I see people like this all the time that always have some "crusade" that they're pursuing - preaching from their high horse when their own closets are full to bursting with skeletons.
It's easier to fight "on behalf" of others and bask in their adulation than deal with the day-to-day responsibilities of life, innit? You've got to take care of yourself and those you're most responsible for first, then - if you have the resources left - take on the rest of the world.

>>> If you're a person who feels similarly...please don't reproduce.

Exactly! One gets looked at funny, for not wanting kids. But there are plenty of people who just shouldn't have.

Indeed. Our heirs ought to be the motivation & inspiration for us to great things with great devotion, not an impediment or burden, certainly not a mere "job".

For the best in this case though, I HATE to think what kind of grandmother that bitch would be to a grandSON.

For the life of me though, I find it hard to believe that Rebecca's father did not see that indifferent reaction coming. How long had they been married?! If a woman is a vindictive, selfish, selfrighteous, egotistical, bitch, how does one NOT notice? It isn't as if the signs are subtle.

Seems like "evil mom" Alice Walker hasn't done that badly, actually.

She's clearly encouraged her daughter to think for herself!

She also helped the then 14-year-old daughter NOT to become a teen mom for the wrong, weak reasons (by calmly arranging an abortion), thus freeing the daughter to take up her place at Yale (not bad!) -and has even provided her pissed-off, now middle-aged chick with a handy career - three books to date about having an iconic mother with feet of clay!

Alice Walker may well have been an emotional disaster as a mommy (no surprise she stopped at one kid from a starter sixties marriage!) - but she's done her duty as a parent.

Revenge memoirs are always useful to read. As long as you don't forget the author has a very specific agenda.

Alice Walker may well have been an emotional disaster as a mommy (no surprise she stopped at one kid from a starter sixties marriage!) - but she's done her duty as a parent.

This is a giant contradiction.

Children do not parent themselves. I can jet off to an evolutionary psychology conference and leave my dog with Gregg or ask my neighbors to bring her over to their place at night and play with her, which they do, but you don't do that with a kid.

Alice Walker may well have been an emotional disaster as a mommy (no surprise she stopped at one kid from a starter sixties marriage!) - but she's done her duty as a parent.

IF Alice was as absent and distant as Rebecca claimed, then I'd say no credit is due Alice. Credit due to Rebecca, her father, or someone else...but not Alice.
If a kid's parents are abusive or neglectful, yet - in spite of the correlation that would indicate they'd be very likely to grow up to be like their parents - the kid learns to reject that behavior...I wouldn't pat the kid's mom/dad on the back and say "good job!"

Or maybe you were just being ironic?

Children do not parent themselves.

True, but Alice Walker's daughter seems to take pains to emphasize that her father, at least, was a warm parent. So Rebecca wasn't bereft of love. And Yale isn't a dead end college.

She describes a busy, brilliant mother blinded by idealism - and idealism and homebody parenting often don't mix well. She also describes a rich childhood in many respects - a different kid may well have taken different lessons from it.

She's also 38 - with a very small child herself.
Old enough to perhaps stop kicking against mommy - yet with some years of grace before her kid, too, perhaps decides Rebecca's brand of mothering wasn't what he wanted.

True, but Alice Walker's daughter seems to take pains to emphasize that her father, at least, was a warm parent. So Rebecca wasn't bereft of love.

How much was the guy around?

Women whose attention/commitment to their careers is akin to mine shouldn't have children. Not fair to the children.

FYI, it seems that kids who are "insecurely attached" (see Bowlby) due to cold and inattentive mothers are affected by this throughout their lives. It's not something you can really get over, but something you can try to accept. Children like this don't have a solid emotional base to operate from -- as children or as adults...and this bleeds into whether they can achieve their potential, have successful relationships with others, etc.

Jamie,
No, you're right.
Alice Walker does not deserve a pat on the back!

But read again what Rebecca writes here (quoted at Amy's link):
"When I write that if [my mother] can’t apologise, I don’t want contact because I feel she is too emotionally dangerous for me and my unborn son, she writes that she won’t miss what we don’t have."

