0:00:12 - Speaker 1
Woke Up. Welcome to Left on Red, where a Gen X mom and gay millennial do socialism.
0:00:39 - Speaker 2
We've got left-wing views on the news you can use.
0:00:42 - Speaker 1
My name is Scott, i'm Susan, and today we have a special episode of Left on Red, which is celebrating Mother's Day. Mother's Day is happening in three days, but when you listen to it I have no idea when it will be. But yeah, all things, mothers and moms and capitalist society and how it deals with that. So we have a Gen X mom here with us, which is really exciting, and I feel like it's only fitting for us to start this topic with what is it like, and or how hard is it, to be a mom in capitalist America?
0:01:21 - Speaker 2
So I can't speak for the experiences of being a mother in prior years, but I think in many ways it's probably much harder, although in some ways it's a little bit easier. So what do I mean by a little bit easier? So we have all these technologies now to become a mother if you are not, for example, in a heterosexual marriage. We have sperm banks, we have assisted reproductive technology, some of which is covered by insurance. And if you don't want to pay for IVF, i have a friend who told me she went to Spain to get IVF. So people can become a mother and there's less stigma. For example, it's certainly not normal, but there's less stigma in being, for example, a single mother by choice.
I have some friends who've adopted or gone to sperm banks to become single mothers by choice, and it's not unheard of, it's not that those children we don't feel sorry for them, and people can build new kinds of families to care for their kids.
So I would argue that in some ways you're part of my family. My children love you very much And they think of you as someone who's close to them And we don't have to be limited by traditional kind of nuclear families. But then, on the other hand, it's so hard to be a mother under capitalism because being a parent has changed. The expectations have changed a lot, and so, at least in my social networks, there's a lot of understanding that your job as a parent is to make sure your child is like a perfect commodity for capitalism, a perfect worker under capitalism, a perfect sort of competitive, talented, prepared, future productive laborer in every sense of the word, and there's a lot of pressure to make sure, for example, some of it's good. So back in the day I would say that, as a Gen X kid, your feelings did not matter. You were told to tough it out. Some people in this room still think kids just tough it out.
They don't name names right, but the idea that our children's mental health and well-being matter, that's a huge improvement. I'm glad that they do it And things like social-emotional learning are now parts of school curriculum And I think that's important And whether or not it's being done well is under debate. But, especially following the pandemic, teachers were doing social and emotional checks on students to see how they were doing. I feel like we take children's mental health more seriously. I'm not saying we're perfect at it, and everyone I know who's a parent of a teen is telling me, you know, my teenager is doing really badly and needs a therapist And I wonder pardon me, wonders is it because of the pandemic or is it because we care about our teen's mental health and we're trying to get them help? So I'm like that way it's good.
But that also puts a lot of pressure on parents because we don't have resources available for, like, our children's mental health. It's got to be like stuff that we do And a lot of times, you know, mental health care providers for kids are not covered by insurance. We have to figure out ways to get them there, like the school you know mental health counselors are. You know the ratios are really high. They have to serve a high number of students And so that's really hard. And another thing, too, is just like I think that with screens, with the pandemic, like children sort of have a sense of like immediate gratification in a way that, like I did it, like my kids stream whatever they want, whereas I was just like watching prices right And I'm not saying that prices right is good, but like I didn't expect to get the things I wanted.
0:05:15 - Speaker 1
All the kids today streaming prices right Non-stop on their tablets.
0:05:20 - Speaker 2
Right And like I just didn't expect things to come to me And like I didn't get to listen to music that I wanted to. I had to, like, listen to Z100. Did you have Z100?
Okay, I was playing my little tape recorder next to the radio and see when, like my favorite, you know, Ace of Bass song would come on to the press record right, And then like the DJ's voice would be at the end. Like all these things make like children less patient, I think, And like parents are so stressed out. Like there's like pressure like oh, don't give your kids too much screen time, But like I have my children a lot and I'm like working 80 hours a week So like what am I supposed to do? And then you know, during the pandemic they were all on screens for like learning or because I was trying to work and do their their like remote learning, And so basically I think it's really hard And it's probably easier if you have like a ton of money. But the people I know who have a ton of money, they also seem pretty stressed out too. Not that I feel sorry for them, But even the people I know who have like nannies and stuff, they don't seem like they're like chilling and loving life as a parent either.
