open letters

Hollywood: Give Us Sci-Fi Heroines with Kids!

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Image: Background of cosmic photo. Text: "Hollywood: Give Us Sci-Fi Heroines with Kids!" We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So

Content note: Fairly minor spoilers for a variety of SF movies, mention of trauma relating to infertility.

2015 and 2016 have been fantastic years for action-adventure heroines. Rey saved the universe in Star Wars (despite the dearth of merchandise featuring her), Mad Max: Fury Road was filled with kick-ass women, Supergirl saved the world while her cousin was hypnotized, and Doctor Who’s Clara Oswald basically became a Time Lord. But there’s something missing. Perhaps it’s asking too much, too soon, but Hollywood, I ask of you – give us some geeky heroines with children!

Let’s get the obvious argument out of the way. Supposedly no woman would be getting in danger so often if she had kids at home.

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An Open Letter to Parenting Experts

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

I believe in being positive, especially as a parent, but sometimes I get frustrated. I get angry when people are being oppressed, when someone is reinforcing prejudicial societal patterns, or when people are putting others in unnecessary pain. These Open Letters are either to the people making me mad or those suffering.

Dear writers of parenting books and articles,

I have a bit of unsolicited advice. You’ve given us so much over the years that it seems time to give a little back.

1) Don’t over-promise unrealistic results. Look, we know there’s lot of competition on the parenting advice shelf. In the age of Twitter, you have to catch their eye right away. Nonetheless, it’s nothing but sheer cruelty to guarantee “Teach your baby to sleep (in just seven days)” or “How to eliminate tantrums and raise a patient, respectful and cooperative one to four year old.” While those claims are clearly absurd to people with two brain cells available to rub together, parents that have been waking up multiple times a night for more than a year or are trying to tolerate whiny kids don’t even have that minimum available. (I say this as a victim of the former situation.) Giving false hope is just mean.

2) Don’t shame parents when your tactics don’t work. When you claim your advice will work for all kids, you imply that if it doesn’t work, it’s the parent’s fault. For example, a number of books and articles emphasize how very important it is that your infant both sleep exclusively on their backs by themselves as well sleep through the night for a specific period of time. But there’s a percentage of kids who will never do that! Good luck explaining “but the books says you have to sleep!” to them.

3) Acknowledge yours may not be the only solution. Everyone knows different tactics work for different kids, even in the same family. So of course, a family may need to draw on a whole toolbox of ideas, not just the ones in a single book. But too often, you allude – or even occasionally state outright – that using other methods makes the reader a Bad Mother.

4) Don’t assume everyone has a Leave It to Beaver middle-class nuclear family. Increasing numbers of families have diverse structures, with single parents raising kids on their own, grandparents helping out, same-sex couples raising kids, and many more combinations. Parents may have high or very low incomes. The primary caregiver may be a mother or father or not even a biological parent at all. Yet you often give advice that’s only helpful, applicable or realistic for a small portion of the population. You recommend absurd amounts of unnecessary baby gear, assume a broad variety of available childcare options (FYI, nannies and au pairs are not affordable for most families), assume the mom will be doing most of the work, and give advice only helpful to parents with 9 to 5 schedules. This structure makes the rest of us feel like we don’t matter or even exist.

5) Don’t recommend – nay, require – contradictory actions in the same book. My “favorite” example is from the tome of pregnant lady-shaming, What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The authors recommend to eat locally as much as possible. Then just a few pages later, the same book recommends pregnant women eat 4 servings of fruit a day, especially mangos. Unless you actually live in South America, that’s ridiculous. Some good copy editing will save a lot of parents some head-banging, and not of the heavy-metal kind.

6) Don’t use the word “should” to refer to a child’s behavior unless you’re actually referring to a developmental milestone. Modern-day parents get just a tiny bit obsessive about their kids hitting their milestones. These days the only things we can turn to to know if our kid is “normal” is other parents, our pediatrician, or parenting books. While there are certain ones that it’s important to meet, it really muddies the waters when parenting books just make up new ones. For example, there’s no set standard for when your kid must sleep through the night. There are some adults who don’t sleep through the night!

