{"id":2710,"date":"2011-05-09T11:48:12","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T16:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=2710"},"modified":"2011-05-09T11:48:12","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T16:48:12","slug":"global-mama-mothers-day-round-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2011\/05\/09\/global-mama-mothers-day-round-up\/","title":{"rendered":"GLOBAL MAMA: Mother\u2019s Day Round-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Seems like quite a few other folks have been reimagining the possibilities of Mother\u2019s Day as well!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/family-relationships\/ci_17993767?nclick_check=1\">Mother&#8217;s Day is more than a greeting-card holiday<\/a>,\u201d Karen D\u2019Souza also returned to the origins of Mother\u2019s Day and wrote about how Julia Ward Howe imagined a day of peace.<\/li>\n<li>Nicholas Kristof urged readers to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/09\/opinion\/09kristof.html\">celebrate by \u201csaving\u201d a mother<\/a> and in a separate essay, pointed out that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/05\/08\/opinion\/08kristof.html?hp\">investing in family planning worldwide<\/a> would result in 94,000 fewer women dying in pregnancy each year. \u00a0(Full disclosure: I\u2019m not a fan of the rhetoric of \u201csaving\u201d\u2014it\u2019s something we spend a lot of time critiquing in my Transnational Feminism class\u2014but I deeply appreciate how Kristof continues to remind everyone that women\u2019s \u201cissues\u201d are indeed newsworthy.)<\/li>\n<li>Also in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/05\/08\/opinion\/08coontz.html?_r=1\">The New York Times<\/a><\/em>, Stephanie Coontz observed that \u201cit\u2019s too bad that nostalgia for a golden age of motherhood that never existed still clouds our thinking about what\u2019s best for mothers, fathers and their children.\u201d \u00a0At <em>Ms<\/em>., Laura Paskus urged readers to <a href=\"http:\/\/msmagazine.com\/blog\/blog\/2011\/05\/08\/honoring-all-mamas-on-mothers-day\/\">honor all mamas<\/a>\u2014including \u201cimmigrants, single, young, queer and low-income\u201d mothers\u2014on Mother\u2019s Day. \u00a0And over at <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.babble.com\/strollerderby\/2011\/05\/05\/are-nannies-getting-what-they-deserve\/\">Strollerderby<\/a>,\u00a0Rebecca Odes drew attention to all the nannies who help mother children, and who should be a part of Mother&#8217;s Day as well!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the spirit of infusing new meanings into Mother&#8217;s Day\u2014and in keeping with the <a href=\"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=2647\">Mother&#8217;s Day Challenge<\/a> I issued to myself and interested readers\u2014I did two things.\u00a0 Right after eating brunch, and sending flowers to my mom (about whom I&#8217;ll write more later), and right before going on a family hike, I gave to two organizations:<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mothersdaymovement.org\/\">Mothers\u2019 Day Movement<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 Founded by six women who were \u201cshocked to learn that $14 billion was spent in the US in 2010 on Mother\u2019s Day celebrations including flowers, cards and meals,\u201d they selected <a href=\"http:\/\/shininghopeforcommunities.org\/\">Shining Hope for Communities<\/a>, a Wesleyan student-founded organization working in Kibera, Kenya, as the target of their 2011 fundraising efforts. \u00a0(The co-founder and president of SHOFCO, Kennedy Odede, grew up in Kibera.)\u00a0 I am totally impressed that college students founded SHOFCO, and I remembered well the insightful opinion essay, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/10\/opinion\/10odede.html\">Slumdog Tourism<\/a>,\u201d written by Odede in <em>The New York Times<\/em> last August.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Save the Children: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodgoes.org\/everymothercounts?__utma=1.1263823709.1288804993.1292438244.1293718574.9&amp;__utmb=1.8.9.1293718574457&amp;__utmc=1&amp;__utmx=1.00014549613434256097:2:3&amp;__utmz=1.1288809330.2.1.utmcsr=(direct)%7Cutmccn=(direct)%7Cutmcmd=(none)&amp;__utmv=-&amp;__utmk=131995407\">Every Mother Counts campaign<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 They have a midwifery training program in Afghanistan, which ranked as the worst place to be a mother in their Mothers\u2019 Index.\u00a0 I like the emphasis on training.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t quite make it to writing any letters to my political representatives as I had planned\u2026 but I figure that Father\u2019s Day is around the corner, and I&#8217;m planning on pitching a surprise to my husband after I serve up his brunch: co-authorship?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seems like quite a few other folks have been reimagining the possibilities of Mother\u2019s Day as well! In \u201cMother&#8217;s Day is more than a greeting-card holiday,\u201d Karen D\u2019Souza also returned to the origins of Mother\u2019s Day and wrote about how Julia Ward Howe imagined a day of peace. Nicholas Kristof urged readers to celebrate by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1916,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21105],"tags":[8959,21351,1399,21615,3109,21621,21773,21798],"class_list":["post-2710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-mama","tag-families","tag-feminist-history","tag-global","tag-mothers-day","tag-motherhood","tag-mothers-day-movement","tag-save-the-children","tag-shining-hope-for-communities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1916"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}