Mother's Day

Lucia Fanelli—seven years before motherhood

Thoughts on this day from one of my fave thinkers:

"Mothers' Day" always kinda saddens me. Not because mine is long gone, but because I've often found myself wishing she'd been born later and elsewhere. Raised dirt poor in a time and a place that worked overtime to circumscribe her opportunities, her astonishing creative bent was rather cruelly delimited from the start. She found her own outlets, and had her own way of quietly kicking against the jams, but would she at least had the CHOICES afforded her children.

I'm not much interested in feminist theory and all that, and I know I don't talk much about the subject, but it strikes me that this is a day upon which to consider the importance of choice for women—and everyone else—everywhere and always.

The choice to be mothers, or not; the ability to attend the schools of their choice, unconstrained by financial limitations; the choice to become priests and leaders in their religious institutions; the choice to marry whom they choose; the choice to work certain jobs assured of the same respect and pay as their male counterparts; the choice, insofar as it's possible, to be mothers and to simultaneously have full, and fully-paid outlets for their intelligence and creativity. 

The choices, in short, fathers have.

Addenda: responsible mothering—and fathering—isn't just about raising a child fit for the world. It's about ensuring the kind of world that's fit for your child. And everyone else's.

And from comments:

For not being interested in feminist theory you sure sound just like a feminist...and you know what they say..if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.