1st Child, 2nd Child

This is from a graduate school paper on child development I wrote in 1977, when Anne was 4 and Michelle was 2. Michelle is younger in this photo.

I am still realizing to what extent the mother I am is shaped by the child I am mothering. When I had only one child, I congratulated myself for all of Anne's superior qualities and blamed myself for her troublesome ones. Since I've had 2 children, I've become remarkably more tolerant of other mothers and of myself. I've also grown to understand why my my mom, after mothering 6 kids, has always been quite skeptical of childrearing theories.

Since I belong to a unique Chelsea community where young parents support each other through babysitting cooperatives, cooperative playgroups and nursery schools, and mothers' support groups, I've had the chance to observe many children of similar ages interact with their parents. When I first moved here when Anne was 17 months, I was quick to correlate the children's characteristics with their parents' childrearing practices. Now I am humbly aware of how infinitely complex the whole question is.

The only dramatic change in our lives beween Anne's and Michelle's births was our move to Chelsea from the Upper West Side. We still lived on a high floor in an apartment with a terrace and spectacular views. Although I was still at home full-time and their dad was gone from 8 to 6, their day-to-day routine was completely different. When Anne was born, none of my NYC friends had children; consequently no one I knew was home during the day. To relieve my isolation, I frequently visited my parents and my husband's parents on Long Island. As a result, Anne had frequent contact with her grandparents and her teenage aunts and uncles, but very little contact with other babies and toddlers.

When Michelle was born, I was immersed in Anne's playgroup, with daily contact with 10 familes and their 2-year-olds. Monday to Friday Michelle was constantly exposed to the stimulation-bedlam of young kids. In fact playing with baby Michelle was playgroup's surefire activity when all else failed. On the other hand, I seldom visited Long Island; our parents and sibs came to visit us. Michelle's comings and goings are always tied to Anne's schedules.

In addition to having different daily routines, they had a different mother. After Anne's birth, I still did some free-lance editing. I kept wrestling with combining motherhood with my editing career. I almost accepted a 20-hour a week editing job when Anne was 9 months. By the time Michelle was born, I had wholeheartedly renounced publishing and was fully committed to full-time motherhood when my children were small. I had chosen working with young children and their parents as my future career. My expectations for myself and my baby had been transformed by what I experienced and by how I had grown during Anne's infancy. I was far freer to respond to my emotions and intuitions about Michelle. I had gained confidence in my own style of mothering and was no longer so swayed by "expert" opinion or my prior expectations of what kind of mother I should be. I was much more relaxed about introducing solids, long-term nursing, the family bed.

Michelle's relationship with me was hardly as symbiotic as my relationship with Anne during infancy. Anne was as much as part of Michelle's life as my husband and I were. Unless Anne was asleep, she was almost always in the same room when I nursed or played with Michelle. As soon as Michelle could reliably sit up, we bathed them together. Since Michelle was 8 months old, they've amicably shared the same room. I successfully diminished Anne's jealousy by involving her in every way possible in Michelle's care. I always read to Anne when I was nursing Michelle, since she hated playing in her bedroom by herself.

The result? Michelle's social skills seem far more sophisticated than Anne's were at 2. Sometimes she stays at Anne's cooperative nursery school when I am the helping mommy. She knows all the children's names, interacts warmly with them, participates fully in painting, block building, clay, water play, and dress up. She manages surprisingly well at meeting time and story time. She needs to establish eye contact with me fairly often, but she leaves me free to interact with the other children. At home she holds her own with her high-powered sister very well. As I observe her avoiding no-win confrontations with Anne, I try to imitate her skillful mixture of unmistakable self-assertion and judicious compromise. As Michelle chortles, "even Anne loves me."

My Fearsome Foursome

My four daughters have turned out wonderfully--well educated, professionally successful, happily married, excellent mothers. Such a happy ending was not predictable during their childhood and teen years. I wonder what diagnosis they would have earn ednow. When they were younger,  I worried that two might be bipolar like me. Spawna of Satan seemed a better diagnosis.

Emma, the rebel; Jane, the Writer; Michelle, the Scientist; an extremely well-behaved cousin; Molly, the Adult CEO

Here were some diagnostic indicators. Not all applied to all four daughters.

