{"id":91,"date":"2022-05-08T14:32:09","date_gmt":"2022-05-08T14:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/?p=91"},"modified":"2022-05-08T14:32:09","modified_gmt":"2022-05-08T14:32:09","slug":"mothers-dont-have-it-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/?p=91","title":{"rendered":"Mother’s Don’t Have It Easy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here’s my most recent column published by the Arizona Daily Star: https:\/\/tucson.com\/opinion\/local\/local-opinion-mothers-day\/article_8dde37d6-bb59-11ec-a71a-af9ecd0a4e0d.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took me a while to realize how much I love my mother. Probably not unlike many, our relationship had complications. But once I became a mother myself, I better understood her motivations and limitations. I realized why she regularly coated my face with sunscreen, and why my hair always lacked the adornment sported by my peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We live in a society where mommy issues abound, and we blame mothers for just about everything. Even in the example above, why wasn\u2019t my dad tasked with the burden of taming my hair? Why did I use my plain hair as an example of Mom\u2019s limitation and not Dad\u2019s? I know mommy issues are real, and my own kids will probably spend thousands in therapy dealing with the unintended consequences of my parenting, but let\u2019s be honest: Mothers don\u2019t have it easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I once had an idea for an algorithm that would calculate how much a person made in a year doing the labor we take for granted: cooking, cleaning, laundry, child care, shopping \u2014 perhaps in addition to the full- or part-time work that actually pays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I lost my first column writing gig after I became a mother. It was a biweekly column that I wrote for three years for an online publication, but once I had a kid, and altered my bio accordingly, I felt my editor growing distant. He stopped corresponding with me when he would regularly reach out to praise my voice. He was ecstatic to help my publishing career, and he made a point of telling me so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess it\u2019s true what they say: Having a kid changes everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publishing, as many other industries, is hostile to mothers. I know some industries see us as a liability since having kids is so expensive (and once you have one, they just keep on coming). But I think the hostility goes much deeper than that, in some unchecked corner of our psyches that is well worth examining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my colleagues, Sallie Koenig, is investigating the ways that higher education is also hostile to mothers. You might think colleges and universities, as democratic bastions of society, set a different standard, but according to her research, that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the participants in my study told me, \u2018When I got pregnant, the department head sent out an email saying he hopes it isn\u2019t catching.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeesh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of my doctoral work, I am translating the Egyptian poet Gamilla El-Alaily\u2019s work. You may know her from the Google Doodle back in 2019 in honor of her 112th birthday. The poems I translated are all about her mother. I had been playing with the idea of entering translation awards, but hadn\u2019t thought the translations were good enough to warrant paying the reading fees, thinking, \u201cWho sees merit in a bunch of poems praising her mother?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I realized I was buying into the same anti-mother sentiment I had been victim of, and that I probably victimized my own mother with (I\u2019m sorry, Mom). My Egyptian-born husband thinks the poems are beautiful, and he doesn\u2019t get why I don\u2019t share his enthusiasm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing I love about Egyptian culture \u2014 and this is speculation, but born out of good reason \u2014 is that mothers are revered by default. Mothers don\u2019t have to juggle a career and managing the household to get respect. They aren\u2019t ever under pressure to diet to be thin or inject their face with toxins to be young. They are regarded as beautiful because they escorted life into this world, and their job would never be described as thankless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s celebrate Mother\u2019s Day with one of El-Alaily\u2019s couplets:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeace be upon you, mother, peace with every holiday,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peace with every sunrise, peace with every sweet song.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy Mother\u2019s Day to all mothers, past, present, and future. It\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s my most recent column published by the Arizona Daily Star: https:\/\/tucson.com\/opinion\/local\/local-opinion-mothers-day\/article_8dde37d6-bb59-11ec-a71a-af9ecd0a4e0d.html It took me a while to realize how much I love my mother. Probably not unlike many, our …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[50,49,48,53,51,52,47,45,46],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","tag-childcare","tag-cleaning","tag-cooking","tag-egyptian-poet","tag-gamilla-al-alaily","tag-jamilla","tag-mommy-issues","tag-mothers-day","tag-mothers"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/khoggattabader.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/flowers.jpg?fit=1024%2C785&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khoggattabader.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}