December 03, 2011
Alice Walker's daughter: "How my mother's fanatical views tore us apart"
Rebecca Walker in The Daily Mail:
I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. But I strongly feel children need two parents and the thought of raising Tenzin without my partner, Glen, 52, would be terrifying.
As the child of divorced parents, I know only too well the painful consequences of being brought up in those circumstances. Feminism has much to answer for denigrating men and encouraging women to seek independence whatever the cost to their families.
My mother's feminist principles coloured every aspect of my life. As a little girl, I wasn't even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent were what really mattered according to her.
I love my mother very much, but I haven't seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son - her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 03:23 PM | Permalink
Comments
Thanks for sharing this.
Posted by: Kevin Chamow | Dec 3, 2011 4:27:56 PM
This "Mommy Dearest" expose has very little to do with feminism, too much to do with selling a book and is a testament to narcissism all around. Sad indeed.
Posted by: Erich | Dec 3, 2011 4:36:39 PM
A very sad story indeed. I couldn't imagine living my life disconnected from my children. I have taken women study classes, but I never heard of any feminists behaving in such extreme manor. I was also thinking that her mother appeared to suffer more of narcissism than just having feminists ideas. Not that I am a expert on feminist theories.
Posted by: susan feldkamp | Dec 3, 2011 5:32:31 PM
All I get from this is that both mother and daughter are very screwed up. This is kind of dirty laundry intellectually vacuous and belongs in a diary or psychiatrist's notes, not in a public forum.
Posted by: Akim Reinhardt | Dec 3, 2011 6:13:14 PM
Akim, I'm with you. As my mother used to say during the misbehavior made public of the Clinton era, "I have a right not to know these things."
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 3, 2011 6:53:28 PM
Why a 2008 article trashing feminism and Alice Walker, an article that says "Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness"?
Oh dear, oh dear . . . Those uppity women have made single-breadwinner families obsolete. Just what the corp-pols and fin-pols wanted.
How about Henry Makow on how feminism is really a communist plot to overthrow the family, the bedrock of civilization:
http://www.henrymakow.com/001995.html
I agree with Akim. Why is this article here?
Here are some other inspiring stories about women around the world:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15991641
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16011926
Maybe the United States needs a little Wahhabi influence to set it straight, get women back in the kitchen and behind their white picket fences.
Or, how about this?
http://kathrynjoyce.wordpress.com/reviews/
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Dec 3, 2011 7:20:28 PM
Do you introduce Dawkins as Richard "The God Delusion" Dawkins? The title of your article was denigrating to Alice Walker as though you had already judged her guilty.
Posted by: Larry | Dec 3, 2011 7:37:11 PM
It's the Daily Mail for fuck's sake. I expect better from 3QD. Please don't throw trash like that our way without warning.
Posted by: N. | Dec 3, 2011 8:31:11 PM
What a whiny, self-pitying piece of crap. This is a person who knows nothing about responsibility.
Quote: "Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating."
You see? No one has choices, according to Ms. Walker. Everyone is a victim.
Including readers of this tripe.
Posted by: MikeB | Dec 3, 2011 8:32:02 PM
If women who were fence-sitting decide too late for conception that they want to be mothers -- well, doesn't this describe many adoptive mothers? If you want to have a baby, there's a limit on how long to wait. If you want to raise a child, you can be a mother at a grandmotherly age. Men can do it too -- they can and do adopt and raise children. Feminism has if anything expanded the notion of who can parent, and how, and when.
Provided Rebecca Walker is 100% truthful about her mother's treatment of her, is feminism the reason for that treatment, or the excuse? Perhaps ironically, Alice Walker sounds like a good dad of the traditional ilk -- financially responsible, otherwise minimally or even episodically involved, interested in dialogue mainly to correct or chastise, and deeply offended if the family ethic isn't carried forward by the child he paid for. You don't think feminism made Alice Walker this kind of parent, do you? The answer is in her character, not in her politics.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 3, 2011 8:47:57 PM
Elatia is right. Lots of happy feminist mums:
http://charlotteotter.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/what-feminist-motherhood-means-to-me-now/
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Dec 3, 2011 9:38:00 PM
What's with the dirty laundry in public folks, are we in Victorian England......