• They were chronically late. No one could get off to school in the morning without substantial maternal help, usually involving cars. They never picked up their toys. I have stepped on 20,000 lego pieces in the dark. To this day I cannot walk across a dark room without my toes' going on alert.
• Emma and a friend decorated their bedroom with a mixture of desitin and baby powder while their grandpa benignly looked on.
• Emma painted her entire body purple when I was on the phone. To reach the places she did, she had to have help, but the accomplice never confessed. I am proud I have never succumbed to the temptation to post that photo on Facebook. 
• Bedtime was a joke. A friend said you could call our house at any time of the night; someone was sure to be awake and delighted to talk to you about anything for as long as you needed.
• They told their mommy " "I hate you" with not an ounce of guilt or remorse. When I asked Emma why she was acting like a devil child at age five, she explained "Mommy, I used all my goodness up in school." She now uses her goodness working for world peace.
• Jane, the Writer absolutely refused to do the assigned kindergarten homework, writing sentences using a list of words. "Writers use their own words." The teacher had no comback. Astonishingly, shy Jane convinced the high school art teacher to allow her to skip classes and submit a portfolio. She argued that artists decide what art to make.  "Jane has such integrity," the teacher marveled.
• They almost never lost power battles with their doormat mommy. Emma should have been born with a printout, "You will win exactly five battles with this child. Choose them carefully." I did win the important battles, but I only learned their importance by losing the rest. By the time her sisters came along I was so demoralized that I didn't fight battles that I could easily have won.
• At various ages the Writer melted down because the new washing machine wasn't blue; the pretty blue rental car had vanished; her aunt and uncle didn't have a second child her age; she was not attending a school that closed three years previously; there wasn't enough snow; election day would be a day before her 18th birthday four years from now. She was a lovely, sensitive child, eager to please when she wasn't battling the existential order of things. She is now a human rights lawyer and writer, heroically battling the existential order of things.
• Michelle, the Scientist, only ran fevers, thereby missing school, on the three school days without the gifted program pullout. I conducted ad hoc home schooling for bored students who could cough convincingly.
• Emma only pulled the hair and dumped sand over the heads of playmates whose mommies would reliably go round the twist. (She has traveled to over 85 countries, and has lived in Niger, Rwanda Kosovo, and France.) She ended her three-year sand eating on the day our pediatrician looked her in the eye and assured me that her sand-eating must account for her excellent health. He would recommend it to all his other patients. For old-times sake, she would occasionally revert to the diet when babysat by a hysteric mommy. The mother of Emma's best friend confessed that she thought Emma would be in jail by the time she was 14.
• At age 2 Michelle magic markered a $2000 painting. Thank God the artist was able to fix the picture.
• At age 2 the same culprit  destroyed another family's audiotapes of their kids when babies and toddlers. Their parents had misplaced the tapes.
• Notice I omitted my baby Molly,  the CEO. The most mature, disguised as the youngest, was perfectly sane from birth and struggled valiantly to contain, organize, and direct her crazy family. This is a lifetime job. All my difficult communications with her sisters are best filtered through the CEO. Every teacher immediately noticed the difference. When Emma made then 24 year old Molly, her son's guardian, everyone applauded her wisdom. She has my power of attorney and is the executor of my will. She is the only family member authorized to communicate with my therapist and my lawyer.
• Molly idolized Madonna when she was 3. She memorized all Madonna's songs, danced around with her grandma's rosary beads around her neck, proclaiming she was a material girl. If only You Tube had been around then!

Michelle Obama would be horrified. I questioned my sanity again and again throughout their childhoods. But I am very proud that I could cherish their intelligence, creativity, and individuality and was never tempted to drug their uniqueness, no matter how it disrupted our lives. They insisted they were going to emphasize order more and creativity less with their own kids:) I had anticipated and have enjoyed much amusement watching them try. In  the last 13 years when 9 grandkids were born, I haven't seen any but halfhearted attempts. I confess that I prayed that Emma, Jane, and Michelle would have a daughter. Emma and Michelle have one each;  Jane has two. I didn't wish such a fate on Molly, but she had a daughter as well. The three oldest are unquestionably more fearsome than their moms. The jury is still out on the 5 year old, but she has a fearsome older sister. The four year old has always been fierce, able to stand up to her brother 3 1/2 years older.

