Rather than falling into the typical princess/witch or angel/whore binary most films trade in, Hanna gives us a movie rarity–a female protagonist who is strong, smart, brave and decidedly not in need of male rescue.

The film is overtly framed as a dark fairytale, but rather than taking the characteristic romantic turn fairytale-esque films have taken lately (see: Tangled, Twilight, Red Riding Hood), Hanna doesn’t require a princess waiting for her prince. Instead, Hanna is an expert survivalist, able to evade the government operative pursuing her, Marissa (played by Cate Blanchett with an icy Texan twang).

The title character’s name brings to mind other strong female Hanna’s (such as Kathleen Hanna of the grrrrrrl band Le Tigre, or political theorist Hannah Arendt) and, fitting of these strong female role models, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is quick-thinking and independent. With a storehouse of encyclopedic knowledge handed down from her father (Erik Bana) and more than enough training to evade the many assassins gunning for her, she is a combination of Sydney Bristow without the glitz, Buffy Summers without the vampires, and Jodie Foster with all her icy-blue-eyed strength.

Like other women populating director Joe Wright’s films (such as Cecilia and Briony Tallis from Atonement), Hanna is neither hyper-sexualized, mentally vacant nor a one-note villain/heroine. As Matt Smith notes in his review, Wright has given us “yet another strong female lead in a film culture that is all too often devoid of them.” Contrasting the film to the “brain dead Sucker Punch,” Smith argues that the film offers “a complex portrait of a young woman.”

While I have not seen Sucker Punch, the trailer indicates a movie saturated in hyper-sexualized female bodies. Framed from a voyeuristic, objectifying male gaze that ogles the female body in action as sexual rather than powerful, and as only holding power via sexuality, Sucker Punch appears to fall in line with other female-driven action movies. Thankfully, by Hanna not sexualizing its protagonist, the film shows that power for women need not reside in bountiful breasts nor be clad in skin-tight body suits (as in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Cat Woman, Iron Man 2 and the like). Perhaps Hanna will finally prove that females can successfully helm action films without being booty-bots.

I agree with Smith that Wright has delivered a feminist take on the assassin genre. Even more intriguing, the film avoids romance and passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors. In one evocative scene, Hanna talks with her new friend Sophie (played splendidly by British actress Jessica Barden). Here, the film offers something even rarer than strong female protagonists–an exploration of female friendship and intimacy completely devoid of boy talk or heteronormative romance. The inclusion of a shot of Sophie’s disgruntled and jealous younger brother speaks volumes about why such scenes (and a widespread acknowledgment of female intimacy in general) are so rare: In short, they threaten male defined hetero-patriarchy, revealing that women don’t need nor necessarily desperately desire men in the way so many movies make us believe.

Hanna has been derided as unbelievable and thin on plot (as here), but I beg to differ. What is unbelievable is that movies like this are so rare. Yes, it’s not entirely believable–what action movie is? Yes, it sometimes values action over dialogue or character development–but it is an action movie, after all. But, finally, it delivers a punch very palatable to those who refuse to be suckers for misogynistic female action-hero stereotypes.

*cross-posted here at Ms. Blog

With a heavy heart, I write in honor of two women who spent much of their time writing and thinking about motherhood.

Two weeks ago, feminist philosopher Sara Ruddick (1935-2011) passed away.  The author of the highly influential Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace, Professor Ruddick focused attention on the day-to-day activities of mothering (a practice she did not restrict to mothers).  In her obituary, New York Times reporter William Grimes writes that she

developed an approach to child-rearing that shifted the focus away from motherhood as a social institution or biological imperative and toward the day-to-day activities of raising and educating a child. This work, she argued, shaped the parent as much as the child, giving rise to specific cognitive capacities and values — qualities of intellect and soul. Doing shapes thinking, in other words.

