Motherhood Politics
Just another challenge of being a female candidate in American politics.
Tressie McMillan Cottom has a column in the NYT that is worth a read, On Cat Ladies, Mama Bears and ‘Momala’. In the piece, she makes an argument about what she sees as a potential trap being laid by Trump, Vance, and the GOP for Harris on the topic of motherhood. Morever see argues that Harris should fight over the politics of motherhood on her own terms, not theirs.
All female political candidates are expected to narrate their motherhood status or, at least, their mother-like qualities. But no other presidential candidate had to meet this challenge the way Harris will. Watching this campaign wrestle with the G.O.P.’s motherhood purity test, so far, has been a lesson in how not to fall for dog whistle traps.
She makes some interesting observations about Harris’ position as a Black woman and the child of immigrants which includes a comparison to Sarah Palin that I think is insightful. Instead of trying to excerpt those portions, I simply commend the article. It fits into the broader conservation on fertility politics.
I will share her basic conclusion:
The Harris campaign has, so far, toned down the mother-in-chief narrative that her 2020 primary campaign prioritized. Instead, they are focusing on how, as vice president, she has championed policies that benefit all mothers, like child care, maternity leave and motherhood mortality research. She led the Biden administration’s first Maternal Health Day of Action. As a candidate, she is working family-friendly policies into her economic platform, such as restoring the administration’s child tax credit, giving families with a newborn a $6,000 credit, and expanding the earned-income tax credit for low-wage workers. That is not as powerful as the G.O.P. mama bear symbolism. But it does not have to be.
This strikes me as correct, and wise on the Harris campaign’s part. And it is a clear contrast with the Trump/Vance approach:
It also underscores how Trump and Vance have very few pro-family policy proposals for actual babies, as opposed to talking about imagined babies that women should be having.
Indeed, one of the many reasons my views of the “pro-life” movement have changed considerably is that precise issue: concern about the imagined babies, but doing precious little to help the actual ones.
A conclusory side-note: I have to admit, this lept out at me, given some of the discourse I see on occasion in the comment sections here at OTB:
The G.O.P., in particular, has tapped into white male rage about women — especially educated white women — who can choose when and how they will have children. As a result, some commentators have begun to call this election the presidential contest of the genders, with male grievance finding an outlet in Trump’s brand of big man politics and women finding resonance for their post-Dobbs rage in the Democratic Party.
I also think, on the identity politics side, picking an avuncular VP like Walz also helps tremendously with that. Having him play the role of “America’s dad” (or at least dad-jokes) takes the pressure off Harris.
She also has been really careful to not talk much about being the first woman president (unlike Clinton in 2016).
I got interested in demographics a while back as it was useful in predicting where our network should build new hospitals and outpatient facilities and what kind of volume we could predict. I then got interested in the discussions on fertility and TFR. What remains remarkable to me is that when the issue is discussed by conservatives and libertarians it is discussed as a problem created and owned totally by women. Men have no responsibility in creating the issue and no real responsibility in fixing it.
More broadly, I long ago decided that most of the pro-life people were more interested in controlling the behavior of women than actually caring about life. The lack of concern about maternal and neonatal/child care is damning but it extends past that to caring for people in general. For the pro-life folks they are definitely not “their brother’s keeper”.
While conservatives are clearly playing to the unhappy loser male demographic I hope Dems can avoid alienating men. They still vote and there are issues among men that need addressed.
Steve
As usual for the GQP, life begins at conception, and interest in life ends at the birth canal.
And this was true before it became the Felon party.
The problems facing men are the problems facing everybody, and that’s what drives male rage.
Traditionalists want to hear that men are unique. They can’t be lonely in the way that a cat-lady might be lonely. Male loneliness is special, a testament to men’s place in the world, and it requires real men to solve it.
It’s so obviously not how any real person works with their problems, but none of this is about that idea.
@Modulo Myself:
I don’t think that’s right.
Men once had unique jobs, jobs that only men held, and jobs that only men could do. Men defined themselves in those terms. Technology and social progress have taken that away from men. The taking was not wrong or deliberately cruel, it was just times a changin’, and in a perfect world men would brush themselves off and decide, ‘welp, that was then, this is now, best recalibrate my self-image.’
Surprise: very few people of any sex are able to re-define themselves. The insistence that nothing has gone wrong for men is insensitive and counter-productive. Yes, men still dominate politics and professions, but you’d have to be a blind man not to see the trajectory. It is seldom about the snapshot and more likely to be about trajectory and velocity.
Can you tell me a single thing that is unique to men other than peeing standing up? How would you define, ‘man,’ in contrast to, ‘woman.’ What is the unique and defining role of men as men?
A man who spent 25 years digging coal out of a mountain alongside other men, and who defined himself in those terms, and sees that this path is closed to his son, and sees that he is unable to define for his son what it means to be a man, is not going to be swayed by statistics showing that men still have advantages. He isn’t one of the men who has advantages. He’s just a working man, and he is confused and lost. Dismissing that man’s fear and displacement is arrogant and counter-productive.
Is this (still) true?
Perhaps, we have come far enough to see female political candidates as individuals first, women second (or third, or whatever).
At least I hope so.
@Michael Reynolds: Since you mentioned coal mining, I thought I’d share a story my dad told me about my grandfather, a coal miner in Roslyn, WA.
It seems my grandfather told my dad and uncle that they could do whatever they wanted for work. Including becoming Mafiosi. But if they went to work in the mines, he was disowning them.
And my grandfather made good money in the mines. When my mom emigrated from Ireland to marry my dad, Grandpa reported a salary of $130-something a week. My dad made $35/week as a warehouse worker. Yet he wasn’t anxious for either boy to follow his path. Hmmm…
@just nutha:
My grandfather grew up in Languedoc coal county in France. He seldom talked about his childhood, and what I did hear sounded pretty brutal – mostly grinding poverty and early deaths.
I enjoyed Homer Hickam’s Coalwood books, they gave me a look into a world very differnt that the one I came up in. Good storytelling in general and recommended for anyone interested in the Applachian experience.
@anjin-san: My understanding is that coal mining was grim work at any rate. But mining in the Cascades wasn’t quite the “owe my soul to the company store” event it was other places. Close tho.
@just nutha:
In Coalwood – which was apparently consider to be a desireable and somewhat worker-friendly West Virgina coal mining town – when a man was killed in a mine accident (or died any other way) his family would be given 2 weeks to vacate their company owned home.
While we are talking coal…
https://www.commondreams.org/news/solar-and-wind-power
@anjin-san: See? There ya go. My grandfather owned his home from early on in my dad’s childhood.
Donald Trump has 5 children, all biologically his. He has been their father for, well, their entire lives.
Kamala Harris has 2 step-children. Best I can tell, she entered their lives when one was staring high school and the other starting college.
If both were asked the question, “Name any of your children’s teachers from any stage of their schooling?” who do you think could name more? If your answer isn’t Trump, then let’s just entirely retire any conversation about them as parents.
@Kazzy: Well done!!
@steve: This statement says it all: What remains remarkable to me is that when the issue is discussed by conservatives and libertarians it is discussed as a problem created and owned totally by women. Men have no responsibility in creating the issue and no real responsibility in fixing it. Men get a free pass while Trump opines that there has to be some kind of punishment (punishment!) for a woman who gets an abortion. Sick and illogical. In other words, MAGA.
@Michael Reynolds: Agreed. I add that I think the younger men have adapted already. I also feel that helping men adapt is a job for men like me who have already made the transition.
Meanwhile there are men that want hetero sex and companionship but no children. Just as there are women who want that.
May they find each other.