Performative wholesomeness

the latter megan milks sent to me via a secret santa book exchange, and i thought about it a lot, especially in light of some things that are underway. i found it frustrating because 1. it wasn’t gay enough and 2. i feel like sometimes she let theory and jargon overshadow things that are known facts about child development. i especially got frustrated by this: 

The fluidity and ambiguity of family boundaries prized by those who celebrate families of choice may appear risky to those (including children) who do not enjoy economic independence or physical or psychological autonomy. at the same time, such fluid and ambiguous families may be a necessary choose for those with meager resources” (194).

If “fluidity” means uncertainty and unpredictability, well yes. stability is a developmental need of children, and if a person’s interpretation of “chosen family” means that children don’t know where they’re going home to or who’s going to take care of them, of course that’s going to seem “risky.” because children literally need to know who’s going to take care of them and what’s going to happen for the sake of their brains and social development. i find this language annoying and privilege-blind, because i work with moms and families who work SO FUCKING HARD to maintain stability for their kids in the midst of crisis. for an educated woman with lots of choices and access to resources to be glib about the importance of stability seems like a slap in the face to moms who bust ass  to work their networks, house their kids, and provide routine when everything is uncertain, and that last sentence feels a little lip-service-y.

overall i find that theorists want to theorize the lives of people with way less choices as being “related to their own” in a way that sort of ignores social forces, economics, and access to resources, which aggravates the social worker in me. (most notably she writes that “the ‘mad’ and ‘bad’ mothers who commit infanticide and filicide, the drug addicted black or bother mother and the unwed teen mother…can be seen as resisting social norms” (16)… which, like, what? to talk about mental illness, substance abuse, and poverty as, in and of themselves, acts of resistance? while those mothers may resist social norms in interesting and  important ways, i don’t think the existence of those mothers should prove a queer theory point about “resistance.” probably a lot of those women would love access to the resources that would make them healthy, secure, and safety housed so they can be “normal” moms not just struggling to survive. 

a couple times i wrote “rude!” in the text because of her obvious desire to distance herself from “normal” moms who don’t know about queer theory, or who use technology to keep track of their kids’ activities rather than being a super cool”cyborg mother,” or who “tolerate abuse by their chosen partners” (192). a lot of this felt like “i’m a queer feminist; those women are not” (even though she has a whole chapter about religious polygamy and how we shouldn’t create distinctions between “good” multi-mother families and “bad” ones). in her desire to “blur the lines between our (good) selves and the (bad) Other” i feel like she erases a lot of important information and distinctions about choices and access to resources. (i haven’t read a lot of theory in a good long while, but it seems like maybe this is A Thing that queer/critical theorists like to do, use the bodies/lives of the Other to make a point?)

[i want to be super clear in raising these critiques that i’m an educated white woman who’s not currently a parent, and whose perspective on this is as a helper/advocate for families in poverty/crisis, NOT as a person in poverty/crisis myself)

i’m making it sound like i hated this book, which i did not, not at all. there was a lot about it that i found really thought-provoking and useful, especially the parts where she talks about coalitional politics, solidarity, and difference:

coalitional families do not merely acknowledge difference, they also value engagement with difference….place value on the difference contributions made to a family by members with different talents, capacities, and dispositions as well as different needs and vulnerabilities…contributions may include demonstrations of human vulnerability and interdependency, as well as resistance to and critiques of forms of care taking that diminish, devalue, or misunderstand the needs of the one being cared for…the contributions of some members may include exposing and disrupting assumptions of white privilege…because the ubjectivites of family members emerge from different positionings within the family…each will contribute different perspectives in constructing or reconstructing family histories, stories, and memories, and thus to familial self-definitions…contributions to ones’ family will also include bringing home what one has learned during one’s travels to worlds outside the home. in a coalitional family, one engages these and other differences as a site of potential growth and transformation (221). 

i want to keep writing/thinking about this book. it’s been really foundational in some thoughts about abjecting and othering children (that i’m not ready to share yet). it crosses my mind daily.