Alice Walker and Rebecca Walker

My sister-in-law lent me a book “Baby Love – Choosing Motherhood after a lifetime of ambivalence” by Rebecca Walker, and said that I might find it entertaining.

Only after I started reading it, did I realize that Rebecca Walker was the only daughter of the black feminist and writer Alice Walker during her only marriage to a Jewish American lawyer. Apparently, the daughter never got any encouragement from the mother about having kids, as the mother viewed motherhood as a sure way to kill a woman’s freedom and possibilities. Now that the daughter has had a son, they no longer speak to each other! Rebecca herself is already a rather avant-garde Bohemian activist and writer, who has written extensively on feminism. She grew up spending two years at a time with one parent. Now that she’s also a writer, there is definitely some mother-daughter rivalry. Like her mother, Rebecca Walker experimented with lesbianism and promiscuity (at least that’s what it sounds like to us non-Bohemians) in general But unlike her mother, she eventually decided to settle down with one partner and have a baby.

I have long decided that the feminist movement was actually a failure – making women believe that “equality” has to imply “sameness”. Of course, in order to be exactly equal, women have to not bear and raise kids, because men don’t; women have to put their own career and ambition above everything else, because men do; women have to be boisterous and loud, because men are; women have to sleep around, because men have; and so on, and so forth. As a result, a whole generation of women who are perhaps a little older than Rebecca Walker have decided that they will live a “free” life, in order to be happy, only to realize later in life that they are not any happier. They rallied to the cry of the leaders of the feminist movements, only to realize that they had nothing to fight for. I believe that a life without kids is fine, as long as one has enough to fill a life. However, many women under the influence of radical feminism have chosen deliberately not to have kids, only to have nothing else fill their lives. They are no Alice Walker, who has indeed been busy promoting her ideas for decades. But they have taken up Alice Walker’s fury, without Alice Walker’s reason to be furious. It is as if they have blindly decided to join a revolution, only to realize that they were never the down-trodden mass that needed such a revolution. They would realize when it’s too late that their interests would have been best served had they not joined this revolution, because they were never subjected to the oppression that inspired this revolution.

In a way, I can see why the Alice Walkers had to go to such offensive extremes in their times by renouncing family and motherhood altogether. That is because they did live in a different time, which was indeed very difficult for women. Back in their times, if they chose to have kids, they would have to stay home to take care of them, because their husbands would not and there would be no other support either. If they chose to get married, they would have to stand behind their husbands and serve in a supportive role, because there was no other way for a marriage to work. The entire society was against them if they wanted to have a life of their own – while being wives and mothers. Therefore, they felt compelled to make a radical choice to be heard or noticed – by renouncing motherhood, they would not have to be bound at home; by renouncing monogamy, they would not have to suffer quietly men’s infidelity; by renouncing anything moderate, they would not have to answer to other traditions they found suffocating, because after all, there were many societal traditions that were unfair and suffocating to women back then. Alice Walker did have a reason to be so extreme and offensive.

Things have changed dramatically in the 21st century. Now that we have had a few decades of evaluating the results of the radical feminist movement besides taking into account the current socio-economic environment, we should be able to declare that the Alice Walkers no longer serve a great purpose today. Thanks to their effort, there is much greater opportunity for women these days. But because of their effort, the generation after Alice Walker no longer should act as if the entire world owed them. The world did owe Alice Walker, but not Rebecca Walker.

However, one of the biggest side effects of the radical feminist movement is that it allows today’s women to shun all responsibility by resorting to excuses. If they have ever relocated for their husbands’ careers, they blame their lackluster careers on the husbands; if they had ever done anything at home, they blame that the husbands were not sharing equal burden. I do believe that some women with really busy work and social lives have made the right choice in not having kids – they don’t need kids and they really don’t have time for them. There are also women who have not found the right partners with whom to have kids, so they naturally pursue a different life, which can be equally fulfilling. But for many other blind followers of Alice Walker and the feminist movement, they have neither Alice Walker’s independence – they still want husbands to support them (see an earlier blog on “Fortress Besieged”); nor Alice Walker’s talent or hard work – they are not accomplished in anything in particular. But their conscious and deliberate choices of not having kids simply have led them to have more time to complain, to lament, to resent and to begrudge – if they have chosen deliberately not to have kids, they ask indignantly, how come they have not led a glamorous, accomplished and adventurous life so far? – It is as if they have carved out all this time, only to realize that they don’t need any of this time after all.

Now that Rebecca Walker has become a mother, it has not stopped her from being a writer. In fact, she wrote this book about how she came to embrace motherhood after a whole life of ambivalence, which she has blamed on her mother. To some extent, she was right to blame her mother, as her mother was a heavy influence on her. Yet on the other hand, aren’t we all responsible for our own decisions once we reach adulthood? She seems to imply that it was wrong of her mother to dismiss motherhood, as it turned out to be a great source of joy for herself. Well, maybe that was not the case for a mother in the 1970s who still wanted to have a writing and activist career. Alice Walker was probably right in resenting motherhood in her times, just as Rebecca Walker is right in embracing motherhood today.

As with most things in life, we tend to over-correct and over-compensate. If the mother suffered in one direction, she would insist on her daughter going the other direction as far as possible, not realizing that the other extreme could be as dangerous or traumatic, and not realizing that her daughter naturally had no inclination to go the other extreme. In other words, only if a woman has been subjected to the submissive role of a wife/mother in the old days would she necessarily want to defy any and all responsibilities of a wife and a mother. Likewise, only if a woman has been subjected to the constant lectures of feminism would she want to go the other direction of becoming a stay-home mother – apparently many women graduating from Ivy League schools these days have chosen that over a busy career, much to the consternation of their own mothers!