Whatever one is to think of the daughter's decision to go public, it doesn't take away the fact that her mother behaved as she did.
I would never defend militant feminism anymore then militant atheism. And what do we do to someone who questions some aspects of feminism, thow them under the bus because their mother mother authored "The Color Purple". Horseshit....
Netherland one of those countries one would like to think has "liberated" women, has one of the lowest percentages of married women who are in the workforce, and the happiest children as per a couple of studies. I am not advocating any cause and effect here, all I am saying is we should not so readily discount someone who thinks maybe we should have another look at feminism as we know it. Coming from the daughter of Alice Walker, even more so.....
Shame on those who called this piece trash and question why it's posted on 3qd.
Posted by: Shahzad | Dec 3, 2011 9:50:18 PM
Shame on them? How Victorian of you, Shahzad.
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Dec 3, 2011 11:49:04 PM
@ Louise
You and some others questioned why this was posted at all, that I have an issue with.
Could care less about family fights, but am very interested about this crazy and venemous feminism that turns motherhood into a crime.
Posted by: Shahzad | Dec 4, 2011 1:06:50 AM
I'm the daughter and the granddaughter of feminists (women and men), though none of them were public activists. Still, I can't take Ms. Rebecca Walker's description of "what life was really like to grow up as a child of the feminist revolution" to reflect a common experience.
Rebecca Walker's problematic relationship with her mother is not a failure of feminism; it has to do with her mother, Alice Walker, a person with her own emotional failings who has apparently been more dedicated to being an activist in the public eye than to being a parent. From Rebecca's description, it sounds like Alice didn't want to be a mother, and she took this out on her daughter in damaging ways. It's probably good that Rebecca has been able to separate herself from this harmful relationship. But not because of the failures of feminism; only because of her mother's failures. Hating motherhood, Alice probably would have been a toxic parent, had she been a feminist or not. And though she might have hated motherhood in her own life, a stance against motherhood isn't actually a part of her public feminist crusade.
The younger Ms. Walker is understandably upset by the conditions of her rearing, but who could confuse this with women's liberation or equality? None of the problems that she lists at the end of the article are failures of feminism. The only reason the issue might get confused in this case is because Alice Walker is a woman, and a mother, rather than a man.
Mahatma Gandhi's children grew away from their father, too. Gandhi was a terrible parent, in similar ways to Alice Walker: distracted, aloof, punishing, and overbearing. Does this mean his cause was wrong? I doubt most people would say so; even if one disagrees with particular ideas, policies, or actions that Gandhi championed, few will argue that his public activism served dubious ends or that he was wrong to have dedicated himself to it, no matter the fact of what it cost his children, his wife, and his nieces.
Posted by: Usha Alexander | Dec 4, 2011 2:14:14 AM
Okay, I admit that I shouldn't have written Alice "The Color Purple" Walker in the title. In retrospect, that does seem condescending.
As for why I posted it at all, please note that our banner at the top does include "gossip" along with science, arts, literature, et cetera! :-)
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Dec 4, 2011 3:41:16 AM
I don't see why the article shouldn't be on the site, although I find it disheartening and sad. Weak generalisations attached to a very specific story rarely prove illuminating. Einstein, by all accounts, was a horrible husband, but, thankfully, no one wrote an expose about the horrible toll of being a physicist's wife. Feminists are not a species and make neither better nor worse mothers than anyone else.
Posted by: Bombie | Dec 4, 2011 7:14:38 AM
This spate of comments covering the critic scale from one end to the other is more telling than the link. And a link is all that's posted, together with a snip of what's at the other end. Readers are free to choose. Those who like the odor can dig deeper and those who are miffed should keep moving. Jeez, Louise, no need to beat up anybody.
We live in a time of extremes. I'm noticing it more as the years pass. From Congressional gridlock to arguments about abortion, capital punishment and religious faith -- it's not just fashionable but almost obligatory that we take sides, extreme sides, on every issue. The goal is not to find agreement but to bludgeon the other side into submission, making one view normative for all.