He quotes Andrea O’Reilly, scholar and founder of Demeter Press and the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, on the impact of Ruddick on the study of motherhood.  Professor O’Reilly cites Maternal Thinking (along with Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution) as “the most significant work in maternal scholarship and the new field of motherhood studies.”  In 2009, Demeter Press published an edited collection of essays, Maternal Thinking: Philosophy, Politics, Practice, that explored the impact of Ruddick’s book on maternal scholarship.

Her ideas influenced many fields.  On the Feminist Law Professors blog, Pace law professor Bridget Crawford writes that Ruddick’s influence “was seeping into feminist legal theory” and provided the groundwork for much “contemporary legal scholarship on caretakers and vulnerability.”  Her loss is felt by many of us who have been deeply influenced by her thinking about mothering.

Although I did not know Sara Ruddick personally, I did know Jessica Nathanson (1968-2011), a contemporary and a Women’s Studies colleague who passed away earlier this week.  Jessica was an inspiring human being.  She was a smart, creative, and accomplished professor, writer, and blogger, and a generous and committed mother, friend, and activist.  She fought breast cancer with an indomitable spirit.

I first met Jessica at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference, where she was an active member of several groups, including the Feminist Mothering Caucus.  She always had an incredibly thoughtful and perceptive answer, whatever the question.  (And as a newcomer to the Feminist Mothering Caucus, and later as a co-chair, I asked her many questions.)  Over the years, we had several opportunities to talk about mothering, research, creative writing, blogging, teaching, job searching, and trying to fit it all in.  But, I now realize, not enough opportunities.  Nowhere near enough.

Jessica thought a lot about motherhood, parenting, and work.  She co-edited a book with Laura Camille Tuley, Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the “Experts,” published by Demeter Press in 2009.  Her book gives voice to mothers who contest what “experts” have to say about motherhood and mothering.  I reread her essay this morning and was brought to tears by her voice: smart, honest, and fierce.

Jessica wrote her essay, “What Mothers Don’t Say Out Loud: On Putting the Academic Self First,” when her son was 2 ½–a time in her life when she was finishing her dissertation, interviewing for academic positions, and starting her first full-time job as a professor of Women’s Studies and Director of Women’s Studies and the Women’s Resource Center at Augsburg College.  In her essay, she writes honestly about the conflict between her need to live an intellectual and creative life, and her need to be close to her young son.  She writes movingly about the pull of her body towards her son, about his need (at times his demands) for her body, and about the embodied dimensions of mothering young children: the physical intimacy of hugging, breastfeeding, and simply being near one another.

But she also claims her own need to write, create, and teach.  While the “struggle for a life of the mind” can be difficult and exhausting, it’s also essential.  The ability to continue creative and intellectual work sustains us; it is what enables us to parent.  She realizes that

If my academic self struggles for a life of the mind, and my mother self is rooted in a contested body, then allowing myself to be an academic mother helps to resolve this split.  It also makes me a better mother.  Teaching and research give me a creative and intellectual outlet.  Because I am engaged in activities that support my selfhood, challenge my intellect, and provide a creative outlet, I can come back to mothering refreshed and energized.  If I can live my own life for part of the day and then spend time with him, I can really be with him, and enjoy him, and be a better parent to him.  I am not an engaged mother when I don’t have this time.

Her call at the end of the essay speaks to me now, from the moment she wrote down these words to the present moment as I read them, thinking of her and her family and all the people who knew her, learned from her, and loved her.

We need to speak this truth to ourselves and to each other: the sacrifices involved in motherhood do not need to be complete and self-annihilating.  Putting the academic self first is not selfish.  It is an honest investment in mothering.

Jessica, you are deeply missed.