Parental Anxiety and Children's Wings

 My mother's combination of fearlessness, faith in God, and experience with 5 younger brothers made her wonderful mother of 5 boys. She didn't worry; she didn't clip any wings. She didn't let little things like sons on the roof or a son out of touch hiking the Appalachian trail for months upset her.   Her shy, timid, anxious daughter was a mystery to  her.  I am a  lifelong worrier. From early childhood, I frequently told my parents, "I'm scared."

What my mom did effortlessly, I have had to struggle with every day of my 51  years as a mother. All my daugters are braver and more adventurous than I am. For the most part, my anxieties have not infected them. They respect my fears.  I have decided to concentrate my worries when their planes are in the air, not when they  are on the ground for days or years in Kosovo, Rwanda, Niger, Sydney, Shanghai, Istanbul, Sierra Leone, etc.They always call, email, or text when the plane lands, at any hour, in any part of the world. Flight Tracker is my best friend. I have come to accept that worrying is how I pray for the people I love.

My oldest daughter Emma has inherited her grandmother's bold fearlessness.

From my journals, 1974-1975
From the time Emma was 10 months old, I took her twice a day to Central Park, particularly one very large playground. Emma would casually wander off almost 100 yards away. As long as I was was close enough to meet her eyes and waved when she glanced at me, she seemed perfectly confident. One nightmarish day, she managed to slip out between the playground bars and head for Central Park West. I didn't know I could run so fast.

At 15 months Emma would go down slides and climb up jungle gyms that three year olds would avoid. By 2 she was so physically competent that I felt confident about sitting on a bench and watching from a distance as she clambered over a climbing structure designed for children 6 and up. She hardly ever cried if she fell down or bumped into something. Emma was happiest learning new physical feats. She loved the water; at age one she would fearlessly walk into the ocean and laugh if she were knocked down. She was physically fearless yet not particularly reckless except about things she could not possibly know about. She was always ahead of other kids in trying something new physically like walking up the slide backward.


Emma in Niger, 2000                                                                      
 One month ago, I sat in a grass hut in a small village in Niger called Koyetegui, and watched democracy in action, Nigerien style. The five members of the Bureau de Vote sat on overturned pestles normally used for pounding millet, and offered me a seat on a woven mat. And so I sat, as the sun set and the kerosene lantern was lit, and watched as the chickens were chased out of the hut and the entire village crowded into this cramped space to watch the solemn counting and recounting of the 132 votes that had been cast in this tiny district. When the vote counting was over and the report had been filled out and duly sealed with wax, I rode back to the regional capital of Dosso with the ballot box to turn in the election results. It was only the next day that I learned from my driver that the chief of the village had presented me with a gift of an enormous river squash. I spent the entire ride back to Niamey replaying the events of the past few months in my mind, wondering how I had ever gotten to be so lucky.

From applications to graduate schools in International Relations in 2000:
In three and a half years, I visited over 75 cities in 53 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In several countries–Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Nepal, Benin, Curacao–I was the first AIRINC representative to conduct a survey. I have had the opportunity to do amazing things in my life. I have seen some of the truly wondrous places in the world, from the Sahara desert, to Machu Picchu, to the Mekong River Delta. I have jumped out of a plane in Maine and been seventy feet underwater in the Caribbean. I have witnessed one of the poorest countries on earth usher in a new era of hope and democracy.

My post to a Salon Group, 2001:
My 28-year-old daughter has just accepted a summer internship in Rwanda. Seven years ago, a million people were killed in three months in the worst genocide since the Holocaust.  At Columbia she is specializing in human rights, transitional justice, and Africa. If she wasn't going to Rwanda, she would have gone to the Congo. I am fiercely proud of her. But I worry about how to handle my fears as she goes from one world flash point to the next. I want to support her, not burden her with my anxieties.

2013

Emma, her husband, and their 2 kids are spending two years in Paris, so she can work for an international organization. Her 5 year old daughter, now fully fluent in French, has inherited her fearlessness. When Emma was pregnant, she fretted that she would not be able to handle an anxious daughter.