This is understandably angry writing - but it doesn't quite make sense. An apology - which Rebecca wants - will not prove that her mother has suddenly stopped being emotionally dangerous!

Maybe Rebecca does deserve the whole credit for becoming her own, forthright person.

I suppose I just find it hard to tell for certain?

"Children like this don't have a solid emotional base to operate from -- as children or as adults...and this bleeds into whether they can achieve their potential, have successful relationships with others, etc..."

That makes sense.

Alice Walker overcame a remarkably unpromising start in life herself. I can see how her achievements must have trumped her daughter's emotional needs.

I suppose I just find it hard to tell for certain?

Fair enough. No good way to tell, eh?

Alice could be all the things Rebecca said, and Rebecca could - even while complaining about her mother - be JUST as bad if not worse.

Or, Alice could have been a fully nurturing mother and Rebecca could just be a spoiled brat with a big fucking chip on her shoulder.

I really don't think I'd know either where to necessarily lay blame OR credit. I'm hesitant to give either. Then again I don't read revenge memoirs.

Then again I don't read revenge memoirs.

I've been known to!

(Jamie, you are probably a lot nearer the truth. The more I think about it, the more it seems likely Alice was probably insufferable in poor, ignored Rebecca's eyes. The latter probably wanted to scream every time she heard "child of dirt poor Georgia sharecroppers" said reverently about her oh-so-wonderful award-winning mom!)

Tressider, every time you write a sentence my flesh starts to crawl. It's kinda funny... Sometimes I'll be in a 7-11 buying a quart of milk, and my back will twitch.... Or I'll be driving up the PCH in Malibu, and an elbow will start to shimmy. And it's spooky for a second, before I realize... "Oh, Jody must be 'composing her thoughts' out there somewhere." All that's left is the oily taste of dread....

> She's clearly encouraged her
> daughter to think for herself!

As if it's a universally difficult thing for parents to do... By that same logic, Joe Hazelwood encouraged us to reflect on the beauty of the Alaskan coastline.

> -and has even provided her
> pissed-off, now middle-aged
> chick with a handy career

For the love of Christ, don't you wish she hadn't? Ted Bundy made one of his surviving girlfriends into a successful memoirist as well. Would you describe this as a silver lining? One of the first "duties" of parenthood is emotional coherence, and I can't believe you'd argue otherwise.

> As long as you don't forget
> the author has a very specific
> agenda.

How many decades of misuse will the word "agenda" suffer at the hands of people who don't have the wits to actually form an accusation?

> So Rebecca wasn't bereft of love.

She was bereft of love from her mother, and that's a special tragedy. You and DuWayne need to write a book: You share the inane presumption that children don't parental love, they just need "love", a conveniently fungible mass of voodoo that can be extracted from any passersby in a pinch, because identities are meaningless. I fucking hate that.

> idealism and homebody parenting
> often don't mix

Correct. Responsible, admirable parents surrender their idealism.

> with some years of grace before
> her kid, too, perhaps decides
> Rebecca's brand of mothering
> wasn't what he wanted.

See, this is the crux. There's a sort of person out there who thinks contrarianism is a mechanized, witless enterprise, requiring only the most localized application of logic.

But you have zero, zero evidence that Rebecca has been less than a sterling mother. To the best of our knowledge, she's the greatest thing that every happened to a child. So on what possible grounds could you assail her in this most personal regard? Were the stakes a little higher in terms of the published venue, is there any reason she shouldn't sue the shirt off your back?

As a now-middle-aged white guy, I was never in Alice Walker's target market, but the headlines and first-paragraphs from what I saw of her made me uneasy. Her daughter's report brings more testimony to an important principle from America's Oprah years, one I've expressed here before: When someone says the most important thing in the world is feelings, the feelings they'll be most concerned with are their own, always.

Even beautiful little girls are maimed by this truth.

Too pompous by half, Crid.

(Btw, the agenda implicit in a revenge memoir is..revenge!)

As for the rest. Silly, slithery stuff. You'd be better off digging up a playground.

Your response lacks an important measure of specificity.

One thing thing that stands out to me here.

