To My Oldest Daughter on Her 13th Birthday, 4/4/86

Dearest Emma,

Happy 13th birthday.  This will be such an exciting year of change and growth for you that I particularly want us to keep in close touch with one another.  Both of us are undergoing major transitions, so I  hope we can understand and empathize with each other.  I asked Grandma what she wished she had said to me on my thirteenth birthday.  She didn't have to think about her answer.  "Tell me everything.  There's nothing you could conceivably do or say that I can't handle.   You don't have to protect me from anything  you feel or do." I liked that. I wished she had told me that when I was 13  What was left unsaid did far more lasting damage than anything that was said.  So that's part of what I want to say to you as you blossom into womanhood.

I have lived 27 and 3/4 more years in the world than you have.  I will be delighted to share any of my experiences with you, well aware that you have to find your own path.  Sometimes I will forget and try to turn you into a newer, better me.  I want you to point out what I'm doing when I do that.  As you grow older, I identify more and more with you, so I will have to struggle not to force my old aspirations on you.  But I have tried very hard in the past to respect your individuality.  You were a distinct, dynamic individual from the moment you were born.  I remember looking into  your gorgeous, alert, intelligent eyes the day you were born and wondering if you would be too much for me.  And sometimes you are.  I am trying very hard to grow up enough to be a good mother to you.  I have always loved  your spirited determination to be your own person, what Barbara Williams, your nursery school teacher, called "your considerable sense of self." I want you to continue to feel free to tell me when I am making an obvious mistake with you or a not so obvious one.

I am glad you are so close to your father.  My own teenage years would have been far happier if I hadn't been so intimidated by my father, so afraid of arguing with him, so afraid of getting close.  You never have to choose between us; we will try to give you opportunities to be alone with each of us.  You already know what very different people we are, but we are equally proud of our beautiful, brilliant, spirited daughter.

The worst thing that happened to me as a teenager is that I felt compelled to choose between my feminine and my intellectual sides.  You live in a very different world, but you still will receive a lot of contradictory messages about what is really important.  Don't choose.  You can be both.  Look at Aunt Jackie and Aunt Lynn, for example.  A boy who holds your intelligence against you isn't capable of befriending or loving the real you.  Don't waste time on such boys or men.

At this stage of your life close female friendships are far more important than boyfriends.  At no stage of your life will close women friends cease to be vitally important.  The longer I live, the more convinced I am that men and women are very different.  Our world desperately needs women's unique qualities.  Women need not become like men to succeed in life.  Women need to support and understand one another.  I would never go so far as one psychologist did when she wrote a book entitled, "Men Are Just Desserts."  But don't ever neglect your girlfriends for some boy.  I hope you continue to have friends like Michael who happen to be boys.  I think that is particularly important because you don't have brothers or male cousins you see regularly.  Peer pressure still discourages men and women from being "just friends," but I hope you can withstand that premature emphasis on pairing off.  Daddy was my friend before he was my lover and my husband.

For most of this century mothers and daughters have been at odds with each other.  That has been a tragic loss for women in general. Ideally your mother should be your most ardent supporter and confidant.  No one, except your future husband, will probably ever love you more.  In fact mothers have an even better track record than husbands.  I hope we can continue to be friends.  I know we will fight, but fighting doesn't diminish our closeness. Look at me and Daddy.  When you were born, Uncle Stephen said, "Good, Mary Jo has a daughter she can fight with.  That should make her very happy."  He remembered my epic battles with my mother.

I hope we can continue to share books with each other.  That might be one of the best ways for you to teach me lessons that you think I need to learn.  Find me the right book to read.  I often learn more from books than from my own mistakes.  And you can always write notes to me if you find something too difficult to say.  I can express myself in writing far better than I can face-to-face. I don't know if you're the same way, but you could try.  I promise to save all your letters to hand down to your daughters.  Wouldn't you have loved to see a letter from me to my mother at age 13?  I would love to see it too.  Recently I have remembered more of my teenage years.  I'm glad.  Getting to know  teenage Mary Jo again will help me to be kinder to  teenage Emma.