7) Never use the term “mother’s intuition.” Most moms arrive home and think, “What the hell do I do now?” The sole extent of my “inborn knowledge” was “Oh crap, my baby is crying!” I knew I should do something to calm him, but what I should do eluded me. Suggesting that I should have some magical ability to know what to do made me even more insecure. If parenting intuition exists, it’s from the slow, beautiful process of learning to know a child’s personality and unique traits. It’s much more helpful to reassure new parents that it will get easier over time as they get to know their child.

Now all of this might make me sound rather, well, motherly. But I’m pretty sure you can handle it. After all, you’ve given plenty of “shoulds” and “should-nots” to us.

An Open Letter to Kids Who are Bullied: How to Fight Back

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

I believe in being positive, especially as a parent, but sometimes I get frustrated. I get angry when people are being oppressed, when someone is reinforcing prejudicial societal patterns, or when people are putting others in unnecessary pain. These Open Letters are either to the people making me mad or those suffering.

Dear kids that are bullied,

I know how you feel. It was many years ago, but I still carry the mental scars – of having gum stuck in my hair, being told that I “needed a facial,” having my poetry notebook stolen repeatedly, having a boy send another girl to tell me that he would rather cut off his dick than go out with me. These memories still sting, ring in my ears when I look in the mirror. But I survived. And more importantly, I learned some hard-earned truths. While my son is too young to be bullied – and I hope he never is – I’ll share them with him if necessary. In the meantime, I hope can help some bullied kids – and maybe adults – today.

1) Know that you aren’t alone.
Bullying is a huge problem – more than 20% of kids report being bullied. Even if you don’t know it, the same people who are bullying you are probably bullying others too. Unfortunately, no one wants to admit to being bullied; society sees it as shameful. So we blame ourselves, even though we’re the victims. And even though adults don’t want to admit it, bullying is a problem way beyond schools. Bullying is an abuse of social power, plain and simple, and there’s way too much of it in our society. From police brutality to victim-blaming rape culture to institutional classism, we have a culture that condones and even promotes bullying. Knowing how to fight back against bullying is an invaluable life skill.

2) Ignore the well-meaning advice to “ignore bullies.”
This is bullshit. If bullies don’t get a reaction, they will not stop – they’ll just scale up their abuse until they do get a reaction. Instead of diffusing the situation, this tactic actually ends up escalating it. Plus, as anyone who has ever tried to ignore a bully knows, it’s incredibly hard to actually do so. Inevitably, you’ll give even the smallest reaction away, providing a foothold for them to dig into.

3) Find your people.
Many people say to go to an authority figure if you’re being bullied. This is not entirely bad advice, but it’s highly flawed. In many cases, the authority figure is on the side of the bully, either because the authority figure is a bully themselves or the bully has a high social status. In other cases, the authority figure wants to help, but can’t do much about it, especially if it’s psychological, not physical abuse.

Instead, I suggest making friends with everyone who will be friends with you – no matter what their social status. In school, it’s exceptionally tempting to make fun of the kids below you on the social ladder, in hopes that you’ll be seen as “cool” by kids higher up. This is utterly false. Bullies, of every type and age, want to divide and conquer; they want you isolated. Even if you could earn their respect, you shouldn’t want to. They are terrible people; you deserve better friends. One of the best things I did in junior high was befriend a couple of people who were even more outcast than I was. While I did it at first out of pity, it turned out that I needed their friendship as much as they needed mine. Unless you’re at a really small school, you can probably find at least a couple of other “weird kids” to hang out with. Don’t forget that you can be “just friends” with people of the opposite gender. Most of my high school friends were guys and I wish I had gotten to know them earlier. I’m actually still friends with most of them.

