My son celebrated his first birthday on the day Donald Trump was inaugurated as president. My husband and I stayed in our home in the suburbs of Washington, DC, celebrating our child and reveling in his joy in the day. At the same time, we knew that the world outside was about to grow grimmer and less safe for many people.
It was something about the confluence of these events—becoming a mother at the same time as history ushered in the Trump administration—that awoke in me an intense clarity of purpose and morality.
Seven days later, the travel ban was announced. My husband, son, and I cancelled our plans for the day and gathered our winter coats to get outside to protest. Standing up against such transparent hate and bias felt less a choice than a moral imperative. I struggled to convey what I was feeling to my one-year-old. “When things aren’t normal, our weekends won’t be, either,” I told him as we whisked him into the car seat.
Though I had been civically engaged before I had kids, my pre-parenthood vision of Saturdays with my toddler had featured crayons and coloring books, not using kids’ washable paint to turn empty cardboard boxes into protest signs. Granted, these visions of motherhood—even how we spend our time now—are signs of our privilege as a white, upper-middle-class family. And while the Trump administration’s policies were hardly the first time that vulnerable groups had been harmed or our democracy had been threatened, it was something about the confluence of these events—becoming a mother at the same time as history ushered in the Trump administration—that awoke in me an intense clarity of purpose and morality. I couldn’t simply sit back and ignore it.
Before I became a mother, I had been a different, meeker version of myself. I preferred not to voice my disagreement with others too loudly. I deferred to those with louder voices and more confident opinions. I always held strong convictions but kept them to myself and those closest to me, afraid of confrontation.
Before motherhood, I had never experienced such a simplified and overwhelming certainty of what I was put on earth to do.
Yet the actions of the Trump administration brought “right” and “wrong” into sharper relief than ever before. Like many others, I felt called to affirmatively stand on the right side of history—for my family’s sake, for other people, and for our collective future. While I know I would have still felt this way had I remained child-free—parents hardly have a monopoly on moral clarity—motherhood has served to heighten my sense of purpose and outrage.
Against this political backdrop, I was also growing into my role as a mother. In charge of a newly minted human, I suddenly found myself inhabiting the role of the proverbial mama bear. The first time my son wore his deeply beloved, light-purple suede boots to school—boots that a company had determined should be associated with only one gender and thus marketed them “for girls”—I felt a protective rush of adrenaline wash over me as I walked through the door. I smiled outwardly as I greeted the teachers, his friends, and other parents, but I was inwardly ready to spring to his defense if anyone so much as looked askance at his sartorial choices. In that moment, protecting my son’s nascent attempt to express himself was the only thing that mattered. Before motherhood, I had never experienced such a simplified and overwhelming certainty of what I was put on earth to do.
Over time, I came to understand that the mama bear role was not something I donned and doffed for various moments; it had become a permanent part of who I am, and it included both protecting my son and also chaperoning his fledgling moral compass. When another kid won’t share the swings on the playground, I give my son a pep talk on politely and firmly asking for his turn. (Alternatively, if my son is the one not sharing, I make sure he starts.) When my son comes home and tells me he is “sad” about something that happened at school, I encourage him to talk about his feelings and try to suss out whether there is any cause that would warrant my intervention. When a younger child can’t reach a toy, I explain to my son that he is responsible for helping his friend.
It’s a highly simplistic answer, but it strikes me that the vocabulary of toddlerhood is uncannily well suited to describing the present political moment.
Now, as a very talkative toddler, my son asks me about the wall of photos in our basement that feature his round face peering out from the top of a worn-out backpack carrier, carried by his father at protests in front of the White House, the Capitol, and the Washington Monument. He asks me what a protest is, and when I explain, he wants to know “why we did that?” I frame my answer in terms of “good decisions” and “bad decisions,” and that when others are getting hurt, we have to say something, we have to do something. It’s a highly simplistic answer, but it strikes me that the vocabulary of toddlerhood is uncannily well suited to describing the present political moment.
While it’s hard to be certain what lessons my son is truly absorbing, and what kind of person he will grow up to be, I’ve observed glimmers that some of my clumsy lessons regarding morality may be getting through. Recently, his preschool teacher stopped me in the hallway after drop-off. She told me that my son had recently broken the classroom rule requiring students to put on their own plates any of the food they touch on the family-style trays used at lunchtime. My son had apparently taken some food off of the tray and placed it not on his own plate but on the plate of one of his classmates, who is blind. After one of the teachers reminded everyone that “if you touch it, it’s yours,” my son froze with a distraught look on his face, apparently caught between obedience to the classroom rule and his desire to help a friend. As I listened to this story in the hallway, my eyes filled with tears, and my son’s preschool teacher started tearing up as well. “I explained to him that he had done the right thing,” she told me, and I thanked her for sharing this small but meaningful moment with me.
At the same time, I am absorbing lessons of my own. When I use simplified language to make tough issues of morality and politics accessible to my toddler, the issues suddenly appear to take on a simpler form. When I tell him why we stand up for others, the true meaning of doing so becomes clearer in my own mind. I am grateful for all that motherhood has given me, not least of all this more lucid perspective and sense of strength to act on it.
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