How Revolutions Become Trademarks

Dear Mary Joan,

Hi sister feminist - from Redstockings - the actual organization. We like some of the political views you posted on your blog titled Redstocking (http://redstockinggrandma1945.blogspot.com/). Unfortunately though, we have to ask you to find another name besides "Redstockings." Perhaps RadFem Grandma?

We ask this because Redstockings is real live operating organization - a 501(c)(3), with archives, publications, fundraising, public classes and more. For more information, you can find us at www.redstockings.org. You can also find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Redstockings. 

In order to be able to keep others from randomly using the name, and thus causing confusion for people, we have to ask others not to use it.  We have to be diligent to ensure that the Redstocking's trademark is used correctly. We find your blog a good read and think you're making a contribution with it. However, if we allow uses like this one, we run the very real risk that our trademark will be weakened. As a fan of the name, I'm sure that is not something you intended or would want to see happen.

 Please do seek another name for your interesting blog. We hope to stay in touch.


Thank you,  
Redstockings of the Women’s Liberation Movement

Grandma, Kinkeeping, and the Birthday Book

One of my most cherished possessions is my grandmother's small 1980 datebook. It lists the birthdays of all her children, their spouses, her grandchildren, their spouses, and her great-grandchildren. All of us could absolutely count on a card from Grandma on our birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations. She always enclosed a dollar for her grandchildren and great grandchildren. She was on a strict budget and we cherished her generosity. If you hadn't received a card from Grandma Nolan, you must have gotten confused about your birthday She had 8 children, 31 grandchildren, and 23 great-grandchilden when she died at age 86 in 1985.

Mary Catherine  King was born in 1898 and left school after eighth grade. One of her first jobs was to mount women's combs on cards. She married my grandfather, James Nolan, a widowed lawyer with a toddler son, at age 22. She had seven children, four sons and three daughters; she raised her stepson as her own. Tragically one daughter died before she was two. Her husband died when she was 40; her children ranged from 17 to 2. He had been sick for 7 years; his chronic illness made it impossible for him to secure life insurance. After his death, she discovered his filing cabinet was full of unpaid bills from poor clients. Grandma had lost her parents the year before. Abruptly, they were very poor She collected rent from three small apartments in Brooklyn, but the apartments were the source of endless headaches. She worked in a laundromat. The older children helped support the family. My mom had to attend secretarial school rather than college.

Grandma was a very loving, giving, ingenious, frugal single mother. All her children turned out well--two lawyers, two teachers, a nurse, a social worker, a computer programmer. She was unavailingly there to help out when babies were born, when someone was sick, when someone was in crisis. A very religious woman, she was empowered by her deep faith. A lifelong Democrat, she voted in the first election open to women. She was always fascinated by world affairs and extremely knowledgeable about them. I could talk to her about anything.

In Becoming Grandmothers, Sheila Kitzinger describes the grandmother's role as the "kin-keeper." I have been understudying that role since my family lived with my grandma during the first two years of my life. I am the oldest girl cousin, just like my mom and grandmother were the oldest girls in their families. Grandmothers do emotional work. They sustain and nourish the family's kinship, keeping everyone connected with one another. This is a greater challenge now when families are far-flung and both parents are working grueling schedules. There is very little time left over for extended families. Weddings and funerals are often the only family reunions. Fortunately, we have had seven big family weddings since my mom's death10 years ago. One of my brothers has 6 grandkids, another 2.

I take absolutely seriously my commitment to follow my grandmother and mother, two strong, loving, generous matriarchs. I kno the extended family's addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, anniversaries. I try to inform  the family if anyone is sick or in trouble, is engaged, lost a job,  got a new job, is pregnant. In the event of a family death, I always find out the funerael arrangements.I can always identify the people in those old pictures ande can quickly produce old pictures upon request.

I have 5 brothers, 5 sister-in-laws, 11 nieces and nephews, 8 of whom are married. I have 7 grandnieces and 4 grandnephews. Twice a year I revise the extended family directory, prying the information out of everyone. Two family email lists. one for my immediate family, one for my extended family, enable us to share news and pictures. We  know what is happening in our lives, even if we don't see each other often enough. I do more of the communicating than anyone else, but I consider that my responsibility. My 5 brothers, 3 sisters-in-law , 4 daughters, 4 sons-in-law, most nieces and nephews are on facebook.