If there are a few adults you trust, you can bring them into that circle of support. It’s up to you to them about the bullying or not, but knowing there is someone you can talk to openly is incredibly valuable.

If you’re on the absolute bottom of the social ladder, try to find your tribe elsewhere. See if you can meet people in a club, like a gaming group, church youth group or non-school sport. If you’re geographically isolated or truly can’t find other outlets, the Internet has a massive number of online communities where people do truly offer support to each other, such as the commenters on Ana Mardoll’s blog. While these can be essential, it’s still the best in my opinion to have in-person friends. It’s terribly difficult to offer a real hug through the Interwebs.

4) Find your purpose outside of popularity or mass social acceptance.
While finding your purpose is something adults struggle with for years, it doesn’t need to be that complicated. It’s just a matter of finding something you truly love and can spend time doing. This could be playing an instrument, reading a certain type of book, or being into gaming. Having a hobby or fandom can connect you with groups of like-minded people (see step 3) and give you something you can truly enjoy even when people are being terrible to you. If you’re a nerd, it’s extremely likely you already have something like this and it’s something bullies make fun of.

5) Show your strength in your own unique way.
This is basically the point at which you give bullies the middle finger. This is a completely voluntary step, especially if the bullies are especially strong or you’re a special target of theirs. But bullies hate nothing more than feeling like someone is apathetic about their opinion or actively working against them. They want passive people who grovel or at least dare not speak. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as telling them that you don’t care what they have to say. Mainly because you probably do care a little and apathy is extremely difficult to fake.

Thankfully, you don’t have to be completely apathetic – just enough to show that their bullying can’t change your behavior or who you are. It’s saying that, “I oppose what you are and your actions, but I refuse to stoop to your level.” While it’s obviously much more serious than most things anyone will face in high school, I draw the most inspiration from the Civil Rights movement. Those protests and sit-ins weren’t just to raise awareness – they were a direct challenge to those racist institutions. Those protestors were reclaiming their dignity, saying, “No matter how much you push us down, we will stand back up and look you right in the eye.”

Probably one of the most obvious ways of doing this is to be an unabashed fan of something that the bullies have teased you about, whether that’s video games, being in band, musical theater, books, music or whatever. Instead allowing them to shame you, be proud of it. Wear t-shirts, carry books proudly, start a club. At first, it will be incredibly hard because it may draw more attention. But if you show that you will love it despite their opinion, I think they’ll eventually stop. Instead of lack of emotion towards them, it’s an active embracing of a topic despite their social pressure. This is different from ignoring bullies because instead of a lack of emotion towards them, it’s an abundance of enthusiasm in the opposite direction.

There are other ways to subvert the social order as well. I never did it myself, but I think greeting bullies with a giant, enthusiastic greeting every time you see them would be a total mindscrew. This requires an obscene level of self-control and acting skill, but a theater kid might be able to pull it off. Anything that upends their social control will reduce their power and minimize the hurt they can cause others.

I hope that this helps a few people. Any advice that you have for kids or anyone else being bullied?

Breastfeeding Week: Open Letter to Advocates Against Covers

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

I believe in being positive, especially as a parent, but sometimes I get frustrated. I get angry when people are being oppressed, when someone is reinforcing prejudicial societal patterns, or when people are putting others in unnecessary pain. Rather than making Chris listen to me rant (yet again), I’ll write an Open Letter addressing whatever is making me angry.

As you can imagine from this week’s topic, I’m a big supporter of breastfeeding. I truly believe that hospitals, the medical institution in general, and all of society should support breastfeeding moms far more than they do, starting with placing the baby skin-to-skin immediately to accepting women feeding children in public. (Mega props to the Pope for furthering this cause.) I managed to breastfeed my son for a full year and am only now just tapering off. But I do have a reoccurring issue with how some advocates frame the issue of breastfeeding in public. While I appreciate that they don’t want to be shamed for nursing without a cover, I feel hurt by the way they refer to the idea of mothers covering themselves up. Terms like “breastfeeding burqa”, implying that I’m denying my baby fresh air (even though that article is pretty funny), and phrases like “I would never put my baby under a blanket!” make me feel as if I’m not “doing it right” or letting down feminists by wearing a nursing cover. While I think they intend to make nursing a more accepted activity, by denigrating a tool that enables many women to breastfeed who wouldn’t otherwise, I think they could be driving mothers away instead.

