Clare's Thoughts

1. How do you define feminism? Why are you a feminist? When did you become one?
This is a multi-part answer. My mum is a feminist and was in the time before the word was invented. She left home at 17 in the 1940s because the opportunities for women where she lived in industrial England were very limited. She wasn't allowed to continue her education like her brothers. So we heard about that. A lot. And I'm one of 5 girls, so there was never any indication in our house that women were inferior in any way. My dad is wonderful and can't understand men who think that way. My brother is the same.

However, somewhere in my twenties, having married a chauvinist, I started to get weary of it all and although I still deeply believed in the equality concepts that go along with feminism I got tired of what I started hearing as rhetoric. Groups like the NACSW sounded shrill and defensive to my ears. Then as my kids got older (and my marriage broke up) I changed again. For the last 8 years I've raised my kids on my own (2 boys, 2 girls) and started working full time (and then some) and started looking at things through my own eyes again. I took my daughter on her first Take Back the Night Walk when she was about 12 and now she goes yearly with her friends.

So, after all that wordiness, I believe a feminist believes unequivocally that women and men have equal value and should have equitable rights, compensation, and opportunities. That can spin off into value for traditional women's work, etc., but if you have the core beliefs, that should happen organically.

2. What has surprised you most about parenthood?
What has surprised me most is how different each of my four children is, and how much seems to be "hard-wired," and how early that appears. Although I like to think that decisions I make in my parenting shape them, I'm not sure of the extent of that. I'm also surprised by the fierceness of my love for them and how difficult it is to step back sometimes and not always smooth the way.

3. What skills have you learned or honed as a parent?
Negotiation, empathy, a sense of fairness. Definitely time management and multi-tasking.

4. What work do you feel called to do? (You don't need to limit your answer to one thing).
I have a child with Down syndrome and my biggest calling is ensuring for him inclusive education and social opportunites, meaningful work and adequate housing. That calling is very much tied to my life as a parent.

My job, although paid, feels very much like a calling. I'm a book publicist and I am learning all I can about new media and ways to promote our books in social communities in a meaningful way (ie., not annoying). So my online life is very full too and extends past the business day.

Personally, outside work and family responsibilities, I am called to make music. It is something I've done all my life, whether singing with my siblings or playing in an orchestra. It's not my living, but it feels like life's breath if I go without it too long.

5. Could you put your identity into a few key words? ie. mother-writer-student. How do you imagine your identity changing in ten years? Or twenty?
sure. mother-writer-student-advocate-musician-community organizer
In ten years I hope that I will no longer be a student. Otherwise no change.

6. What is work? What is leisure? Do you have enough time to do the work that you want to do?
Very much a crossover, and no I don't have nearly enough time.

7. Payment is the most obvious way to assign value to work; are there other ways?
Payment is good and necessary, but I am just as fulfilled by my volunteer efforts. Success, a sense of community, a feeling of a job well done.

8. When people ask: what do you do, how do you reply? How does your reply make you feel?
I always start with my paid work, but then I find it's incomplete so I start adding. Then they get this kind of stunned look on their faces and I feel like I've been bragging. Which is not what I meant to do. It's just all important to me.

9. How have your goals for yourself changed since becoming a parent? What help do you need to reach those goals?
I used to be content with simple goals (I had achieved them -- get married and have kids). I was very happy and lucky to stay home with my kids for 9 years, but I still volunteered a lot at the school. Now I've gone back to work full time and school part time. I need the degree to advance in my work, but I'm not looking outside my current company, so my goals are modest but include increase in responsibility and compensation.

Outside my job my goals are always to stay involved in issues of social justice.

My goals for my kids include them having the opportunities I had. Being the sole provider for my kids makes it more difficult so I've had to make choices. We buy much less "stuff" but the kids take lessons, go on trips, etc.

10. How has feminism failed mothers / fathers (if you think it has)? Personally, what do you think feminism has given mothers / fathers? What could it give?
I think anything that takes away choice threatens equality. For example, older feminist ideas that said you shouldn't stay home with the kids, that you had to have a career. There was no sense that it was ok to choose a simpler life, or that you could be a feminist and just really, really want to spend time with your babies. I think that has changed, and it's good.

I don't have a lot of insight on this one. I'm just really glad that I'm raising my girls to question the status quo and the idea that someone else imposes on them what they SHOULD do as a woman.