Calling all young scholars, students, and feminist research mavens!  We’re looking for contributors for a new rotating-authored column called “The Next Generation.”  (Apologies to the Star Trek franchise.)  This column is geared towards would-be Girl w/ Pen contributors who may not yet established as feminist scholars, but still have a lot to say about bridging the gap between feminist research and popular reality.  We’re looking for contributors under 30 to submit guest posts to this monthly column, which will include a range of topics.  You can find general criteria for contributions on our Submit Your Ink page.  If you’re interested, just submit a short pitch to me (Avory) via the contact form.  Please spread the word widely and if you know any promising young feminists who might like to submit a post, pass it on!

This post is crossposted at She Writes.

This month I was a nominee in Babble’s Moms with Clout contest.  In the end, Sausage Mama won, not me.  But the whole enchilada got me thinking: What is “clout”?  And why do so many women have trouble owning theirs?

My dictionary defines clout as “power and influence.”  Synonyms include “pull,” “authority,” “sway,” and “weight.”  In the public sphere, traditionally, clout has been gendered male.  To an overwhelming degree, it still is.  (See the depressing stats here.) Women, however, are mixing it up.  At social networks like She Writes, where authors promote one another and not just ourselves, at game-changing initiatives like The OpEd Project, where established thought leaders help fellow female experts embrace their expertise and get heard, “clout” is being redefined as something more communally achieved.  But even in the push for collaborative clout, and particularly among women, the tension between the one and the many remains.

I know this tension personally.  I experienced it this past month as I emailed my friends to ask for their vote, then opted against posting the request at She Writes or at my group blog,Girl w/Pen.  It just didn’t seem Girl w/Pen-y (or She Writes-y) to promote myself just for the sake of winning an iPad 2 (the prize).  I meticulously checked to see if any other of the 30+ nominees were She Writes members, so that I could shout us out collectively, as my colleagues in leadership at She Writes and I agreed that that would be the right way to do it.  But since they weren’t, I let it go.

In the end, I mildly regretted not saying something about it in the forums available to me—forums, heck, I’ve helped create.  I admit: I wanted that iPad!  I would have put it to good use, downloading e-books and apps and learning about the new forms all our books might take as I work toward my new project (The Pink and Blue Diaries).  But as early as day 2 or 3 of the contest, I quickly learned that I didn’t want it that bad.  Just as I couldn’t bring myself to harass my non-She Writes friends and followers more than once (ok, twice), I felt that promoting myself here for commercial gain would compromise the spirit of the community.  It felt like a conflict of interest, you know?

And that, exactly, is the problem.  Not just my problem, but women’s more generally I fear.  Are women collaborative, at times, to a fault?  In putting the community above ourselves, are we losing out on opportunities to enhance not merely our pocketbooks but our careers?  After all, winning a contest like this one is not just about winning an iPad.  To say you’ve won a contest breeds…clout.

And why should we care about clout?  Love it or hate it, fact is if you want to be a successful writer these days, clout matters.  It’s no longer the merit of our work but the reach of our platform that gets us the goodies.  Clout has been a social media buzzword for “influencer” or “community leader” for a while, but interestingly, now it’s also a website, complete with metrics and scores.  Klout.com measures “overall online influence” through an algorithm that determines exactly how much influence someone has over their social networks.  In a Klout score, numbers mean nothing; “true” influence means more.  (Come on, you know you want to, so go for it: check your Klout score here.) Will publishers start looking up our clout scores, like they look up our previous book’s sales in Book Scan?  Who knows.

In the meantime, I am not alone in my hesitation.  But nor do I necessarily think that’s a good thing.  In an article for a Canadian parenting site, top blogger Ann Douglas explores the dark–or rather, the ambivalent side–of making the top “mommyblogger” lists, while Catherine Connors of Her Bad Mother notes in a post at her own blog that top blogger and clout lists can be a source of bad feeling in the mom community, leaving those not listed feeling badly.  “I think, to that extent, they’re a little problematic,” Connors says, then adds: “I think it’s interesting that we worry about…whether feelings get hurt and the community spirit gets undermined—when this kind of discussion would be pretty much unthinkable in almost any other sphere.  Does anyone talk about Forbes business rankings making men feel bad?”

