Reflections on Mother’s Day

As an academic, May is a very hectic time for me professionally.  It was a blur, but Mother’s Day was almost two weeks ago.  Around that time, two very different Mother’s Day-themed articles caught my attention.  They seemed apropos to share in light of my recent posts on women’s roles and family separation.

The first article is about the “most powerful” moms: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/world-s-most-powerful-moms.html?page=1.  It originated from Forbes. 

I wasn’t really sure what they meant by “powerful.”  That is sort of an ambiguous term.  Power derives from a variety of sources, e.g., actual authority in the work place, influence in the home, influence in one’s community or profession, physical strength, the size of one’s bank account or credit limit, etc.  I wasn’t even sure what kind of power Forbes was intending. 

And it just seemed an odd thing to try to rank.  Power is hard to quantify.  I’m not really sure why one would want to quantify it and rank people, but there is interest in that apparently. 

When I came across the article, I also just wondered about societal attitudes towards power.  I guess by virtue of this ranking by a famous business magazine, power is something people admire and maybe even desire. I suppose I know that intellectually, but that does not make a lot of sense to me.  And I don’t know I had any particular admiration for the women who made it into this elite list.

From a Christian world view, power is not something to be envied or necessarily pursued.  Jesus rejected attempts to give him earthly power and instead made himself vulnerable on the cross.  Dr. Tony Campolo wrote a fascinating book about that: Which Jesus?: Choosing Between Love and Power.  I blogged about the book a couple years ago: http://progressivechristianitylaw.blogspot.com/2009/10/which-jesus-choosing-between-love-power.html.  It is a terrific book and I highly recommend it.

The second article I came across was a photo essay about Mother’s Day in Prison:  http://news.yahoo.com/photos/mother-s-day-in-prison-slideshow/#crsl=%252Fphotos%252Fmother-s-day-in-prison-slideshow%252Fmother-s-day-in-prison-photo-1336857250.html.  Having just spent a lovely day with my own precious kids, I shed a bunch of tears when I looked at these photos on Mother’s Day evening. 

Being a mom inspires one to want to protect and nurture the vulnerable little human beings who are your children.  That is what being a mom is all about.  It is your job to take care of them, keep them from harm, and help them develop into the people God intended.  You’re supposed to hug them when they have nightmares or get frustrated by long division.  You are supposed to give them a smile and tell them they are beautiful even when they feel ugly due to a new hairstyle or a pimple.  You are supposed to make them a healthy breakfast even if you are exhausted and haven’t consumed your coffee yet.  You do those things not because anyone makes you do them, but because you have such a profound and powerful love for these little people.  You’d do just about anything for them. 

With that mindset, I looked at the photos in this slideshow and tried to imagine the experiences of these children and mothers who live so far apart, who see each other so infrequently.  These children, who have to be bused in to see their moms on Mother’s Day, are essentially growing up without a mom.  Quite a stark contrast to the Forbes article, these incarcerated moms are incredibly powerless.  The most personal, most vital relationships of their lives are completely dictated by the impersonal decisions made by others in the criminal justice system.

I teach Criminal Law.  I understand retributionist and utilitarian arguments for imprisonment.  But the reality is that the vast majority of women in prison have not committed any violent offense.  Most are serving time for drug offenses and/or are caught up in an overly broad net of accomplice liability when their husbands, boyfriends or lovers actually commit the target offense. 


And I won't even get into the issue of wrongful conviction.  Over 90 percent of criminal cases never go to trial.  Hiring a lawyer is expensive and court-appointed attorneys are notoriously over-worked.  So, there are serious issues as to whether people in prison have even committed the crimes for which they are serving time.  But that is a complicated issue for another day.

Even assuming everyone in prison is guilty, in this age of dire government debt and overspending, I don’t understand why we insist on continuing our ill-conceived experiment in mass incarceration.  Others have written at length how we incarcerate a higher percentage of our population than any other nation—even the People’s Republic of China can’t compare.  Criminologists and fiscal conservatives have made cogent arguments that we need to take a smarter, more financially responsible approach to criminal justice.  I tend to agree.

But looking at this photo essay, the more pressing issue to me was what we’re doing to families.  Our experiment in mass incarceration has been going on for several decades.  In a country that purports to embrace family values, how can the ripping apart of families be a good thing?  How can there be no allowance made to support the retention and nurturing of family bonds?  What do we think will happen to the precious little children who grow up without enough hugs and encouragement from their moms (and dads)?