0:06:24 - Speaker 1
Yeah, do you think that's because what you described? you're basically saying, like all of these problems aren't even at this point Oh, I'm working too hard or whatever. But now it's like is my child well adjusted? Am I doing everything right for my child to be growing up and healthy and appropriate environment? is my kid addicted to screens? I mean, like I'm addicted to screens. I have timers on my phone that I'm only supposed to spend one hour a day on Twitter, but I regularly extend a timer for like five minutes, ten minutes, 30 minutes. It's a problem. Am I getting anything from it? Not really. I'm often scrolling and seeing similar or the same tweets or I'm doing like a couple of like stupid shitposts here and there.
0:07:06 - Speaker 2
It's not really all that worth it. I said, check out the shitposts. Yeah, check out my shitposts.
0:07:13 - Speaker 1
There's not as many now that my Twitter account is public, but I feel like a lot of these things are extremely fraught. I don't know how to deal with them with kids. I have a few friends who haven't given their kids screens at all up until certain ages. How old?
Oh man like old, like seven, six. I was very surprised. I was like how did you keep your child away from like a tablet or a phone or whatever? Don't they see you on your tablet or phone? And they were like, oh, we did a really concerted effort not to be you know, me and my wife, not to be on our phones in front of our daughter, blah, blah, blah. But they say, like the moment they gave their daughter, this one person in particular, the moment they gave their daughter a screen and like, let her spend more time on it. They said she's become somewhat less patient. She started using the phrase I'm bored And they say that she used to not say that, which is hard for me to believe as a chronically bored person.
Lots of different problems that arose just by giving the child a screen and having to deal with that. And it's like you said, it's kind of unavoidable. If you have a child in Zoom school, they literally must be on a screen, right? If you are a working parent and you cannot spend every single waking moment, even at home, being with your child, you have to do lots of responsibilities that you couldn't do during the day And so, yeah, the child's going to have to be distracted or entertained somehow, often with the screen right. That's like the technology angle. I'm also curious in like the material angle. So you obviously you talked about working incredible amount of hours a week.
It's very difficult in the United States now to be a single mother, or even to have a dual income, household and support children, especially if both of you are working.
One of you cannot be providing childcare, so you must be paying for childcare, which is a salary in and of itself.
And there's also the element of like how hard do you want to work in order to provide for your child right?
Like as we approach Mother's Day and the idea of like, thanking mothers and appreciating everything that moms do, there is now this expectation as a mom, that you must work right, and not just because you have to afford rent and here in New York City it's really, really difficult but also you have to work in order to provide every single opportunity for your child, extra tutoring, every single else that your child might need, the things that you describe, the mental health.
This is cutting into the traditional view of being a mom, which is, like you know, being a stay at home mom and taking care of your kids, and now it feels like women are being pressured to. You know, it feels like feminism was this amazing force that it sought out to liberate women from this expected role but our society has backslid into. Oh, women are still expected to be moms and still expected to do all of this childcare, and also you have to be like a girl boss and have this amazing career and do everything, and I don't really know how most women successfully deal with all of these conflicting and competing pressures.
0:10:17 - Speaker 2
Right, and like you also, my mom was a very attractive person throughout my childhood. But, like, you have to be hot too. Like you, young moms are supposed to be hot. Like, if you look at pictures of boomer moms, they kind of look like moms. But like, if you're a Gen X or millennial mom or whatever, you need to look like a teenager. You have to have like a really nice body. You have to have like very like stylish clothes. You can't look sloppy now because you're just expected to quote unquote keep it tight, you know, and it's also very hard to maintain a relationship too. Right, like I think that capitalism makes love really hard, but all the pressures of capitalism on families makes love really, really hard. And yeah, there's a I feel like, depending on what social networks you belong to, there's sort of an idea like you got to eat your kids into the good schools.
Your kids have to learn like Mandarin. They have to have, like, all these opportunities. Yeah, it's very. You know it's a lot of work and there's also an expectation, even though you're working and you're a girl boss, that you're also doing all this extra labor at home. My kids schools both have an expectation that somebody's available all the time to have the kids at home with them, to go on field trips, to pick them up early on on half days. There really is an expectation that we're always available, even though that's probably not the case. Both of my kids go to schools that are very working class. Maybe the mom doesn't work, but you know, i don't think that there is that kind of wide, widespread availability and time. But schools require it though. Like schools are underfunded, they need volunteer labor, all this kind of stuff.
