November 2015 / Irene Pérez, ES

ART, RESEARCH, THEORY: In the November column we are pleased to feature Irene Pérez (Spain), a visual artist based in Terrassa (Barcelona). Her work explores identity, language and the physical space.  She is also a mother to a vibrant five-year-old girl. Their life together has made Pérez question and further investigate the social constructs of the world around her. From these inquiries Pérez has been inspired to take part in projects such the co-creation of the feminist group Mitja Subversiva (Subversive Knitting), a group of people who meet periodically at the La Caníbal co/op bookstore in Barcelona to discuss socio-political issues and create actions through textile production.  From both being an artist and a mother, she has learned to see obstacles in life as stepping-stones for new discoveries. 

EDUCATION AS A CREATIVE AND TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESS

Last summer I attended the The Mothernists conference, a three-day spent with a group of women artists and cultural producers who engage with motherhood and mothering in their practices. Organized by the m/other voices foundation and inspired by artist Lise Haller Baggesen’s project and book,  it was a truly stimulating and eye opening experience. So, when at the end of the conference I was invited to write a column for m/other voices I was thrilled and immediately said yes. Almost as immediately, I felt the anxiety that invades you when you feel not fitted for a task you have undertaken. What will I write about? What kind of knowledge could I share? On a greater level, I had had the same feeling when, after twenty-four hours of labor during which both my life and my daughter’s where at risk,  I found myself holding a premature tiny baby who looked nothing like I had imagined. Holding her for the first time, two thoughts immediately entered my mind: This new person who came out of my body feels like a stranger; I have no idea what am I supposed to do now.

Doubt and uncertainty are part of the equation both in parenting and artistic practice and nobody tells you about them neither in art school nor in the prenatal courses. In both instances, once you know their presence is only temporary, though recurrent, you learn to navigate them and use them to your advantage.

It takes an artist to raise a child, dye and resist on silk scarf (30"x30"); Mothernism (2013-ongoing) Lise Haller Baggesen. Photo by Asleigh Dye, courtesy of the artist and Inside\Within.

I desperately struggled with motherhood for the first two and a half years. It wasn’t pretty. I despised being a mother almost as much as I profoundly loved my daughter and this was a contradiction that caused me an unbearable pain. Why was I at war with motherhood? It took some time and a lot of searching in books and in conversations with other mothers, but I finally realized that the war was not against my motherhood, but against the social construct of motherhood. All the romanticism embedded in me since I was a little girl and all the impossible things everybody seemed to be expecting of me: the good mother; the multi-task super woman; the endless vessel of love, compassion and attentiveness. My struggle was also due to the fact that my work as a mother seemed to have no value (at least not one that was rewarded with money or recognition). All of a sudden my career was on hold and I was “only” a mother. But, because we live in a world that seems to speak just in economical terms, I was completely missing the mark. It took me a while to understand that I was not the one failing, but that it is the structure (i.e. the socio economical system) supporting this construct that is failing us all. Argentinean artists and mother of three Ana Álvarez-Errecalde recently said in the article Cathartic Power of Art: Motherhood as a Rite of Passage: “As a mother I have experienced the absurdities and unfairness of a society which on the one hand idealizes maternity, but on the other hand belittles and turns its back on the needs and care that arise from the mother-child relationship.” In the same article, Alvarez-Errecalde talks about the socio-economical repercussions of such underestimation of mothering, which does not acknowledge the possibilities and the significance that care labor has in our societies.  

artist/mother (2011), Irene Pérez. Cross-stitch work.

In my motherhood I have gone through doubt, uncertainty and frustration to little by little understand the personal and social relevance of mothering. Most of all, I have come to experience how our social and economical systems devalue the work and the role of care givers, who are usually women. It is especially evident to me that this is the case when we talk about the role that mothers play in education – meaning the transmission of skills and knowledge.