Um, no.

And that brings me back to my main concern: I was flattered to be nominated in Babble’s “Moms with Clout” contest.  In the end, I couldn’t do what it takes.  I find it interesting—and problematic—that I am so comfortable writing this post after the contest is over, revealing my ambivalence, but wasn’t comfortable asking for your vote.  Either I am being too ladylike, or simply not woman enough.

Attention GWPenners in the NYC Area: Join me, She Writes, and The OpEd Project for a joint Happy Hour in Manhattan on Sat. April 16! And for a break from all that clout-making and clout-sharing, come recharge at the mini-retreat I’m leading for writing mamas with Christina Baker Kline on May 21 in Brooklyn.

The Women’s Studies Program at the State University of New York at New Paltz will host a one-day conference on Saturday, April 30, titled “Green Feminisms: Women, Sustainability and Environmental Justice.”

This year’s conference focuses on the particular dangers that environmental degradation has posed for women throughout the world and celebrates the women who have been struggling against it. The keynote panel features Beverly Naidus, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at the University of Washington; Joni Seager, Professor of Global Studies at Bentley College; and Karen Washington, President of the New York City Community Garden Coalition.

A wide range of workshops will bring together activists, farmers, researchers, writers, educators and artists. Sessions will address a variety of subjects including the work of women in the past who have written about the environment; women’s involvement in movements against hydrofracking, mountain top removal and other threats to the environment; women’s involvement in green construction and community sustainable agriculture; and women’s efforts to sustain food sovereignty throughout the world.

The day will conclude with talks by LaTosha Brown, Director of the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Thilmeeza Hussain, Deputy Representative for the Maldives at the United Nations on the global leadership of women on climate change. Highlights of the day include Trailer Talk, a live performance about hydraulic fracturing, and an Educational Market of local CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) and other farm projects, alternative energy projects and environmental organizations.

All food served will be sourced from local Hudson Valley farms.

Come join us! You can find more information, a complete list of programs, and registration forms at www.newpaltz.libguides.com/green_feminisms.

This interview originally appeared in the Ms. Magazine Blog and is re-posted with permission.

In Part I of my interview with Gail Dines, the self-described anti-porn feminist discussed sexual freedom, coercion, safety and harm. Part II continues the conversation. And this time, porn actors respond.

Shira Tarrant: Your new book, PORNLAND: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality (Beacon Press), is out this month. When readers pick up this book, what do you want them to know by the time they put it down?

Gail Dines: I want people to understand that porn is a business with considerable political clout and the capacity to lobby politicians, engage in expensive legal battles and use public relations to influence public debate. Like the tobacco industry, this is not a simple matter of consumer choice; rather, the business is increasingly able to deploy a sophisticated and well-resourced marketing machine, not just to push its wares but also to cast the industry’s image in a positive light.

These are not fun, creative, playful images that feed our sexual imaginations but instead are industrial products that depict a type of sex that is formulaic, generic and plasticized.

ST: I know you’re concerned about harm to women. In Pornland you describe on-the-job injuries sustained by some porn actors–for example, HPV, genital bruising and HIV. All forms of work involve exploitation and risk, whether it’s dying on an oil rig, developing carpal tunnel syndrome or being exposed to asbestos–what makes risks in porn any worse than other workplace dangers?

GD: HPV or genital bruising are generally not listed as job hazards. Women who do porn talk about anal prolapse and surgery [for repair]. The injuries in porn leave long-lasting emotional impacts. The level of abuse and violence to women in porn stands out. There is the psychological trauma of having one’s body treated in this way. It is a very intimate form of abuse. Articles from the porn industry press reveal how difficult and demanding the job is and that women can’t last that long in the industry because of injury.