0:12:03 - Speaker 1
And if you, as a mother, work a job where you have to literally physically be in person, you cannot. you know, you can't say, oh, i work remote so I can take calls and do stuff and take two hours out of the day to do a field trip. You can't do that. You have to physically be at your place of work And that happened, you know. that's the case where I feel like the majority of moms in the country. It's also funny you're talking about like you have to look hot. I have never seen as many advertisements to me on social media for skincare and a variety of different like skin and body products as I'm seeing now because of Mother's Day, One that I'm really really very interested in and I'm about to like buy. ironically, is this like infrared light therapy?
0:12:50 - Speaker 2
For your skin Yeah.
0:12:52 - Speaker 1
Yes, i don't know how it works, but there's a few different products I've been advertising, all of them featuring moms. That's the worst part. So some of them like feature moms, like meditating in front of this, like metal box that does a big infrared light on you. None of these products, by the way, say what it does. It's just like infrared light therapy. Like, oh, what are the benefits? It doesn't say that. it's just like infrared light.
0:13:13 - Speaker 2
You got to Google that shit.
0:13:15 - Speaker 1
Yeah, well, it's presumed that you'll know, but I saw today one of them was like a mom with her like toddler, playing with like the infrared light gun And she's like playfully pointing it at the kid and then pointing it at herself doing actual therapy. It's very funny that they put it on the kid, i guess means it's not harmful.
I don't know, i don't know what but hilarious, and I do remember the last gift I think I got my mom for Mother's Day was like skincare product set, and so it does feel like there's a lot more anti aging and looking beautiful stuff around Mother's Day, and I don't get the same type of advertisement on Father's Day or any other like male holiday. So, yes, there's a pressure to look hot, which you know if you're a mother you are already a beautiful person, but there is unfortunately this like anti aging sentiment in society.
0:14:11 - Speaker 2
It's not just anti aging. As soon as Twitter found out I was a mom, I got a lot of weight loss ads.
0:14:16 - Speaker 1
Oh, wow, so you have to be really skinny as well.
0:14:18 - Speaker 2
So you have to have no wrinkles, you have to be really, really skinny and you have to be perfect. You have to be I think I saw some Instagram wheels. You got to work like you don't have children. You have to take care of your children like you don't have a job, Right, So it's basically impossible. And then then we have like wine mom culture, which is right. Women drink as a way to relax. But now it's like oh, but you're now alcoholic now too. So I mean I don't drink anymore, probably because I was becoming too much of a wine mom.
0:14:48 - Speaker 1
I remember I would love to meet wine mom Susan. Yeah, wine mom.
0:14:51 - Speaker 2
Susan is dead long live wine mom Susan. I once was going to a play date and I was like we got to get wine to my, my younger son, and my younger son would like scooters. A wine shop ahead of me and he announced to everybody wine is for the women's. And I was like, oh crap.
0:15:08 - Speaker 1
Yeah, oh, no, that's not. that's funny, but yet.
0:15:13 - Speaker 2
I told it to everybody and we all thought it was true. It was like then it got like a little dark, you know. Yeah, it's just a little.
0:15:19 - Speaker 1
but yeah, no, it's. It's crazy that, as the more we talk, i'm even thinking like all of these things are simply the result of companies trying to sell more product. All of these pressures that we're talking about to you know, it's a societal pressure to be beautiful, to be thin, to be the perfect mom and the perfect employee and the perfect you know person doing literally everything. You can have it all And then it all comes back down to like some corporation, some profit interest, some like economic and financial motive. That's inherent to being in a capitalist society. That's just telling you every day you're never enough. You need to feel like less, so you want to buy more and you need to work harder and spend more of your time being economically productive for some rich asshole, because that's the only way you're going to be able to afford the skincare creams and the weight loss products and the line.
0:16:11 - Speaker 2
And the Mandarin lessons, and the like okay.