When our daughter was four years old and going to a school here in Spain, she started to show worrying signs of anxiety. There were episodes of bullying at school and she felt pressured to do the class work. The place that was supposed to be safe and feed her curiosity was causing her pain and taking away the sparkle in her eye. In a country with growing political corruption and instability, where people are being stripped of their social and civil rights, my daughter showed me the way to understand that education is a key part of a system that prioritizes the production-line mentality over the wellbeing of people. I began looking for an alternative form of education, which took us onto an amazing process of transformation. We are now part of a community, an education co-op, and in the process realized that we, her parents, are her primary educators.

Mothering, (2015), Irene Pérez.Work in progress for New Universe, preparation watercolor for textile work.

Nowadays, in our three-bedroom apartment a passionate physicist, a tenacious artist, a vibrant five-year-old girl and a loving black cat live together. This makes for a very interesting mix when it comes to the exchange of knowledge. Our life is filled with constant exploration and everyday I have proof that children are born with limitless curiosity and creativity. Nobody needs to teach them that. Furthermore, I have learned the importance of keeping this interaction alive if we truly want the world to be a better place for us all; and I do.

“It is not the war, nor politics and the market: only a more humane education can transform society.”     

-Claudio Naranjo

Because of my daughter, and through her, I am being exposed to innovative ideas and experiencing the possibility of different paradigms. And it is this place that I am at this moment, where I find myself being my daughter’s teacher as much as learning from her, where the world enters my studio.

Next year I will have my first solo exhibition at a museum, which, under the title New Universe, will present a series of works that explore the learning processes that occur within the family, especially between mother and child. My goal with these works is to give a voice to the social relevance of mothers, children and the work they do together, because to me it becomes clearer and clearer that our daughter Maia has come to teach me many things. After all her name does mean mother.

Artist Irene Pérez and daughter Maia sharing an afternoon of painting and ideas.

October 2015 / Mila Oshin, UK

ART, RESEARCH, THEORY:  In the October column we are pleased to feature the UK based Mila Oshin, an artist, poet, singer, artistic director, curator / founder of Project AfterBirth and practicing mother. In her article Passage, she talks about her transition into motherhood and how this became integral in producing the international exhibition Project AfterBirth together with her life- and artistic partner Kris Jager from Drunk With Joy and Joy Experiment.

PASSAGE

It is exactly six years ago this month that we last performed live. It was the final date of our tour with Joy Experiment and I was six months pregnant with our first child at the time. Kris and I were both on a high. We were looking forward to becoming parents, but in a way my pregnancy had almost been, quite literally, a sideshow up until that point. We were possibly even more excited about picking things up where we left off with Drunk With Joy as soon as the baby arrived. I remember daydreaming about having the baby in the studio with us as we would record our new album and about taking her or him on our next Joy Experiment tour, which was going to be even bigger and better than the last one, with international dates and new artists and works.

Mila Oshin, Joy Experiment, 2009, photo credit: Kevon Clifford

Three months later, after 60 hours of labour and resisting intervention, my first birth ended in a forceps delivery, which left me with permanent coccydynia, ongoing nerve damage and chronic pain. Due to what, in retrospect, is likely to be a combination of her difficult birth, my physical condition and exhaustion, and her high-spirited nature, my beautiful healthy baby cried almost all the time, demanded constant movement, fed in short sessions of fifteen minutes almost every hour when awake and never slept more than two hours at a time until she was six months old. I remember phoning the health visitor once to ask whether severe lack of sleep could result in permanent brain damage. I thought I was going to die, or at least go insane.

Fast forward over the two most difficult years of my life, and we were blessed with another baby in the making. Because of my lingering post-first-birth issues I could still not sit, stand or lie down in the same position for more than five minutes at a time. I knew my second pregnancy was going to be a challenge, but I had no fear of the birth itself. I was as convinced as I had been the first time around that with the right support in the background and left to my own devices in every other possible way, under normal circumstances, it should be no problem to birth a baby. We could barely afford it, but we felt hiring a doula was the only way to maximise our chances of the right person being there, to give us the support we needed, exactly when we needed it. Living a mere ten minutes away from hospital, there was no reason not to try a homebirth again.

