Parenting presents endless occasions for hand-wringing. At every turn, there’s a thorny issue and – as self-appointed experts will be keen to assure you – a fresh opportunity to mess up your kid for life. Epidural or natural birth? Breast or bottle? Helicopter or free-range parenting? Stay at home or pursue a career? Often the burden of these choices, and the responsibility for their implications, seem to fall on the mother.
For the next conversation in our F Word series, we’ll focus on the intersection of feminism and parenting. Can feminism provide a roadmap for raising children? Is it possible for feminism not only to inform, but define parenting – and what does that look like?
Featuring
Maxine Beneba Clarke
Maxine Beneba Clarke is the author of the acclaimed memoir The Hate Race, the award-winning short fiction collection Foreign Soil, the poetry collections Carrying The World and How Decent Folk Behave, and many other books ...
Rachel Power
Rachel Power is a freelance writer, editor and artist. She has contributed to many publications, including Mamamia, The Big Issue, Kill Your Darlings and The Age. She has worked as a court illustrator for Channel 9, production editor of Arena Magazine, and is currently communications manager for the Australian Education Union (Victoria). Rachel is the author of Alison Rehfisch: A Life for Art, The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood, and Motherhood & Creativity.
Liz Shield
Liz Shield is a queer, feminist, activist social worker and radio announcer on community station 3CR. She is a volunteer management collective member of Flat Out, a feminist organisation that has been supporting criminalised women in Victoria for 25 years. Liz has blogged for Femme Galaxy and Plan to Thrive, and self-published a number of zines over the past twelve years including Not Another Zine and most recently, Tick My Box.
She likes baking, gardening and writing letters. Liz is also a solo mum to her two-year-old daughter.
Zakia Baig
Zakia Baig arrived Australia in 2006 as an overseas student, and one among the thousands of Hazaras who left their homes to escape persecution in Pakistan and Afghanistan. A mother of two, Zakia is a Human rights activist and executive director of Australian Hazara Women’s Friendship Network.