So I thought I've thought about this long and hard because I've always thought of myself as a weirdo, but I am not able to resist all these social pressures, right To be like the girl boss, you know alpha mom with the great kids, but it goes against sort of how I think people probably would be outside of capitalism. So I have this little story that I like to tell people, which is that you're expected as a child to be at your school. You get evaluated against this like set of assessments like how's your reading, how's your math, how's your science, how's your music, how's your gym.
But actually human beings traditionally evolved in groups, so whatever you weren't good at, it was okay, because someone else in your clan or your tribe or whatever was going to do that better than you. But you would contribute something else. So at one point I was like telling my younger son, who is very smart but very lazy, i was like buddy, you got to learn how to read. And he said to me without missing a beat my older brother reads everything to me, so I don't need to learn to read, which, on one hand, very funny, but also actually probably how we used to organize ourselves. Like you have an older brother who's really good at something, then you would develop a skill in something else right, and together you would keep each other safe and full and happy, right, and, and you know? but capitalism expects you to do everything.
0:17:35 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's funny because I've been in the room with Hugo and Leon where Leon was reading. I was trying to help, i was trying to encourage Hugo to read And Leon would just read it for him instantly. I'd be like Leon you can't read for Hugo because he's never going to learn how to read. So this beautiful collective sentiment that Hugo is expressing, i am bringing the capitalist stammer down and saying no, you have to be good and proficient at everything as an individual, which is very funny.
0:18:02 - Speaker 2
Unfortunately, But that's how, but that's expectations, that we all have to be so autonomous. And it's funny, though, because capitalism says the opposite, right, like, when it comes to, like, international trade. You know, you're good at wine and you're good at making wheat, so you specialize in wine and you specialize in wheat, right, so we treat like. Capitalism is a very consistent in its messaging. But, yeah, so there's a lot of pressure, and I think that you know, as a result, the pressure is on being a parent, but especially on being a mother, because, you know, typically women do the vast majority of the care work but not not always And domestic labor, but now we're doing all this.
Paid labor too. Is that? you know the statistic I like to share, which is that, in divorces, that involves college educated women, women initiate 90% of the divorces because they're just like what the this is a bad deal Like, and so, as somebody who identifies as someone who is from a separated marriage, like, i'm not saying that's exactly what happened in my instance, but, like you know, the social practices within a household, they're not changing in a way that reflects the material, material realities.
0:19:19 - Speaker 1
That's. I also feel like we could spend a whole other episode on the arrangement of marriage and whether or not it is still a bad deal for a lot of people, regardless of motherhood and everything that goes in terms of being, you know, parents is marriage still, does it still make sense for our society? And you'll also see that, like the rates of divorce, i think, go down as the economy gets worse and go up as it gets better. So obviously you see that like really direct financial incentive for people to stay married or people you know being willing to be single right, and the perverse nature of how our economic security, our ability to pay for things, our ability to have shelter and food, forces us to stay in arrangements we might not otherwise want to be in. But one of the things that you said was a really great segue for us to talk a little bit about our moms for fun, for Mother's Day, for fun, i promise. You are talking about the pressure of like moms, being like really competitive and wanting their kids to, you know, be perfect and everything, and the difference in raising your child in an individualist society versus collective one. So I feel really, really lucky in some ways that my mother grew up in a really radically different type of society.
So my mom grew up in Cyprus right, and not like a city of Cyprus but like the village they like didn't have electricity until she was, like you know, 16 years old and the conditions there were really just like you lived in a large family. She had five brothers and sisters and tons of cousins and this like huge village where everyone was just kind of like living together and as a kid you worked with your parents they are obviously doing agriculture so she helped out with the animals and the little farm stuff and would help her mom like sew things and make clothes for the other her brothers and sisters. And as she grew up she would describe like sleeping. Everyone slept in like one very small room on like stacks of like hay and they slept like in the same bed. But you know, people were turned the different way, like feet to head type of thing, and it was this very like collective, like join together moment all the time.
So when she came to the United States I feel like she brought a lot of that attitude with her and her family did with her too, and I never felt a lot of pressure from her or my father for that matter, to be like particularly competitive at anything. Obviously, i think they knew I was, like you know, intelligent as a child and they encouraged me in the gifted and talented program. But when I got in and at first it seemed like it might be too hard for me, they were really super chill about. They were just like yeah, you want to go back to his own school? that's what we don't, we don't care, right? I think all they wanted was for me to get some form of college degree eventually that would allow me to have a job. That, like I wasn't homeless, right.
