Check out Mandy Van Deven’s interview with Mumbai-born author and architect, Meera Godbole Krishnamurthy, in which they discuss the author’s new novel, Balancing Act (Penguin Books India), her experience of coming to writing as an architect, and her thoughts on building an identity as a feminist mother. You can find their conversation over at Bitch Magazine.

As a Women’s and Gender Studies faculty member, I’m hyper-attuned to representations—of beauty, of consumption, of masculinity—in the world around me.  As the parent of a daughter with Down syndrome, I’ve become equally attuned to representations of people with disabilities.  Now that we’re well into the holiday season, I’ve been interested to see how children with disabilities appear in all the holiday-themed programming and advertising, if they appear at all.

The big problem is that kids like my daughter rarely show up at all in mainstream media.  Holiday specials pass by, one after the other, and my husband and I find that we’re searching increasingly desperately for disabled characters.  “Oh,” I said the other day while listening to the Muppet Christmas CD, “I think Animal is a person with special needs!”  He doesn’t speak clearly, he obviously has some behavioral challenges, including difficult controlling his emotions, but he’s a beloved and valuable member of the rock band Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.  It’s occurred to me that we may be able to use Rudolph as a role model in the future, as well—his community initially interprets his difference as abnormal and undesirable, but they come to see it as a talent and a benefit.  But in terms of actual human beings, the representational terrain is fairly bleak.

There are exceptions.  Toys R Us, for instance, has a catalog specifically for kids with disabilities—kids that they kindly, but awkwardly, call “differently-abled.”  Whoopi Goldberg and a child with Down syndrome are on the cover, and all the toys in the catalog feature kids with various disabilities playing with them.  The toys are described in terms of their educational and/or therapeutic potential:  for instance, the Fisher Price “Go Baby Go! Crawl-Along Drum Roll” is marketed as providing gross motor, tactile, auditory, visual, and thinking stimulation.  I do appreciate that, since Biffle and I are eager for Maybelle’s playtime to be stimulating, and we are often on the lookout for toys that will help her in one or another of the areas we’re working on in therapy.

But the fact that kids like Maybelle only appear in the “differently-abled” catalog is distressing.  These kids are all in their own catalog, even though all the toys are the same as the ones in the regular Toys R Us lineup.  As one of my colleagues pointed out, “If you want to know who a society doesn’t value, look at who they segregate.”  So, while I’m very glad that Toys R Us is documenting the existence of disabled kids—not just kids with Down syndrome but those with autism and a range of physical disabilities, as well—I do wish that these kids were fully included in all their marketing, so that their catalogs would help make these kids’ full inclusion in society at large seem normal, desirable, even unremarkable.

Maythee Rojas is a teacher, critic, and writer.  Author of the new book Women of Color and Feminism (Seal Press), she is currently an associate professor in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at California State University, Long Beach.   The book is a fascinating overview of feminist history and the construction of identity politics within feminist movements, with a diverse representation of notable icons, which includes not only Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash and Saartjie Baartman, but Tracy Chapman and Laura Aguilar as well.  It’s a smart, page-turning read that offers numerous examples to illustrate powerful points.  The book easily belongs in the hands of the many online feminists today who are in search of a book to start the critical journey of self-education on the connections between race, class, sexuality and gender.

Over phone and email, I recently spoke with Maythee Rojas about intersectionality, resisting multiple oppressions within feminist movements, and the hopes for her new book in addressing important issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in feminism(s) today:

Allison McCarthy:  What led you to working on a book focused on women of color and feminism?

Maythee Rojas: I have been teaching a course on the subject for the last nine years and the literature and theory by women of color is something I have studied closely as a scholar. However, when I set out to write this book, I wanted to avoid writing something that could be construed as the authoritative book on women of color.  There’s no such thing, nor should there be. I respect Seal for taking something academic and making a commitment to developing it as part of a mainstream series. It helps create bridges with the academic world and find new audiences beyond the Ivory Tower.  My hope is that this book will lead other presses – mainstream and academic — to publish more works on women of color.