Now Emma is the lead on Peacebuilding for UNICEF. In many ways, I, an anxious mother, did better with my bold daughters than my bold mother did with her anxious daughter. I never forget her telling me, "You would be much happier if you were more like me."

Letting your fear of what could happen clip your children's wings  and undermine their confidence and autonomy endangers them most of all

December 2, 1982--4 Children

I have had my happy ending. My four darlings have grown up into strong, loving wives and mothers with challenging careers, supportive feminist husbands,  and brilliant children. Parents in the trenches often are comforted by how many mistakes I made without dire, lifelong consequences.. 

My kids are 9, 7, 4, 7 months. We had impulsively moved to Bangor, Maine from Manhattan in March 1981; I almost immediately got pregnant. We are snowbound November through April. My husband insisted on heating our 4-bedroom house entirely with our wood stove and six cords of wood. We had a three-sided metal gate attached to the living room wall with carabiners to keep the girls away from the stove. I had never before had to cope with stairs and kids. My ability to write in full sentences has collapsed. I am trying to decide whether we should try to move back to New York. I am very active in the Nuclear Freeze movement. Being a political activist and the mother of 4 isn't working. I remember the good times so vividly and totally forget the hard times. No wonder why younger mothers reject the saccharine advice of older mothers.

I have not edited my journal entry.

I let the kids stay home today because Michelle was hoarse and Emma was hard to rouse. Their being home busy with their projects makes it harder to keep Molly (the baby) safe. Molly has a scratch near her eye, and I don't even know how she got it--perhaps the kitten? Made apple crisp, made bread. No oven timer, so I kept losing track, worried about the stove door being so loose--will it fall off? Reading Lifton-Falk book about nuclear war, will give me nightmares. Kids bickering; baby eating pieces of paper. All my careful preparation for naught, no time to sit down and relax. Molly hardly napped. Papers all over living room floor. Snapped and yelled.

Do I want to go back? Something always make me stop at the brink. Fear of admitting we made a mistake? Or are these growing pains? Half-conscious of my tendency to romanticize my life in New York. I didn't share my political interests. We probably know more people in Bangor who share my interests than we did in New York. I glanced back over my journals. A bracing perspective. Mothering has always been hard. So much for my fantasies about how much better a mother I was in New York. I am so hard on myself. Go to the library and look up book on depression.

Importance of Birth Order

In the first picture, I am two and one half; Joe is one. In the second I am four, Andrew is six months. In the third picture, I am seven; Bob is newborn. In the fourth picture, I am 12; Gerard is 1. Next I am 13; Brian is one month. The last picture was taken when I was 14.

Studying the pictures, I understand family dynamics much better. It has always seemed that sibling relationships matter more to me, that I try harder to keep the family connected. Being both the oldest and the only girl seems central. I was my adult height when my two younger brothers were born; they were only 5 and 7 when I left home for college. I must have seemed a quasi-maternal figure to them. In some pictures I look like their young mother.
We did not grow up in the same family. My mother returned to school full-time when Brian was 5; when he was 7, she started teaching high school. Joe, Andrew, and I had had a stay-at-home mother until we went to college. Brian doesn't remember my mom staying at home full-time. My father retired before Brian finished college.

We have very different perceptions of our parents. Joe, Andrew, and I remember our dad as a brilliant intellectual and mathematician; Gerard and Brian remember an old man who disappeared into Alzheimer's Disease. The three oldest remember our childhood perceptions of my mom as "just a housewife" who never went to college. My younger brothers remember her the way her obituary describes her: "teacher, activist, trailblazer."

With the death of my mom, Joe, 18 months younger, is my collaborator in family history. Unfortunately Joe was too busy climbing on top of the roof as a kid to remember very much. I realize I could write family fiction and convince everyone it is family history.

I struggled not to favor my first daughter Anne in sibling squabbles, because she, like me, was the oldest of several siblings. Both my first husband John and I were the oldest children of oldest children of oldest children--not the best recipe for marital harmony. Certainly Anne shows the same sense of responsibility for her younger siblings that I felt. John, Anne, and I thought younger siblings owe considerable gratitude to the oldest, who has fought all the battles necessary to whip parents into shape.

