Laura Tuley and Jessica Nathanson are the editors of the upcoming anthology Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the "Experts." Laura is the mother of one and was recently displaced from New Orleans to northeastern Texas after Hurricane Katrina. Read her ongoing column Dispatches From a Displaced Mama for updates. Prior to Katrina, Laura taught English and Women's Studies at the University of New Orleans and did graduate work in Counseling at Loyola University. Currently, she is teaching an online course for UNO and plans to return full time in January when the university is scheduled to reopen. Jessica is also the mother of one and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Gender Studies at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She is the co-chair of the National Women's Studies Association Feminist Mothers and Allies Caucus. A few months ago, I came across their call for submissions for the anthology and decided to find out more about this compelling project that takes on the subject of maternal instinct vs. expert advice by publishing the voices of real mamas. After all, most mamas, particularly in the first few years, will find themselves deliberating between following their gut or following the status quo.
-Sheri

mamazine.com: How did you come up with the idea to put together an anthology on this subject?

Laura Tuley: Jessica and I were on a panel together (she organized it) for the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) annual national convention in 2004 on mothering and academe (more specifically, the difficulty or delicate balancing act of becoming a mother as a feminist academic). The panel was very engaging—generating an intense discussion amongst panel members and between panel members and audience members—and Jessica and I continued to talk in the following days and weeks about issues and ideas related to the topic until, finally, one of us proposed that we put out a call for papers to see if we could actually attract other writing and opinions on this material, which was so deeply significant to us, to compile in book form for all of those women—feminists and mothers—who were living and struggling with the same questions in isolation.

mamazine.com: When I read your call for submissions, I immediately shot off an email to you. The topics you plan to explore in your anthology touched on many of the topics that have been burning deeply in me—as a feminist mother who has tried to balance expert advice with my own intuition/well being and also as the editor of mamazine.com. I'm dying to talk and read about these issues. What has been the response to your call?

Laura Tuley: Our call for papers, which was posted in the Fall of 2004, immediately generated both widespread interest and controversy. Some women were excited and relieved to find a forum in which to address these issues (some had already been working on articles, chapters, or dissertations on related topics) while others interpreted our call as, mainly, an attack on Dr. Sears and his idea of attachment parenting and reacted to us angrily and condemningly (a couple of individuals literally wrote "shame on you" in emails). While we did change our initial title (which we realized was misleading) from Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to Sears and Other Baby Trainers to Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the "Experts," these women's hostile response and refusal to think critically about one particular practice of childrearing gave us pause. Why, we wondered, were so many so deeply invested in defending Dr. Sears who, in point of fact, only one of us—I—wanted to critique and who hardly needs defending? Moreover, why were these women so quick to police, rather than engage in productive discussion with other women? In the end, we were able to reach even our harshest critics by calmly explaining what we considered to be our genuinely open-ended agenda: to give voice to a range of women's voices and opinions on the experience of pregnancy and childcare and the ways in which all of our experiences in those arenas are influenced by dominant ideological trends and authorities, and, in the end, we received plenty of submissions—submissions from all angles—but we did end up pondering our experience publicly in a roundtable at the NWSA 2005 annual national convention.

mamazine.com: Have you received any responses from the "experts" themselves? If so, what have their responses been like?

Laura Tuley: No, that would be the subject of another book. Right now we're primarily concerned with giving women a space to talk back.

mamazine.com: Since so many of the "issues with experts" tend to touch mostly white, middle-class mothers, tell me about your experience in putting together an anthology with essays and articles from a diverse group of mothers? How are women of color and lesbian mothers responding on this subject? What about fathers?

Laura Tuley: Good question. Although we have received several pieces from women of color or lesbian women and one from a gay foster care parent who is a father, few of these pieces speak specifically about the subjects of mothers of color, lesbian mothers, and fathers. Rather, a number of the submissions we received from white, middle-class, educated, etc. mothers make reference to or discuss the heterosexist, racist, and classist nature of "expert" literature and culture. So, that is a gap in our collection, but knowing that other kinds of parents exist and are writing, in the academy and elsewhere, we have been actively soliciting material in order to correct this imbalance and are optimistic about our capacity to do so. Frankly, I would love to get more feedback from fathers, in particular, since they are mostly omitted (at least as any kind of significant party) from all of the literature and discussions on parenting.

mamazine.com: Where do mothers of diverse populations get their parenting advice if they're not getting it from the "experts." Are you finding that their source of advice earns them more or less self-doubt in their parenting role than that of women who read the bestselling "expert" advice?

Laura Tuley: Since, as I explain above, we are still soliciting articles by these authors that address the issue of how their difference affects their view of "expert" advice, I could only speculate (and, therefore, won't).

mamazine.com: What have you learned in putting together this anthology?

Laura Tuley: That it's quite a lot of work (as much or more than putting together your own book)! I guess I would say, too, that the book has made me more acutely aware of the urgency and significance of this discussion for many many women and mothers, particularly feminist mothers, and the need for more forums like this one in which to creatively theorize experiences that are otherwise relegated to our private lives.

mamazine.com: What are your biggest hopes (and most fanciful dreams) for the overall response to this anthology?

Laura Tuley: Well, to have it read widely and ideally taught in women's studies classrooms, to help women to make more informed choices about pregnancy, birth, and childcare, and to give women a sense of community on the basis of which they will feel more secure and confident in their own instincts and experience. Finally, we probably would not mind it if we actually got royalties at some point but that probably is a "fanciful" dream.

mamazine.com: When and where can we expect to be able to buy your upcoming anthology?

Laura Tuley: We're hoping to publish it with Seal Press, which we truly love and value (have just completed and sent off our proposal packet), but that remains to be seen…