I have seen both my mother's and father's formerly close knit family disperse once the family matriarch dids. My extended family is scattered all over the East Coast, from Maine to North Carolina, so it is a challenge to keep us close. One daughter, usually a New Yorker, is living in Paris for two years. Two live in Boston, one in DC.  Fortunately, we have had six family weddings since my mom's death 4 years ago, so they have been family reunions as well. By next February, there will have been 6 babies in two years. Weddings and funerals are often the only family reunions. Fortunately, we have had seven big family weddings since my mom's death10 years ago. One of my brothers has 6 grandkids, another 2.

I have a small bedroom filled with  16 boxes of my parents' wartime letters.  50 boxes of family slides,  about 30 photo albums.  I have letters I, my brothers, and my daughters wrote to my mom.   I have the papers my mom wrote when she returned to college at age  42, I have three file draws full of my daughters' best drawings, school papers, letters and cards.


Arranging an extended family reunion has become an impossible challenge. My mother's 80th birthday party in 1981, my oldest brother's  60th birthday in 2007, my 65th birthday in 2010,  my 70th birthday in 2015, 7 big family weddings, one funeral have been the biggest gatherings.

When I was taking care of mother 24/7 during the last three years of her life, I scanned thousands of old family photos and slides. My husband, a computer programmer, wrote software for many family picture sites. His software enabled me to caption the photos and arrange them in chronological order. Pictures that family members had never seen were freed from boxes and closets and available to everyone, anytime. At my mother's wake, we were able to show a slideshow of her life, with pictures from 1921 to 2004.

As I learn to grandmother, my Grandma Nolan is my inspiration and role model. Looking through her date book always brings back new memories of  unfailing love,  absolute commitment,  kindness, and understanding.

NYC, 1974-1976, Nonsexist Childrearing in Action

Emma belonged to a Chelsea Manhattan playgroup for two years, from 1974 to 1976. She was 17 months when it began, 3 and ready for nursery school when it disbanded. Playgroup met 5 mornings a week in the basement of the Y on West 23rd Street. Parents had the option of coming 1 to 5 mornings. Scheduling was a nightmare that I had naively accepted. I kept the minutes of playgroup, and I wrote a paper about it for a social work class in group dynamics 20 years later.

I thought you might be amused by parenting, Manhattan style, 1974. How earnest and how absurd we were in so many ways. But we were absolutely committed to allowing our kids to be free to be you and me.

Ranging in age from 28 to 40, we all lived in Chelsea and Greenwich Village. With one exception, our playgroup child was our first child. At 28, I was the youngest mother, but the only one from a large family. We all were college educated, with serious careers before we had children. There was an editor of psychiatric books, a writer, a teacher, an artist, an art therapist, two social workers, one vocational counselor, two psychology graduate students, and  a psychiatric nurse.

Most of us were struggling with our decision to stay home with our children. Confirmed apartment dwellers, we saw little relationship between mothering and housework. All of us planned to remain in Manhattan. Dreading winter cooped up with newly mobile, newly negative toddlers in one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartments, several mothers were contemplating returning to work to regain their sanity. Significantly, no one returned to work full-time during the life of the playgroup.

None of us had long-time friends who were staying at home to raise young children. We needed to build a new circle of friends; our friends from work no longer sufficed. We were not traditional wives and mothers. We desperately wanted intellectual colleagues fascinated with child development, determined to raise children without our own inhibitions and neuroses. All of us considered ourselves feminists, committed to nonsexist childrearing.

Confused Feminist Has a Baby, 1973

Dropping out of Columbia Law School in 1971 was a turning point in my life. After a year of soul-searching journal writing, I realized that I had been denying my emotional, nurturant, sensitive  nature, never considering careers like psychology or social work. Closer to my dad and having 5 younger brothers, I had raised myself as a Koch male, In the jargon of early consciousness-raising groups, I was male identified. I got very involved in the feminist movement in New York City and recognized the sexism of "thinking like a man."