*****

I asked folks in the porn industry for their responses to Gail Dines’ claim that porn physically traumatizes women. Beth Brigham disagrees. (Brigham was formerly Dines’ research assistant and worked in porn.) She reports:

There’s no emotional trauma from a sex act that you’re prepared for. If you know in advance what you’re going to be doing, you are ready. If I have a day where I’m doing seven penetrations, I know what to do to insure that my body remains healthy. Sex acts don’t happen by accident in porn and you know how to deal with them in advance.

April Flores, a BBW adult actress, adds:

“There is no doubt porn is a very physical job. However, it is also a very individualized profession. Each performer is responsible for their own physical health. A performer always has the choice of not doing something they are not comfortable with. All of my peers are doing work they feel proud of and that enhances and expands on their own sexuality. Gail Dines thinks all performers are victims and this couldn’t be further from the truth.

I also need to point out that many people outside the industry are having rough sex by choice. I’ve heard quite a few stories of people [in the general population] going a little too hard and hurting themselves.

Dines worries about increasing rates of anal sex caused by men who watch gonzo and convince women to bend over–never mind the missing data, non-het sex or women’s sexual agency. It’s unclear that porn is behind this alleged trend, and the tone implies there’s something wrong with human proclivity.

Then there’s the matter of spanking, teasing, topping or switching. Here’s what Dines says:

Pornographers are controlling sexuality. Sexuality is coming out of an industry not imagination. Porn contributes to more BDSM because [it] appeals to bored and desensitized porn users. This isn’t about sex but about corporatizating desire. It’s not an accident that there’s more BDSM activity now.

Again, there’s the question of evidence. And didn’t Dines say that private sex is a personal matter?

By phone, Dines tells me that what people do sexually is none of her business. “I’m not talking about constraining sexuality, but creating sexuality that is based on respect and equality. I’m not against sex,” Dines says. Her concern is about “the business of porn, not the practice of private pleasure.” But perhaps that line is blurry.

To be continued in Part III …

Above image: “Three Nudes and Reclining Man” (1934) by Ernst Kirchner, public domain. From Wikimedia Commons.

I was surprised this month when a small study came out with a conclusion related to relationships and the major news sources actually reported it, well, somewhat accurately.  Lately, there’s been no shortage of misleading reporting on relationship-related studies, and particularly studies related to how men and women are different.  I’m getting pretty sick of hearing the old, tired line about how young feminist women are finding themselves dissatisfied in relationships, combined with the implicit “I told you so” in the journalist’s tone.

This new study, to be published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, focused on regret.  Among other things, the researchers asked a random sample of the American population to describe a major regret in their lives and then categorized those regrets into life areas.  The takeaway that reporters chose to lead with was the finding that romantic regrets are the most common, and that women are more likely to have romantic regrets, while men are more likely to have regrets about their careers.  I found the news stories to be pretty accurate as far as how they reported the study–the problem, this time, comes from how we’re trained to read the media.

Headlines like “Bad Romance: Women Regret Love Failures More Than Men” and “Most Women Regret Failed Relationships More Than Anything Else” might as well read “Breaking News: Gender Binary Still in Tact!”  For people who tend to skim, or just read the first paragraph of a story, the quick takeaway from this study is not only that women care more about romance and tend to be disappointed, but that there is a clear divide between how men and women think about relationships and about their regrets.  In fact, the study actually left a lot of questions, and doesn’t really prove that this is true.

The sample size was small–only about 76 respondents actually completed the survey, which was done by using random digit dialing to get a representative sample.  (The news articles tend to say only that 370 people were called, but a lot of those didn’t answer or didn’t complete the survey.)  The researchers were hoping to expand on previous studies that used college students as a population, since that group is younger and more educated than the population at large and might tend to experience regret differently.  They decided to look at how different demographic factors influence regret, which I applaud, but they didn’t really report on how those factors interact.

