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Watching the moms in Portland get tear gassed this morning made me think about how in America, the virtue and sainthood of "motherhood" is only given to hetero white women who are married. For the rest of America's mothers, motherhood is deadly and dangerous.
Black mothers are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white mothers. Mothers who are incarcerated are forced to give up their children.
And we certainly don't let women who are fat become mothers. I think often about this article by @v_solesmith https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/magazine/fertility-weight-obesity-ivf.html
Native American women are twice as likely to die in childbirth than their white counterparts. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/she-hoped-shine-light-maternal-mortality-among-native-americans-instead-n1131951
And who do we allow to identify as mothers? Who gets to say, I am a mother? Trans mothers? Mothers who were forced to give up their children? Who gets that privilege?
We take children away from Black mothers. We blame single mothers for ABSOLUTELY every societal ill from radicalized men to school violence all the while making it harder for mothers to earn money, go to work or get healthcare.
For decades, America forcibly sterilized Black, Native American and incarcerated women. So who gets to be a "mother"?
The experience of motherhood in America is a political question just as much as it’s a question of flesh.
And I'm sorry, but I am thinking about this because it's literally the intro of my book https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781541762831
