Perhaps it’s because I cocoon myself with like-minded people a little too much, or perhaps it’s because I am an eternal optimist that thinks the world is truly changing in ways that I like to think of as “for the better”. But really, truly, I’m shocked when I hear of others talking disparagingly about stay-at-home parents, or when I face the discrimination of their judgments myself.
Don’t they know I’m actually a subversive?! I’m not “just a mom”. I’m a radical challenge to the systems failing our world today. I’m changing the world one fully-present, bursting-with-intensity moment at a time.
Throughout my day, I cook and clean and bake and do laundry and garden. I read stories and play games and visit the library, I soothe hurts and I cuddle. I meal-plan and meal-prep, I set the table and I do dishes. And with each and every act that I perform in my role as “mother” and “homemaker”, I am acting from a deeply political and deeply personal place.
For each time I feed my children fresh fruits and vegetables that I’ve grown myself, I am sticking it to the industrial agricultural complex. I am denouncing monocultures: the great fields of chemically-dependent wheat and soybeans and corn that pollute our water systems, destroy bio-diversity and concentrate land into fewer and fewer hands.
Each time I cook a meal for my family, I am laughing at the fast food industry’s sordid attempts to lure my children to obesity and diabetes.
Each time I grow and gather herbs to heal my family with, I am denying the legitimacy of the pharmaceutical companies. My family won’t be peeing out anti-depressants that will eventually make their way back into our drinking water, the ocean and several species of fish. My children won’t be one of the 10,000 deaths in Canada this year due to adverse reactions to prescription drugs.
Each time I mend an article of clothing for my family, I am standing up to Wal-mart and saying I refuse to have cheap goods at the price of human dignity around the world.
Each time I read a story to my children I am telling the corporate owned networks that I will not be bought, and my children are not for sale.
Each time I hang my laundry on the line I am telling the “independent” power producers that I don’t need extra energy – I am capable of cutting back and will not collaborate with them to destroy a river or a community.
Each time I walk with my children to the park, I am telling the oil companies that I don’t condone their unethical choices in the name of cheap energy to transport my family. I will not be party to Chevron’s destruction of the Ecuadorian Amazon, the severe human rights abuses used to protect their pipeline in Burma, or the purchasing of American government favours.
Each time I seek to understand my children and really hear their needs and feelings, I am creating peace in the world.
Each time I invite them to garden alongside me, to cook with me, to sew with me, I am denying the right of the corporations to own them later in life.
Each time I encourage them to trust themselves and trust each other, I subvert the system that wants to fill them with fear and tell them what and how to think, so that they may grow up to be good consumers – buying their way to happiness and financing it all with mindless work.
Each time I model creative problem solving and compassionate communication, I challenge the system that seeks to plug them in, shut them down and make them drones.
Is it enough? I’m not sure, but I do know that if I don’t do it, if I don’t seek to be the change I wish to see in the world, there is no hope. So next time you see a parent providing care for her/his family, recognize the actions of a political activist and offer your support. We need community in this changing world, now, when it has been put up for sale along with so much else, more than ever.
This entry was posted on Sunday, July 26th, 2009 at 10:44 am and is filed under MINDFUL LIVING. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hear, Hear! Great article. You have written out beautifully what I believe about our family’s choices deep in my heart.
Thanks from another subversive mama.
Jen
*standing up and cheering* *on my chair!!* Bravo! I’m with you all the way!
A wonderful article! I’m encouraged and proud of my own similar choices!
Absolutely brilliant! Feel free to add us to your ‘cocoon’
Agreed. Bravo! Beautifully written and inspirational to many I am sure. Keep it coming!
Beautifully said -
perfectly captures the whole point of mothering!
Love it. Amen. Ditto.
I envy you - I wish I could stay home and do all those wonderful things with my baby - instead I go to work and try to fill my weekends teaching her all that.
Yes Yeeeeeeeeeesssssssss YES!!!! You are changing the world and inspiring others alongside you. Soldier on mama.
thank you so much for this great article full of inspiration and confirmation. i linked from Krista’s inspired life.
Thanks for the reminder of why we do what we do.
AMEN! I strive to do what I can, but I still have a long way to go.
Keep on inspiring mama!
Sing it sister.
Great article! Thank you for so eloquently reminding me why I decided to step out of the 9-5 office life 6 years ago to have a life at home with my children, despite the fact that it has not been an easy road for us financially to do so. These things are SO much more important than money. The only thing I would add is: “Each time I take my baby to the potty and put reusable cloth on his bum I am sticking it to the disposable diaper industry and feeling good about minimizing my contribution to the landfill”.