AM:  In what ways did your academic research on Chicana/o and Latina/o literature contribute to your literary vision for Women of Color and Feminism?
MR: In the book, I consciously attempt to focus on multiple groups and communities. Learning about Chicana/o and Latina/o culture has never been in isolation for me.  In fact, if you look at the history, experiences, and creative expressions of Chicana/os and Latina/os, you’ll find that other communities of color have often influenced them.  There’s a lot of overlap in terms of the messages relayed and socio-political issues addressed.  As a scholar, I have the same approach: having a specialization in Chicana/o and Latina/o literature requires me to think about other groups in an intersectional manner.

AM:  Why do you see the theory of intersectionality as critical for all feminists when addressing issues raised by women of color?
MR: Intersectionality applies to everyone, period.  We all have multiple facets of identity.  However, intersectionality is often applied only to those who do not fit mainstream categories of identity. Much of it has to do with people’s lack of deep introspection; or, whether they are willing to think about their positions of privilege on a daily basis and the effect of their actions upon others.  It’s a journey of integrity and honesty that’s a part of self-actualization in our lives.  If feminism is truly going to produce the result of equality for women and opportunities in a less biased society, we have to think about how women from different communities can reach that success.  We’re not all on the same level in any place.  What factors and what privileges stand in the way?  It’s really about working collectively.  It requires reflecting on people around you: their lives, opportunities, limitations.  If you’re working in a social justice movement or a place of transformation, you have to take those factors into account or it’s going to be a flawed attempt.  It does require those things.

AM:  How have women of color, outside of global feminist movements, contributed to a greater public understanding of gender, race, class, and sexuality?
MR: I think it’s through daily actions.  The interactions of everyday life are bound to challenge us.  So often, we have perceptions of others based on media, politics, and education.  However, when we encounter people who embody particular markers of race and class and sexuality and we interact with them, those markers fall away to flesh and bone individuals.  I also think our interactions with non-academics – our families and friends– teach us as much about culture as they do about them.  It’s more about what we are willing to open ourselves up to.  Does what we what learn about others connect with what we assumed about their background, sexuality, culture?  To more specifically answer your question, I believe women of color contribute to life through their daily interactions in public spaces, through the ways they raise their families, through the challenges they make to a system, a classroom, a workplace, etc.  For creatively minded individuals, it’s also through their cultural production (art, film, music, etc) and how they shape these expressions to share with other people.  I think a lot of people aren’t actually part of organized social movements, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t part of social change.

AM:  Have the feminist movements of past and present failed to address the needs and lives of women of color?
MR: I don’t think they’ve outright failed.  If I believed that, I would have to rethink why I am in Women’s Studies.  Have they had their shortcomings?  Yeah.  But that’s part of understanding that we haven’t accomplished all the goals of feminism and there’s a lot left to do.  I think it’s important that we’re critical of these shortcomings and that we register our disappointments.  We can use that as a preventive measure.  The book is rather critical at times of past movements, but I don’t think it argues that they haven’t worked at all. The people who have been responsible for writing about feminism and promoting feminism have been remiss in their inclusion of women of color and that’s important to take into account.  How willing are feminists to really self-interrogate, to really consider what they’ve gained at the expense of others, what hasn’t been achieved in the ongoing project of feminism?  For us to stay abreast of what hasn’t worked, what hasn’t been done, and whose voices are missing keeps us alive and moving forward toward an ideal.  Even if it’s not achieved in our lifetime, it shouldn’t be something we stop striving for.

AM:  Who did you envision as the audience for this book?  Have any of the responses to the book thus far surprised you?
MR: I kind of thought about it in two ways.  One of the audiences it’s geared towards is obviously college students, both graduate and undergraduate, and I think you can hear that in the classroom descriptions I use.  I was also encouraged to learn that it would be available in independent and mainstream bookstores, so that anyone could find her/his way to the book.  You might think that a book on women of color is only for women of color.  I can’t stop anyone from thinking that, but I hope that for anyone who reads past the first few lines, the reader will see that it’s for anyone who is interested in knowing themselves better and knowing more about the world around them.