Personally, there is no way I would ever be able to breastfeed after a couple of weeks if I didn’t have my nursing cover. I am an extremely modest person; just scheduling the posts this week gives me the shakes. So when I started nursing Sprout in public, I became hyper-aware that people would be thinking about my breasts, even if they couldn’t see them. And that totally freaked me out. I was so nervous that even with the cover, I tried to make myself as invisible as possible. I sat in the back of the church instead of our usual spot; I fed Sprout in the car at an outdoor mall instead of on one of the many benches. There is absolutely no way that I could have started feeding him in public if there was the chance anyone would see my bare boobs, nipple exposed or not. And as any nursing mom knows, you absolutely need to feed your baby in public. Bathrooms are not appropriate places to bring hungry babies. So if it wasn’t for my nursing cover, I would have breastfeed my baby for a drastically shorter period of time. I suspect I’m not the only one in this situation. Now, some advocates would say we should just get over our neuroses and throw off societies’ restrictions. But it’s damn hard enough being a new mom – why add more emotional and social burdens than necessary?

Beyond the modesty issue, I wonder if Sprout himself would be able to eat in public places without the cover. He’s been a very observant, engaged baby since the day he was born. As a result, he’s always been easily distracted while eating. His very first night, I struggled to get him to latch as Chris and I talked. A moment after Chris left the room, he latched on perfectly, his attention no longer split between eating and our conversation. Even if he wasn’t too distracted in public to latch on, he would constantly be breaking his hold, exposing more nipple than a wardrobe malfunction would. He still does this when Chris walks in the room while I’m nursing. Even if I wasn’t quite modest, that would be a whole lot of public nudity and unfortunate leakage.

Beyond my personal experience, assuming people have the social capital to nurse their babies in public without a cover is a privileged position. Women of color and poor women already have huge societal burdens put on them and shouldn’t need to feel even more judgment. People are more likely to feel like they can make disparaging comments to them than a white, middle to upper class woman. Lastly, the consequences of social approbation are likely to be more severe for people who have less power to push back. While a manager of a restaurant or pool may give a more privileged person a warning first, they may go straight to kicking out someone who society already undervalues. Plus, these groups are already less likely to breastfeed, so they should have access to anything that might help them do it.

In general, we need to support breastfeeding moms in whatever way they choose to breastfeed. Shaming women or denigrating blankets or covers only harms new mothers that are trying to do the best for their babies and themselves. There’s enough judgment out there – let’s stand in solidarity in a positive way.

An Open Letter to Parenting Philosophers

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 6 Comments

I believe in being positive, especially as a parent, but sometimes I do get frustrated. I get angry when people are being oppressed, when someone is reinforcing prejudicial societal patterns, or when people are putting others in unnecessary pain. Rather than making Chris listen to me rant (yet again), I’ll write an Open Letter addressing whatever is making me angry.

I don’t believe in parenting philosophies. That’s not to say that I don’t believe they exist – the reams of parenting books and blogs would immediately disprove me. Rather, I don’t believe in their usefulness as moral and ethical frameworks. Instead, I think they’re useful as broad sets of guidelines from which parents can and should pick and choose based on their own values. Trying to apply something as restrictive as a specific ethical philosophy to something as situational, deeply personal, and chaotic as parenting is bound to end in frustration. Parents feel judged enough – making them feel as if it’s straight up immoral if they don’t follow your philosophy in every situation is just wrong!