So I was very fortunate for that, and I feel like my parents had this very like non-American, non-capitalist outlook where you just had to work hard and be really kind and loving to the people around you and be a good person and that's all that mattered. And it was, of course, very religious too, very much like here's the rules of being a good Christian you have to be kind, you have to be like patient, you have to be, you know, studious and all these sorts of things. But it was never very competitive or very much like you need to be better than other people at anything or you need to have it all or you need to be really X, y or Z in any particular category, and I think I'm very, very lucky for that, because I didn't grow up with a lot of pressures a lot of my peers have now, whose parents were very much Americanized, very much in American culture, very much kind of expressing a lot of the sentiments of the 90s really. But you, your parents, were different.
0:23:24 - Speaker 2
Yes, they were very different. So, like in Korea, if anyone watches like K-drama, they're familiar with this. But Koreans are obsessed with name brands. You know, they're like omaguchi bag, whatever. And so Koreans like name brand universities, they're very competitive, they're very test oriented and that's like something that comes from like Chinese civil civil service testing like, which is very egalitarian in some ways, because under Chinese like the system, any peasants child could take a civil servant exam and become like a Mandarin class person, right, but anyway. So that was sort of inherited because Korea was kind of like a kingdom. That was kind of a relationship to China.
Anyway, susanarity, i can't ever say it, i can't say I don't like French words, they're all all right Anyway. So my family was obsessed with achievement, competition. My parents encouraged my brother and I to be competitive with each other. My brother was like a child genius so I was like well, she seems nice And we like had to be perfect at everything except for sports. My parents were like we don't care about the body, which is probably why I like the body so much, but, like you know, music that's your form of like rebellion Rebellion, I like the body, Yeah.
I'm like telling my parents, i'm like, dad, you got to do the stretches I sent you because you got a really bad back. But yeah, i grew up with that And I definitely internalized it And it was. it's very hard to separate yourself from like. so you take that and that's Korean and then you add it to American culture which is hyper capitalist and like uncaring and like as at least under like Korean society, you kind of care for people who aren't as fortunate as you, while you know driving those who are able to like high achievements. So you know, in some ways I still saw American culture is very, is like too unkind. But my mother growing up just always wanted to make money. She was like, oh gee, mlm queen, like she sold new skin which is like a direct sale skincare. So talk about skincare.
I don't do skincare, by the way.
0:25:44 - Speaker 1
Your mom is very camp.
0:25:45 - Speaker 2
Yeah, she sold spray vitamins. I'm pretty sure she sold amway products at one point on top of being a mother and a registered nurse. I don't know how she had this energy for so much hustle, but every time she would meet one of my mom's, my friend's mom, she would like try to sell something. I really found really embarrassing because, like, i feel like that level of hustle like American society is weird, because you have to work really really hard but you can't be like obvious about it.
0:26:11 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you can't admit that you need to make money.
0:26:14 - Speaker 2
Right, you can't, you have to be ambitious but you can't be like obviously hungry, because that embarrasses everybody, because you know we're still a Protestant society. right, we're a Puritan society And like my mom's sort of like earnest drive was like distasteful. And the other thing I noticed growing up was that my parents' friends had like they went into decor and my family was just like we had the ugliest furniture at least everything growing up And I didn't even notice, i didn't even care.
But my sister pointed that out to me later when I was growing up And I was like, oh yeah, all of our stuff is ugly Because Koreans like the outside of the house to look nice, at least I mean back then. I think nowadays they're all they're. They're so rich that they're into aesthetics of every kind, but you know, Gucci bag nice looking house on the outside.
0:27:00 - Speaker 1
I watched this play like four or five years ago about these two Muslim families, one of them which was very Americanized and one of them which was recent immigrants, and kind of the daughter of the Americanized one and the son of the immigrant one like were wanting to get married, and so it's kind of like bringing the families together and seeing like the culture classes right. And it was really funny because I this was in New York and obviously it's like a place of like smart people And I remember sitting watching the environments for the two families change. And the Americanized family had this like New York apartment. There was like brick wall, some exposed brick, and they had all these books everywhere. It was very lots of wood and natural materials. I remember thinking, oh, it looks so cramped and ugly. And then the immigrant family had this like house.