I'll settle for diversity, thank you. If you want to go to hell in this life not waiting for the next, have at it. That's the option of free will we all have. I simply wear galoshes before wading into comments threads. Carry on.
Posted by: John Ballard | Dec 4, 2011 7:17:22 AM
The really important thing is that she managed to turn her personal trauma into money (i.e. the point of this 'article': "Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After A Lifetime Of Ambivalence by Rebecca Walker was published by Souvenir Press on May 8, £15.")
Truly living the American Dream.
Posted by: Philosopher's Beard | Dec 4, 2011 10:15:07 AM
Instead of thinking this is about Alice Walker and her daughter, at least one person thinks this article is about "crazy and venomous feminism." That's what happens when people believe gossip.
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Dec 4, 2011 10:59:45 AM
Ditto to Louise above. The posting of this article works to perpetuate some cliches and bogeyman versions of feminism and distract from its real claims and accomplishments. Also unexpected though are the somewhat childish caricatures of "militant" feminism in the comments...
Posted by: Kevin | Dec 4, 2011 11:13:21 AM
Now it's all gossip, wonderful....
Alice Walker's behaviour can not be totally divorced from her views. You can question her brand of feminism and her inherent hypocricy in having a child in the first place if she sincerely held her beliefs.
But please don't over simplify things by claiming that this has nothing to do with feminism at all.
Feminism has it's accomplishments and I am all for them.
Please answer this for me again: What would Alice Walker say to a highly educated Dutch woman in her 30's who gets married and leaves a promising carrer to have a child and start a family....and is happy with her choice.
@ Kevin
Can we please not pretend that militant feminism does not exist or has in the past......
This defence of Alice Walker I find a bit akin to the Polanski affair. A celebrity can count on a percentage of their fan base to defend them against anything.
Posted by: Shahzad | Dec 4, 2011 11:40:56 AM
So the daughter made some money off of it, does that make the issues any less important. Are we to laugh it it off as gossip....
Posted by: Shahzad | Dec 4, 2011 12:20:35 PM
No one here said they are a fan of Alice Walker. People have tried to separate the daughter's tale of poor mothering from feminism. If, as Rebecca says, her views were fanatical, you can't blame feminism for a person's fanaticism.
Further, this has nothing to do with Polanski.
But if you try very hard, Shahzad, I think you could be a top prize winner in the simile contest:
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/12/56-worst-similes-from-high-school-students.html#comments
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Dec 4, 2011 3:51:00 PM
And all I am saying Louise is this, how can you separate that poor mothering from feminism when it's Alice Walker. Walker's brand of feminism influenced her mothering don't you think ?
Someone brought in Gandhi as an example of bad parenting. This is not about notable people exhibiting bad parenting. It's about that kind of feminism that turns motherhood into a sin and something to be shunned and feel ashamed about.
Maybe I not being clear enough, but we can let this one rest....
The Polanski affair I brought up only as an example where famous people by being famous are held to a different standard.
Posted by: Shahzad | Dec 4, 2011 8:57:45 PM
Re: Rebecca Walker has made money off it. Show me one writer in the world, Alice Walker included, that has not used her life experiences to make art, and consequently, money.
Dear posters: stop making specious excuses for Mother Walker. Rebecca claims she was a bad mother, if we accept her evidence, she was. And you can't just claim "bad parenting" is orthogonal to feminist ideology, to the extent an extreme interpretation of feminism encourages what Alice did (I've met many a feminist who believed it was sinful to expose little girls to absolutely anything that could reinforce traditional role modelling, such as dolls) feminism itself is implicated. Deal with the issue, don't poison the well.
Posted by: Jason | Dec 5, 2011 8:52:52 PM
POOOR Rebecca,
Give me a break. This is what you find when bi-racial women can't seem to find harmony within themselves. They question the ability of Black Women/Men to raise a healthy child. Be careful the lesson will come through Tenzin.
Done with U Rebecca!
Peace
Posted by: Chris | Feb 27, 2013 2:02:44 PM
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