Lately, I’ve felt very frustrated when I’m reading a blog post or book where I agree with the broad viewpoint but they take a position that’s so extreme that it doesn’t match anyone’s lived experience that I know. This is a pretty common issue with philosophical frameworks – it’s how you end up with annoying thought experiments like the trolley problem. Normally, this isn’t a huge issue. In “real life,” the only person who will judge you if you don’t follow a single philosophical framework in every area of your life is a freshman philosophy student. However, everything in parenting is about people’s personal, everyday lives. Unfortunately, most parenting philosophies don’t make space for the variability between families.

Often, this narrow viewpoint comes from the author’s unacknowledged privilege. This unexamined privilege shows up in all sorts of issues, from prenatal care to sleeping arrangements.

Broadly, it’s a good idea if pregnant women eat a variety of fruits and vegetables. But using language that’s going to inspire guilt in women who can’t meet those requirements (looking at you, What to Expect When You’re Expecting) is unfair to the many pregnant women who feel hideous nausea all of the time and can only eat very limited diets. And that’s not to mention the women who had food sensitivities before they got pregnant.

In general, breastfeeding is a important behavior to encourage and teach new moms how to do. But for women for whom breastfeeding exasterbates post-partum depression or is so awful that they’re in chronic pain, telling them that using formula denies your child “what is needed for development” is just reinforcing the narrative of failure that’s already running through their heads. Besides physical restrictions, there are many women who have to return to workplaces – especially retail and other service industry positions – that have no space or time accommodations for pumping, making breastfeeding after a few weeks impossible. New laws require employers to provide these resources, but considering how common wage theft is despite the fact that it affects a much larger population, I’m not confident in enforcement. While these articles often blame the larger society for not supporting breastfeeding instead of the individual, the language still feels intensely personal.

I’m all for the general idea of attachment parenting, but saying that co-sleeping and baby-wearing will guarantee that your child will never be a bully minimizes so many other social pressures and makes non-attachment parents feel unnecessarily guilty. Statements like that fail to acknowledge that not everyone is capable of that level of intense exercise after giving birth. A friend of mine was left with severe back pain after a very long, intense delivery and unable to carry her son around. However, that doesn’t mean that she loves him any less or he’ll be irrevocably damaged.

Beyond privilege, some of the philosophies are just absurd when carried to a certain point. I believe that babies shouldn’t be cooped up in seats or forced into positions they aren’t ready for. But claiming that propping your baby to sitting once in a while will doom him or her to a life of klutziness is ridiculous.

Basically, these philosophies and their advocates need to cut parents – especially moms, because they’re usually targeted at moms – some much-needed slack. Moms are expected to get everything just right these days, truly “leaning in” and “having it all” when that’s impossible or much too stressful than is healthy. Adding to that pressure by implying that moms who don’t follow a definitive philosophy are permanently damaging their children is irresponsible and mean. Babies have flexible brains and are remarkably adept at developing well even when we screw up once in a while. Similarly, making hyped up promises that everything will go perfectly – your baby will definitely sleep through the night, be wonderfully calm or naturally graceful – makes the parent who follow those philosophies and don’t get the results feel like there’s something wrong with them rather the idea that maybe the approach doesn’t work for their family. While there are (TW: descriptions of child abuse) some philosophies that no one should ever adopt, no single philosophy is perfect for every situation or every family.

Instead of presenting these philosophies as the end-all and be-all, I wish that the advocates would present their ideas as a toolbox of skills and options that parents can use as needed. I would like them to acknowledge that other philosophies may have some good points that parents may want to draw from. I would like them to even show parents how actions offered by their philosophy can fit with or complement others.

In the meantime, it’s up to us as parents to not allow ourselves to be intimidated by dire warnings and over-promises. By rejecting the formulation of One Right Way to parent, we can embrace the fluidity and chaos of parenting in all of its messy glory. By allowing ourselves the freedom to pick and choose, we can end up with what’s right for our families, no matter what anyone else thinks.