Jody, you seem inordinately, one might even say unreasonably, invested in defending Alice Walker from any and all critisicm.

Why is that?

Crid,
Against my better judgment, I shall make an attempt at a brief exchange of points with you.

If you read the text at Amy's link, you do not find Rebecaa complaining she was not loved.

It is the "special tragedy" of the lack of attention she received from her mother that hurt her so deeply.

Note the implication, for example,when she describes her own contrasting reaction to motherhood and how she was not prepared for the strength of her feelings for her baby. “I adore him,” she says. “He’s really into running and jumping and he’s very attached to me. It’s all, ‘Mommy, Mommy, Mommy’, and it’s very difficult to leave him.”

The picture that emerges is terribly sad, sure.
No doubt there was a hugely self-serving element in Alice Walker's self-consciously "progressive" determination to allow her daughter independence at an early age.

(Though unlike Dickens's gloriously awful Mrs Jellyby, Alice Walker did not go on to pop out a small tribe of kids - and proceed to neglect them all in favor of charity for lost souls abroad! Rebecca was an only child, probably that also suited her mother!).

I don't think it's peculiar of me to suggest that part of Rebecca's beef comes from the fact she can't make peace with never having been the center of her famous mother's world.

Maybe that's also a "special tragedy" in your opinion?

Jody, you seem inordinately, one might even say unreasonably, invested in defending Alice Walker from any and all critisicm.

Why is that?

Quick answer,lujlp?

No one else was.

(Actually I've agreed with some of the criticisms, just not all of 'em!)

"from a starter sixties marriage!"

What is it about the phrase "starter marriage" that bugs me so much?

Do I think people who accept this callous disregard for their lifetime commitment suffer from too much Sex And The City? Do I think they display too little concern for their spouse? Or that they've they spent their lives swimming in a warm, shallow ocean of self-involvement between islands of admirers?

Whatever it is, it creeps me out. Maybe because it sounds so much like a "starter" house, as if the marriage is simply a financial arrangement. "I traded up to (a split-level in Brentwood) (a stockbroker who swears he's off the coke) (a bottle blonde, but she's got a natural set of Double-D's)".

Yuck.

Jody if someone hates their parents and refuses to have anything to do with them it is one of two things.

Justified, or behavior ingraned in them from another parent as a form of alienation.

This sound justifiable

I agree, Gog.

It's a rather flip and revolting borrowing.

I'll try not to use it again. The sense I meant - a step in life embarked upon with more enthusiasm than sense, for the status it represents to the world rather than for its likely longevity - is somewhat buried beneath all the other associations.

"When someone says the most important thing in the world is feelings, the feelings they'll be most concerned with are their own, always."

Crid, truer words have not been spoken.

Jody if someone hates their parents and refuses to have anything to do with them it is one of two things....

Nah. Too few,lujlp.

Rebecca says (in the linked text) that her mother's refusal to apologize was one tipping point.

I think you can add keeping your pride and rage at simmering point by refusing to cut a parent any slack for past behavior as a reason for maintaining hating a parent.

The two women seem as stubborn as each other!

(But books subtitled: "How I Accepted My Famous Mother's Shitty Parenting Wasn't All About Hurting MEeee-eeee And Finally Grew Up" don't sell too well, probably).

If I remember correctly, Rebecca Walker was in a same-sex relationship for several years in which she essentially informally adopted her partner's son and raised him as a co-parent. Then they split up...and Rebecca Walker essentially ditched the kid, and once she had a bio-baby, wrote lyrically about how the biological bond trumps all else, blah blah blah. So let's just say she's not my favorite person.

But I'm sorry - a grandmother who refuses to come see her newborn grandson who might die out of spite is a whole different kettle of fish. And not in a good way.

I know people who have mothers with busy careers who nevertheless felt loved and cherished by both of their parents. But those mothers kept track of what was going on with their kids, and would not have responded to their daughters getting pregnant at 14 with insouciance. (Their daughters weren't getting pregnant at 14, because the mothers kept track of what was going on their daughters' lives and taught them the facts of life, but you get my point.) Nor would they dream of "resigning" from their job as a parent short of, I dunno, extreme emotional abuse from a hopelessly drug-addicted adult child, or something along those lines. You can stay at home and be emotionally neglectful; you can work full-time and be involved. But your children have to be a top priority - not in the sense of giving them what they want, but in the sense of giving what they need. Alice Walker chose to conceive and parent her child - if she wasn't willing to invest emotional capital into that endeavor, she should have stayed on the Pill.