I live somewhere in the Bronx and it was nice big house and lots of like modern furniture and everything was like white and gray And I was like, wow, how beautiful. And then there was a note from one of the the Americanized parents, like have you seen how gosh and ugly their houses? And it was funny to me to realize that like this, like Long Island suburban aesthetic is not considered attractive to most educated, like fashionable people, and actually the exposed brick and like the library books was like cool and fashionable And I feel like your parents, you know. There's some sort of like thing there for me about like what is the aesthetic, what's fashionable, what's good decor for? like people that are Americanized, people that are educated, people that have like a quote, unquote sense of fashion or style, and then people that are just kind of like into McMansions, which I feel like my parents are into McMansions Yeah me too.
It was very difficult for me to when Keenan first showed me the McMansion Hell blog because I would take him through this neighborhood in Jamaica. Here in Queens I've been looking at these huge, beautiful houses and he goes are you kidding? These are so ugly And I'm like what are you talking about? And I feel like there was like this arbitrary, like set of fashion rules.
0:29:12 - Speaker 2
But anyway, that's an aside about class and fashion and We'll talk about that in another episode with somebody who knows what they were talking about.
0:29:21 - Speaker 1
Okay, but before we end the episode, i would love to hear a like positive memory or a sweet memory You know we'll do this a Mother's Day, nicely of your mom, and I'll try and Why. I haven't thought of one yet. I mean, i have lots but I'll try and think of. I guess I'll think of one here Which is maybe like just the first thing that I could think of, not necessarily the most positive, for the best, but, as you, i mean, oh, my mother passed away two years ago, three years ago, a couple years ago, and One of the things before she died, i remember was we were working really hard on the no energy fight and we were like almost successful and I was also like Cool lobbyist, right.
So I had lots of like professional success and like organizing success. And I remember trying to explain it to my mom who, again, like never got a college education, or I don't even think she went to high school right, she didn't go to beauty school, some respect. But trying to explain to her that we're fighting this like gas polluting Corporation and they have billions of dollars and they're like evil. I think she understood what climate change was or like what emissions were right, that was this weren't really like relevant concepts to her and I remember being like, oh, wow, she's gonna be so proud of me that I'm accomplishing so much. And she didn't understand a single thing about what I was trying to explain there, with energy or peaker plants or anything, regardless what language I used.
But I remember she was just like oh you, happy you, you're like safe, you're doing good. Okay, that's all that matters, i love you. And I was like, wow, this was never a woman who was ever interested in how much money I made or how much like professional success I had. She was just like can you afford your rent? Are you safe? Are you at risk of like anything? No, you're happy, that's so good, i'm so happy And I'm really lucky for that. So that's a positive memory. What about you, susan? Let's hear a positive memory. Susan gave me a thumbs down. I look at a water girl.
0:31:27 - Speaker 2
Before you spring this on me.
0:31:28 - Speaker 1
Yeah, sorry.
0:31:30 - Speaker 2
I think that women have harder relationships with their mothers than men do, but I Mean, my mother is very loving and supportive and I haven't been a traditional Korean daughter And she loves and accept me, accepts me anyway, so let's just leave it at that.
0:31:48 - Speaker 1
That's a. That's a positive note for Mother's Day. Well, thanks everybody, and I feel like there's no join DSA spin. I can put off of it.
0:31:58 - Speaker 2
You want to fight to make the world better for mothers and caregivers and children, then you know, joining a socialist organization is one step in that direction.
0:32:08 - Speaker 1
That's right. And if you don't have the best relationship with your mother, as a lot of people on the left often report, partially because of all the pressures of Capitalism and how hard it is to grow up working class and being working class mom, this is an organization in which you will find many people of similar experiences, where you will never feel judged for saying, yeah, i don't talk to my mom, because there's lots of people of different backgrounds and persuasions, with those complicated relationships, and this is a place that will accept you, however you come, and you will belong. So We hope that encourages you to join DSA.
0:32:44 - Speaker 2
Solidarity forever.
0:32:48 - Speaker 1
Left on red is recorded live at left on red studios International in the People's Republic of Astoria, queens. It's hosted by me, Scott Karolidis, and Susan Kang. It's produced with original music by Noah Teachey. Thank you so much for listening You.