AM: What projects are you currently working on?
MR: I have three projects that I’d like to see happen.  First, I want to finish my book, Following the Flesh: Embodied Transgressions in Chicana Literature, which looks at literary characters who are cast as “bad” women (mistresses, murderers, lesbians) and are maligned by society, and help us rethink what “bad” means. Examining these issues within both US and Latin American contexts, the book addresses crossing not only social borders, but also physical ones.  The next project I would like to pursue is a cultural history of Latinos and dogs. Drawn by my own passion for animals, I’m really interested in looking at how dogs show up in Latino culture.  Living in L.A. with a large Latino population and a dog-friendly attitude, there have been several race and class bias in the city’s laws that have been passed and I wanted to address those biases. I’m also interested in immigration issues in terms of how they relate to cultural shifts about pets as immigrants become more assimilated to the US.  A third project, which is much farther down the line, is a cultural history on feminism in Costa Rica.  My grandmother is nearing her 104th birthday and I would like to parallel her personal experiences as a woman (she has lived a very nontraditional life) with the development of women’s lives and issues in Costa Rica over the past century.  I imagine describing the historical and social changes of my family’s country vis-à-vis my grandmother’s own life.

The amazing ladies of WAM! are auctioning off one-of-a-kind items including the chance to travel, connect with your favorite feminists, own original artwork and autographed collectibles, and get editing advice from the best of the best – all to benefit WAM!. Bid early and bid often, because it all goes to support gender justice in media…Details here.

The uproar over the change in mammogram and pap smear recommendations have been volatile to the say the least. We’re talking about women’s lives, plain and simple…right? If we take out the absurdity that came with attaching the recommendations to the current health care/insurance reform debate (like say the GOP crying about the government interfering with a woman’s health decision), we might see the recommendations a bit differently.

With possible reductions in screening, many women have pondered whether their BFF or even they would be here to write about. Jill Zimon writes about how the guidelines might cause women to be more passive about breast cancer. Ironically after we have spent years getting women to actually do mammograms. I say the same with pap smears, but when we are dealing with science, especially health science, we have to weigh many other factors.

Feminist health scientists have won many battles in the last 20 years, but is it worth it to fight for maintaining the status quo in relation to screenings?

If we start at the very beginning of the debate, we must first start with lives lost or endangered by the screenings themselves. The Breast Cancer Fund asks, “Why are we still relying on this method of screening when we have long understood that radiation is a known breast carcinogen?” Mammograms involve putting our lives at risk, but presumably the risk is much smaller than the risk of doing nothing. Where is that tipping point? Is it determined on the individual basis or the population basis? If saving your daughter’s life might cost one other woman’s life is it justified? Do we justify use of mammography if we save 100 women and lose 1? Because honestly that is what I believe we need to talk about. Not cost-saving in dollars, but in lives impacted.

Luckily I have feminist women’s health professionals in my circle and for the most part, they agree with the guidelines BUT they wish that the panel had worked with communications professionals to get the message out in a better way. I agree, but I also wish the Obama administration hadn’t sold out the panel so quickly. Bottom line: For low risk women, it might be better for you to skip a mammogram now and then or wait until you are 50. BUT…BUT…you can only decide this with your physician. So while the GOP jumped on this as a sign that the government really was creating death panels, it was actually an affirmation of women working with their medical teams to provide individualized health plans.

During the HPV vaccination debates of 2007, I heard a lot of concern over whether the vaccine was worth the risk for the benefits. I also heard from women (at the 2007 NOW Conference) who talked about how scary and invasive they felt the follow-up screenings for cervical cancer were to them. They weren’t talking about cervical cancer treatment, but the steps between a bad pap smear and cancer treatment itself. How much are their lives worth compared to vaccination injuries and deaths? Again, the feminist health professionals I know say that the new guidelines, which didn’t cause as much uproar as the mammogram guidelines, are essentially what they have known all along. The risk isn’t worth the unnecessary pap smears and the follow-up treatments. Or is it?

And this is why I advocate for scientific literacy for all, especially women. The next time you hear a woman, no matter her age, wave their hands while saying that they aren’t into science, ask them if they are into their health because that’s what we are talking about. Science is not out there in our gadgets, but it’s right here in our bodies. We also need to ensure that our medical science professionals, from the MDs to the PhDs, have a grasp of ethics as well. They need to be in the community not just to serve, but to learn. Drawing up medical recommendations is a balancing act between the science and the ethics of being a human being, having to weigh all the outcomes to find the best solution.

As a science grrl, I don’t know where that line actually is, but I do know it can’t be drawn by unemotional scientists nor by the scientifically under-literate public. There’s a partnership in there, but each side needs to learn more about the others skills too.

