On February 3, George F. Will published a column called “Lifting Up the Fatherless,” which at first glance looks like so many other “boo hoo, poor boys without fathers” handwringers until you get to the fifth paragraph.

Born to an unmarried, mentally ill prostitute, [Robert Lewis "Sugar Bear" Jackson] acquired his interest in driving from his grandfather, who would drive around the block with Sugar Bear in his lap. Not until Sugar Bear was 25 did he learn that his grandfather was his father, too, having had a sexual relationship with Sugar Bear’s mother.

Don’t you love the nimble use of the euphemism “sexual relationship” to define incest, an act that rarely occurs between consenting adults?  Especially not when one of them is already identified as having a mental illness?  I suppose the word “RAPE” is too unsettling for a guy who wears a bow tie.

Sugar Bear grew up mostly on the streets, episodically drifting into and out of the care, such as it was, of various female relatives.

Will doesn’t state that Sugar Bear would have been better off in the care of his rapist father/grandfather instead of “female relatives,” but I felt the correlation was strong enough to say so on my Facebook page.  A couple of readers thought I went a bit far in chastizing Ol’ Bow Tie, and perhaps they’re right.  I’m just very sensitive to the assumption that children suffer without a dude in their lives, for that assumption leads us down this stupid path:

Rick Santorum Dwells on Gay Marriage: he suggests to a New Hampshire audience that an imprisoned father is preferable to a same-sex parent (Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2012).

!!!  Emphasis mine!!!  Because any time I get even the faintest whiff of the suggestion that my friends Morgan, Mia, and Margaret are somehow not being loved adequately because neither of their parents has a dick, I want to scream!!!!!  And explode into a fiery ball of exclamation points!!!!!!!

Happily, a Facebook reader recognized that the fault lies neither with Will, the editor who crafted his column’s headline, or with Frothy Mix, for that matter.  We remain such a grossly sexist society that whenever something goes wrong, we’re quick to assume that a MAN ought to be able to fix it–in the case of Will’s column, a closer reading reveals that MAN not to be Sugar Bear’s bio-dad after all, but MAN some folks believe is The Good Lord Himself™.  As this reader so brilliantly wrote on my FB wall: “I object to the insinuation that biological or mythological fathers are the only options for good role models.”

Right on!  Sugar Bear was failed by much more than his father/grandfather/heavenly father.  Social problems as tough as entrenched poverty and mental illness aren’t going to be fixed with a Dad shaped band-aid.

(Confidential to the rad mom formerly known as Spike Laird: please don’t start a blog.  I have enough competition already.)

Interested in the thoughts of an actual honest-to-gosh cis-fella, I turned to the Radical Hubby.  ”Oh whatever,” he huffed.  ”People tell themselves that crap all the time.  I’m a good father, so I’m the reason that my kids aren’t in prison.*  When the truth is we are all a mess of nature versus nurture versus all the other bullshit the world throws at us.  Kids need people who love them.  Period.”

Yep.

*Matt is a wonderful parent, by the way.  He’s a great believer in quantity time as well as quality time.  Still, when my son was old enough to realize that his best buddy had two moms, he whined: “WHAT? Mo has two moms but I only get ONE? That’s not fair!”**

**True story!

President Obama, December  8, 2011:

As the father of two daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine. As I understand it, the reason Kathleen [Sebelius] made this decision was she could not be confident that a 10-year old or an 11-year old going to a drug store should be able alongside bubble gum or batteries be able to buy a medication that potentially if not used properly could end up having an adverse effect. And I think most parents would probably feel the same way….

The Radical Housewife, October 5, 2010:

Contemplating our children as sexual beings feels creepy; we don’t want to do it.

Would I want know if my daughter wanted an abortion? Of course. Every parenting decision I make is guided by my desire to build trust and respect in our family. I would want to know about her abortion; I would want to know about her pregnancy; I would want to know that she was sexually active. Do I have the right to all of this information? No. I work to earn her trust, but I can’t force her to give it to me.

No law can force a trusting relationship that doesn’t exist. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics supports this view, stating that “legislation mandating parental involvement does not achieve the intended benefit of promoting family communication, but it does increase the risk of harm to the adolescent by delaying access to appropriate medical care.”

Jezebel.com, December 6, 2011:

One of my favorite feminist bloggers in the world (literally–she’s based in Australia) is Blue Milk.  She contacted me a few months ago about a new anthology that features her writing called The 21st Century Motherhood Movement: Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change the World and How To Do It.  She asked if I’d review it here, for the delight of my many radical readers.  After I choked down my jealousy and assured myself that someday, SOMEDAY I will receive a letter from a publisher than is not a kindly worded rejection, I agreed.  Heh.  Seriously though, it is great pleasure to spread a little more feminist mom love in the world.  When the package arrived I even posed Miriam with it, in what will be a Radical Housewife tradition (see my post on Gloria Feldt books from January).

Looks great, huh?  I couldn’t wait to open it up.  My beach reading had arrived!  Until…

Holy crap, Miriam said!  Did you catch how THICK this mother (no pun intended) flippin’ book is?  School may be in session Down Under, but around these parts I’m on call 24/7.  Kids can’t be expected to entertain themselves in the 21st century, you know.  Elliott needs to be reminded several times a day that he has books and toys in his room that were purchased to alleviate what he claims is his soul-killing boredom.  Then there’s the constant bicycling from park to wading pool to garage sale, the hours in the car driving to waterparks and nature centers and museums and….

