Don’t Blame Feminism for Bad Parenting

Alice Walker’s daughter, Rebecca Walker, has written a memoir and an article for the Daily Mail about what it is like to be the daughter of this famous feminist. The article is a diatribe against feminism instead of what it should be, a work about poor parenting. Rebecca Walker blames all of her mother’s ill parenting on feminism and that isn’t where it belongs.

I can understand how terrible it must have been for Rebecca Walker to grow up as the daughter of Alice. I am close to Rebecca’s age and I also grew up in California with a divorced mother, so I can relate, to some extent, to where she is coming from.

However, she makes a huge mistake laying the fault of her childhood at the feet of feminism. It is understandable that Alice Walker couched her decisions within a feminist framework, it is her life’s work, it is her devotion, it is how she sees the world. There is no other way for Alice Walker, world famous feminist, to explain things to her daughter, she was enrobed in feminism. The problem is that Rebecca Walker is blaming feminism for her mother’s faults. Narcissism is not the fault of feminism. Poor parenting skills are not feminism’s legacy. My guess is that as the eighth child of share croppers, Alice Walker did not get the kind of parenting that she wanted as a child. She probably gave her daughter a better childhood than she had, but that would seem poor indeed compared to other parents of the 1970s.

I have found that most people feel that there were major flaws in their childhoods. These flaws have a dramatic range, but they are felt by each one of us. Most parents try to correct those flaws that they felt most dramatically for their children. So it makes sense that Rebecca Walker would create a traditional family structure for her son. Most children of divorce feel that the divorce was the seminal event in their lives and they work to create a more traditional family structure than they had.

This is still not feminism’s legacy. The legacy of divorce may be a result of the work that feminists did to help women see that they could leave dangerous or soul-sucking marriages, but if Rebecca Walker had spoken to people whose parents stayed together for the sake of the children only to fight constantly and tear each other to pieces in front of that child, she might think that divorce is not as bad as she thought.

Feminism gave women the ability to have more choices than they had ever had before. This means that they had the ability to be crappy moms as well, but there were also feminist who were wonderful mothers. To blame feminism in such a public way for bad parenting is irresponsible and short-sighted.

And to blame feminism for the choices women make to advance their careers before they consider motherhood is ridiculous. The only thing that feminism can be blamed for on that score is that women have the ability to have high-powered careers and can even make that choice. Things were not better when women were forced into marriages and motherhood to stave off impoverishment that would result from being a single woman in a world where all the jobs were for men.

Women who decide to start their families early and enter the work force later are no better off than women who chose the other route. They have the same amount of limited choices and their career options become far less appealing the longer women stay at home.

Feminism may not be perfect, but it has dramatically advanced the choices and options available to women. Feminism is not at the root of a distraught childhood and should not be held responsible. Mothers always make choices that their children would rather they didn’t. We are not perfect people. But our poor choices are each of our responsibilities and not the fault of a social movement.