#mothers

[ballerinainterrupted]

Naomi & kate

[verkomy]

quick 60s ineffable wives fanart

you can get a print here: inprnt!   

[celesse]

Love you, Mom 💐💖

[lucidloving]

In the Blood— John Mayer // @lucidloving // @chaosinline on Instagram // Édouard Levé, Suicide // @futngina // @lucidloving

[angoragoats]

Stay still I’m plucking your hairy ears

[lunchboxpoems]

LUCILLE CLIFTON (again and again and again ♥️)

[ungodlydandelion]

"But she gave birth to you, you owe her!"

My mother wanted to be a mother. It was her dream to be a mother. She poured all her energy into being a Good Christian Mother.

She did not want me. She wanted motherhood. I was a side effect of her dream. Once I was old enough to disagree with her, she hated me. I wasn't making her look like a Good Christian Mother. I was loud, disobedient, needy... almost like a child. Not quiet and pretty and grateful for crumbs.

Yes, she birthed me. For herself and her partner. For the people who were already born. Not for me. As all mothers have for all of time. It's not the birthing that makes a mother worth honoring, it's the parenting.

[sovietpostcards]

"Uppy" by Vera Nazina (1961)

[nobrashfestivity]

Ida Applebroog Mother mother I am ill 1993

[vizrecon]

In 1981, Marianne Bachmeier shot the murderer of her 7-year-old daughter. Klaus Grabowski, a 35-year-old butcher who had already sexually assaulted 2 girls previously.

Bachmeier pulled out a Beretta during his trial nd emptied 7 bullets into Grabowski's body, killing him instantly.

Marianne was sentenced for murder to 6 years in prison, of which she served 3 and was released for good behavior

[kermit-coded]

O Mother Where Art Thou?

batgirl (2000) // bethany webster, from mother wound healing: why it’s crucial for women // batgirl (2000) // enough, suzanne buffam // batgirl (2000) // h.d., from “envy” // fariha róisín, how to cure a ghost // batgirl (2000) // batgirl (2000) // james baldwin, from jimmy’s blues and other poems // janet fitch, from white oleander // batgirl (2000) // batgirl (2000) // clarice lispector, “excerpt”, collected stories (trans. katrina dodson) // batgirl (2000) // jack gilbert, “the abandoned valley” // batgirl (2000) // tomas tranströmer, tr. by robert bly, from a poem titled “track” // batgirl (2000) // batgirl (2000) // may sarton, journal of a solitude // batgirl (2000) // adonis, from selected poems; “a piece of bahlul’s sun” (tr. khaled mattawa) // batgirl (2000) // batgirl (2000) // neil hilborn, “a place where someone loves you” // batgirl (2000) // laura gibson, from “empire builder” // batgirl (2000) // anne carson, grief lessons

[reasonsforhope]

Flint, Michigan, has one of the [United States]'s highest rates of child poverty — something that got a lot of attention during the city's lead water crisis a decade ago. And a pediatrician who helped expose that lead problem has now launched a first-of-its-kind move to tackle poverty: giving every new mother $7,500 in cash aid over a year.

A baby's first year is crucial for development. It's also a time of peak poverty.

Flint's new cash transfer program, Rx Kids, starts during pregnancy. The first payment is $1,500 to encourage prenatal care. After delivery, mothers will get $500 a month over the baby's first year.

"What happens in that first year of life can really portend your entire life course trajectory. Your brain literally doubles in size in the first 12 months," says Hanna-Attisha, who's also a public health professor at Michigan State University.

A baby's birth is also a peak time for poverty. Being pregnant can force women to cut back hours or even lose a job. Then comes the double whammy cost of child care.

Research has found that stress from childhood poverty can harm a person's physical and mental health, brain development and performance in school. Infants and toddlers are more likely than older children to be put into foster care, for reasons that advocates say conflate neglect with poverty.

In Flint, where the child poverty rate is more than 50%, Hanna-Attisha says new moms are in a bind. "We just had a baby miss their 4-day-old appointment because mom had to go back to work at four days," she says...

Benefits of Cash Aid

Studies have found such payments reduce financial hardship and food insecurity and improve mental and physical health for both mothers and children.

The U.S. got a short-lived taste of that in 2021. Congress temporarily expanded the child tax credit, boosting payments and also sending them to the poorest families who had been excluded because they didn't make enough to qualify for the credit. Research found that families mostly spent the money on basic needs. The bigger tax credit improved families' finances and briefly cut the country's child poverty rate nearly in half.

"We saw food hardship dropped to the lowest level ever," Shaefer says. "And we saw credit scores actually go to the highest that they'd ever been in at the end of 2021."

Critics worried that the expanded credit would lead people to work less, but there was little evidence of that. Some said they used the extra money for child care so they could go to work.

As cash assistance in Flint ramps up, Shaefer will be tracking not just its impact on financial well-being, but how it affects the roughly 1,200 babies born in the city each year.

"We're going to see if expectant moms route into prenatal care earlier," he says. "Are they able to go more? And then we'll be able to look at birth outcomes," including birth weight and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions.

Since the pandemic, dozens of cash aid pilots have popped up across the nation. But unlike them, Rx Kids is not limited to lower-income households. It's universal, which means every new mom will get the same amount of money. "You pit people against each other when you draw that line in the sand and say, 'You don't need this, and you do,' " Shaefer says. It can also stigmatize families who get the aid, he says, as happened with traditional welfare...

So far, there's more than $43 million to keep the program going for three years. Funders include foundations, health insurance companies and the state of Michigan, which allocated a small part of its federal cash aid, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Money can buy more time for bonding with a baby

Alana Turner can't believe her luck with Flint's new cash benefits. "I was just shocked because of the timing of it all," she says.

Turner is due soon with her second child, a girl. She lives with her aunt and her 4-year-old son, Ace. After he was born, her car broke down and she was seriously cash-strapped, negotiating over bill payments. This time, she hopes she won't have to choose between basic needs.

"Like, I shouldn't have to think about choosing between are the lights going to be on or am I going to make sure the car brakes are good," she says...

But since she'll be getting an unexpected $7,500 over the next year, Turner has a new goal. With her first child, she was back on the job in less than six weeks. Now, she hopes she'll be able to slow down and spend more time with her daughter.

"I don't want to sacrifice the time with my newborn like I had to for my son, if I don't have to," she says."

-via NPR, March 12, 2024

[celesse]

Hang in there, babies 💐🐁🐁🐁

Available as a greeting card & print in my shop 💖

[arixlana]

need thanksgiving to come sooner

[unspokengrief]

You’d love me if I was gentle, right? If I wasn’t so bitter at my mother. If I wasn’t so loud, so blunt, so damaged from my past. You’d love me if I was smaller, right?

My whole life I have been trying to make myself smaller. To live a life without an echo, without a shadow. I keep my curtains closed, my head down and use my inside voice just like I’m told.

I am just a girl, occupying the space I was given when I was 5, too afraid to ask for more.

I am confined to the smallest room, in a large, empty house. I know what I am and what I could’ve been. While they are discovering the ocean, I am still trying to unlock the door. And if all that lies on the other side of the door is settled dust, please find me a comfortable place to rest. I promise I will never ask for more.

I have seen what emptiness has done to my mother and the door never unlocks. The wound never closes.

— Hannah Green, ‘As The Dust Settles’.

[thegoodmorningman]

You better have a Good One, Mom. (Or else...)