In my constant discussions with friends about baby spacing when my kids were young, I noticed that adult relationships with your siblings greatly influence you. If you love your sibs, you might think a brother or sister is the best gift you will give your kids. If you don't talk to each other, you will feel guilty about the trauma you are inflicting on the oldest. As people only have two children, there will only be younger and older older. Middle children seem to have special gifts society will sorely lack. When I told 6 year old Michelle, I was pregnant with Carolyn, she rejoiced, "Now I won't be the only middle child."

Pride Overcomes Anxiety

I would like to share something I wrote in 2001 to a Salon group:

"My 28-year-old daughter has just accepted a summer internship in Rwanda. Seven years ago, a million people were killed in three months in the worst genocide since the Holocaust. She is getting a master's degree in international affairs at Columbia, specializing in human rights, transitional justice, and Africa. If she wasn't going to Rwanda, she would have gone to the Congo. I am fiercely proud of her. But I worry about how to handle my fears as she goes from one world flash point to the next. I want to support her, not burden her with my anxieties. I would like to share experiences and ideas with other mothers of children whose idealism and dedication take them into danger. "

Learning not to burden my daughters with my anxieties is a lifelong struggle. But my anxiety is not nearly as great as my pride:
The daughter I was so worried about, Vanessa, co-edited this new book, which is being ordered for international relations classes throughout the country.

Not Just a Mother

I didn't set out to be the mother of four. With five younger brothers, I had no romantic illusions about motherhood. I felt my mother and my aunts had sacrified their spotential to mother large families. From age 13 to 26, I questioned whether I wanted to be a mother at all. Instead, I was determined to have the challeging, intellectually demanding career that I felt to be incompatible with motherhood.

When I was a child, most of the older working women I knew were Roman Catholic nuns. My mother, my friends' mothers, and my aunts stayed home and raised their children. Although I knew I wanted a career, I never could decide what career. I invariably said "I don't know" when people asked me what I wanted to do. But I always added, "I don't want to be just a mother." I valued intellectual acheivement at the expense of the maternal, emotional, intuitive side of my nature. I was sure I didn't want to be just a teacher, a nurse, or a social worker either; the traditionally feminine fields were not for me. I would aim higher.

I was a shy girl who refused to wear the glasses I desperately needed outside the classroom. If any boy noticed me, I must have come across as a dreadful snob since I couldn't see him. I fervently believed that a girl could be smart or she could date. I was as confident in my intellectual abilities as I was dreadfully insecure about my popularity and attractiveness. One of my uncles kept the letters I wrote him when I was in graduate school. They are so embarrassing. Basically I listed the books I had read and the marks I had gotten, comparing them to the marks of my brothers and my friends.

Feminism and Motherhood, August 1976

Reading my 1970's journals is both fascinating and disquieting. Do I still know this woman? Would I make friends with her? Would I read her blog? My present husband admits he would have been terrified to talk to her. Part of my confusion is rooted in the times I grew up, in the 1950s and early 1960s, long before feminism. If my oldest daughter Anne had 5 brothers, she wouldn't have received such contradictory messages on achievement and motherhood. All my siblings believe I deserved my struggles with Anne, since I gave my mom such a hard time:) I vividly remember my brother Stephen saying to me right after Anne was born: "Good, you have a daughter to fight with. That must make you very happy."

8/31/76 Since I started journaling, I had many insights into my difficulty in choosing a career. It's intimately bound up with my family, being the only girl with 5 younger bothers. The roots go back a generation; my mother had 5 younger brothers plus a sister she never had very much to do with. In the jargon of early feminism, we were both "male-identified." As a girl, I was very close to my 5 young uncles.

My mom was a tender, attentive mother who adored little children and managed them beautifully. How could I have not wanted to be like her--beautiful, vivacious, outgoing, loving, warm, playful. But I was nothing like her; I was shy, quiet, introverted, likely to be ignored in a crowded classroom. I always preferred reading to socializing. I always struggled with my belief that my mom wanted a daughter who was more like her rather than like my quiet, introverted, mathematician dad. I enjoyed babysitting; I never regretted being the oldest in a large family. As a child and early adolescent, I adored babies. My uncle had twins when I was 12. I often visited and helped them out, and tormented by mom by hoping that her sixth child would be twins. I frequently took care of my younger brothers when they were babies and toddlers.