But it's possible that I'm overly influenced by the following passage by Rebecca Walker that I quite liked:

"I keep telling people feminism is an experiment. And just like in science, you have to assess the outcome of the experiment and adjust according to your results, but my mother and her friends, they see it as truth; they don’t see it as an experiment."

>I can see how her achievements must have trumped her daughter's emotional needs.

If your achievements are going to trump your children's emotional needs, DON'T HAVE KIDS.

> I shall make an attempt

Here in the United States, nothing's as pompous as the word "shall." Thirty years ago, a college instructor told us the word was dying, and that thoughtful people knew it was time. Besides, you'd made it through almost an entire comment exchange without dropping one of your pearly Continental koans, and we knew it couldn't last.

> If you read the text
> at Amy's link

After all these years, why would I start following her links now? If you're going to tease a blogger it's good sportsmanship to not do the reading and see if you get busted. Well, it's a lot of fun, anyway. For example:

> you do not find Rebecaa
> complaining she was not
> loved.

I mentioned love because you (Jody) did. Maybe I'm just an inordinately feminine guy, all mushy and feelings-oriented... But passages like this seem morally deficient, even if they're just a contrarian pose ("No one else was"):

> Rebecca's beef comes from
> the fact she can't make
> peace with never having
> been the center of her
> famous mother's world.

Why should she make peace with that? I think it's reasonable for a child (a defenseless young human, after all) to know --or be made to believe-- that they're the center of the universe for some period of their lives. The best parents seem to indulge the presumption while simultaneously teaching all the different ways a child is expected to connect with others and observe boundaries.

It's true that in general people who whine about unloved childhoods into adulthood are pathetic, wasting our time as well as their own. Patti Davis comes to mind, but they say Reagan never really connected with anyone after his divorce, not even the kids from the second marriage.

And the children of divorce deserve a little consideration. Their pain is gratuitous, and we're assholes if we don't say so.

See also my comments about the Zappa family. Some projects won't get done if you're distracted by the kids.

Actually, though you mentioned fame a couple of times, I don't think it much matters. There are plenty of people living quietly who ignore their kids to the same effect.

> Walker essentially ditched
> the kid, and once she had
> a bio-baby, wrote lyrically
> about how the biological bond
> trumps all

OK, so I guessed wrong about her excellence as a parent.

> they see it as truth;
> they don't see it as
> an experiment."

Yeah. Fond as I am of their products, I wish Reagan and Zappa had both made more time for the kids. It would be funner to admire them.

I don't think it's peculiar of me to suggest that part of Rebecca's beef comes from the fact she can't make peace with never having been the center of her famous mother's world. Maybe that's also a "special tragedy" in your opinion?

Sure is. As a kid, you're supposed to matter to your parent, and in a big way. And we understand that if your mommy is being chased by the Nazis, or is otherwise direly preoccupied, that she might avert her attention for a while, but if mommy is just a self-absorbed girl like me, well, then, she should get an IUD.

And the children of divorce deserve a little consideration. Their pain is gratuitous, and we're assholes if we don't say so.

Exactly.

Here's an excerpt from my answer to somebody who e-mailed me the other day for advice (a question that isn't going to make my column):

...when you have kids, I think you have an obligation to them, to not break up a family and screw up their lives. I don't have kids because I am impatient, self-involved, and I would break up a relationship if it stopped being exciting to me and move on to the next. It's a pity you chose badly the first time around, but why should your kid have to pay the price? If your relationship with your wife isn't high-conflict (which is really bad for kids) can't you and your wife make it work for the kid's sake? Who says your needs get to come first after you bring another person into the world? -Amy Alkon

PS If your marriage was "rocky from the start," what compelled you to have a child with this woman? Does nobody take that seriously? It's more than having a cute thing that looks and talks just like you, huh?

