Yo, Mama

How to float above the crap about motherhood in the mainstream.

by Alisa Gordaneer
5/10/00

For one thing, there's no such thing as a perfect mother.

Ariel Gore and daughter Maia.

The Mother Trip: Hip Mama’s Guide to Staying Sane in the Chaos of Motherhood

by Ariel Gore
Seal Press, $14.95, 230 pp.

You think you’re living the alternative lifestyle – maybe you recycle, listen to indie rock and have piercings. You wear eco-friendly hemp clothing and think globally whenever you act locally.

Then you get pregnant, and, like probably every other knocked-up chick in the country, you rush out to buy the obligatory copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Suddenly, you’re swept up in a tide of mainstream sensibilities that’s inextricably linked with not knowing what exactly you’re doing with this little blob of babyness, and a whole canon of books – from both ends of the political spectrum – that proclaim "This is the Right Way!"

The culture of motherhood – not the idealized, Virgin Mary and/or June Cleaver cult of motherhood, but the contemporary, Million Mom March culture of motherhood – is a strange and polarized place.

On one side are the mainstream mothers, with dolls for girls and balls for boys. Nothing wrong with that or, if you’re into it, with staying home with the kids or letting baby cry itself to sleep.

On the other side are the rebels, the attachment parents who toss What to Expect in the trash along with the pacifiers and cans of formula. They sleep with their babies and breast-feed in public without giving a damn.

Maybe I’m painting it too black and white here, or pink and blue, but it’s hard to find a voice (despite the hundreds of parenting books, magazines and Web sites out there) that can reconcile motherhood, and all its social and cultural baggage, with a more alternative sensibility.

But riot grrrls and hippies and rebels and lesbians and dominatrixes and alternachicks get pregnant too, and even (gasp!) become mothers.

It happened to Ariel Gore while she was bumming around Europe at the age of 19. When she and her daughter got home to California, little in the way of parenting media (books, magazines, advice from nosy aunts, whatever) addressed her lifestyle.

So she started her own ‘zine. HipMama grew into hipmama.com and the essays she wrote for those two outlets grew into The Hip Mama Survival Guide: Advice from the Trenches on Pregnancy, Childbirth, Cool Names, Clueless Doctors, Potty Training and ToddlerAvengers, a book aimed at helping young mothers make sense of a world into which they didn’t necessarily fit. Chapters address such topics as how to deal with family court and bill collectors, as well as tantrums and diapers.

Now, there’s The Mother Trip. Part how-to guide and part collection of essays, this radical departure from most parenting media is in no way about how to be the perfect parent.

For one thing, Gore points out, there’s no such thing as a perfect mother. And two, if you take care of yourself instead of trying to fit some kind of idealized image of what a mother should be, she figures you’ll become a better mama anyway.

Although Gore’s discussions of the political and personal challenges she’s encountered as a single parent are thoughtful and candid, it’s the little tidbits hidden within this book that really set it apart.

For example, there’s a great (I tried it) recipe for pumpkin muffins, and one for chicken soup – included not because mamas should cook to keep their kids happy, but because mamas should also take the time to nurture and nourish themselves.

Gore’s version of self-nourishment includes being a living, thinking member of a community, even if it’s a virtual one.

Hipmama.com – mentioned in a number of the essays – is a lively forum for discussion. It’s also a radical community of women who give their kids names such as Phoenix, Zelda, Monk, Rock and Luna; who work and aren’t apologetic about having their kids in daycare, or don’t work and it’s not because they think staying home is their natural role; who use the word "shat" instead of cutesey-poo euphemisms in discussions about potty training.

Reading their postings, I suddenly felt better about feeding my toddler ketchup for breakfast or inadvertently teaching him all the variations of the word "fuck."

On the site, someone has posted a call to arms declaring Erma Bombeck – ‘50s housewife and humorist extraordinaire – should be canonized as the patron saint of housewives. In some ways, you could characterize Gore as the Gen-X Bombeck, which is both a compliment and a warning. Both are entertaining and witty. Gore is radical, and Bombeck, well, she was radical for her time. But Bombeck, for all her success, lamented the trials of laundry and couch-potato husbands, her syndicated column appealing to the readers of what were once called the women’s pages of daily newspapers.

I hope that doesn’t happen with Gore. Of course, she’s bound to keep stomping through the world of contemporary parenting, shaking things up like a toddler on a rampage – and that’s a good thing. But her voice comes from the fringes, and that’s where I hope it stays, a strident alternative to a contemporary society that espouses "family values" in a distinctly family devalued way.

As any new mama knows, when you’re doing something as quote-unquote normal as being a mom, it’s far too easy to lose yourself in the mainstream.

Alisa Gordaneer’s son thinks she’s the hippest mama he’s got.