Everything changed when I started high school and started to get attention for being smart. Early in high school I rejected my mother's world and chose my father's world. But even when my father agreed with me intellectually, he never supported me in my arguments with my mother. Instead he blamed me for getting her upset. After my first daughter Anne was born, my dad told me he preferred wise women to intellectual ones. So I rejected my mother's world, yet I was close to my mother and dependent upon her. No wonder we were constantly fighting. What did my mother symbolize to me? Mindless maternity. A good mind going down the drain with thousands of dishes washed ,thousands of diapers rinsed.

I perceived her as a good mother of young children, but not of troubled adolescents, because she accepted things, did not probe, question, challenge the way things were. She found it easier to put others before self because she did not have a highly developed sense of self. I on the other hand was selfish and immature, putting my own intellectual development above all else. I clearly saw a dichotomy--wife and mother versus intellectual. No woman I had ever personally encountered had combined both. In fact, the nuns were the only career women I knew. All my aunts, mothers of my friends, the neighbors were housewives. I was in the process of rejecting Catholicism, so I never got close to any nun for her to serve as a role model. I began to suspect I never would get married, that the only way to attract a man was to play dumb, something I would never consider. I wasn't really rejecting motherhood; I never thought much about it. But when my first boyfriend wanted to tease me, all he had to say was that I was like my mother. I couldn't imagine anything more insulting.

I always sought out situations where I could be the only woman in a group of men. I didn't want to seduce them; I wanted to excel them. I made the mistake of going to a Catholic women's college my freshman year, Nazareth College of Rochester, because they offered the most scholarship money. Almost immediately I wanted to transfer. I told my parents I wanted to switch my major from English to Political Science,, and Nazareth had no such department. I was only interested in college debate after the assistant dean explained that Nazareth had no debate club because "there's something in the nature of a woman that makes it objectionable for her to compete so openly with men."

At Fordham I was usually the only girl in my political science classes. At Stanford, there was only one other woman among the first year grad students. I was positively crushed when I realized how many women there were at Columbia Law School. It wasn't enough for me to think like a man; I had to think better than a man. I only made friends with women who had also rejected the conventions of femininity.

Everyone in the family perceived my dad as smarter than my mom, particularly her. She would always send us to him for the hard math and science homework. We were amazed when she returned to college and got all A's. Thehe mother who graduated from college in 1967 and grad school in 1968 and taught high school history was a different mother than the one I knew growing up. Looking back, I see my mother's ambivalence. My evident influence over her, that fact that she went to college when her youngest entered school, how hard she worked as a student and a teacher, her still emerging feminism all suggest she might have been giving me contradictory messages.

Unquestionably, she identified with my opportunity to go away to college, my getting a NYC apartment, my opportunity to get a PhD all expenses paid--such chances were unheard of among her friends when she was my age. When I told her I was dropping out of Stanford and marrying John, she attempted to dissuade me. She never attempted to convince me to have a baby before I was ready to have one. Her reluctance to pressure me seemed to indicate that she would have done the same thing if circumstances were different. I was destined to go beyond her wildest dreams, and she would be very happy for me. Throughout my adolescence and young adulthood, the "masculine" intellectual, achieving, ambitious, competitive side of my personalty was nourished and encouraged by everybody.

So many of my school and career problems are unquestionably related to my constant striving to be like my brothers,, to deny my womanhood. That's why I am only discovering child development as a possible career. Any career involving children was feminine and therefore unworthy of my superior intellect. It was against all my principles and preconceptions to feel overwhelmingly maternal toward Anne. I thought the maternal instinct was a myth and suddenly I was wallowing in it. I suddenly understood had my mother could have decided to have six children.

I still cannot understand how I suppressed the woman who can't pass a baby stroller without smiling and flirting with the baby, whose favorite During that first year after Anne's birth, I had to learn that I needed people, not just brilliant intellectuals, ordinary people to talk to, to get ideas from. I needed to relinquish my faith in the overriding importance of rationality and learn to trust my emotions. I could learn from almost every mother I met; I could get support from most mothers I met if I could learn how to ask for it.

