Letters to the Editor
Suniya Luthar
Published Letters: 2
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Clinton and motherhood
[Read the article: Making sense of Super Tuesday]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Ms. Walsh,
I’m writing to tell you how very much I appreciated your column on Super Tuesday. It inspired me to send this letter (below) to Salon.
With all best regards,
Suniya
Suniya S. Luthar, Ph.D.
Professor of Clinical and Developmental Psychology
Teachers College, New York
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SENATOR CLINTON AND MOTHERHOOD
Having watched so much of the campaign coverage on cable, I have been taken aback by the deprecation and apparent glee that many commentators seem to take in predicting Hillary Clinton's impending demise. The near-absence of self-reflection in this regard has troubled me greatly. So I was much relieved to read the Joan Walsh column, Super Tuesday, which provided a welcome, much more balanced appraisal.
At the same time, I am well aware, as a psychologist, that people in general can strongly like or dislike people for reasons not entirely clear even to themselves. And having experienced some uneasiness about Clinton myself while resonating with her on policy, this led me to self-reflect. I came to realize that my own ambivalence has largely been because I empathize and identify with her, as a woman and as a mother.
A paradoxical statement, perhaps: why would we dislike someone with whom we identify? Social psychologists offer many reasons. When we encounter people whose lives reflect things we fear or worry about in our own, we often channel our reactions into negative judgments of those individuals.
And what does Clinton embody, that might trouble a woman like me? Her (very public) struggles in juggling her various life roles as a mother and spouse on the one hand and as a public figure committed to her felt calling in life, on the other.
This woman has experienced endless excoriation in the media, where any implied compliment is paralleled by a denunciation. She is a brilliant professional and skilled lawyer no, she is conniving and ruthlessly ambitious. She has been a loyal partner to her husband no, she has been using him and thinks its her turn now and so is having him deliver. In other instances, criticisms are accompanied by other criticisms that are mutually contradictory. She is interpersonally cold yet she guffaws (a belly laugh, no less!). She is deeply calculating about her public image but she showed a centimeter of cleavage!
My own research with mothers shows that the lives of women like myself can resonate all-too uncomfortably with what Clinton has experienced, as the New York Times’ Judith Warner suggested in an early pre-election commentary (Domestic Disturbances, October 18th 2007, “The Clinton Surprise”). In an ongoing internet-based study (www.momsaspeople.com), we are exploring contemporary motherhood with a focus on what this means to us (rather than what we do for, to, or with our children). One theme that reverberates across the hundreds of responses thus far is that mothers today, with or without careers outside the home, are being sorely tested by the challenge of juggling many life roles.
We struggle endlessly to achieve that elusive balance between being loving, responsible caretakers of our families, and maximizing our personal and professional hopes and aspirations. We worry about showing instinctively felt softness in tears of compassion that for a man would reflect his empathy, but for us, are seen as our weakness. For those with careers, we must tread cautiously in expressing leadership at work (research shows that women tend to be anxious about outperforming men and are derided when they do succeed), and at the same time, we obsess about being seen as ineffectual or indecisive. And above all, so many live with a self-driven injunction: be nurturing and supportive to our children and spouses, without demanding a parallel steadfast nurturance for ourselves. (How alien does the old adage, rephrased, sound: Behind every successful woman is a devoted, loving husband?)
But what of non-mothers? Why would males, for example, be uneasy about Clinton? My teenage son reports that he, like many of his friends might have voted for Clinton but that none of them really like her, and dont know why. Pressed further, however, these young people echo what has often been mentioned in the media: disdain for not taking the hard line on Bill and Monica the way a woman of her stature and standing was supposed to do. A common sentiment among these young men is, Why on earth would she stay with her husband after the way he treated her what kind of person would do that?!
Well, quite apart from the possibility that as a spouse, her overall love for her husband superseded her resentment (to a fault or otherwise) -- how about her devotion as a parent? Mothers of every demographic routinely make all types of sacrifices for their children, with a steadfastness that can be awe-inspiring, as I have seen in 15 years of research on women. And we all know of mothers who choose to remain in sub-optimal and even hostile partnerships, primarily to give their children the best possible emotional and economic security. Might Senator Clinton have just a shred of such maternal impulse?
In this Presidential election, I believe that we would do well to examine carefully our inexplicable dislike for Hillary Clinton (or for any other candidate for that matter). Social psychologists have long written about attribution errors, and our decisions about presidential candidates driven by poorly understood negative emotions that may derive largely from our own fears and struggles. In such an important decision, let us strive to choose rationally, based on knowledge about the candidates’ platforms and track records and their promise for America and the world -- rather than on the basis of a nebulous personal affinity or dislike.
Suniya S. Luthar
Professor of Clinical and Developmental Psychology
Teachers College, Columbia University