I had a mother who should not have had children. During my childhood there were no hugs, kisses or any show of emotion except passive aggressive anger. We never talked to each other except when I would ask her to cook something or to give me money. I never brought any friends over. My brother and mother were estranged in my childhood-teen years and it was forbidden for me to mention his name to anyone. It was necessary for me to always say I was an only child. I was an excellent student, but that never affected my home life in any way. I had other terribly abusive experiences with her that I will not get into but I what I mentioned above illustrates my daily life. The very next day after I graduated highschool I lit out. I never called home and home rarely called me.

I too had a loving male figure-my stepfather but it wasnt until adulthood that I appreciate his presence. I suffered from heavy depression most of my life, whehter it was enviromental or biological I am unsure.

When my life finally came together after getting the help I needed I received a sincere apology from my mother and she acknowledged that she should have never been a parent. That really helped me and gave me closure. I cant underestimate how important and significant it was.

Actually, though you mentioned fame a couple of times, I don't think it much matters.

Crid,
I think her mother's fame did indeed matter to Rebecca. It may not be a factor in the stories of all other women with unhappy childhoods, yes - I do get that! - but it's fairly central here.

Again - from the linked article - she directly compares her relationship with her mother to that of the imaginary hippie offspring of Margaret Thatcher.

She also states:

“My mother is a celebrity, and celebrities need to constantly police their reputation. If you put a chink in their public persona, it can be very dangerous and threatening to them.”

She even seems to be saying it's because of her mother's prominent public persona that she'll never get that apology!

First of all, this is an important Jody Clue... Reflecting back on some things you've said over the years, I now conclude that this is a personal fascination for you. Amy has Paris Issues; Raddy has Constitutional Separation of Powers Issues; I have Fuzztone Guitar Issues; and Jody has Fame Issues.

The world is full of parents who never let their feel kids feel the sunlight as they should, whether they're famous or not. (See Purplepen, above.) Sure, from the perspective of the kid, the problem is what happens when Dad goes on TV. But that's more about how people tend to reductively personalize threatening forces, and to deny that the one person who should be their source of love is a fuckup. It's more dramatically fulfilling for bitter teenage son of a Senator to say "I can't compete with the allure of being on C-Span!" than to say "My Dad is better at impersonal relationships than intimate ones."

Let's review Rebecca's sins:

A) She's bitter.
I must know five hundred people like that. (None of them have famous parents, though many of the earlier generation did well in various fields.)

B) She jerked around an adoptive child.
Purplepen's experience is backwards from what we usually see: Stepparents are often a source of pain and loathing in a child's life. But divorce with children is a very, very big problem, and almost all of us have friends who've put their children through things that are pretty grotesque.

C) And... Also...
OK, that's it.



It's a short list: Her experience isn't unique. Here in Tinseltown, I run into the kids of famous people with some frequency. There's nothing distinctive about the ones who're fucked up. For a kid to indict his parents' fame is like a Navy brat who blames the sea, or a farmer's kid who blames those Goddamn rutabagas out on the north forty. You can't trust kids to correctly name the flaws in a parent's character: Both parties have too much invested in their long-term illusions.

(PS Purp: I totally heart you)

PPS- You want fame? You want name dropping? I recently found out my boss is the son of guy featured in Coppola movies, and has since acquired household fame in similar ventures (etc). It was apparently a loving household, and my boss has a gorgeous family of his own now.

Wrong, Crid.

This piece Amy highlighted had, I thought, fascinating cusp issues.

The situation described was just murky enough to demand either complex projection - or similarly snarled rationalization - when commenters weighed the pros and cons.

But from your last comments, I'm not really sure I've got the hang of your larger thesis anyway. So I'll belt up now.

I gotcher cusp issues right here. None of the rest of us see murkiness: I can't understand what point you're making about projection.

Today's Jody Shibboleth: "Belt up". Collect 'em all!

(All this shit's still on disk, you know. Someday someone's going list all the Jodyisms at once and it's going to be really funny, like with Yogi Berra... only made of pretension instead of goodwill.)