However, I should have reread this journal before deciding to become a public librarian and a social worker. Having four daughters has not removed the influence of my five brothers and my five young uncles. I still don't do very well in women-dominated professions. I have always been more comfortable with male psychiatrists, both as a patient and as a therapist. I still love competing with and debating with men. As a social worker, I worked best with clients who were schizophrenics with serious drug problems and often prison records. I suspect I would have done well as a prison social worker. Late at night, I am comfortable in a subway car that is all men. It is still easier to approach a group of men than to approach a group of women. All my life I have struggled with the fear that women won't like me if they really know me. I've never learned tact. Men are easy; they enjoy bright, argumentative women who smile, call them sweetie (because I am not good with names), genuinely admire their ties, shirts, long hair, earings, or beards, and obviously enjoy them.

Feminist at Age 46

I am trying to make up for lost time in this blog by including stuff I have written a long time ago. I wrote the following for a social work professor who delighted in making sexist aspersions. This was written in 1991; my daughters were 18, 16, 13, and 9. Please excuse the academic nature of this post.

I hate generalizations about women. I was made to feel unfeminine growing up because I cared passionately about books and ideas. My mother was very much a housewife, and I vowed to be nothing like her. I identified with my mathematician father and my five younger brothers. From 13 to 26 I was sure I didn't want to be a mother; I wanted intellectual challenge and stimulation, which appeared incompatible with motherhood.  I spent freshman year  of college in a women's Catholic college. If I had gone to Mars, I could not have felt more alienated or misunderstood. An enthusiastic high school debater, I was appalled to be told the college did not have a debate club because "it was against the nature of women to debate intellectually with men. Panicked, I escaped to Fordham where I was usually the only woman in my political science classes. I had a few equally intellectual women friends; we condescended to and avoided "ordinary women.

Last spring my 18 year old commented to me, "Mom, how did the idea ever get started that men are superior to women. For God's sake, where is the evidence?" At 18, I believed that men were superior to women; I loved being told: "you think like a man." Once I escaped from the Catholic ghetto, I studied feminism and gradually began to appreciate women. Living In Manhattan at the height of the early feminist movement, I found women who questioned things, read seriously, struggled against traditional roles. I was not willing to get sexually involved with my future husband until he read Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Looking back, I can laugh at my earnestness; on the other hand. I do less housework than any women I know. I remained closer to my husband, my brothers, and my male friends. I always felt I had to rein in my sarcastic, argumentative, critical Koch self with women, who did not relish heated intellectual debate as much as I did.

When I had my first daughter at 28, everything changed. I remember remarking to a male friend: "It's ironic. I never believed in maternal instincts and I am overwhelmed with them." I found pregnancy, birth. breastfeeding. and raising preschoolers more satisfying and challenging than anything I had done. I climbed down from my intellectual ivory tower and spent many years teaching childbirth education, doing breastfeeding counseling, and coordinating playgroups. I devoured books on pregnancy, birth, motherhood, and child development. On the questionnaire for my 20th high school reunion, I wrote that my ultimate ambition was to write a great book integrating feminism and motherhood. Feminism now disappointed me; abortion did not seem to be the central issue of womanhood. Restructuring society so that women could be good mothers and pursue demanding careers seemed a far more important priority. Women's equality could not rest on the belief that the sexes were essentially alike. Women had unique contributions to make outside the home.

To some extent I renounced my prior intellectual interests. I remember a moment of epiphany. I was coming back from Central Park on the bus with my sleeping two year old and my two-month-old infant. I was trying to read the current New York Review of Books and juggle my two sleepers. A young Hispanic women got on the bus similarly encumbered with two children the same ages. I thought: "Stop the intellectual pretentiousness. You have much more in common with this woman than these Upper West Side intellectuals you're still trying to become." I canceled my subscription. Perhaps I also relinquished my existential anguish and intellectual ambitions until my children were older.