I had always assumed that professional success was far more important to me than traditional motherhood. I had seen how my mother postponed her dreams until the youngest of her six children entered school. Instead of being a lawyer, as she had originally planned, she settled for high school teaching.

A few months later a good friend got pregnant, and I became intensely involved in her pregnancy. For the first time in my life,  I wanted to have a baby. I questioned my motives, wondering if I was merely postponing the inevitable return to grad school. I assured myself I would go back to work when the baby was a few months old. I got pregnant the first month we tried, and I loved being pregnant.  I was able to achieve my goal of natural childbirth. I felt terrific immediately after birth. Breastfeeding was easy.

Nothing prepared me for drowning in an overwhelming surge of love, tenderness, protectiveness the minute I looked into my new daughter's bright eager eyes. I had never believed in the myths of fulfilling motherhood, and yet mothering young children was the most fascinating, creative job of my life.

Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine I would love being  full-time mother from 1973 to 1988 and  my grandson's nanny from 20007 to 2009.

But if anything, I am more of a feminist than I was in 1971.

Confused Feminist in Love

I read the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan when I was a freshman in college.  Friedan did not raise my already raised consciousness, but gave me more confidence in my ideas. I attended Fordham University, planning to become a college professor of political science. Fordham had just begun to admit women, and I was  the only girl in my political science class. Being the only girl and the best student in a class was heaven. I met John, my future first husband, in my junior year. It is a family joke that I was first attracted to him when I heard his SAT scores. John found my intellectuality and my femininity equally attractive, and for the first time reconciling the two seemed possible. Just to be sure, I insisted he read Simone DeBeauvoir's The Second Sex before I was willing to make love. What a self-righteous little prig I was ! But John contributed as much as I did to four daughters' academic and professional achievement.

John, a year behind me in college, planned to be a physics professor. (I was desperate to hide from my family that John was 9 months younger.) When I applied to grad schools, I looked for places equally strong in both physics and political science, figuring a year's separation would make us surer about marriage. If I had known myself better, I would have applied to grad schools in New York City. I went to Stanford University in California, 3000 miles away from my love. I hated grad school, was miserable without John, and left after two months. My parents were puzzled that I had given up an all-expenses paid PhD; I foolishly avoided my family for two months. I would not admit to myself that missing John, not hating graduate school, was my major motive. As a result of that delusion, I didn't return to graduate school until 16 years later.

I returned to New York,  got married, and slowly worked my way up in New York City book publishing. I was never wildly enthusiastic about editing social science and psychiatry books. It resembled grad school, abstract, intellectual, remote from people.Why I went to law school was murky. The preceding spring at my brother  Richard's wedding, my brother Stephen said, "Mom thinks you should go to law school and make something of yourself." In a retirement interview, my mom told the editor of the high school paper that she would have gone to law school if she had had the opportunities open to women now. Whose ambitions were I trying to fulfill?

Corduroy Over 35 Years

Vanessa was 15 months old; maybe that is why she is distracted by the camera, unlike her more attentive son. She would have listened more attentively to Andy than to someone reading with her eyes closed.

Has Feminism Won Its Battles?

Unlike many feminists with my intellect and education, I decided to stay home with my four children full-time for 15 years and part-time until the youngest went to college. I involved myself in nonsexist childrearing, childbirth education, breastfeeding counseling, parent education, toddler playgroups, babysitting cooperatives, cooperative nursery schools, school libraries, a campaign to save the local public library, the nuclear freeze movement, mental illness support and advocacy, parent advocacy for playground upkeep and a preschool playroom, a high school group for interracial understanding--the list is endless. When I made the mistake of attending library school and social work school, I naively assumed my qualifications would be obvious and no one would dare to treat me like a beginner. I was given the responsibility of an experienced worker and the salary, benefits, and respect of a beginner.

I recall one infuriating incident during my first social work placement; my childless supervisor earnestly instructed me how to interview a client with her two year old present. I had frequently run La Leche Meetings with 20 moms and 30 babies and toddlers. Women social workers who had taken very short maternity leaves and worked full-time during their children's childhood too often acted like all my knowledge had been attained by cheating. I got more respect from male professors. The situation has worsened; women are terrified of taking only a few years off from work. And yet the men who fought World War II left their jobs for several years and did not suffer economic consequences. The government even paid for their college and grad school education.