Psalm 116:16
Truly I am your servant, LORD; I serve you just as my mother did; you have freed me from my chains.

Discovery Atlas: China Revealed (Separation of Families)

There was another family highlighted in the film that I wanted to mention.  A male window washer in Shanghai was chronicled.  He is a migrant from the provinces who had come to seek better wages in the big city.  He risked his life on a daily basis doing a very dangerous job.  He washed high rise office buildings at night to avoid disrupting elite professional workers during business hours. 

Sadly, he lived in Shanghai alone.  He moved to Shanghai for economic opportunities, but due to the limited freedoms people have to relocate within the PRC, his wife and child had to stay in their home village.  That is such a sad situation, but not uncommon in the PRC in the twenty-first century. 

Tragically, this pattern in the PRC is not new in the world.  It is not uncommon for couples and parents/children to be split apart for long periods because of dire economic conditions that prompt adults (usually but not always males) to go elsewhere to earn money to support the family. For example, the current situation in the PRC is not unlike the plight of Mexican and Central American migrants in the United States who are separated from their families for months or years at a time.  And it is reminiscent of the separation of families in South Africa during the apartheid era when men would go work in mines or other locations far away from the “homelands” where their wives and children were legally confined.

Discovery Atlas: China Revealed focused on the window washer as he traveled home to see his wife and child at Lunar New Year.  This is a very common practice.  Many adults in the PRC have had to leave their families in the provinces to seek jobs in large urban settings.  They typically are poor and don’t have the resources to travel home very often.  The Lunar New Year is a huge holiday in Chinese culture, perhaps analogous to Christmas in the United States.  It is the time when many such families reunite. 

I felt so sad in watching the documentary that when the window washer arrived in his village, his little daughter did not recognize him or show any excitement over his presence.  She seems stunned and weary of him.  Understandably, he is heartbroken to be a stranger to his only child.  What parent wouldn’t be?  He has had to make huge sacrifices to provide financially for his family, and his daughter does not even know him.

Psalm 2:7

I will proclaim the LORD’s decree: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have become your father.”

Discovery Atlas: China Revealed (Women and Families)

There were a few other parts of Discovery Atlas: China Revealed that seem particularly relevant to this blog.    For example, part of the documentary featured the PRC’s war on drugs.  The film focused on the nation’s drug police.  There was a scene where a taxi driver was arrested for dealing drugs, and the narrator noted that he would face the death penalty for such crimes.

The film then focused on the experience of a female drug police officer.  As a woman, she had broken barriers to succeed and excel in her profession.  It was noted how rare and amazing her achievements were in the male-dominated culture of the PRC.  It was also noted that she constantly had to prove herself despite her past achievements.

The film also noted that this female drug police officer was a single woman.  In her interview, she expressed that she couldn’t find Mr. Right, and men did not seem to approve of her professional accomplishments.  In listening to her, I came away with the sense that she was destined to a life of loneliness simply due to her professional success.  That was very sad to me.

However, I was heartbroken by the attitudes of the parents of this female drug police officer.  Apparently, she was their only daughter.  In their interview, they initially described their pride in her accomplishments.  But contradictorily, they also spent a lot of time expressing concern that she had not taken a more traditional path in life.  Her parents wished she had become a full-time wife and mother. 

My heart just broke for the female drug police officer.  She had worked so hard and accomplished so much, but she was still being condemned by her parents.  And how hurtful it must have been to be condemned for not having started a family.  I had the sense that she was already sad about her inability to find a supportive, suitable partner.  I had the sense she did not want to end up alone in the world such that her parents’ condemnation seemed to be rub salt in the wound.

Moreover, I felt very frustrated that the parents were so ungrateful for their daughter’s hard work.  Despite the fact that she comes home late from grueling hours at her job with the drug police, she cooks for her parents and cleans their clothes (by hand because they did not have a washing machine).  She seemed to be supporting them financially and caring for all their basic needs.  They lived in her home.  She was clearly making a lot of sacrifices for them. 

