expansive families

leaving oppressive parenting

I’m going to share some sketches here in their tender, newborn stages. These images came to me in my small sketch book in one evening. Sometimes I get a “download” of ideas in an instant. I let these intimate visions live there, in the sketchbook for days, months and often years before I ever move them elsewhere.

Because of the intensity of my life as a caregiver, peer support facilitator, activist and chronic pain survivor, my visual work rarely makes it onto a canvas. It’s funny to look back over the years because in the past, I seemed to make so much time for paint. So much time for “production”. And I believe that time is coming back to me soon actually. But as I have been in a deep inward reflective and healing space for the past year, I have released myself to rest. Released to sketch and move my body. To write and go to therapy. To watch tv and play games. To really be with myself through this time.

I feel so grateful for the friends in my life who can see me as more than my productive value. See beyond the finished piece and into the journey. They value me as a person and that means so much. If you do find people who will go with you on the journey of self-discovery, hold onto them! They are rare and a true gift.

The images below explore a few topics around work and pleasure. I believe the two should never have been separated like they tend to be in our capitalist society.

Mothering - the work of care - has been siloed into private homes for a few generations now. Not long if you think of our evolution. But for those who have had the “privilege” to stay at home with their children (I will leave that topic for a different time) they know how the monotony and agony of keeping a child alive in their infancy will echo in your head as a long, sad scream. At least most of the mothers I know have that sentiment.

I believe work and pleasure should always mingle. That may mean so many things. But first, we must acknowledge that caring IS WORK. If we can’t acknowledge that as square one, we are lost.

The expansive family I envision of the future is one where sexuality and feeding a child are intertwined. Where massage and bathing and feeding are mingled. A vision of doing existence in our bodies together rather than separate. An existence where touch and affection are not necessarily sexual but beautiful additions to our life on earth. I know this sounds pie-in-the-sky. But is it? Why should affection be limited to a romantic partner? Why should feeding a baby milk from your body be restricted to one nursing mother? Why can we not gather together and feed each others’ babies? Why can we not raise each other into our full selves without shame?

Westernized family systems are predicated on heteronormative, cis, straight contracts. The governing systems condone, and financially support this prototype (with some being more agreeable to queer arrangements). The Christian church (historically) upholds it and will often shun families who live outside this norm. Within this arrangement, people with uterus’ are expected to:

1. Have a child, preferably many

2. Raise said child isolated from others

3. Enforce moral codes to the next generation

Even though this is the norm preached from the pulpit to Hollywood, most of us know that it doesn’t work like that and that if we try to replicate this prescription, we fall apart. What I find interesting though, is in the last slide. I write, “Our children are not bad or even rebellious. They are practicing using their voice, separate from us, and in doing so, they become free thinkers, unswayed by authoritarian governments.” Children who are encouraged to use their voice, from birth, will resist oppressive and authoritarian systems they face well into adulthood.

Let this sink in.

If a mother is expected to raise children in an isolated fashion, she will often be forced into authoritarian parenting. Facing all the things she faces in caring for a child alone is more than one person can do. If all her bio and non-bio family are off to their paid work, she has no other choice but to use force over her child.

Can you see why the personal is political in this case? An unhappy caregiver creates a voiceless child. And a voiceless child creates a pawn for the authoritarian government systems.

Nothing brought this to the foreground more for me than seeing this IG reel about the Nazi mothers in Germany,

violeta.parenting.science

A post shared by @violeta.parenting.science

If we believe in raising free thinkers, let’s move outside of the siloed, lonely, oppressive systems of parenting and into lavish, loving and abundant places of connection, affection and resilience building. Let’s move into genuine love rather than tokenized love. Let’s raise each other. Our whole selves. Let’s leave systems of shame and authoritarianism as quickly as possible.

Much love,

Maria