When my mom went back to college in 1963 and work in 1968, after having raised 6 children, she was accorded more respect and her experience was more honored than mine was 20 years later Full-time childrearing is frequently belittled as beneath the time and attention of intelligent, well-educated parents, who presumably should have exploited immigrant women of color to love and understand their children while they pursued their more important jobs.

Remember, things have not changed for the valiant, loving women of color who raise our children and care for our aging parents. I take care of my toddler grandson 3 days a week; my friends are mostly nannies from all over the world. I am often appalled how little highly successful two-career couples pay their nanny; many fail to provide the caregiver with any benefits, least of all health care. They think nothing of calling the nanny on Sunday and telling her they don't need her that week. As one dedicated women from the Dominican Republic told me, "the more I love the children, the more it hurts my heart."

I agree that most women with college degrees, graduate, or professional degrees have made enormous strides in most major professions and in the workplace generally. Even nurses and teachers have made significant progress because they unionized. Public librarians and social workers usually make less than any other professionals with graduate degrees, because they are mostly women and they are not unionized.

It is only when women have children or have to care for aging parents that they fully realize that women have mostly gained the right to follow the traditional male life style, emphasizing work over relationships, caregiving, community activism.. As women chose to have children at an older and older age, the realization is late in coming. At that point their lives tend too become too frenzied and exhausting to leave any time for feminism and political reform. My four well-educated, successful daughters are only having their consciousness raised as they begin to have children. You might make over $100,000 a year, but you still will have to pump breastmilk for your infant in the toilet.

The mommy wars infuriate me because they presuppose it is the responsibility of mothers, not fathers, to raise children. In the 70s we believed in equal childrearing, although we fell far short of that goal.

NYC, 1974-1976, Nonsexist Childrearing in Action

My oldest daughter Emma belonged to a Chelsea Manhattan playgroup for two years, from 1974 to 1976. She was 17 months when it began, 3 and ready for nursery school when it disbanded. Playgroup met 5 mornings a week in the basement of the Y on West 23rd Street. Parents had the option of coming 1 to 5 mornings. Scheduling was a nightmare that I had naively accepted. I kept the minutes of playgroup, and I wrote a paper about it for a social work class in group dynamics 20 years later.

I thought you might be amused by parenting, Manhattan style, 1974. How earnest and how absurd we were in so many ways. But we were absolutely committed to allowing our kids to be free to be you and me.

Ranging in age from 28 to 40, we all lived in Chelsea and Greenwich Village. With one exception, our playgroup child was our first child. At 28, I was the youngest mother, but the only one from a large family. We all were college educated, with serious careers before we had children. There was an editor of psychiatric books, a writer, a teacher, an artist, an art therapist, two social workers, one vocational counselor, two psychology graduate students, and and a psychiatric nurse.

Most of us were struggling with our decision to stay home with our children. Confirmed apartment dwellers, we saw little relationship between mothering and housework. All of us planned to remain in Manhattan. Dreading winter cooped up with newly mobile, newly negative toddlers in one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartments, several mothers were contemplating returning to work to regain their sanity. Significantly, no one returned to work full-time during the life of the playgroup.

None of us had long-time friends who were staying at home to raise young children. We needed to build a new circle of friends; our friends from work no longer sufficed. We were not traditional wives and mothers. We desperately wanted intellectual colleagues fascinated with child development, determined to raise children without our own inhibitions and neuroses. All of us considered ourselves feminists, committed to nonsexist childrearing.

Playgroup was supposed to give us time off. The first year the ratio was one mother to two children; the second year it was one to three. Many mother who weren't on duty stayed anyway, particularly those with younger children. When we weren't playing with our toddlers, we engaged in ongoing group therapy. All of us had been or were currently in therapy and could talk comfortably and knowledgeably about conflict, repression, projection, and denial. We endlessly analyzed our marriages, our families, our psychological makeups, our childrearing philosophies, and our children's personalities.