I’m sorry.  I can’t read real books in the summertime.  This is as intellectual as I get:

School’s in session on Monday, August 29.  I should get my brain back online somewhere around Labor Day (that’s September 5, for all non-Yanks).  Thanks for your patience, fellow readers!

How did I become the Radical Housewife?

[from the Fall 2006 issue of the Minnesota NOW Times]

I was born feminist and progressive, raised in the Free to Be…You and Me era by a couple of baby boomers who, while not quite flower children, took to heart the political upheavals of the age. In our house, all people were equal and everyone had unlimited potential. So I took my college education and became an at-home parent! I could do anything, be anything, handle anything. Only when my son Elliott was born in 2000 did I realize how wrong I was.

I love Gene Weingarten, but who doesn’t? Sure, he’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, but how many of those stiffs can write prose that makes you weep one week and wet your pants laughing the next? Nick Kristof and Maureen Dowd can eat their hearts out! If I could write with one percent of Weingarten’s intelligence and verve, I’d be happy. Also, his Facebook profile picture looks like this:

Why am I thinking of Weingarten today? Because today, I had the opportunity to learn from what he taught me. Just a few minutes ago, I completed my purchase at my southside Cub Foods (yes, the one that blew up–it’s safe now) and headed out to my car to load the bags in the trunk. Parked next to me was a jet-black Toyota Tacoma with small child in the back seat. On a sunny day. A little child, no older than 9-10 months old, tops. LOCKED IN A BLACK CAR ON A VERY SUNNY DAY.

!!!!

If you haven’t yet, please read the story that earned Weingarten his second Pulitzer, called “Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?” Obligatory trigger warning: if you are a parent, this story will make you cry. If you are not a parent, it will still seriously bum you out. After you blow through a box of tissues, tell me what YOU would have done if you were me in the parking lot of Cub Foods at high noon.

I didn’t hesitate. I called 911. Moments later an angry white man in his late-fifties started waving at me frantically from the garden center tent propped up in the Cub parking lot. He shouted, as he gathered up his flower purchases, that he’d been watching the little girl the whole time. I didn’t get off the phone. The man, clearly well-to-do and unused to ruffians calling the police on him, came out to the car, unbuckled the girl, and carried her into the garden shop on his hip, mumbling all the while.

I told the operator that the guy was yelling at me for calling him in. “Well, I’m with you,” the operator said. “That’s a pretty young kid to be left in a car.” The operator said that a squad car would come out for a chat with the guy, whom I described. When I completed the call and the man finished his transaction, I approached him. I explained that I (a loyal Gene Weingarten fan) felt that I had to err on the side of caution.

“Well, you didn’t need to call the cops,” the man snarled. “You could have asked, hey, is anyone in the garden center watching this kid? And you would have known she was fine.”

“Sorry,” I answered. “When I see a baby locked in a hot car, I call the police.”

“You made a judgment call,” he snapped. “And you did it without knowing any of the facts. I was right here the whole time.”

“No, YOU made the judgment call,” I yelled, furious. “You made the call to leave a kid in the car when you could have just as easily picked her up and taken her in! Look how easy that was! But this isn’t about you, it’s about her. I DID IT FOR HER.”

I wish I could say I stormed off in righteous indignation, but remember, I am a Minnesota native who lives in fear of stepping into someone else’s beeswax and who quivers when talked to harshly by a stranger. I’m writing this to justify my actions to myself, to my community, and to my writerly idol, should he have a Google Alert on his name.

Did you read Weingarten’s story? What would YOU do?

First they came after my womb:

Then they came after my friends:

Minnesota Republicans offer constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage

DFLers ding GOP for social issue ahead of budget shortfall

Now they want…..MY SON??

From an action alert issued by the PACER Center, a nonprofit organization that provides education, support and advocacy for Minnesota children with disabilities:

I attended two very different activist gatherings last week. One consisted of parents and administrators at my kids’ school, while the other brought together local feminists (aka Cackle of Rads, Twin Cities chapter), a number of whom are involved in Democratic party politics. At both meetings, I heard the following:

“The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”
“Is anyone looking a the big picture here?”
“We’re talking to a brick wall half the time.”
“Is this sabotage? Or just idiocy?”
“I’m exhausted.”
“All of this work was for nothing?”
“We’re not even talking about the same thing.”

Today in Minnesota Public Radio News:

Girls need the right to confidential reproductive care, a commentary by Shannon Drury.

The hardest part of parenting is letting go, as Khalil Gibran recognized. I wrote on this subject a year ago for HipMama.com, in a piece titled “Growing Up is No Rainbow, or: Childhoodphobia!” Clearly I have some anxieties about how to raise a healthy, self-possessed daughter.

Her stubbornness and determination were on full display this morning, when she decided that, since the sun was not yet up, she wouldn’t have to get ready for school (try explaining the earth’s rotation to a grouchy five-year-old). As Matt always says, our job is to build her confidence to unrealistic levels so that when the outside world tears her down, she’ll have plenty left over to survive, even thrive. I wonder if that’s why she thinks she can control time.