Chris Bobel is the author of The Paradox of Natural Mothering. Bobel's book focuses on mothers who choose some or all of these practices: homebirth, extended breastfeeding, homeschooling, eating organic and whole foods, attachment parenting, and/or "voluntary simplicity." As a result of her research, Bobel comes to see "the internally contradictory discourse of natural mothering as simultaneously regressive and progressive."

mamazine: Can you tell us a little about why you chose to study natural mothers, as well as how you defined natural mothers?

Chris Bobel: Well, as many research projects begin, it began with myself. As a new mother, I was struggling with negotiating an identity as a mother—meaning trying to figure out what kind of mother I needed to be, wanted to be, could be. My feminism led me to fashion a kind of motherhood that didn't sacrifice my needs entirely but, of course, I wanted to do right by my baby, and so I began the quest to figure out what was right for us. The more I learned about birth technology, the practices of formula companies, the medical industrial complex, agribusiness, etc., I knew I couldn't participate in mainstream parenting. I was amazed at how much I had taken for granted. At the same time, the kind of parenting that seemed to be healthiest and safest was also expensive, labor-intensive, and often, self-sacrificing. Ugh. I needed a balance.

I ended up with a homebirth and through that experience, tapped into the whole natural mothering community in my area. And what struck me about the families who homebirthed was that they often homeschooled, joined food co-ops, used natural healthcare, co-slept, breastfed for years, etc. It seemed like a package deal. They were such radicals! In fact, at first, I called the moms radical moms, but when I began interviewing them, they told me the word radical didn't resonate.

I was also really fascinated by the women in these circles because they seemed to draw together women who would otherwise despise each other. I actually sat between two mothers at a La Leche League meeting once—the mother to my left was wearing a vehemently pro-choice t-shirt and the woman to my right was warning an equally vehemently anti choice t-shirt. Since then, I've heard lots of stories (and observed) atheists and fundamentalist Christians networking at homeschooling functions. What is the common denominator, then? So, my personal quest led to some very juicy research questions. I later figured out that an unabiding trust in nature was what connected these moms. They shared distrust in culture, and more precisely, they railed against the many ways technology and consumerism got in the way of authentic family connection.

mamazine: One of the fundamental claims made by most of the mothers you interviewed is that while on the surface, their lives seem somewhat retrograde and biologically determined, what separates them from mothers in the past is that they've chosen to practice intensive mothering. Those choices, as you point out, don't occur in a vacuum. What relationship do you see between the natural mothers' choices and their social class and ethnicity? How do cultural constructions of motherhood and family-unfriendly workplaces affect their choices?

Chris Bobel: In the book, I refer to these choices as the choices that choose you in an attempt to show how the decisions the natural moms make (any moms, really) are socially determined. Sociologically speaking, really no choices are free. The contexts in which we mother are hugely influential in shaping the ways we mother. Over and over again, I heard mothers tell me how they planned to combine paid work outside the home with mothering, but quickly learned that "something had to give.* It wasn't just family-unfriendly workplaces that made breast pumping impossible, for example. It was also partners who didn't pull their share of the baby care weight and cramped, dank daycares with waitlists and underpaid staffs that made daycare seem like an impossible option. Perhaps more than anything, the patriarchal ideology that mothers who pursue their careers are bad and selfish and the mothers who sacrifice are good and noble factors into these choices.

But there's something else I want to say about the choice to natural mother.

I think the link between choosing to natural mother and what's called "cultural capital" is really important. My aim in the book was to point out the ways the natural moms' privilege enabled them to take the risks necessary to parent alternatively. Of course, one of the features of privilege is not knowing you have it—that's how it works. So, I can understand how many natural mothers don't readily see how their class, race, and sexuality privileges protect them when they make alternative choices (and I do recognize that are natural moms who are poor, single, queer and of color, but, I think it is pretty obvious that natural mothers are largely women who enjoy some significant privileges). After all, you need resources to buy organic or pay out of pocket for holistic healthcare. You need to have time off from work long enough to establish breastfeeding, or not go back to work at all, etc. Ultimately, the risk taking necessary to say no to vaccinations, to breastfeed in public, to talk about your family bed in your doctor's office—these practices are much easier to pull off if you are white, college educated, straight, and married, American-born, and so on. Our culture doesn't cut marginalized mothers much slack, so parenting against the mainstream comes at a price.

mamazine: A chapter in your book is titled, "Natural Mothering: Social Change or a Narcissistic Retreat?" Was this a question many of the mothers you worked with were grappling with?