For example, those not currently in a relationship were more likely to have relationship regrets.  Were more of the women surveyed not currently in a relationship than the men, or was it about even?  Similarly, while the results were explained by women’s tendency to privilege social relationships more than men, I wonder if the opposite might be true.  If the women surveyed happened to be very successful in their careers, you wouldn’t expect them to have as many regrets about career.  Regret doesn’t necessarily match up to the area someone is most focused on–you might have more regrets about an area you don’t have time to focus on instead.

Another factor I’d be interested to know more about is the importance of social pressure.  In other words, are women feeling more pressured to care about relationships and do well in the romantic arena, and thus have more regrets when they don’t?  Or could social pressure be acting in a different way, encouraging women to enter into romantic relationships in a way or at a time that’s not right for them?  I would think that kind of pressure might tend to create regret if someone had an opportunity for a relationship style that felt right for them but weren’t able to overcome social pressure to be more “traditional,” or if someone entered into a “traditional” relationship due to societal expectations and later realized a tension between that relationship and personality.  Similarly, it would be interesting to know whether a woman’s family background, education, and hometown have any correlation with her regrets, but the study is simply too small to find anything out about the influence of these factors.

Finally, something you’ll find out about me as this column continues is that I have a bit of a hawk eye for essentializing gender, and for queer erasure.  While I don’t think this study necessarily presumes heterosexuality, there’s no data on the sexual orientation of those surveyed, and the way things are broken down by gender means that the reporting is necessarily going to fall along these lines as well.  Any time you compare men vs. women in the area of romantic relationships, I think there tends to be an assumption that men and women are in relationships with each other, and so the tension is between two competing relationship styles bumping up against each other in a relationship.  This isn’t a critique of the researchers, exactly, but of the way we tend to read research.  I think it’s a challenge to look at that quick headline grab and question the assumptions that pop up, but one worth pursuing.

I want to let you all know that my “Welcome Table” post from Girl w/Pen has now been syndicated on BlogHer.  As of today, it’s first in line on their feminism line-up, but here’s the individual link, too.

I got this cool graphic and everything!  BlogHer contacted me to ask about syndicating it–who knows how they came upon it, but I thought that was very cool.  As you may remember, the post generated loads of thoughtful commentary here, and I’m interested in seeing if readers over in the BlogHer community have things to say about it.

[Cross-posted at Baxter Sez.]

Speaking of Superwoman, today at Framingham State University Stephanie Coontz is coming to campus: that is a highlight! A low light this week, feels like, is the airing of Waiting for Superman – that’s the anti-teachers union documentary that pulls heartstrings, and, as Diane Ravitch discusses in the New York Review of Books, misrepresents a lot about charter schools and teachers unions. A column in the NYRB, no matter how smart, doesn’t have the emotional impact of a documentary. Ravitch summarizes the American disappointment in education that underlies the film, and notes,

At last we have the culprit on which we can pin our anger, our palpable sense that something is very wrong with our society, that we are on the wrong track, and that America is losing the race for global dominance. It is not globalization or deindustrialization or poverty or our coarse popular culture or predatory financial practices that bear responsibility: it’s the public schools, their teachers, and their unions.

I’m banking on some grounded dialogue at my school on Waiting for Superman that can overcome the intense manipulation we’ve been receiving these days regarding the public sector and teachers. You can check out the American Federation of Teachers site on this topic. And Not Waiting for Superman recently has provided considerable material related to the war in Wisconsin; “Not Waiting” was founded by Rethinking Schools “to talk back to the film and support efforts by teachers, students, and parents to improve and preserve public education.”

Here’s the concern about WFS: As Ravitch notes about the film’s celebration of the success of charter schools:

Some fact-checking is in order, and the place to start is with the film’s quiet acknowledgment that only one in five charter schools is able to get the “amazing results” that it celebrates.

She goes on regarding the function of such a film,

Why propound to an unknowing public the myth that charter schools are the answer to our educational woes, when the filmmaker knows that there are twice as many failing charters as there are successful ones? Why not give an honest accounting?