Again - from the linked article - she directly compares her relationship with her mother to that of the imaginary hippie offspring of Margaret Thatcher.

Eh, I could see comparing myself with Margaret Thatcher's actual or hypothetical offspring to make a point, and my parents aren't famous in the least. (Great parents, but not famous.) Everyone knows who Margaret Thatcher is, so she's a great focal point for an analogy. I don't think she's putting her mother up on the same level as Margaret Thatcher - I think she's speaking a language her audience is likely to understand.

Was Rebecca Walker as badly off as the children of starving, AIDS-riddled parents in Africa who can't feed their children? No. Was she as badly off as children who are beaten and/or raped by their parental figures? No. Was she as badly off as the kids who get bounced through the foster care system? No. But that doesn't mean that she loses the right to criticize her childhood. Not abusing your kids is considered rather a low bar to clear these days. I'm sure there are many advantages that have accrued to her as the result of having a famous mother. I'm sure those advantages are ones that I would have killed to have at various points in my life. However, the maternal tradeoff would never, ever be worth it.

By the way, I think I may have somewhat misrepresented the Rebecca Walker-adoptive kid situation before - apologies for my spotty memory. Apparently the story is that she lived in a lesbian relationship for several years and co-parented her partner's biological child, writing about how important that relationship was, etc. etc. She still refers to him as her "first son." However, once she left the lesbian relationship, hooked up with her current boyfriend, and birthed a child, she began to say that she thinks adoptive parenting inherently involves a lesser level of love than biological parenting. Her exact quotes include:

"I don't care how close you are to your adopted son or beloved stepdaughter, the love you have for your non-biological child isn't the same as the love you have for your own flesh and blood. It's different. . . . It isn't something we're proud of, this preferencing of biological children....Yes, I would do anything for my first son, within reason. But I would do anything at all for my second child, without reason, without a doubt."

...which is interesting given that her own biological mother seems to have much more passionate and heartfelt connections to and concerns for unrelated people than she does for her own biological daughter. And keep in mind that Rebecca Walker's "first son" is a teenager. Nothing like finding out that one of your parents considers you to be second-best when you're a teenager!

John Lennon pulled a similar stunt a few weeks before he was murdered, mumbling something about how his boy with Yoko had some Karmic currency at play because of h

Aw to hell with it, let's see if Google can find it.

Of course they can.

PLAYBOY: "You're being very honest about your feelings toward him to the point of saying that Sean is your first child. Are you concerned about hurting him?"

LENNON: "I'm not going to lie to Julian. Ninety percent of the people on this planet, especially in the West, were born out of a bottle of whiskey on a Saturday night, and there was no intent to have children. So 90 percent of us... that includes everybody... were accidents. I don't know anybody who was a planned child. All of us were Saturday-night specials. Julian is in the majority, along with me and everybody else. Sean is a planned child, and therein lies the difference. I don't love Julian any less as a child. He's still my son, whether he came from a bottle of whiskey or because they didn't have pills in those days. He's here, he belongs to me and he always will."

Following a couple of passable ballads in 1983 --sung with an almost off-puttingly reminiscent voice-- Julian hasn't been heard from again. We're told he's done some drinking.

When thinking about the wonderful afternoon Eric gave to his boy today (see later comment) and I'd like to piss on a Beatle grave... Or at least scratch out my vinyl copy of Let it Be.

Am I a horrible person if I say that the Lennon quote above makes me feel as though his assassination is somewhat less of a tragedy? Perhaps, but I embrace my horribleness if so.

Here, from Wikipedia, it's pretty horrible. Julian reportedly said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lennon

"I've never really wanted to know the truth about how dad was with me. There was some very negative stuff talked about me ... like when he said I'd come out of a whiskey bottle on a Saturday night.[29] Stuff like that. You think, where's the love in that? Paul and I used to hang about quite a bit ... more than dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seems to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and my dad."[106]

I liked "The Color Purple." It is the only book in the poor-black-woman-in-the-south-raped-by-a-relative genre that I actually like.

Are there any books by black women that DON'T involve being poor, in the south, and raped by a relative?