This drug police officer was caring for them and was asking little of them, which seemed odd to me.  They looked to be about 60 years of age and in very good health.  Indeed, I was surprised they didn’t have jobs themselves.  They seemed a little young to have retired.  But even if they had retired, they seemed to be perfectly capable of caring for themselves.  I was stunned that they were not doing more to pitch in around the house.  From my perspective, they ought to have been washing her clothes and having a hot meal on the table for her when she got home from a long day on the job.  The parents’ attitude seemed selfish and not loving.

Colossians 3:21

Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged.

Discovery Atlas: China Revealed (Female Beauty)

I love learning about different cultures.  For various reasons, I have a particular interest in the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”).  A while back I watched a fascinating documentary on the country.  It was part of the Discovery Atlas series, which apparently features vignettes of people in different parts of the planet to give viewers a sense of the culture of a particular land. 

The episode I watched was called Discovery Atlas: China Revealed.  It was released in 2006 and is narrated by actor James Spader.  I found it fascinating and would highly recommend it.  I watched it with my children; we all enjoyed it and learned a lot.  In particular, to continue with the themes of recent blog posts, I would like to focus on a few aspects of the documentary that I especially found interesting.

The film described how there is huge competition for professional jobs in the PRC. And the film noted that such job competition was particularly difficult for women.  To explain the situation, one woman, who went by the Western name “Eliza,” was interviewed along with her boyfriend. 

In the interview, Eliza’s boyfriend noted that getting a good job in the PRC was not dependant entirely on one’s professional qualifications.  With Eliza standing next to him and listening to everything he said, the boyfriend explained that if there are two female candidates with the same qualifications, the better-looking candidate would get the job.  I felt rather humiliated for Eliza because the clear suggestion was she was not good looking.  And it was a strange suggestion because to me Eliza looked quite lovely.  The narrator then explained that with such intense competition, aspiring professionals do whatever they can to get a leg up on fellow job-seekers.

The documentary then followed Eliza’s consultation with a traditional Chinese medicine expert who noted her dehydrated skin and the impact stress was having on her appearance.  Eliza then went for more extreme measures; she visited a plastic surgeon.  The documentary then followed her decision to get a number of cosmetic surgeries. 

This was mind-blowing to me.  These were expensive, painful and time-consuming surgeries.  Moreover, any surgery involves serious risks, including death.  It was tragic to me that anyone would feel compelled to devote such resources and take such risks just to improve one’s appearance.  And it was particularly tragic when the pressure was attributable to trying to get a job in an office that would not appear to have anything to do with one’s appearance.  Eliza was not applying for jobs as a model or actress.

One of the surgeries Eliza elected involved changing the shape of her face.  Another involved a controversial procedure to create more of a crease in the eyelid to give Eliza’s eye more of a European appearance.  These were surgeries with huge repercussions and would completely alter what this young woman looked like.

Eliza explained to the filmmakers that she knew that she had classical Chinese beauty, but she said that was not enough.  Without any sense of irony, Eliza noted that the surgeries would make her look more like a “Barbie doll” and such dolls are so “lovely.”

I’m not even sure where to start.  The documentary was fascinating, but this portion of the film was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever viewed.

To American ears, it would be easy to look down on Chinese culture for such blatant sexism.  It would be easy to take the superior attitude that such things could never happen in the U.S.  I’m not sure that is true though.  We may just be less open and honest about it.

Several years ago, Barbara Walters did a report on 20/20 about the role of appearance in how people perceive others.  Studies showed that we make judgments on people based on their appearance.  We are drawn to make favorable judgments about attractive people, harsher judgments on people who are not attractive. There was a part of the report about job interviews.  Attractive people did better with the same qualifications than less attractive people.

I think I have seen such subtle attitudes play out in the course of my professional life as a lawyer.  I’ve known female colleagues with great credentials and talent, who are obese or have very visible acne scars, and somehow never get a good legal job.  I’ve always suspected that their appearance had something to do with it. 

I’m no longer in practice and am now an academic.  Even before I stepped into the classroom, I was well aware that female profs get judged (at least in part) based on their appearance.  I had heard that through the grapevine, e.g., from trusted female advisors and at a new professor conference.  Many of us feel the need to powder our noses, put some lipstick on and/or comb our hair before stepping in front of the class.  We know our appearance is scrutinized—much more, I suspect, than our male colleagues. 

