Miriam Peskowitz is the author of The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars. In her book, Peskowitz investigates why mothers make the choices about work and caregiving that they make, as well as whether real choices actually exist for most American families. After talking to mothers of various incomes, educational backgrounds, and ethnicities in both rural and urban areas, Peskowitz writes, "The truth behind the Mommy Wars is that in real life mothers are casting about for lives that feel sane and safe, and we need more help than we're getting." I interviewed Miriam Peskowitz via email in May 2005.
-Amy

mamazine.com: Since Mother's Day was yesterday, I have to ask how you spent your Mother's Day.

Miriam Peskowitz: Well, it wasn't your typical Mother's Day, I'll tell you that. I awoke early, to shower and get dressed by 8, when a black town car came to drive me downtown to VideoLink. I was set to appear on CNN that morning to talk about my book. The spot lasted 3 minutes, 5 if you count the online email questions I answered. Tally that toward my fifteen minutes of fame. By 10:30, the car had driven me home, where my daughter and husband cheered, and then gave me all sorts of little mother's day presents, including the three cards and a rice paper hanging banner with the Chinese symbol for mother that my daughter had made at school.

At noon, I took my daughter to Wild Things softball, the girls club in our neighborhood. We both played in the annual mother/daughter softball game. After, her coach Andy gathered us all under a big shade tree. First he passed around some New York Times ads for Mother's Day and asked why everything we hear about Mother's Day has to do with buying things. Then he collected those and passed around red cards with the words to Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, (I put this up on my blog, Playground Revolution) and he told the girls that Mother's Day was once very political, and that it was about peace, and that's how he hoped it would become again.

At 1:30, my husband's parents came over for lunch. And at 3 I was off to a Mother's Day Book Party and Tea where I was speaking about how we can see motherhood as political.

I returned home at 6. We all shared dinner, and by 7:30 I was fast asleep in my daughter's bed. Like I said, not your typical day.

mamazine.com: What do you wish could be different in mothers' lives by Mother's Day 2006? 2010?

Miriam Peskowitz: By next year I hope we feel less judged, and more confident. I hope we find our collective voice enough to say, we love our kids and ourselves and we've had it up to here with the lack of support and we want some change. We want paid family leave not just in California but throughout the nation. We want media attention not to fake issues, like do mothers have hormones that make us smarter, or do French mothers have it better than we do in America, but to the full range of real problems mothers face, all of us, rich and poor and middle class, working mothers, mothers at home, mother who work part time. By 2010 I hope we've seen a smart, feminist movement that's not afraid to stand up for women and mothers and demand more support.

mamazine.com: Who are some of the mamas you look up to, and why?

Miriam Peskowitz: I look up to my own mother, Myra Peskowitz, and to Jean O'Barr, one of my teachers and mentors. I admire their sense of clarity and direction through life, and their willingness to accept change, even seek it out, and make the best of it. They're both "big picture" people. Both came of age during the early 60's, and so have lived through such significant changes for women's lives. I really admire some of the women writing about motherhood right now, like Andi Buchanan, author of MotherShock, co-editor of LiteraryMama.com, and editor of a few anthologies set to come out in the next year for her willingness to be so brutally honest about motherhood, and Judith Stadtman Tucker, the founder and driving force behind Mothers Movement Online. And other mothers too: friends who show me through their actions how to parent calmly and well.

mamazine.com: In the epilogue to your book, you write about not wanting to make a fuss as a pregnant and then new mom, but realizing later that raising objections to the ways mothers are treated is the only way societal and internal expectations of mothers will change. What advice would you give a new mother about speaking up?

Miriam Peskowitz: I would tell her to take a deep breath and go for it. I've learned that when I'm timid, I don't get what I want. I've learned that when I understate and minimize the motherhood problem, no one can understand it. And positively, I've learned that when I use my voice and ask for something and explain the issues fully and passionately, I have a better chance of getting others to fuss along with me, and sometimes even getting what I want. Choose a small, local problem to solve (as a start), and in the process, connect it with the biggest, broadest issues possible. Don't be afraid.

Many of us barely remember times in our nation when activism and rebellion were more common. We need to relearn what's important about our national culture, which is that it's based on rebellion, not on the quiet and conformist culture it has become.

And here's the last piece of advice. Almost the whole time I was writing The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars, I kept thinking that someone else must be saying the same thing. I kept thinking there must be 100,000 mothers writing the same book. Wasn't it obvious that mothers are frustrated, that the frustration can't be solved through self-help and therapy, and the answers are political? And then I realized, yes, there are a few others writing and thinking in the same vein, but no, there weren't 100,000, and that I needed to be able to put myself out there and say political things, even when it feels silly. So that's my advice: do it, even when it feels silly, because throughout American history, women activists have felt both rightful, and been made to feel silly. So, do it. Because you will feel better, feel less helpless, and you will be helping yourself, other women, and your sons and daughters, too.

mamazine.com: My copy of your book has some heavy underlining in the second chapter, "The Parent Problem," where you write, "When I considered returning to my full-time job, it was the fear of being too tired that washed over me. My wish to not be tired was stronger than my wish to continue at the rewards and prestige of being a professor" (65). As a part-time college instructor, I felt the same way when I considered applying for full-time jobs during the years I was caring for babies. Like you, I also felt "stunned, quite honestly, that simultaneous commitments to do work and raise a family seemed so hard to maintain" (65). What do you think are the reasons the difficulties of having satisfying work and family lives are often obscure or even invisible to women before they have children?

Miriam Peskowitz: Well, things are changing. But, for those of us who had kids early on in the latest baby boom among more educated and affluent and professional families (and that's precisely where the baby boom is happening right now; the nation's birthrate as a whole is in decline), the women ahead of us just didn't have many children. They really didn't. The model was, if you're in the professions, you forego kids. Not everyone did that, of course, but we didn't have a whole lot of models. There are exceptions, of course, but no one talked about it. And those of us who were younger and childless probably didn't ask much about their lives as mothers.

When I was pregnant, on a college campus, I rarely saw another pregnant woman. And none of the older professors who were mothers had any good advice for me. It was all platitudes. I was told that I would learn to work quicker and faster. "You'll get more done in 15 minutes than you ever thought possible," one of my deans told me. Which is like saying, get ready to really work extra hard and really burn yourself out, in a shorter time than you thought possible. But no one ever mentioned that there was no paid family leave, no onsite childcare, no real understanding for the lives of working parents. Women just a generation before us were told to be happy that they got in the door, but once in, were reminded of the costs of raising a stink as women or as mothers. That's the message they got. So they didn't talk much about these things, and certainly not to younger women without children. I think, though, that all the new babies in our lives are pushing things to a crisis point.

Last week, while on tour in Seattle, I met with a group of women lawyers one day, and the next, a group of law students, mostly women. What struck me is that in contrast to five years ago, women aren't waiting till they're 35 or older to become mothers. They're having kids younger, and they're still expecting to work, and they want the workplace to change to accommodate them with part time schedules and flex-time when they want it. I think this sense of entitlement is totally positive and will set the stage for real change.

mamazine.com: What are you reading right now?

Miriam Peskowitz: Great question. After a reading I did at Third Place Books/ Ravenna, in Seattle, I was talking with two women who worked at the store—I liked them very much—and I asked them for recommendations. I took home David Bezmogis' Natasha, a collection of memorable short stories, Michael Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, and Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex. It's nice to be reading fiction for a change.