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nyone who knows me will
think it’s laughable that
Crow is posing as your

local expert on motherhood. Well,
stifle those giggles, folks. Number
one: I’m not proclaiming myself an
expert by a long shot. And number
two: the area in my life I’ve felt
the least confident about over the
years (besides whittling) is raising

- kids. But I now have the privilege

at age 60 of living with my four-
year-old grandson for a while.

I don’t have answers
about the challenge of child rear-
ing, but I do have some
perspective.

My own mom would
have rather been a career woman,
but it was frowned upon to do both
in those days. So she compromised
by putting energy into my dad’s
corner drugstore (complete with
soda fountain, red leatherette
booths, jukebox and pinball
machine) a five-minute walk from
my house. Do you believe they
sent kids at school home for lunch?
The assumption, of course, was
that Mom would be home waiting
for you with your bologna sand-
wich and glass of milk. I ate a lot
of hamburgers and hot fudge sun-
daes for lunch at Dad’s store
instead. I

I spent the 196'0s“'ge't'ting
married too young and criticizing
the 19505. My husband and I
believed we were over-protected,
too suburbanized, too privileged
and too conforrnist. By the time
our first daughter was two, my
husband was flying fighter-
bombers over North Vietnam, and
my.child- raising theories were out
the window. I was intensely isolat-
ed. I employed a lot of babysitters
and took hikes in the desert to keep
myself sane. I found my daughter
often an over-whelming responsi-
bility as well as an occasional com-
fort. She was good-natured, pas-
sive, and perfectly adorable. I was
a nervous wreck.

Our second daughter
came in 1974 when I convinced
my old man to get out of the Air
Force. We settled down as late-
blooming hippies in Vermont. Our
child-raising theories began to take
root: freedom, permissiveness,
non-conformity, earthiness, whole-
some food (with a little organic
weed thrown in for Mom and Dad
to keep them mellow). We had
basically a good time, but I needed
to come out as a radical lesbian
feminist. My (ex-) husband took
our oldest daughter for a trip to
Israel to broaden their horizons and
never came back. The youngest
stayed with me, and I raised her in
the Burlington lesbian feminist
community until we moved to
Israel. Then I brought both kids
back to the States.

Of Woman Born by radi-
cal feminist Adrienne Rich opened
my eyes to the “institution of
motherhood.” Rich suggested that
the biggest sexist trap ever invent-
ed was the expectation put on indi-
vidual women to be 110 percent
responsible for the fate of their

 

children within the nuclear family,
a demoralizing form of female
bondage. What about fathers?

. What about extended families?

What about society? Why was
Mom targeted as the evildoer if
something went wrong with the
kids? Why were women made to
feel guilty at every turn if they
wanted to lead fulfilling lives out-
side the family unit?
That’s all I needed to

hear. Frankly, I wasn’t much of a
kid-person back in those days. I
wasn’t the self-sacrificing type or
the type who preferred the compa-
ny of kids over adults because they
were simpler to relate to. I never
babysat much as a teenager. I
thought babies were cute but not as
cute as puppies. My motivation for
having children was in part based

’ on intense social pressure.

Unfortunately, I swung
the pendulum a little too far as our
radical lesbian feminist community
attempted to acknowledge the
oppression of mothers among us
and offered to do communal child-
care. At the time, I was enormously
relieved to have the burden lified.
But I was too absorbed in my com-
ing out process and my drive
toward political correctness to put I
the well being of my children first.

I remember some of the
in-your-face kids (two of them
mine) at our community events
who were over-encouraged to
express themselves at the expense
of the adult agenda. I don’tthink
that was good for our kids, to tell
you the truth. They needed to learn
manners, respect and boundaries.
Otherwise, no one would want to
be around them.’

I also was self-righteous,
shortsighted, egotistical, intolerant
of others who didn’t think like me,
and prone to anger. Somehow I

. suspect my character defects and

lack of tolerance towards children
were related. I think it’s great that A
women nowadays have more of a
choice whether or not to have chil-
dren, but I’m suspicious of people
who condemn children as an
abhorrent species. .
These days gay and les-

bian child-raising styles run the
gamut. Some are recreating the
1950s and making their kids the
center of the universe. Some still
insist that foisting children on our
gatherings is a pain in the ass.
Providing free childcare at any
given cultural event is a thing of
our radical feminist past. The
African proverb, “It takes a village
to raise a child,” is pretty popular
these days, but American society is

       
   

 

getting less village—like by the
minute. Nevertheless, I’ve seen a
lot of heart-warming cooperative
child rearing in our queer commu-
nities lately. I can’t help but credit
the pioneering efforts of lesbian
feminism for paving the way.

Now that I find myselfa
custodial grandparent I’m grateful
that I learned enough feminist the-
ory from my sisters to help me
mobilize my “village” so my
grandson and I don’t have to be too
isolated. The good news is I’m
through feeling guilty for asking
for help. I also believe that chil-
dren need a variety of caretakers to
learn flexibility and to truly cele-
brate diversity. A parent who feels
trapped and resentful doesn’t do
the poor tyke any good.

I am also enormously
grateful to be given this “second
chance” to be more emotionally
and physically present for Lew’s
childhood than I was during my

Children need a
variety of
caretakers to
learn flexibility
and to , t,r1rly,__,__
celebrate ‘ »

diversity.

A parent who
feels trapped
and resentful
doesn't do the
poor tyke

any good.

own children’s growing up years.
Partly, that’s a perk of grandmoth-
erhood; but it’s also a result of fig-
uring out who I am, how I like to
spend time, and what I value so
that I don’t have to devote all my
inner resources to forging an
identity.

Do I want to go out and
adopt a few more while I’m at it?
No thanks. I’m undertaking this
because I believe it’s the best thing
to do for my family, but I’m still
not the earth-mother type.

I don’t think all women
should have to be around kids, and
I appreciate kid-free space. But
because I’m now in a position to
do primary childcare, children
interest me a lot more. They bring

_ me back down to basics. They

make fresh observations about our
crazy world. The younger ones are
wildly enthusiastic about simple
things, and they have no concept of
time, which keeps them in the

. present 2 a discipline many of us

knock ourselves out trying to pull
off. Most of all they teach me tol-
erance, love, patience. and kind-
ness. Of’ course, I lose it every now
and then, but not nearly as much as
I used to-when I was

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