Great article, Tabitha. When I read it, I felt supremely grateful that, when my oldest son was born 28 years ago, I was able to be a stay-at-home mom for ten years, until my younger son went into grade one. Then an economic downturn that severely threatened my husband’s job spooked us and persuaded me to return to the paid work force. But I was very appreciative that I had been able to be a full-time mom at least while my kids had been preschoolers. I especially valued having been able to nurse my babies.
I would like to address what Janice said, “I envy you - I wish I could stay home and do all those wonderful things with my baby - instead I go to work and try to fill my weekends teaching her all that.”
Janice, I believe that, even in your situation, you have the power to make choices that can make a difference for the better.
On the Victoria Day long weekend I went camping with some friends and their friends. (For the benefit of non-Canadians who may read this, that was in late May 2009.)
The friends of my friends were a family that included an 18-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son. Although the 18-year-old had just completed her first year of university, she and her brother were what I would describe as unspoiled kids. They delighted in hiking, kicking a soccer ball and throwing a frisbee on the beach, collecting driftwood and building structures from it, and ……. get this ……. READING.
They did not need video games, shopping malls, movie theatres, etc., to feel entertained.
The reason I mention them is that both of their parents always had worked outside of home. Yet their parents also loved outdoor activities, and had included their children in them from very early ages.
The results of their parents’ choices were clearly visible in those kids. I was delighted to see that a mother who had needed to be one of the income earners in her family had managed to raise what I would describe as very natural, independent teens.
So, Janice, I would encourage you to do what you can with what you have.
This is not to detract from Tabitha’s article, which I loved.
[...] all this, I feel that this week has allowed me to really appreciate this article I found today, Parenting … a Radical, Political Act. I thought you guys might enjoy this. [...]
every conscious act is a radical act, and every act is political if we make it so (remember the old saying, “the personal is political and the political is personal”?)
Thanks for a great piece!
Just want to wave my virtual hand and say, “Don’t forget about us stay-at-home dads!”
What a great post. Too often we neglect to take notice of all the little, everyday acts - but they add up to immense importance
Right on, mama. You are magnificent. Thank you for putting this into words.
With enormous love and solidarity…
kris
I completely agree with your article. With everything you said and left unsaid. I made the money when dh and I got together, and my mother said I would always be the bread winner in the household. But soon after we got married, I miscarried two babies (one second term) and then got pregnant with my another, and decided that working wasn’t for me, or my children. Since the pregnancy of my daughter I have been at home. Which includes my husband losing his job, then working for $8 an hour and going to college at night for over two years.
I once figured it out, all of the cooking, preserving, mending, clothes making, one car family stuff that I did… and what it would take to live the ‘other’ life, and it was about $9/hr. Add in child care for two children (we now have three) on top of that, and I was actually MAKING money, staying at home.
Now I homeschool/unschool, and my children are home with me, preserving, saving, thrift shoping, and gardening. A friend once said to me, “Finanacial freedom does not come from having money. It comes from not needing it.” And I have never heard a more true statement in my life. Our healthy, happy, close knit family is living proof.
Blessings,
Val
http://goddesshobbies.blogspot.com/
YES!!!
THANK YOU for so eloquently writing out everything I have been feeling for the past nine years of my “stay at home Mom”,along with our past four years of our Life Learning lives!
Imagine if we had a universal basic income!
It would make for a very healthy society indeed if we could have an economy centred on care, including care of self and others, and there is a simple way of doing this.
Many people around the world are meeting, talking, and even making films about the concept of basic income guarantee, also called guaranteed livable income (canada), formerly guaranteed annual income (GAI) advocated by Martin Luther King Jr.
One of the 500 richest people in germany is a very strong advocate of guaranteed income, Gotz Werner and goes out of his way to point out that the “unemployed” are engaged in very socially useful, productive activities: “he unemployed exist only because we use the concept of unemployment. Most of the unemployed have work, it’s not like they sit on the couch and watch TV all day. They are busy in their family, in other social work, in sports clubs. They are doing valuable work. Someone who cares for their children is much more valuable to society than someone twisting caps on bottles in the factory.”
Read the whole interview here; http://www.livableincome.org/agotzwerner.htm
you can also read an economic analysis of the importance of unpaid care work here:
http://www.livableincome.org/amothernomics.htm
and here: http://www.livableincome.org/ahousework.htm
In canada there is even an association of research on mothering, however, they make you pay a $70+ membership fee to even submit a paper for one of their conferences. So blog and articles like these become an even more important contribution.