Over twenty mothers who were mourning the deaths of their children and protesting government violence were arrested and jailed this past weekend in Iran. Valerie Young wrote a great post about it over at her blog, Your (Wo)man in Washington, which can also be found over at MomsRising. Connecting Iranian mothers’ activism with mothers’ activism elsewhere, she writes that

Motherhood instantly ups your ante in the human sweepstakes. It gives you a very personal stake in the future, and makes you vulnerable in every way. It can also empower. Women who hesitated to speak for themselves may find their voice and advocate energetically for themselves as mothers and for the welfare of their children.

Mothers in Iran have been organizing online, on twitter, and on the streets. They have set up a Mournful Mothers Committee with a blog and have been staging anti-government protests on a regular basis in Tehran. They were arrested before Student Day demonstrations planned this past Monday. Watch the video here. Supporters in LA have submitted a petition to the U.N. calling for an investigation of human rights violations in Iran.

I am reminded of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who protested regularly during Argentine’s Dirty War–when tens of thousands of Argentinian citizens were abducted, tortured, and “disappeared” by the government–as well as China’s Tiananmen Mothers, or the Welfare Warriors in the U.S. (The picture above is a poster from the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.) Motherhood can not only be a powerful political motivator for individual women but also provide a potent moral ground from which to protest human rights violations and other injustices. Women in various movements around the world have mobilized the symbolic power of motherhood in ways that work within traditional notions of motherhood to claim authority and demand justice to leave the private space of the home and enter into the public sphere with potentially radical demands.

While it’s true that this form of activism can run the risk of perpetuating traditional definitions of motherhood, it’s also true that it can inspire a powerful activism grounded in an ethics of care. Women who may never have considered themselves activists can suddenly find themselves standing their ground in the face of soldiers with guns, as an anonymous Iranian journalist observes in an article about the ongoing women’s anti-governmental activism in the October 5 issue of The New Yorker.

I am inspired by the brave and media-savvy Mournful Mothers Committee and the mothers who have not let fear stop them from speaking out. They inspire me to consider how caregiving, by women and men, provides us all with an opportunity to extend our circle of concern to our larger communities, both locally and globally.

Anya and Teo are 7 weeks old today, and those first foggy days postpartum are only now coming into hazy relief. Going in, I’d feared postpartum depression; having had a few run-ins with that dark night before, I was all too aware of the risks. Thankfully, depression hasn’t hit. But my mind played some serious tricks on me those first weeks with the babies here at home.

My mind—anxious—obsessed. As in, when not attentively focused elsewhere (diaper, nurse repeat), my mind would wander into spin cycle, grasping over and over again a singular script. You’ll laugh when you hear it. The script went like this: I pretended I was Sarah Jessica Parker. Or rather, I wished I were.

SJP you say? Yes, that’s right. SJP became the object of my relentless postpartum mental gaze because SJP—a soon-to-be Brooklyn neighbor who had recently had twins herself via surrogate—was waited on, I was certain, hand and foot. Nursing at 3am and craving cinnamon toast and fresh orange slices, for example, I’d think: “Sarah Jessica’s cook would be bringing her cinnamon toast and oranges right about now.” And so on. It was the fantasy of the new mother who rather wanted to be cared for herself, and it just didn’t let up.

Until, that is, my hormonally crazed postpartum mind found a new object to twist itself around like a weed: spiders. I’d been up late one night after the hospital watching a National Geographic Special on newborn behavior in the animal kingdom. The program featured a breed of spider for which offsprings’ arrival signaled the mother’s death. Baby spiders hatch, so it’s not like the mother spider died in childbirth; rather, once the voracious offspring hatched, the tiny multi-legged carnivores would feed on the mother’s body, destroying her along the way. I watched, spellbound, repulsed, as she let it happen. It was nature taking its course. And while nursing, I just couldn’t let it go. It was the fantasy of the nursing mother who feared she might disappear.

My obsession with the baby spiders slowly gave way to one more—a fixation that is with me still and one I hope will not go away (unlike the others, which, thankfully, did!). This last postpartum fixation had to do with Marco, and our work/life arrangement, which is in flux. Following the mind meld with SJP and the fixation on the spiders, I became obsessed with the notion of Marco as a stay-at-home-dad. It’s one of many arrangements we are trying on, but in my mind, it stuck like glue. It’s the working mother’s fantasy, and it’s one that many couples have, of course, made real.