My husband and I have tried to raise our four daughters free of the stereotypes that constricted my childhood. When the girls were young, I was more involved with them than my husband was. Our dramatically different responses to parenthood convinced me that men and women were fundamentally different. However, mothering demands far more than biological instincts. Unquestionably, breastfeeding makes it so much easier to be a responsive mother to an infant. I never resented night feedings because I Invariably was awakened by the discomfort in my full breasts before the babies started crying. But I thought deeply about what I was doing. I read widely in anthropology, and I broke most of the rules of conventional American childrearing. Two of the girls were born at home; I nursed two of them 6 years and one 4 years. During infancy they slept in our bed; we both carried them in frontpacks and backpacks for over two years each.

I allowed them great freedom to experiment, explore, mess up, create, play, splash water on the floor. At one point we had a slide, climbing structure, tent, and rings from the ceiling for a swing, rings, and a trapeza. I spent a small fortune on art materials and books. I sent the two older girls to a school with no artificial grade levels, no formal grades, no homework, no standardized tests. Defying convention to this extent was a direct result of the intellectuality of my teens and twenties. I had very definite ideas on education, and I implemented them as far as I could. How my daughters are growing up is very gratifying. Predictably, my ideas are usually dismissed because "your children are so gifted." I have refrainted from retorting, "too bad children are the only inventions you can't patent." I don't believe I did anything more than allow their true selves to flower. None of my daughters value order or domesticity; they are all serious readers; none has any problem questioning authority; all are excellent math and science students. Two are prone to existential angst like me; two are free from it like my husband.

But they are unquestionably different from my five brothers and my husband. On the other hand, they are strikingly different from each other as well. I have often spoken with women with one boy and one girl. Many, but not all, of the differences they attribute to gender only seem to be the result of different personalities, since my daughters differ In the same ways. Still, they are not reckless or attracted to danger for danger's sake the way that my brothers were. It would not occur to them to climb out on the roof and dive into a swimming pool. After their preschool years they are rarely physically aggressive with one another. Their tongues were lethal weapons. None of them has begged for a motorcycle. Unlike my husband, they have not spent much of their time firing rockets.

I agree with you that motherhood makes women feel more weighty on this planet. I fear death less because I will be leaving behind four spectacular women; I have made a difference. The most moving ceremony I ever attended was my grandmother's funeral six years ago. She died at 86, having been widowed at 40. She left 7 children, 32 grandchildren, and 25 great grandchildren (the number is now 41). Most of them came to her funeral because she had been special to each of them. My grandmother did not view her life as meaningless. Possibly fathering is less central to a man's life. But I would like to see several generations of men actively involved in fathering young children before I make any generalizations about that.

Giving Children Wings

My mom's combination of fearlessness, faith in God, and experience with five brothers made mom a wonderful mother of boys. She didn't worry; she didn't clip any wings. She didn't let little things like sons on the roof or a son out of touch hiking the Appalachian trail for months upset her. Joe and Andrew look so pleased with themselves without any fear they might fall off or get in trouble. Her shy, timid, anxious daughter was a mystery to her:) I was annoyed that she didn't complain that my brothers forgot her birthday or mother's day, called once every two months.

Giving my daughters wings has been a bigger challenge for me, but I have not infected them with my anxieties. My oldest daughter was a bold adventurer from birth. From her company's web page: "Anne arrived at IPA after spending a year in Kosovo working with the UN Population Fund, having previously consulted for UNFPA in New York. She spent several months with the Centre for Conflict Management in Butare, Rwanda, where she was a researcher on the gacaca tribunals. She has also spent several years as an economic consultant in the private sector. She has traveled to over 65 countries, and has lived in Niger, Rwanda and Kosovo. " When she was 23, her boss wrote: "Anne can handle herself anywhere in the world." At the time she had to tell people: "look for the 16 year old in the hotel lobby."

On our living room wall is a huge world map, with push pins marking all the places my girls have traveled to. I recall asking another mother whether are grown children live close by. She told me no, one was 10 miles away and one was 20 miles away. At the time Anne was living in Africa and Michelle was in Australia on business for three months.

My daughters honor my anxieties. I have disciplined myself to worry when they are actually in flight, not on the ground. They send me their itineraries and call me when they land. I follow their flights on flight tracker and never sleep well when they are in the air. Two years ago Anne was on an 18-hour flight to Singapore; I couldn't sleep when she was in the air. My daughter Rose, the human rights lawyer, has promised me she will never visit her law firm's Iraq office.