The Perennial Travails of the Working Mother

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  From the New York Times (2/22/07):

For years, mothers have been taking to the Internet to blog or post messages about the travails of motherhood, commiserating, fuming or laughing about their shared lives. But in the last year there has been a marked increase in those who are going beyond simply expressing their feelings. In a throwback to their mothers’ — or was it their grandmothers’? — time, they are organizing about family and work issues.

A generation of mothers who are largely perceived as postfeminist in every way, from sex to economic discrimination, has begun a consciousness-raising that is almost old-fashioned were it not for the technology involved. Raised to believe that girls could accomplish anything, these women have reached parenthood, only to find they faced many of the same pay, equity and work-family balance issues that were being fought over decades before. From that awakening, they say, has come the inkling of a new movement.

In many ways, these groups are repackaging issues that have been around for nearly 50 years and have proven intractable despite the efforts of legions of activists, lawyers and elected officials.

But what MomsRising has done, the organizers say, is frame its concerns as family and economic issues, which resonate for a younger generation of women. (They say they will include the fathers later.)

It is not a coincidence that MomsRising is using the tactics of MoveOn.org, the influential liberal organizing site that helped propel Howard Dean’s presidential candidacy. One of the group’s founders is Joan Blades, who, with her husband, Wes Boyd, founded MoveOn.

Read Mom’s Mad. And She’s Organized.  Thanks to my own Mom for the tip.