In the autumn of 2012, I gave birth to my second daughter at home in the presence of Kris and our doula, moments before the arrival of a midwife. Although the experience was undoubtedly hugely empowering, rather than healing the memory of our first birth, it only seemed to magnify the horror and needlessness of the circumstances and consequences of the first one. Whenever I spent any time on my own, an overwhelming sense of guilt, anger and grief took hold of me. When my second daughter was six months old and I went into my studio again for up to half a day a few times per week, there was little else I could write about. Within three months I completed Passage; a book of twelve poems about my experiences, some so raw, intimate and brutally honest that, at first, I did not even show them to Kris, my artistic and life partner, and the father of my children.

Passage, 2015, poetry collection by Mila Oshin,cover artwork: Placenta 1 (2011), placenta blood and gold leaf, by Ione Rucquoi (UK)

I instantly felt that Passage may well be my most powerful, original and significant body of work to date. Still, I had no idea where to place it within my own artistic trajectory, let alone within the context of contemporary art at large. Unwittingly, I had entered the realm of the mother artist. I had no idea at the time that there was such a thing as ‘the maternal’ as a discourse within the arts, let alone any academic fields. I had not heard of any of the wonderful organisations and initiatives dedicated to the work of mother artists around the world that have sprung up in recent years. I was yet to come across a single one of the various books published by artists and academics over the past fifty years to highlight the contrast between actual experiences of new parenthood and their representation in popular culture. 

        Mila Oshin with daughter, 2013, photo credit: Kris Jager                    

My new feelings of isolation as an artist were reflected by my personal experiences as a mother. Like many other mothers and fathers, I was apprehensive of publicly questioning my pregnancy, birth and early parenthood experiences, or revealing and sharing my often conflicting related emotions. Our fear of being judged or marginalised for being ungrateful or too concerned with ourselves and failing at the first hurdle of living up to the vision of the ‘good mother‘ or the ‘good father’, is powerful. Still, I had a very strong sense that my personal experiences were part of a much wider problem facing 21st century parenthood at large. I started on a quest to back up my suspicions with evidence. I guess that was the point at which Project AfterBirth was born.

Project AfterBirth exhibition catalogue, 2015, cover artwork: Germination (2014), archival pigment print, by Belinda Kochanowska (AUS)

An unprecedented increase in instrumental and caesarean births since the 1990s on both sides of the Atlantic suggests that, in the 21st century, fewer women than ever before are able to do what has come naturally to the vast majority of them since the beginning of humanity. This mass female disability cannot fail to have a major impact on women’s sense of self and, subsequently, their relationships with their partners and children. Still, these facts appear of little or no interest to the medical or mental health profession. This, in spite of very recent studies suggesting 20% of mothers now suffer from post-natal depression (double the previous statistics), more than 10% of new fathers suffer from psychiatric morbidity, and suicide continues to be the biggest cause of maternal mortality in the UK (with related statistics being unobtainable in the USA where, quite astonishingly, reporting maternal deaths is not a legal requirement). 

Fortunately, I knew from my own experience that I could rely on there being at least one type of parent who had no choice but to express their deepest and most complex feelings; the artist parent. Invisible as they may have been to me at first, I knew other artist parents were out there somewhere, committing their own pregnancy, birth or early parenthood experiences to paper, paint, music, film, etc., and thereby uniquely documenting a period in adult life at once the most intensely felt and least likely to be accurately captured by memory. I had always believed that artists, by both sensing the urgency and possessing the skills to translate issues at the core of our existence into the universal language of art, have the potential to break down fundamental barriers and open up crucial debates. It made complete sense to me that artists’ autobiographical work on new parenthood experiences could prove key to any research on the subject. 

Exhibition view, Project AfterBirth, White Moose gallery, 2015, photo credit: Kris Jager

Fast forward over another two years and in addition to the imminent publication of Passage, Kris and I have just launched the first ever, international, open exhibition on the subject of new parenthood entitled Project AfterBirth. The exhibition is hosted by White Moose gallery in UK until the 13th of November and includes 39 outstanding 21st century works spanning the visual, performance, literary, film and digital arts by 30 contemporary male and female artists from across five continents.  It has already attracted physicians, midwives, doulas, academics and journalists, as well as many artists, art students and, of course, parents from all over the country. The exhibition, which we aim to tour internationally between 2017-2019, also marks the starting point of an international inter-disciplinary art and research initiative through which we will pull together findings from the fields of obstetrics, mental health, midwifery, media studies, and women and gender studies to establish the extent to which 21st century pregnancy and birth practices and representations are influencing the state of maternal (and paternal) mental health.

For more information on ProjectAfterBirth and to keep updated on upcoming talks and special events, to obtain an exhibition catalogue or a signed copy of Passage please visit: www.projectafterbirth.com or www.milaoshin.com

Exhibition: Project AfterBirth
Gallery: White Moose
Dates: Sat 3 Oct 2015 – Fri 13 Nov 2015
Times: Tuesday – Saturday 11 am – 5 pm
Entry: FREE
Location: White Moose, Moose Hall, Trinity Street, Barnstaple EX32 8HX
T: 01271 379872,
E: info@whitemoose.co.uk,
W: http://www.whitemoose.co.uk

Project AfterBirth’s 2015 programme is kindly supported by: 
Lottery Funded Arts Council England, Birth Rites Collection, Museum of Motherhood, Joy Experiment, White Moose.

September 2015 / Courtney Kessel, USA

ART, RESEARCH, THEORY: In the September column we are pleased to feature Courtney Kessel (USA), an exhibiting artist, practising mother, art educator and gallery director at the Ohio University. In The Eternal Maternal, her article for m/other voices, she talks about her collaborative practice together with her daughter Chloé.

THE ETERNAL MATERNAL

“..When my daughter says that the work is all about her, I say that no actually it is about me, and my particular experience of being a mother.  My work is not just ‘about’ you, it is because of you….”

 The collaboration between my daughter, Chloé and I started at a very early age, whether she was aware of it or not.  Sure I dabbled in breast milk drawings and used it as a mixing medium with watercolors, but I was never really interested in the bodily fluids that maternity brings.  Instead, I became more aware of what it did to me, how it changed me every day forever, never to go back, because if you are a mother, you will always be a mother.

 The Cosmic Scribble, an ongoing ‘body’ of work, started when Chloé made some of her first marks on paper.  Instead of making her first drawings more precious, dating them and leaving them untouched in a drawer, I chose to interact with them. I felt that this was my prerogative, as her mother, to interact with her and her things as I thought fit. At the beginning, I may have gone back to the drawings and colored in the spaces on my own, but later it became a thing we did together while sitting at the kitchen table, or out to dinner waiting for food to arrive. For at the beginning, our lives are so intertwined… the womb and umbilical that turns into the nearness and proximity of breastfeeding and learning to walk.  Even now that she is ten, I wonder how she is doing or what she is doing away from my “eternal maternal”.

“...This is the everyday that happens in the home or in the studio.  I am interested in the blurring of the domestic and public...”

One night at bedtime, while Chloé was about to brush her teeth, I showed her my tongue that I cast in bronze called Mother Tongue, which led to a variety of photo sketches.  Most of the time this “work” is never shown, but the fact remains that this is very much part of the process.  This is the everyday that happens in the home or in the studio.  I am interested in the blurring of the domestic and public.  I call it, “performing visibility,” the showing or making visible that which is usually not seen because it takes place ‘at home’ and without an audience.  This is my practice.  I don’t have the time to “go to a studio”; my studio has been largely at home and in makeshift spaces.

 A few years ago while I had been recording sounds at home, Chloé had a tantrum getting ready for school.  I just kept on getting our lunches packed and breakfast made knowing that it would pass (eventually), but decided to record it.  She was late for school and I was late for the class that I was teaching.  When I got there, I told my students that I had proof of my delay if they wanted to hear it.  They all laughed and said yes, so I played the recording for them.  It was at that moment that I realized the difference it represented outside of the home.  While the tantrum was still painful to me, the recording created different responses from my students. This difference led me to think about other domestic things that when displaced and displayed in the public sphere of the gallery hold a much different meaning.

“..As she gets older, we collaborate more, activating in new ways the already charged mother/child space...”

Sharing Space (2012) is an edited 2-minute video of us “sharing space.”  We were at a restaurant and she got cold.  So, sitting on my lap, she stuck her arms in my cardigan that I was wearing. We re-performed this action in the studio for the camera.  As she continues to get in and out of my clothes, a metaphorical birthing and rebirthing occurs.  Humor also arises as I unknowingly strangle my child. This recording involves the practice of showing.  Chloé performs for no one but us.  Looking into the camera, she holds the viewer’s gaze, not some person who was taking the picture.  As she gets older, we collaborate more, activating in new ways the already charged mother/child space.

In Balance With (2010-2015) has been performed 4 times for an audience over the course of 4 years. Each time we perform, there are different items that go onto the seesaw and the pile grows with toys, books, laundry, pots, pans, and other things from our home. We, actually, have an ongoing joke that if I can’t find something; it’s probably in the gallery.  The seesaw starts off empty then I start to add objects to her side until we have balance.  Once balanced, I have to subtly adjust and counterbalance all of her movements.  The performance is over when she is ready to come down. The piece speaks to how I can only do my “work” so long as she is content and occupied.  Chloé is growing so both her body and her attitude toward the piece changes.  Each time I consider doing it, we have a long discussion about how she feels and if she still wants to do this with me. I imagine that at some point, she will no longer wish to continue.

“These sculptures are maternal visibility and institutional critique as they are installed and displayed in a gallery space...”

While some pieces involve my daughter directly and physically, others are more indirect.  In, Spaces In Between (2012), I was interested in making positive the negative space that is in between our interactions.  The edges are painted in hot pink enamel that glows onto the wall, highlighting the charged space in between Chloé and me. On the far right, you can see our two profiles coming together as we almost touch noses. Similar to the line of the seesaw that physically connects us in In Balance With, I was focusing on the highlighted line as an umbilical that connects our interactions and us.  These sculptures are maternal visibility and institutional critique as they are installed and displayed in this gallery space.  Abstract in nature, but true to form, these sculptures are a ‘for instance’. While they stand in for my daughter and me, they are life sized and could be you and your child, if you were to stand in the positions. 

As Chloé gets older, it seems the farther away from me she is able to be.  She no longer needs me for nutrition (physically), she no longer needs me for support (physically), and yet, I am always thinking about her in some capacity, the “eternal maternal”. We are of the same material, but are separate from one another. Even when we are not physically performing together, my work is still largely engaged in a dialogue about maternity, the impact of having a child in my life, and the overall lack of visibility of the maternal in the arts and in society.  And when my daughter says that the work is all about her, I say that, “ no, actually it’s about me and my particular experience of being a mother. My work is not just ‘about’ you, it is because of you….”

Cut From The Same (2012)

How Do You Get Through Words, was a four-hour performance piece, which started with a drywall wall. During the performance I hand cut sentences that questioned my availability and decisions with and for my daughter.  

May 2015 / Shira Richter, ISR

COUNTING OUR ASSISTS

I think the issue of understanding (or misunderstanding) the depths of mothering and art in our cultures is a skin deep bone deep issue. I think it touches on the foundations of our beings, that's why I say I'm a radical (root canal) fundamentalist. 

Why fundamental?

The fascinating work of evolutionary biologist, woman, and mother Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and her colleagues has exposed a huge blind spot in the research methods of her field, showing how the "true" nature and scope of mothering and care work has been miss-understood.  There it is, that word again: "miss-understood". (which can be also writtenMs. Understood, or Missed- as in missing something important). I mention her "womanhood" and "motherhood" for a reason- she admits it affected her way of seeing, and asking questions. 

Ah how I wish artists and scientists would cooperate more seriously. Similar ideas have been navigating  pioneer artistic focus and research for ever. For instance, in the field of film, one is supposed to "look for the conflict". This way of thought is so ingrained; I had to find underground creative tactics in order to make a film about Palestinain-Israeli female friendship.  Usually artists seek cooperation with scientists, because scientific research tends to support their own, less verbal research, but very seldom does science seriously seek the knowledge of artists. Art is viewed as an extravagant "extra" and not as a valuable field of research. I won't go into this (huge) subject here, but I'm happy to recommend a book that explores it, albeit through the eyes of the current ruling gender. 

 The whole of western culture- and I dare say capitalism ("free market"), is based on the "survival of the fittest" Darwinian idea, which focuses on what is thought of as (male) struggle and fight. But Hrdy and co. have found several missing pieces, which have a lot to do with -mothers. I'll be very unacademic in trying to sum it up crudely in my own artistic language: Turns out the "strongest" (or fittest) is actually the most loved and cared for. How else can such helpless dependent and care intensive baby creatures survive? I repeat: the "fittest" actually means- the most loved and cared for. Think of what kind of policy and decisions would be made if this was accepted as the core value of our culture. 

The other day I tried to explain this to my partner. It was after I got an exciting email from Sarah Blaffer Hrdy in response to an email I sent her in which I asked for a good size photo of herself holding a colleagues' baby. Exiting because it's not every day that your idol answers your email and is also so nice! The reason I wrote her was because of a photo gone viral of an Israeli male professor standing in the classical pose of a lecturer, while holding a real live baby.  In one of the many re-posts it wrote: "when the student's baby cried, this professor did an awesome thing...".  Up to the moment of writing this the post has earned57,234 likes, and 5,632 shares. Wow. It's very important to visualize and clap our hands when instead of kicking the mother student out of class, (like several instances I've heard about -including one at an art college), the professor (who is a great guy) picks up the child and continues. That in itself definitely deserves the photo-op and clapping likes. What got to me is how much clapping a man receives –especially from women, for doing the same thing female professionals have been doing for, well, a long time. (Yes, not all of them, several have put on the patriarchy together with the suit, but I personally know of quite a few).  It's not easy to concentrate AND sooth a baby, and women have been doing it forever. The problem is – we seldom get such a standing ovation from our cultures and especially from our own sex. In fact, the sad thing is we usually get the opposite. Is this a tiny instance of envy on my part? Well, yes. Sometimes envy is a normal healthy reaction that points to an unmet need.  Unmet needs are sometimes in our heads and hearts, and sometimes - they are in our cultures. I would like to explore this feeling and see where it leads to. 

About a year ago I noticed something interesting. Almost simultaneously, and without knowledge of each other, two extremely similar campaigns erupted in entities and countries continents away from each other. "Mothers demand change" an Israeli face book page came out with images of pregnant women dressed as prisoners, captioned: "Motherhood is not a Crime". In Canada, Mirci, and Demeter press, one of the first publishing houses of academic research on motherhood came out with a campaign saying "motherhood is not a liability". Both 'Liability' and 'crime'- are not exactly compliments. ("A liability can mean something that is a hindrance or puts an individual or group at a disadvantage ..." from Wikipedia). Both had strong reasons for their campaign, rooted in the behavior of the environment: Israeli women who are mothers were "coming out of the closet" about being rejected from the work force, or forced to do jobs way below their education, all because they became mothers. Up till now the scope of the phenomena was unknown (6829 members in the group). Few dared admit this. In Canada Mirci's,  main funder wanted to "close the money Fawcett" because, according to Orielly in this interview by Rachel Epp Buller, their focus on motherhood was viewed as a liability…believing that soon Demeter Press would reach what they called "market saturation" and run out of motherhood topics to publish. Both campaign messages were that mothers mothering and mother work is being considered unworthy of –the market. 

These examples teach us that in order to survive financially, instead of being proud of accomplishing the hard work of building a family rich in human relationship and knowledge, we should hide our mothering accomplishments from our CV, our job interviews, and our professional life. (This is why I cringe every time I'm expected to send a classical CV to an art proposal. I feel that what is most important to me-  is a liability to my CV).

Remember the viral baby- holding- guy- professor?

Photo of Griselda Pollock with baby

Well, to test the visual allure of an academic holding a baby I posted a photo I took way back in a conference in 2009 of Griselda Pollock, Scholar of international, postcolonial feminist studies in the Visual Arts - holding and soothing a colleagues' baby. So far (six days) it earned 35 "likes"- and 3 shares.  No competition with the male professor. Maybe the problem is the missing mathematic equation on a board behind her. Primatologist and evolutionary theorist Susan Blaffer Hrdy gave me a great story about trying to visualize her "allo mothering" (mothering another womans' baby/child) in a popular scientific magazine:

“Regarding the photo you requested: I am glad you noticed, and am happy to send you a copy. The photographer was Anula Jayasuriya, who is also the mother of that baby ... In addition I also attach an article about my work, rather ironically titled “Sexual Stereotypes”, that appeared in the British science magazine, ‘Nature’ whose (ironic!) cropping of that photograph might interest you. When ‘Nature’ asked me to send a photograph, I deliberately chose that one: Woman Scientist Holding A Baby (Indeed, Serving as Allomother for another Woman’s Baby), because, like you, I had a point to make. The editors had their own ideas of how women scientists were supposed to look; they cut the baby out. (My bold)”

Photo of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy with baby

So In 2002, like now, a woman's mothering abilities of another baby don't merit her much viral Appreciation. No standing ovation.  

 Am I clear in making the point- professional academic man acknowledged visually (photographed) and rewarded for holding baby, while professional women scientist/theorist censored, or not really appreciated for holding baby?

 If we think of the major discoveries' of Hrdy and co, you see the same phenomena repeating itself here. We, as a culture, seem to keep missing the value of the knowledge begot through real female mothering.

 Why am I so interested in the "clapping hands" regarding both mother work and artwork?

 This is a good question. And it's one I've been asked – especially by other women. What I've been told again and again is - "We are doing it because it's our choice. Because it's important". "Doing it is the reward, I don't need credit as well". "Wanting credit is from the  ego…"( "ego" as negative).

 Naomi Wolf, in her book Misconceptions writes: The message you receive from your work environment about how valuable your work is affects your psychological well-being. Every day I was getting the message that the work the women I knew and I were doing had little value.

 What I'm trying to show here is how on one hand we women can be conscious feminists, who realize how our surroundings devalue our work, and on the other hand wanting "Clapping hands" is viewed as something negative.

 I'll finish with an example from basketball. Don't ask, but I'm partly to "blame" our twin boys are serious players in the basketball league. Although the (Darwinian?) competitiveness goes against my beliefs, I do my best to try learn what it's all about. What fascinates me is the way every single move and action has a name, and a status. That's how men do it (a realization I was taught by "fire with fire" by Naomi Wolf). They value every thing they do and have even found a way - to stop the ultimate unstoppable- Time (!). My favorite status is the Assist; the instances in which a player throws a ball to another player who goes on to score a point. Collecting Assists is valuable for the career of a player. So, if you think about the many instances in which something materialized in the world because of something you said or did, that inspired, encouraged,  affected, helped, or supported someone else, it's very possible you have accumulated enough Assists to be considered an extremely valuable player. SO, how many 'assists' have you accumulated lately?

My favorite part of basketball