| | Published March 12th, 2014
| Memoir Focuses on 'Maxed Out' Mothering in the 21st CenturyAuthor Katrina Alcorn to speak at LLLC March 20
| | By Lou Fancher |  | | Katrina Alcorn Photo provided |
It's funny, we spend our childhoods practicing control - and a lifetime learning to let go of it.
From "Don't stick your finger into that socket; you'll die!" to "No matter how adorable you look in those pajamas, you can't wear them to school," to "Don't text what you're thinking: you'll get fired," growing up teaches us to stop. But maturity, it seems, is about release: not blaming others (let go resentment), not having it all (goodbye BMW), and not thinking the world revolves around you (hello parenting).
Oakland author Katrina Alcorn's memoir, "Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink" (Seal Press), tells her story: a 37-year-old mother and working professional woman on the road to maturity. Alcorn will read and discuss her book at a Sweet Thursdays event at 7:30 p.m. March 20 at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center.
Alcorn is a mother, stepmom, wife, former journalist, blogger, and a freelance experience design consultant, a title meaning she analyzes customers and clients and designs websites and services to meet their business needs. She also speaks at conferences and appears as an expert consultant on local and national radio and television programs. She strives to maintain friendships, invest real, skin-to-skin time with her children, and at times in her life, has suffered clinically certifiable depression and panic attacks requiring medication and therapeutic intervention. In her free time - ha! - she's written her first book. To handle anxiety, she meditates, sending stress-filled bubbles into the atmosphere.
Alcorn is a busy woman, but she's not the only one - which is both the point and the purpose (and really, the societal problem) at the center of her memoir.
Her expressive narrative, bolstered by the inclusion of well-researched studies she references in brief, chapter-concluding essays, presents a deeply human portrait. Blemishes, blushing embarrassment, blissful exclamations about her husband, Brian, and their children, all mingle with the flickering drama of female aggression in the 21st century. And it's this energy - the desire to be a major breadwinner, to stand out, to be first and foremost in their children's lives, to be a svelte, sexy, suave swinger dressed in a three-piece suit and toting a breast milk pump - that crashes Alcorn's cart.
In a series of episodes that read like a giant bowling ball headed for a perfect pin-smashing strike, Alcorn experiences nauseating, numbing panic attacks. "My heart fluttered madly. My hands shook....It was too hard to be there," she writes. Eventually, her mind plays tricks allowing her to escape her own body and resort to puppeteering: plodding through meetings and conferences while "directing" herself as if from above.
Despite her pluses - a hi-tech job, an understanding boss, a supportive spouse, a housecleaner, attentive daycare - all the equipment the world tells women they need to lean in and have it all are not enough to save her from tanking. She quits her job and collapses, literally. It takes over a year for Alcorn to feel whole and human again. But along the way, she investigates the systems undergirding (but failing to defuse) contemporary life's pressures.
Competition from other women: Alcorn cites Cornell researchers' 2007 study showing mothers with resumĒs equal to those of non-mothers were 79 percent less likely to be hired and paid $11,000 less. No sick leave: 145 countries worldwide guarantee sick leave; in the United States, barely 50 percent receive it. Lack of part-time options: 75 percent of Dutch women work part-time, with benefits. Across industries, not just in women-dominated fields, real-world examples cause Alcorn to question the cultural stigmas and corporate bias opposing a more progressive workplace in America. Childcare and family-friendly work environments shouldn't require advocacy; they should be a basic human right, she concludes. She ends the book with 10 suggestions "you can do right now." Unfortunately they're not as thoroughly described as her personal stories, but some readers may appreciate the springboard they represent.
It's easy - even tempting - to criticize Alcorn's pain as the indulgent rant of a white, upper-middle class woman who doesn't realize how good she's got it (or had it). But that would be ignoring the more important aspects of her pain. It's not comparison that matters or will move the arguments forward. What matters is compassion - and that we not divide progressive energy and lose ourselves by infighting. After all, we owe it to the 1920s Suffragettes and women's-libbers of the 1970s who grandparent the sons and daughters of 2014 to preserve and improve upon their work. Women and men must be allowed the privilege of earning a living while raising a family in dignity.
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA