrogating why we’re discomfited by it, even if that means that we come off as a little critical. I think.

Civil discourse: so hard sometimes! What do you think? Would you kiss-feed? Do you judge a mom who does? Would you judge a dad? Should we really just not be judging ever, at all? DISCUSS!

More on Babble Voices:
Why We Should Have Our Kids Chew Our Food for Us

Catherine is Director of Community at Babble, but her super secret mommy blogger superhero identity is Her Bad Mother. Don’t tell anyone.

The other week, on International Women’s Day, I wrote about my struggle to be a feminist mother. I wrote about wanting to encourage my daughter to run far and to run free, as I did, but about worrying about her running too far, and too free. As if there were such thing, but therein resides the struggle: I fear that there is such a thing. Or at least, that there is the cultural suggestion of such a thing, and that that suggestion might be as much of a constraint as the thing itself.

I wrung my hands, and wrung my hands.

And then I got this email, from my mother:

Emilia asked me the other day, after we’d read The Lorax together, what my most very favoritest Dr. Seuss story was. Hers was a tie between The Lorax and The Cat In The Hat. The Grinch would have been a contender, she said, but she liked the TV show better than the book. I’d have chafed at that, but she does kind of have a point. The Grinch is a whole different experience with Boris Karloff.

Anyway. My favorite Seuss story is none of the above. It’s this one: Hooper Humperdink, Not Him. It’s about the awesomest birthday party ever, and the one boy who wasn’t invited. Well, until the end. He gets invited at the end, of course, because all Seuss stories end on a positive note. Yes, even The Lorax, which has been criticized for being gloomy. Of course the extinction of trees is gloomy. So’s being the kid who’s never invited to parties, or having a heart that’s two sizes too small. But the whole point of so many Dr Seuss stories is exactly that: to acknowledge the stuff about life that’s complicated or difficult or challenging (YOU try telling Sam I Am that you don’t want his green-tinted breakfast special) and then to remind you that, despite all that, there’s every reason to keep your chin up. There’s always hope, usually in the form of a person or persons with good hearts – hearts that will carry that one seed forward to bring back the trees, or that will rise up in song and inspire a Grinch, or that will invite Hooper Humperdink to that super-awesome birthday party. And the message is always there, in the closing lines and rhymes of the story, that YOU could – you SHOULD – be that person with that good heart. YOU can – you SHOULD – carry the seed, start the song, issue the invitation. You DO care a whole awful lot, Dr Seuss reminds you, in almost every story, and so you SHOULD do something about it. You WANT to do something about it.

Last year, Intel asked me if I’d do a video with them for their Tech Wonders channel. Which was really flattering, and also a little confusing, because when it comes to me and tech, the word ‘wonder’ is not what comes to mind in any context other than ‘I wonder how Catherine gets by in such a technological world when she can’t even synch her iPhone and her MacBook.” But they assured me that it was relevant and appropriate, and I chose to be reassured, and the result is what follows – a video interview with me about my experience as a mom blogger, and specifically about my experience as a mom blogger who believes that the act of mom blogging is really kind of maybe just a little bit radical. Which I do believe, especially when it comes to sharing stories and bridging distances and opening up the public sphere to our voices and changing the world and yadda yadda, and which belief I expound upon at some length here. Also, I cry. I’m a crier. (The post that I cry about? That would be this one. It’s not like it’s gut-wrenching or anything. It’s just, you know, reading those words out loud, agh.)

There are also some images of my extremely untidy loft (in my defense, the pictures were all taken shortly after we moved in, before we’d unpacked), and at least one image of Jasper without pants, reaching for a woodsaw. Please disregard those pictures, and substitute whatever mental images you can conjure that will support your idea of me as a woman who lives in a ordered home and who does not let her children get their hands on sharp tools.

So, Beyonce and Jay-Z had a baby, and – true to self-indulgent celebrity form – Jay-Z recorded and released a song in honor of that baby before the placenta was even cold. Which might seem odd to you and I – if my husband had taken off to a recording studio while I figured out what the hell to do with our brand new squawling offspring, I think that I’d have been more than a little put out* – but let’s face it: they’re artists. They’re special. They get these creative urges and they just have to give in to them, you know?

*(That said, I did blog about my son’s birth before I could even stand up in the maternity ward, so. Pot, kettle.)

So it is that songs about how blown one’s mind is by one’s own offspring – or even other people’s offspring – are not at all uncommon. Sometimes, they’re even good. Jay-Z’s is not good – it is, actually, really very bad (it contains the line, “you’re my child with a child from Destiny’s Child.” Really.) – but there are quite a few lyrical tributes to babies and children that are very good. Herewith, ten of what I believe to be the very best such tributes (a list that I was tempted to title, Top Ten Songs Inspired By Or Written For Babies Or Children By Preening Grown-Ups, but worried that that was too snarky, because I really do like these songs. ‘Isn’t She Lovely’, these songs are not.)

Daughter (Loudon Wainwright)

This song got a lot of exposure when it was included on the soundtrack to the movie Knocked Up, but I totally loved it before that, you guys. Because, seriously, it's just a perfectly lovely song. His ‘Rufus Is A Tit Man’, about his son and breastfeeding, is also awesome, but I don’t know that I’d put it on a shower playlist. Although maybe I would. That would probably be a cool shower.

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When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a princess. I wasn’t particularly fussy about what kind of princess I might be; indeed, my definition of ‘princess’ was pretty loose, to the extent that if you asked me which princesses were my favorite, I would have listed a series of names that included Cinderella, Wonder Woman, Princess Leia, Rapunzel, Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Wendy from Peter Pan, and that chick who fooled Rumpelstiltskin. Actual status as royalty, in other words, was not, in my mind, the defining characteristic of a princess. I still don’t think that it’s the defining characteristic of a princess, whether you’re talking about Disney characters or the late mother of William of Wales. Which is why I don’t have a problem with princesses, like, at all.

No, really.