Society poses many obstacles to motherhood, panelists say

The so-called “Mommy Wars” – the conflict between mothers who work outside the home and stay-at-home moms – are more than a simple debate about how best to raise children, according to panelists at a recent discussion, “Valuing and Reclaiming Motherhood.”

The March 19 event, held at the Women’s Center in the Student Union, was part of Women’s Herstory Month.

The Mommy Wars are “heavily constructed by the media,” said Barbara Gurr, a doctoral candidate in sociology and instructor in the Women’s Studies Program.

The “hidden Mommy Wars” are much more insidious, she said.

“That’s what happens in our culture that prohibits women from being the kind of mothers they want to be, and the way in which the government and politics control motherhood.”

In the U.S., motherhood is the number one cause of poverty for women, Gurr said: “The lost wages, lost retirement, and lost Social Security have an impact on you.”

Homicide is the number one cause of death for pregnant women in this country, she maintained.

“We should be outraged,” she said.

“That’s war. That’s violence. That’s war against motherhood.”

Gurr said there is a “war on reproductive rights and reproductive freedom. People don’t understand how endangered access to safe, legal affordable abortion is.”

She said several dozen counties in the U.S. don’t have any access to abortion.

“If you live in one of those counties you have to drive far even to get advice about abortion.”

She noted that 16 states still have anti-abortion laws on their books that predate the Supreme Court’s 1973 case, Roe v. Wade.

“Georgia, South Dakota, and Oklahoma require woman seeking abortions to receive state-written information on the topic, and the state legislatures in these states are very anti-choice,” she said.

“That impinges on your life.”

She said that in Connecticut, access to emergency contraception for rape victims is a “serious issue.”

Women in the U.S. in same-sex partnerships face legal discrimination over the right to be a mother, she said, whether they want to adopt or have biological children.

“Our country has a long and deep history of forcible sterilization of women of color,” Gurr added.

“This is a very serious war against mothers. That says something about who can be a mother and who cannot be a mother.”

She discussed a form of chemical birth control that was tested on women in communities of color, largely the Native American population.