Parenting as Social Justice: An Interview with Peggy O’Mara
The state of the world is quite concerning. So concerning in fact that some families are choosing to not have children. For those of us who are parents it can be really difficult to know where to begin, or even how to find time to work on social justice. But Peggy O’Mara urges parents to realize that parenting is social justice.
Peggy O’Mara is an independent journalist who was the editor and publisher of Mothering Magazine for over 30 years. Her books include Having a Baby Naturally, Natural Family Living, The Way Back Home and A Quiet Place. She is the mother of four and grandmother of three. Peggy currently publishes her writing on Medium, where her focus is Family, Health and Justice.
I sat down for a conversation with her. First I asked–
What is the current state of affairs?
Peggy O’Mara said, “the current state of affairs is rather alarming–very alarming. We hear only bad news. We don’t see any solutions. We feel that our personal actions don’t matter. And I think we all know that for centuries we have exploited the natural resources of the planet. We’ve cut down the trees, killed the animals, for short term goals. . . When I was growing up there was a common conversation about the common good. We don’t talk of the common good anymore.”
What are the top issues that parents can focus on?
Peggy O’Mara said that there are some areas that will make a big difference in both families and the world.
- Our first environment is the mother’s body. While there are other environmental issues that should be dealt with, with treat the larger environment the way we treat our first environment.
- Closely related to the first issue is childbirth reform.
- Parental support systems that allow parents to focus on their work as world changers.
First Environment
Peggy said,
For me when I think about the environment, I could go back to the beginning. Our first environment is the mother’s body. Her womb and her breasts, her arms, her body–that’s the first environment. And the way we treat that environment is parallel to the way we treat the rest of environment. We dominate it. We have so many women in the United States and we pride ourselves in being the richest country in the world. But we don’t take care of our citizens in the way that other countries do. And we see that a lot in pregnancy and birth. Too many women experience a lot of psychological stress during pregnancy. Maybe they don’t have health insurance. Maybe they have to work too much, they can’t take care of themselves the way they’d like to. And the results of that is often premature birth which we have as a big problem in the United States.
Peggy O’Mara
Childbirth Reform
Women have been disempowered by childbirth. Peggy O’Mara shared some startling numbers.
Also our infant mortality rate is too high. It’s for again for black women, it’s twice that of white women. For white women it’s 4.4 per thousand. For black women it’s 10.4 per thousand. It’s almost as high for indigenous. And perhaps the most just shocking and depressing, is the maternal mortality, that [the number of] women dying in childbirth the United States is actually going up. We know how to take care of it. It’s not like it’s a mystery. We just don’t we prioritize that. So it’s been rising for the last 20 years. In 2020 it was 23.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 which is nearly six times the Australian rate of 4.8 per hundred thousand and 14 times the New Zealand rate at 1.7 in 100,000. So of course, we have to ask what are those countries doing? And what they’re doing is that they have well-resourced health systems, plenty of highly skilled health workers and a well-developed infrastructure. So what we have in the United States, we don’t have enough maternity workers and we don’t have enough midwives to doctors and as you know the midwifery model of birth much less interventionist. If I’ve studied, gone to college or university, to be a OB-GYN, what I’ve learned is to be a surgeon. So that’s what I’m going to do, that’s what I know. So the more surgeons we have attending birth the more likelihood we have surgical birth. So in the United States we only have 4 midwives and 11 OB-GYN’s per 1000 births. Now in contrast Sweden has 66 midwives and 12 OB-GYN’s per thousand births. Australia has 68 midwives and seven OB-GYN’s. For countries with better birth outcomes simply have more midwifery led births. There’s plenty of research which shows that is superior. It is less interventionist. Sitting with the moms and being patient. We need more midwives relative to OB-GYN’s. And we need more access to midwifery in all settings. We need healthcare, maternity coverage for all moms. About 10% of them don’t have maternity insurance, so that’s enough to make you worry.
Peggy O’Mara
Parental Support Systems
Once children are born parents need additional support to keep going with their lives and change the world.
And I think we need some kind of paid maternity leave or guaranteed caregiver income. I want to talk more about that later, because women feel pressured to return to work if they’ve been working. They don’t have capacity to stay home and their working. Going back to work too soon not only interferes with the bonding with the baby, but also undermines breastfeeding. Because it’s very hard to keep breastfeeding when you’re working and pumping and trying to breastfeed when you’re home, it’s almost impossible. And this why it is so hard for mothers. And we’re told by the American Academy of Pediatrics by the World Health Organization, to breastfeed your baby for two years. And mothers, how are they going to do that? We don’t offer mothers the support to do that, but we expect them to do the impossible. It’s just part of a dilemma in the United States that I’ve been working on really my whole adult life.
Peggy O’Mara
Where to begin
Peggy says to start at the beginning. Choose a natural, gentle birth if possible. Take steps to reduce your carbon footprint in your own home and find a community of like minded people. In addition we need to work on our mindset.
So in terms of how environmental and social justice are linked I think they’re almost the same thing. It’s like we dominate, if this is our relationship with the environment it dictates how we treat individuals and groups. So if we have a dominator model on our children as well you know on our relationships. If we have that model rather than a cooperative model we will degrade both of them for our own benefits. We will dominate others to get what we want rather than cooperating, which always works better and which people have done this historically.
Peggy O’Mara
For over 30 years Peggy O’Mara published Mothering Magazine. The statement of purpose for the magazine reads, “Mothering is both a fierce advocate for the needs and the rights of the child and a gentle supporter of the parents as we strive to empower decision making that will embrace and consider the needs of all members of the family. We explore the reality of human relationships in the family setting, recognizing that raising the heirs of our civilization well is a prerequisite for a healthy society.”
So for busy families and parents there is of course much to be done, but as Peggy O’Mara says,
“So I would say that raising your children well is all you need to do. It’s all you need to do. I mean if you can to more wodnerful. But start with that. Start with you own personal environment. What is your environment like? How can you make your environment again cooperative rather that confrontational, rather than dominating. That’s a work in itself.”
Please fill out Peggy’s Care Giver Survey
