CALL TO A MOTHERHOOD MOVEMENT
October 29, 2002

I

We, women who nurture and care for children, we who mother, call all mothers to a renewed sense of purpose, passion, and power and a new commitment to building a movement aimed at honoring and supporting mothers and the work of mothering.

We call for a motherhood movement to ensure the dignity and well-being of children.
We call for a motherhood movement aimed at a fundamental re-ordering of the priorities of our society—a society so driven by radical individualism and the values of commerce that it is losing touch with the values of the mother world—the essential ethics of care and nurture that are indispensable for both children and a good society.

II

We are women who have been strengthened, empowered, and emboldened by victories won through the feminist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Today, on the 36th anniversary of the founding of the National Organization for Women, we call for an end to our culture’s devaluing of mothers and mothers’ work and we seek the full support of the women’s movement.

We call for a calming in the tensions between the women’s movement and motherhood, tensions that we have experienced in our own lives as we have struggled to balance our work as mothers and our work in the larger community. We call for the cessation of all "mommy wars" and an unprecedented joining together of mothers to build a motherhood movement for the 21st century.

III

We are mothers of diverse races, backgrounds, and religious and political affiliations. We come from many different walks of life and regions of the country. Many of us combine mothering with full-time, part-time, or at-home employment. Many of us devote full time to the work of mothering.

While we follow different paths in our daily lives, we are united in our conviction that whether we are employed in the workforce or not, the work that we do as mothers is of paramount importance, but profoundly undervalued and demeaned.

Our society treats mothers’ work as less worthwhile and less valuable than the work of business. All too often, it subordinates the interests of children and families to commercial values and concerns. It relegates the work of caring for children to the margins of life and consistently gives short shrift to the work of nurturing and cultivating human relationships. We face a growing vacuum in caring for each other.

This is a culture that devalues children and has lost respect for childhood. In spite of alarming trends in child well-being, our nation has been unable to stir itself to change course for the sake of its children. We will no longer accept the continuing decline in the quality of our children’s lives.

While we have different callings and different points of view, we are united in the belief that the time has come for mothers to move boldly to change the conditions under which we mother and under which our children are living.

IV

On this important day in the history of women’s progress, we recall that among the women who gave birth and leadership to the women’s movement in the 19th century were mothers who sought to bring their concerns about children and nurturing into the public square. We remember mothers who were a vital part of the early feminist movement and who were responsible for a host of social reforms aimed at improving the lives of women, mothers, and children. We call to mind the many partnerships between "maternal feminists," who focused on children and nurturing, and "equal rights" feminists, who focused their energies on the task of gaining equal rights for women in the public sphere.

For much of the second half of the 20th century, motherhood and the concerns of mothers were outside the mainstream of the women’s movement. The women’s movement of the 20th century focused primarily on women’s rights as individuals and their rights to achieve in the public sphere. All too often, efforts to raise the concerns of mothers have been perceived as attempts to undermine the gains of feminism. We reject this false dichotomy. Equal rights for women and support for nurturing and for women who wish to be nurturers need not be at odds.

We seek to build a 21st century motherhood movement that will move us all forward, building on the advances of the women’s movement to extend equal rights to mothers and put mothers’ concerns about children and nurturing at the top of our national agenda.

Our society urgently needs the contributions of those who engage in mother’s work –those who by virtue of having devoted maternal time, energy, and intelligence to children can refresh our collective understanding of the way that human beings are formed and the care and support that is essential to nourish and develop the human spirit.

V

We envision a motherhood movement that brings together and strengthens the voices of the many mothers across the nation who have long labored to raise mothers’ concerns. We applaud the work of these groups and seek to build a motherhood movement that is broad-based and collaborative, striving to build alliances in pursuit of common goals.

We will help build a movement that seeks to learn from the lessons of women’s history. We envision a movement in which mothers who are focused on gaining equal rights for mothers work in coalition with those dedicated to children and those focused on social and cultural reform.

We seek to build a movement founded on principles of equal dignity, regard, and responsibility between women and men, mothers and fathers. We will work to build a movement that listens intently to the voices of mothers, recognizes that there are many paths to a successful and fulfilling life, and avoids one-size- fits- all remedies.

We will help create a movement that will search for innovative political, economic, and cultural strategies that honor and support mothers and enable mothers-- and fathers-- to spend more time on the vital work of caring for children.

We will work to create a movement that goes beyond the current "work and family" debate to a larger, more searching, "culture and family" debate. We want to transform our culture so that the values that so dominate our lives, the values of the money world-- radical individualism, relentless work, the quest for material success, and speed-- yield ample room for the values of the mother world--- care, connectedness, interdependence, and the other values necessary for nurturing human beings and building human relationships.

VI

In a world that typically extols the voices of experts and professionals above our perspectives and opinions, we have in the past been hesitant to raise our voices as mothers. But no more. The time has come for mothers’ voices to be heard and mothers’ work to be valued. The time has come for mothers’ priorities to be fully reflected in our culture and in our nation’s private and public policies.

We call all mothers to a renewed commitment to their children and the vocation of mothering. We call all mothers to a new dedication to advocacy and activism to value motherhood and childhood, and most especially, children. We call upon all mothers to join in building a movement aimed at transforming our culture to make it worthy of our children.

We will continue to raise our voices. We will make ourselves heard, firmly believing that a society that values mothers and the work we do— a society that fully reflects mothers’ priorities -- will be a better society, better for mothers and their children, for all Americans, and for the world.

SIGNATORIES

• AFFILIATIONS ARE LISTED FOR IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES ONLY.

Enola G. Aird, Director, The Motherhood Project, Institute for American Values (New York, NY)

Heidi Brennan, Co-Chair, Board of Director, Mothers At Home, (Fairfax, Va.)

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, President and Founder, National Parenting Association (New York, NY)

Jean Kilbourne, Author and Creator, "Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women," and Visiting Research Scholar, Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)

Rev. Dr. Eileen Lindner, Deputy General Secretary, National Council of Churches (New York, NY)

Michele Mason, Founder and Director, Child Friendly Initiative, Inc. (San Francisco, CA)

Barbara Nicholson, President, Attachment Parenting International (Nashville, TN)

Peggy O’ Mara, Editor and Publisher, "Mothering Magazine" (Santa Fe, NM)

Andrea O’Reilly, Assistant Professor, York University and President, Association for Research on Mothering (Toronto, Canada)

Lysa Parker, Attachment Parenting International (Nashville, TN)

Gloria G. Rodriguez, President/ CEO, AVANCE, Inc. (San Antonio, Texas)

• THIS MOTHERS’ STATEMENT WILL BE RELEASED IN CONJUNCTION WITH A SYMPOSIUM ENTITLED "MATERNAL FEMINISM: LESSONS FOR A 21ST CENTURY MOTHERHOOD MOVEMENT. PARTICIPATION IN THE SYMPOSIUM DOES NOT IMPLY AGREEMENT OR ENDORSEMENT OF THIS STATEMENT IN WHOLE OR IN PART.