Getting my 'pussyhat' out of storage
Does becoming a parent have to mean giving up on political activism?
Welcome to Chief Complaint! For those of you who are new, this newsletter features intermittent musings about medicine, gender, parenting, and body justice — all from your friendly neighborhood primary care doc. I’m so happy you’re here.
When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, I was pissed.
Well, first I was shocked. Then I was depressed. Then I got angry.
I was in residency training at the time, and my co-residents and I spent an entire morning that election week — a morning that was supposed to be dedicated to learning about medicine — talking about how horrific it was that he had won.
This time around, it seemed like everyone was pretending it didn’t happen. I felt almost afraid to talk about the election at work or with my neighbors, lest I start a fight with an unsuspected Trump supporter. Online, the outrage poured in to my inbox. In real life, we talked about the weather or Thanksgiving plans.
In 2016, I wasted no time in protesting his imminent presidency. Some friends and I arranged to drive down to DC for the Women’s March before the inauguration, heading out of Philly straight after a long day in the hospital. Who needed sleep? There was fascism to fight! Everyone bought pink “pussyhats” on Etsy. Everyone wore sweatshirts that said “Nevertheless she persisted!” On the dating apps, all the guys I matched with had photos of themselves with clever anti-Trump signs. (Including the one I married!)
In the early months of 2017, my friends and I were going to protests constantly. We rallied in favor of universal health care in downtown Philly; we swarmed the airport to protest threats of mass deportation. Protesting was a way to channel my anger and dismay at the threat of autocracy in this country. It was a way to feel less impotent.
There are some questions worth exploring about the intersection of privilege, whiteness, and my ability to get involved in all these protests. Was it all a cynical exercise in personal branding, or a fun social activity? I admit I never truly feared violence or arrest at any of these activist events; I occasionally even brought my dog along. (His name is Bernie Sandals.) It’s perhaps a testament to my race and class security that I was shocked by a Trump presidency at all — friends and colleagues of color often told me they knew that a Trump America existed all along.
But I hope it was more than just fun and games. Looking back, I hope I used my privilege for good, that I stood as an ally for those truly at risk from a Trump presidency. (Although it’s important to note that my race and class privilege only got me so far — Trump Supreme Court nominees have made life profoundly less safe for all women in this country.)
Since Trump was elected this second time around, I gave myself a few weeks to put my head in the sand and ignore the news. I started listening to classical music in the car rather than the news; I turned off all the New York Times notifications on my phone. I told myself I’d focus on my community and my work.
Then a few weeks became a few months, and when I turned on NPR the other day, I realized that, oh my God, the inauguration is on Monday.
Needless to say, I do not have plans this time around to head down to DC to protest.
And now, I’m wondering why.
Let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge that the big picture is emphatically not about me. Nobody cares whether some white lady from Philly can find that pussyhat she bought off of Etsy eight years ago. (I think I actually donated it to Goodwill — a painful metaphor.) The second Trump presidency will almost certainly cause profound harm to many people, and me contemplating my own reaction to it is a luxury.
But this essay is about me, insofar as I want to explore the tendency I’ve noticed in myself and my friends over the last few years to shrink away from political activism. Eight years ago, I was focused outward. These days, it feels like my sphere of concern has gotten smaller.
Why did I stop protesting?
A big part of it, I fear, is becoming a parent.
Have any of you noticed this? That parenthood, somehow, makes us turn inward? That contemporary millennial/Gen X parenting means a shift of focus towards our nuclear family rather than the community at large?
My book club recently read the highly enjoyable Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez. The book was, as they say, “compulsively readable,” and I genuinely liked the protagonist Olga. But a central construct in the novel explores the tension between parenthood and politics, and it’s framed in a way that I found quite pessimistic — and quite conservative.
Our heroine Olga’s mom is a radical Puerto Rican activist in the Young Lords, and she eventually abandons her children in favor of her political cause. She’s a terrible mom, manipulating her children from afar, choosing ideals over family responsibility. Parenthood and political activism are incompatible, the book seems to argue. You can’t be committed to the people you love and the ideology you stand for.
Maybe that’s why the book got under my skin. Maybe Olga — who, unlike her mom, very explicitly chooses family over social justice — reminded me of myself.
I’ve had countless conversations with my parent friends about this topic. One neighborhood mom put it explicitly: “It’s not like I voted for Trump, but I just want to have an easy life. I don’t want any drama.”
Some of this inward focus seems inevitable after parenthood. There are only so many hours in a day, and caring for a kid necessarily means that I have fewer free time than I used to. When activists take to the streets, somebody needs to be watching the kids — and it’s usually women.
Still, my friends and I feel some tension between being engaged parents and being engaged citizens. Previously idealistic women find themselves pouring the energy that was once focused outward on researching the best strollers or pureeing organic baby foods. It’s not that those things aren’t important — strollers are very important, believe me; I’ve had several bad ones that I wish I had spent more time researching — it’s just that for me, they’re not the whole story to living a meaningful life.
Caring for a kid is hard, and it’s important. I feel a true sense of pride in being a mom. But a big part of being a good parent, to me, is role-modeling the kind of world I want my child to inherit. I fear that this turn inward — this focus on nuclear family — often means resource-hoarding for my own kid, rather than thinking about the well-being of our community.
Last year, I read a brilliant book called Wanting What’s Best by Sarah Jaffe. Reading it was like poking a giant knife into my heart and twisting it around, repeatedly. It was about the ways “nice white parents” stockpile resources for their own kids, often harming vulnerable children in the process.
The book was damning, and also illuminating. How can I tell my kid to *share* his Paw Patrol dolls when all the other parents and I sit around talking about getting into “good” schools or securing a spot in the “best” swim lessons? The book made me want to do better. I want to show my kid that we can bring richness to our own lives by also thinking about others.
Looking through all my protest photos from 2017 on my phone has got me thinking: What might it look like to engage more in community activism with my kid?
I’m not sure that it needs to take the form of taking to the streets, like my friends and I did so often during the first Trump presidency. Activism with kids might be slower and gentler. It might take the form of checking in on neighbors, or getting involved in activities with desegregation as an explicit goal.
It might mean volunteer work whose efficacy is questionable but which instills a sense of service as a ritual. (We recently went to a local park cleanup, for example, and my child’s leaf-raking skills were preschool-appropriate, which is to say weak. Still, I thought it was worthwhile.)
Or, it might actually mean protesting — remember these kids?
I’m curious: Do you have ideas about what political engagement as a parent looks like? How do we role-model activism as we prepare for the second Trump presidency?
My close friends and I took our then young sons to a local women’s march in 2017, with signs and strollers and my youngest in an ergo. I didn’t keep attending protests then but I didn’t even consider it this time. In retrospect, a lot of that pink pussy hat energy was performative but did it help? Idk. I do feel an intense desire to help protect vulnerable folks from what is coming, but I don’t think mass protest is the move in 2025.
Adding your book rec to my list.
My oldest daughter was an infant in 2016 when Trump was first elected. I was out there at several protests with her in the baby carrier. I think it's true that parenthood and motherhood, specifically increases your desire for rootedness, which can pull you away from certain types of activism. But I also think that the protests were a specific cultural moment and one that looking back doesn't feel particularly effective. Am I less engaged in activism than I was before kids, not really, simply because medical training had me starting out more self-involved than I'm proud to admit. As a mother, I feel a lot more committed to the local, to my watershed, to the people whose houses I can bike to. It's different than driving over to Minneapolis, but in these times of falling apart I hope it is more effective.