Flickr photo by Harvard Law Record
Elena Kagan, President Obama's Supreme Court pick, has a lot of people wondering about how her personal life will affect her decisions. This blogger (and mom) doesn't think that someone's mommy status matters. For another blogger's perspective (also a mom), read The Supreme Court Needs Another Mom.
Elena Kagan has no children and according to Michael Roston, a writer for True/Slant, this is going to mean the difference between a caring, loving Supreme Court and a heartless Darth Vader-like Court bent on worldwide destruction.
OK, that last piece may be an exaggeration.
But seriously, Roston does make the argument in his May 9 essay that Kagan represents the end of an era of motherhood on the Court and that this is a bad thing, indeed.
Roston says:
"To me, if a woman doesn’t have a child, she has only an abstract ability to pass judgment on issues where motherhood is concerned. I say this not out of disrespect for childless women, whose own struggles I would not dare to play down. Rather, I say it out of respect for all the mothers in the world, including my own. Women with the concrete knowledge of the decision-making that comes with motherhood simply know better ... ‘A mother knows best’ as we so often say."
I really, really want to love this. I really do. After all, I'm a mother and my fellow mamas hold a special place in my heart. But try as I might, I can't shake the sense that no one would say this about a man.
I've never once heard anything about a man's fatherhood status having an effect on his ability to make decisions or advance in his career. And although I recognize that Roston is speaking in more of a general way about the Court and not calling out Kagan herself, it does ring a bit uncomfortable, as though we women are nothing more than our ovaries with some brains stuffed in as an afterthought.
I know many "childless" women who are just as capable of empathy as those who have given birth. And I also know many cold, heartless, horrible women who have given birth. I don't think our ability to procreate has much of an effect on our ability to empathize.
I also think there's a fair amount of hypocrisy in the idea that a woman without a child can't make decisions "where motherhood is concerned." Haven't men without wombs been making those decisions for years? What about a woman who can't bear a child? Is she less able to comment on matters that have to do with motherhood just because her body is unable to produce a child?
Dangerous ground, I say. And so when Roston says (channeling Gloria Steinem):
"I must insist that a Supreme Court without a mother on the bench would be as incomplete as a tricycle with two wheels. Mothers make the world move forward, and they need to have a voice in the arrangement of our society, from the boardroom to the courtroom and beyond."
I want to agree. I really do. I believe in motherhood. I believe it has made me a stronger person who's much more capable than I ever was before. But I don't think we need a mother (or for that sake, a father) on the Supreme Court in order to make it effective.
I just don't see how the status of a person's womb is relevant to her ability to make effective decisions.
Do you think a motherless Supreme Court is really a terrible thing?
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Comments 4
I think that a person's personal life should have no bearing (within reason) on their appt. I'm going to write a journal entry entitled "The Supreme Court needs a Crossdressing Iranian basketball referree who moonlights as a stripper at a gay bar" Because " the gay people aren't adequately represented, Iran doesn't like us right now, a basketball referree would have experience being fair, strippers have that whole kindness to each other thing going.
Look, the bottom line is, everyone brings their own lives and experiences to the table. Unless we are going to up the SCOTUS to about a half a million individuals, there are some experiences that just aren't going to get a chance to weigh in.
There are a lot of fathers on the Supreme Court and only one mom. Why shouldn't mothers be more fairly represented? The moms in the US are treated terribly compared to other industrialized countries in the world. Mothers should have representation in the same proportion as our population. We have a long way to go to achieve this.
I've never once heard anything about a man's fatherhood status having an effect on his ability to make decisions or advance in his career.
Because it is insignificant to men, and to society at large. Men become fathers after the birth of their children. Women's motherhood begins when she discovers that she is pregnant. There is a really big difference that some agents in our societies have tried to erase. Mothers have an entirely different trial in life than non-mothers. This is undeniable. Not to say that every mother mother's the same.
I also think there's a fair amount of hypocrisy in the idea that a woman without a child can't make decisions "where motherhood is concerned." Haven't men without wombs been making those decisions for years?
Yeah, they have. And that's the whole damn problem of why we do not have our full rights as women and why we are still working so hard to get them.
What about a woman who can't bear a child? Is she less able to comment on matters that have to do with motherhood just because her body is unable to produce a child?
The problem isn't that she is less ABLE, it is that she is less qualified. In my opinion, if I wanted to know something about gays, I want someone that has walked and lived the life. If I want to know about people of color, I want to know persons that have walked and lived the life. This doesn't mean that other oppressed persons cannot relate or speak on the issues.
I read this and re-read it a couple of times just to clarify in my mind what I was reading. Mother, father, childless: I'm thinking, and it's only my perspective of course, that, at some point in her life this woman had a mom right? So the "mother knows best "piece would certainly be true and it would apply here in the upbringing her mama brought to the table. This wouldn't be an issue if it were a childless father, why put that pressure on a woman simply because she does not have a child? Yikes.