Chris Bobel: Some were. Frankly, not as many as I expected. To me the natural mothering movement has great potential to radicalize our parenting norms if it figures out how to make itself accessible to MORE moms. I don't see much evidence of that.

There were those who didn't see their mothering as social change at all. They made choices simply in the best interest of their families. Period. Others saw their mothering as role modeling or witnessing, that is living by example and they found this very gratifying and a slow but steady route to social change. There were a few mothers who were quite critical of natural mothering, and I admired their willingness to take a careful look at what they were doing and what it meant. These moms did notice how white and middle class the natural mothers were, and they wondered if a movement that depended on privilege could initiate broad change. And they wondered if essentially checking out by homeschooling and homebirthing was an effective means of getting institutions to change. Was it ultimately selfish to focus on the tiny universe of the individual family? (But there's that threat of selfishness again...it is a conundrum). I'll paraphrase one mom who admitted that maybe her energies would be better spent improving the local schools, but it was her kid who needed a better education today. She couldn't afford to invest in long-term reform. She homeschooled.

mamazine: There have been a few voices "from the inside" questioning some aspects of natural mothering, especially a rigid adherence to attachment parenting principles. Cynthia Eller's essay, "Why I Hate Dr. Sears" is one such voice, as is Marrit Ingman's chapter "Fuck Dr. Sears" in her new memoir, Inconsolable. Unlike many critics of attachment parenting, these mothers practiced natural mothering before finding that they questioned some of the tenets of attachment parenting. Is this the beginning of a backlash, or perhaps a movement toward a modified take on attachment parenting?

Chris Bobel: It is likely a bit of both. As Eller writes, we are lured into the world of attachment parenting because we want to be good parents, even great parents, and Ingman astutely points out how what she calls designer parenting is a thinly veiled attempt to get self validation. I agree. Our cultural scripts motivate us to always do better better better. There is a lot of wisdom in the babycarrying, co-sleeping, extended nursing way. As anthropologist Meredith Small (and others) point out, it has worked since the beginning of humanity, and it still works all over the world (but as Eller and Ingman remind us, it isn't perfect).

But this thinking is dangerous. We need to resist the romanticization of certain parenting practices plucked out of their cultural and historical contexts. You can't take the parenting out of the Amazon and plop it down here and say VOILA! It is an odd fit and like somebody else's shoe on your own foot, it can hurt sometimes. I think the voices of resistance we are hearing are important. I want to hear more of them. And I want to hear these voices critiquing the social situations and value systems that make attachment parenting tough to do. I get angry when moms get blamed for not being attached enough, and I shudder when moms point their fingers at each other (that's an old internalized sexist script, isn't it?) We can do better. But we need help, dammit.

mamazine: What are you working on these days?

Chris Bobel: I am working on a new book on yet another emerging social movement—the menstrual activism movement. Like natural mothering, it, too, is a movement focused at the personal level and advances a critique of consumer culture, the medical establishment and what I call "the dominant cultural narrative of menstruation" (in which menstruation is seen as dirty, taboo, shameful, and inconvenient). People active in this movement write zines and blogs that expose the hazards of conventional menstrual care (single use tampons and pads) to our bodies and the planet and promote the use of alternative reusable products (like our grannies used and some hip new stuff, too). They also hold menstrual health workshops, which teach menstruators what they never really learned in that 5th grade girls-only movie, create affirming rituals for girls' first menstruation and later, menopause, and speak out against menstrual suppression for healthy women (we just don't have enough data to be certain it is safe for everyone). I love this activism because it confronts taboo and finds all sort of creative ways (art, film, music, poetry, ritual, performance) to get people talking about something that is so hush, hush and misunderstood. I am having a lot of fun.

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