I find myself both enthused and frustrated by my main stakeholder. When they’re good they’re so good, and when they’re not it’s like banging your head against a brick wall! I guess this can be true of anyone and anything and I don’t dwell on it too much but I thin because a lot of what I am doing is so much about looking at things on a large scale societal or cultural level it feels like everyone should be concerned and clued in and of course that’s not the case. Just as I am not clued in on many main issues that affect me, I’m not in anyway saying I’m perfect.
Going back over some of the feedback from my initial interventions was interesting and I love all the paragraphs and paragraphs, email essays and looooooong texts and voice notes I have from mothers (yep all the mums) about what they learnt and what they will do differently and how they feel about all of that. I love to see this and it’s quite humbling actually to have all these women communicate such personal things with me too. That I am able to create a space where honest, open, supportive and non-judgemental discussion can happen is really great and I don’t take it likely. What I then do with all this knowledge though sometimes feels huge. I guess I don’t have to do anything really, it’s its own great thing but it also serves to help me evolve the project and my work more largely which is great. It makes it hard to show as evidence however in the context of MAAI because I’m pretty sure no-one else is gonna be reading all those long and personal accounts!
The dads are another thing entirely and I have to check my initial reactions to their inability to share and support each other the way women do. It makes me feel bad for them because they are missing out on these very valuable experiences and support systems. But I understand more than ever why and how men (yes a generalisation, not all of them, blah blah blah) got here – the book “Why Does Patriarchy Persist?” should be read by everyone, especially those raising children! – and so I can be more empathetic to their situation and hopefully help tackle it better now too. I got one long amazing piece of feedback from a dad yesterday about the podcast and I was so grateful, he has been the most forthcoming and articulate dad in this process so far and it was a breathe of fresh air.
The problem with parents, and it’s not a problem I am immune to either. Is that it is a privilege to be able to worry about this stuff. Most parents I know, particularly post-pandemic, are exhausted and tapped out and worrying about all kinds of things that are possibly more tangible than the smog of patriarchy we all breathe in, and this is understandable, even more so right now with all that is happening with the UK economy. A lot of them just want to make it to weekend and watch Strictly in their pjs with a glass of wine and they absolutely deserve this. It’s too overwhelming to worry about economies, climate change, misogyny, geo-politics etc especially when it can be hard to see how those things affect your day to day sometimes.
I guess the point of this musing is that I have to accept that I will only ever be able to engage some people in this stuff. Those that want to seem really keen and really involved and vocal and those who don’t, don’t and that’s ok. The dads, again, you can lead a horse to water and all that! In a way it’s the same as art, some people whilst happy to look at a picture don’t want to touch a pen and paper and that’s ok. I don’t get as frustrated by this and I need to remember to apply that thinking to the rest of the parents in the project.