I never got my cinnamon toast exactly, though Marco makes me waffles, which do the trick; I no longer worry that I am that mother spider (phew!). But I do still dream about Marco, pictured here reading Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs with Teo strapped to his chest, being a primary caregiver. Postpartum blur, or potential solution? We shall see. In the meantime, we’re both enjoying these babies, and being home with them, so very much!

GET IT WHILE IT’S HOT: Demystify the blogosphere with GWP’s very own Courtney E. Martin. Attend the live online event TOMORROW or order the download to enjoy any old time! Register here, at She Writes.

Here’s the full court description (pun intented!):

What distinguishes a blog from a website? How do you find a blog that deals with your particular passions and interests? What is proper etiquette for getting bloggers’ attention and/or participating in the blog conversation? This workshop for beginners demystifies blogs once and for all, breaking down both the basic anatomy of a blog (blog roll, categories, comments, etc.) and the landscape of the larger blogosphere. Participants will walk away with a clear understanding of how to find blogs that interest them or pertain to their field, search for particular issues and experts within the new media landscape, and operate with savvy in the blogosphere—using blogs for research, promotion, and platform building.
Stay tuned for Part II, in which Courtney will demystify starting a blog and finding content to keep it fresh and attract traffic.

Courtney E. Martin is a writer, speaker, and consultant based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of three books, including the award-winning Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women (Penguin, 2007). She is also a Senior Correspondent for The American Prospect and an editor at Feministing.com, the most widely read feminist publication in the world. She has appeared on most major media outlets, including The O’Reilly Factor, CNN, and GoodMorning America, and won numerous awards and fellowships for her writing and activism. Courtney is happy to coach both individuals and organizations in blog and book proposal development, new media outreach, and engaging young people. She also loves facilitating panels, developing conferences, and speaking on topics such as feminism, intergenerational dialogue, activism, youth culture, politics, and writing.

With Tiger Woods in the news for this latest round of Very-Public-Infidelity, guest blogger Ebony A. Utley weighs in with her expertise on the issue. A research expert on marital infidelity, Utley confronts common stereotypes and raises questions about cheating, talking, silence, and power.

The proverbial cats are out of the bag as the tabloid media collect stories from Tiger Woods’ alleged mistresses. The mistresses are increasingly chatty — talking about “I was with Tiger here” and “he left me a voicemail there.” Woods is busy denying what he can and apologizing for what he can’t while Mrs. Woods remains silent.

None of this is unusual. With a slew of high-profile unfaithful men in the news lately, it’s hard not to notice a pattern. These men haven’t come out in public to say, “I had inappropriate sexual relations outside my relationship” without first facing an impeachment trial, sexual-assault accusations, blackmail threats, texts, sexts, voicemails … you get the picture.  Rarely have these men come clean without some sort of provocation.  Often, famous unfaithful men confess to their infidelity because the other woman beat him to it.

Mistresses are notorious for telling their side of the story because the world wants to hear it. The sex secrets of sexy women are titillating. Be honest with yourself. You wanted to know whether Tiger’s mistresses were prettier than his wife. Some of you readers out there also wanted to know whether she looked like she was better at sex than the wife. Admit it. Those are our society’s infidelity stereotypes. The other woman had to be offering something that the wife did not.

The wife wasn’t giving it up. Or if she was, her sex was boring.
The wife let herself go.
The wife was too invested in the kids.
The wife didn’t (emotionally) support her man.
The wife was emasculating.
The wife was never around.

Mistresses are quick to perpetuate these stereotypes, but the husbands are quick to offer their wives $4 million diamond rings and $80 million prenup revisions.  If the wives were such horrible people, why dish out all the cash to keep them? Since the husband can no longer keep the mistress quiet, is he buying his wife’s silence? I don’t think so. Men who cheat on their wives rarely want to leave them; usually they’re genuinely sorry. The silence on the wives part is not about his money. It’s about power.

A mistress has power because she is the secret. She is the one tasked with being discreet. Once the secret is out, the mistress loses her power. She scrambles to get it back with revealing details, but the more she talks, the more her power diminishes. People know who she is, where she was, what she did, how she did it, and who else she did it with. Once the prurient details are all out there, people are free to pass judgment on the mistress and she rapidly moves from sexy story to object of public scrutiny to obscurity.

But the wife who refuses to talk gains power. Now she is the one deciding to be discreet.  No one knows what she’s thinking and everyone wants to. Did she know?  Did she have a revenge affair? Why didn’t she leave him? Does she love him that much? How is she going to spend those millions? The quieter she remains, the more dignity that wife regains.  Long after we’ve forgotten the mistress’ name and the seedy motels and the racy voicemails, the silent wife is still standing in the spotlight with an air of mystery about her. We might not understand her, but her secrets are the ones that garner respect. The most understated gift a chatty mistress gives to the wife is power.

Ebony A. Utley, Ph.D. is an expert in infidelity. She is currently writing about her interviews with wives who have experienced infidelity during their marriages. See more of her research at http://www.theutleyexperience.com/

Four years ago, Judith Warner made the argument that “hyper-parenting” in the U.S. has caused plenty of mothers to lose all semblance of balance in Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. While the book received its fair share of criticism (for example, see the thoughtful analysis of Warner’s book on The Mothers Movement Online), I recently confronted the bubbling up and spiraling out of my own anxiety–slightly irrational but nonetheless all-consuming–which found its source in the shadowy threat of the H1N1 virus.

A few weeks ago, I was totally caught up in H1N1 anxiety. No doubt some of it had to do with media stories about cases of mortality; the rest of it was wrapped up in having young children. I was managing to control my anxiety surrounding my youngest son, who’s in nursery school, but couldn’t manage to quell the fears about my oldest daughter. J. is in elementary school and has asthma plus multiple food allergies, including to egg; this means she can’t get flu shots. We had plans to travel to see their grandparents for Thanksgiving on two planes. Given our past history of taking her to hospitals for various asthma- and sickness-related issues, both my husband and I were nervous about the whole plan.

What to do? Forego the trip to see aging grandparents because of our generalized anxiety about the possibilities of the kids catching H1N1 (from which plenty of kids have recovered)? Grit our teeth and try our best to get a grip on the anxiety and fear we knew were being influenced by media hype? Silence our concerns about a relatively new vaccine and do everything we could to find out if it was possible for both of our kids to get vaccinated?

In the end, we settled on choice #3. This wasn’t hard for my youngest one, but proved more time- and labor- intensive for my oldest. We finally managed to score a dose of the vaccine from the pediatrician, which we transported to the allergist–where we sat, all morning, watching Sponge Bob in the waiting room while the doctor skin-tested her for reactions to the vaccine and eventually administered the dose in two stages.

So, what does this have to do with global motherhood? For one, our little family drama was set into play by globalization, which not only affects the pathways of pandemic viruses and the constant flow of information about them, but also the fact that we were living two plane flights away from my parents. At the same time, our experience represents parenting from a position of privilege: we had health insurance, access to the vaccine, and the ability to take a whole day off from work in order to vaccinate our daughter. It reminded me how many U.S. families don’t have the resources to access preventative care, or even to navigate relatively minor medical issues.

Subsequent phone conversations with friends in other states made me realize how this global scenario was at the same time very local. My friend in Boston? Couldn’t get the vaccine for her two kids but didn’t seem overly worried about it. The pregnant friend of friends in Atlanta who wanted the vaccine? Wanted it but couldn’t get it. Those same friends in Atlanta? Had one child who got sick with H1N1, recovered, and subsequently got the vaccine with the rest of the family. These geographical differences are exacerbated when we look at other countries, where H1N1 has sometimes not even registered on the radar. In many countries, it’s diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and HIV/AIDS that threaten children on a daily basis. (Here’s a link to UNICEF’s The State of the World’s Children 2009 report.)

Parenting in the time of H1N1: for those of us with some degree of resources, it highlights how caring for children often boils down to managing risks. Does the risk of a relatively new vaccine outweigh the potential risks of contracting a virus? Or is it the other way around? (For that matter, how risky is a plane flight to visit grandparents? The car trip to the airport? The list goes on and on.) Thoughtful parents perceive and weigh risks in different ways. There don’t seem to be right or wrong answers, except in hindsight, which can be kind or cruel. We can never know in the moment.

Families without resources have fewer choices, less ability to take control of these anxiety-ridden situations. I suspect it’s far more stressful not to have choices, to care for small children when you can’t take control and you can’t battle fate with much more than prayers and crossed fingers. Even if “control” is anything but.