Over the semesters I’ve been teaching, I’ve had countless student comments about the shorter (or longer) length of my hair and details of my jewelry.  I even have had students feel at liberty to ask pretty personal questions like whether I color and/or perm my hair!  I was visiting with a female colleague not long ago, and we laughed that we both avoid mid-semester hair cuts if at all possible.  We have learned through past experiences that such changes are too distracting to students.    We now limit our hair cuts to winter and summer breaks.

I had heard over and over in various ways that course evals are in part a reflection of snap judgments at the beginning of the course, and such snap judgments are disproportionately influenced by physical appearance.  Repeatedly, I’ve heard female profs half jokingly say they’ve considered plastic surgery.  I don’t think the American women who’ve said that to me really mean it.  But I think it is telling that in the 21^st century anyone even makes jokes of that kind.  In the United States, we may think we’ve come a long way, baby, and the status of women here is vastly superior to their status in China.  I’m not sure that we necessarily are light years ahead in this area.

John 7:24

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

"More Beautiful"

Ironically, just a few hours after my last post, I was listening to Christian radio and heard another song that fit with the recent themes in this blog.  The song is Jonny Diaz's "More Beautiful."  It is a powerful song and fits nicely with the songs in the last post, so I wanted to add it.  Take a listen by using the link below.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lb-bRQMCBs&feature=related

1 Samuel 16:7

"The Lord does not look at the things man looks at.  Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."

Songs about Beauty

I’ve been blogging recently on our culture’s double standards with respect to physical appearance for men and women, as well as the culture’s impossible standards for female beauty.  There are many disturbing aspects of these phenomena.  But as a mother to daughters, one aspect that particularly concerns me is the struggle of girls and young women to conform to these standards. 

First, they are unattainable standards.  As I have noted before, these images are not reality.  Between the Botox, the plastic surgery and the air-brushing, what we see is only an idealized vision of what women should look like. 

Young people especially don’t always understand the falsity of these images.  And it causes all kinds of pain when girls and young women can’t make themselves look like these phony popular culture images being lauded.  When females try to live up to these standards, it is equivalent to boys and young men trying to live up to the standard set by the Superman character in comic books.  It’s a no-win situation.

Second, as a person of faith, I particularly worry about the misplaced time and effort when our youth are encouraged to focus disproportionately on their appearance.  At best, physical beauty is fleeting.  It is not permanent.  And Jesus taught us to minister to the brokenness of those around us.  That is how we should use our time and resources instead of primping and buying tons of make-up and accessories.

There are two songs I wanted to share that seem apropos to these concerns about our culture’s fixation on physical beauty.  They are accessible at the links below.  I hope you enjoy them.

“Beautiful” by Mercy Me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C2o0jHNRuU

“Fingerprints of God” by Steven Curtis Chapman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWtbq4tl1w8

Matthew 7:24-27

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

Models v. Most Women: A Growing Weight Disparity

Following up on the post about Jennifer Hudson’s motivation to lose weight, I came across an eye-opening report recently.  It is available at the link below:

http://news.yahoo.com/video/entertainment-15749636/models-vs-real-women-growing-body-gap-27868545.html#crsl=%252Fvideo%252Fentertainment-15749636%252Fmodels-vs-real-women-growing-body-gap-27868545.html

I mentioned in the prior post that the entertainment industry is notorious for holding up unrealistic standards of female beauty.  The women promoted in the industry use all kinds of artificial means to meet those standards.  They aren’t natural beauties.  Or if they are, that is not what we’re being shown.  As a result, as a society, we have lost sense of what women naturally look like.  The images in media are such a distortion of reality.

But the report at the link above focuses on just one aspect of this—the weight of today’s models.  There has always been a gap between the weight of models and average women.  But the report describes how in recent years that gap has dramatically increased.  Models, who were celebrated in the 1980s and 1990s, would be considered fat by today’s standards in the modeling industry. 

Indeed, today’s models often look grotesque.  Long thin arms and legs without padding on the bones.  Protruding rib cages and hip bones.  Today’s models are so thin they are reminiscent of what human beings looked like when the Allies liberated Nazi death camps or when there is dire famine in Sub-Sahara African.  Those are such horrifying, tragic associations, I’m not sure why such extreme thinness is held up as a standard of beauty.  To me, it is just evidence of a person’s physical starvation and ill health.  It is tragic and sad, not a source of beauty.

1 Peter 3

Rather, [your beauty] should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.