I don’t know the answer. But here’s the deal: there is a discourse of going after teachers, and teachers are disproportionately women. As part of the ongoing “war on the public sector” that I wrote about last month, the anti-union rhetoric in general seems all mixed up with anti-woman sentiments. Women make up a higher percentage of public sector unions overall, and especially teacher unions. According to 2010 data from the Current Population Survey analyzed for GWP by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, women were 56 percent of all unionized public sector workers. For more information see CEPR’s state by state review of public sector union participation. You can see a girlwpen dialogue on the benefits of unions to women here.

I am not waiting for Superwoman. I already know a lot of Superwomen–and Supermen, my fellow teachers.

–Virginia Rutter

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act.  I encourage everyone to become familiar with what the Act has already accomplished, as well as the plans through 2015 (see an interactive timeline online).

Today, I dedicate this month’s column to reflecting on one of the new consumer protections that is scheduled to become effective January 1, 2014, No Discrimination Due to Pre-Existing Conditions or Gender:

Before the Affordable Care Act became law, insurance companies selling individual policies could deny coverage to women due to pre-existing conditions, such as cancer and having been pregnant. 

A WhiteHouse.Gov fact-sheet describes the ways in which, “The Affordable Care Act Gives Womem Greater Control Over Their Own Health Care.”  When I first read it, even as a feminist medical sociologist familiar with health care inequities, a few lines jumped out at me:

Right now, a healthy 22-year-old woman can be charged premiums 150 percent higher than a 22-year-old man.

Less than half of women have the option of obtaining health insurance through a job.

Today, maternity benefits are often not provided in health plans in the individual insurance market.

I appreciate the many positive effects this law has on women, men and children, but I find myself asking: why did the Affordable Care Act not include this provision — to eliminate discrimination to due to gender — among its original 2010 provisions?  A comparable provision was effective as of September 23, 2010 for children:

…health plans that cover children can no longer exclude, limit or deny coverage to your child under age 19 solely based on a health problem or disability that your child developed before you applied for coverage.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for protecting children’s rights to receiving coverage.  As a mom, I understand the instinct to want to protect one’s child before one’s self.  However, it feels like the policy-makers did not take into account the body of research on the direct correlations between maternal health and child health.  To put it simply, an unhealthy mom is not good for the health of her child — whether or not her child has excellent or poor health care coverage.

For example, a 2005 article in the journal PEDIATRICS documents research findings that,

“Maternal depressive symptoms in early infancy contribute to unfavorable patterns of health care seeking for children.” 

Another 2005 article examined the psychological and physical health of adult caregives of children with cerebral palsy and found that:

The psychological and physical health of caregivers, who in this study were primarily mothers, was strongly influenced by child behavior and caregiving demands…These data support clinical pathways that require biopsychosocial frameworks that are family centered, not simply technical and short-term rehabilitation interventions that are focused primarily on the child.

It’s easy to imagine the ways in which a child’s health might suffer if her/his primary caretaker has poor mental and physical health.  And, solely providing health care to the child did not necessarily improve the health outcomes of the caregiving moms.

One more example along the lines of the effects of maternal depression is the case of pediatric asthma.  A 2007 article in the Journal of Health Economics reports a study which shows:

…treatment of mother’s depression improves management of child’s asthma, resulting in a reduction in asthma costs in the 6-month period following diagnosis of $798 per asthmatic child whose mother is treated for depression.

Our health care system will likely save more money once we end insurance company discrimination on the basis of sex/gender.  Now, I recognize that not all women are mothers, but the overwhelming majority of mothers are women.  So, if the gendered division of labors in most families remains such that moms are primarily in charge of maintaing and protecting the health of their children, then wouldn’t we want these caregivers to have access to affordable, quality health care before 2014? 

That said, I am grateful that this law passed and hope that we will continue to work on ways to strengthen coverage for all Americans.