Cindy Sheehan and the politics of motherhood: politicized maternity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Nicolosi, Ann Marie

[1] In September 2005, activist and mother Cindy Sheehan was arrested in front of the White House for participating in an organized peaceful sit-in, in which protesters demanded that George Bush receive their request for his plan to end the war in Iraq. The civil disobedience action came at the end of a weekend long demonstration in Washington, DC, opposing the war. Sheehan had gained notoriety that previous August when she camped outside of Bush's home in Crawford, Texas, demanding an audience with him so he could explain the noble cause for which her son died (Sheehan 2005). Sheehan's encampment, dubbed Camp Casey after the son she lost in the war, became a powerful symbol for the anti-war movement--one that highlighted the anguish of a citizen mother. Sheehan's actions were not novel or new--but actions that had historical precedent. In participating as a mother in the public sphere of political protest, Sheehan was practicing a form of twenty-first century Republican Motherhood and her actions imbued the growing anti-war action with the cultural currency of motherhood. Cindy Sheehan's protests, while endlessly discussed and displayed in the media coverage of her actions, cannot be comprehended without an understanding of the ways in which American women have framed their civil actions in the context of motherhood. In addition, motherhood has been used as a way for the media and the public to interpret Sheehan's actions, as well as other women's political protests and activism, to create a frame of reference that is congruent with the identification of women as mothers and wives, thereby reinforcing accepted gender roles. Sheehan's actions politicized her maternity, turning the constructed and widely accepted gender role of motherhood into a political weapon.

[2] Scholars of United State's history and women's history are well acquainted with the term Republican Mother. Linda Kerber popularized the term over 30 years ago when she articulated the creation of a political role for women of the revolutionary generation. Kerber argued that "the tangled and complex role of the Republican Mother offered one among many structures and contexts in which women might define the civic culture and their responsibilities to the state ..." (Kerber 1976, 188). Furthermore, Republican Mothers used their roles to secure access to education for themselves and their daughters, using the domestic sphere, a realm reserved exclusively for women, as a locus of public agency and authority for women. Although Kerber was writing about the political role of women in the absence of the male rights of citizenship, I would argue that the political actions of women under the guise of motherhood can still be defined as a version of Republican Motherhood, but perhaps we need another term--politicized maternity--to describe the political currency of motherhood. Whichever term we use, it is clear that Cindy Sheehan's protests, earning her the title "Peace Mom," were rooted in the activism of her ideological maternal predecessors, especially those who have protested America's involvement in war and organized violence, and provide a model for historical continuity in understanding women's strategies for effective political activism. Only by understanding the history of women using motherhood and the accepted boundaries of gender for their own purposes, can we make sense of Sheehan's successful use of her own motherhood. Sheehan, like many women and mothers before her, transformed the maternal practice from a "commitment to treasure bodies and minds at risk" into organized "resistance to the violence that threatens them" (Ruddick 1995, 157).

[3] Cindy Sheehan's protests are part of the tangled historical and contemporary discourses on motherhood and the gendered cultural logic of motherhood. Motherhood, as a political tool, has been appropriated by forces along the entire continuum of the political spectrum. Both pro and anti-war movements have used the gendered discourse of maternity to promote their causes, each relying on the feminized discourse and praxis of the culture of motherhood. In this context, motherhood is not only a state which women experience, but also a symbol imbued with national identity. Thus the symbolic American mother has provided a representation of maternal legitimacy to the policies and strategies of differing political ideologies; Sheehan's mother identity helped to sanction the growing Iraq anti-war movement.

[4] By August of 2005, as more and more Americans questioned US policies in Iraq and as the aftershock of September 11, 2001 began to recede, dissent against the war spread and the anti-war movement grew from the voices on the extreme left to those from Main Street America. When Casey Sheehan lost his life in April 2004, his mother's grief prompted Cindy Sheehan to find out answers as to why her son died. Under his mother's protests, Casey Sheehan's death, as well as those of the other young men and women who lost their lives, became a symbol of the futility of the war in Iraq. When Sheehan camped out in front of George Bush's Crawford ranch in the heat of a Texas summer, she represented a nation's increasing desire to understand why it was embroiled in a War Against Terrorism taking place in a country that had performed no act of terrorism against the United States. Had George Bush taken the time to meet with Sheehan and answer her questions, she might not have become the powerful political activist she did. Like the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo, Sheehan traded on her motherhood and perhaps Bush feared what philosopher Sara Ruddick defines as a "peacekeeper's hope," that "the rhetoric and passion of maternity can turn against the military cause that depends on it" (Ruddick 1995, 157). Bush's refusal to meet with her provided the burgeoning and expanding anti-war movement an important icon--a mother politicized by the futility of her child's death in an increasingly unpopular war. The movement gained the emotional value of motherhood as a justification for its protest. The identity of motherhood--the cultural and political constructions of motherhood--allowed for dissent based on the image of women as life-givers and nurturers--an image politicized women have long used to their advantage. Women have exercised political agency in their use of motherhood as they turned the private constructions of motherhood into public constructions of motherhood, erasing the murky boundaries between their lives and actions in the private and public spheres. Active in the anti-war movement and also participating in the September 2005 protest were the groups CODEPINK, a group dedicated to peace activism that targets women (although men are members) because "Women have been the guardians of life ... because of our own love for our families and communities, it is time we women devote ourselves--wholeheartedly--to the business of making peace," and the Raging Grannies, each performing their own versions of "Republican Motherhood" (Mother's Day 2006: A Call for Peace! 2006).

[5] Cindy Sheehan as mother was much more effective than she could ever have been as Cindy Sheehan citizen. If she had camped outside George Bush's ranch as an independent citizen she probably would have been forced to leave with little fanfare or media attention. But Bush could not to treat her roughly as that would make him appear as a callous ruffian who had no regard for a mother's grieving heart. Sheehan's appearance as a "mater dolorosa" (sorrowing mother) highlighted the futility of the war despite the bellicose rhetoric of patriotism and anti-terrorism of Bush and his military advisors. The "mater dolorosa," as Sara Ruddick argues, refuses to subordinate her pain to the language of war and violence--the tales of victory and defeat (Ruddick 1995). Sheehan's demands for answers for her son's death undermined the Bush administration's rhetoric of a righteous war and moral triumph.

The Currency of Motherhood

[6] Motherhood occupies a venerated place in American culture. No other identity is as sentimentalized and revered as that of the mother. Mothers, and motherhood, have more latitude in political protest as politicized maternity presents an ideological "slip" that falls between the imagery of the selfless mother and the selfish woman. This potent construction has been used for every purpose from war to citizenship to capitalism--and the same imagery has often been used for diametrically opposed principles. In the case of war and military engagement, forces to support any given war as well as those opposed to the same war use the same idealized images of mother love. Motherhood is exclusive in its stylized imagery and gendered construction. Although fatherhood is also constructed, its construction lacks the emotional attachment of motherhood, reflecting, especially for men, the latitude of emotional display that is permitted for one's mother. The sentimental belief in a mother's undying and unconditional love has no match. A father's love is constructed in different ways, especially for male offspring. Fatherhood is rooted in the male roles of head and breadwinner of the family, identities that are more independent than relational (Orloff and Monson 2002). The paternal power of the father is predicated in natural male rights (Williams 1998). Because the mother identity is conceived as the nurturer and the custodian of the day-to-day labor of childrearing, the assumption is that the mother bond is stronger than the father bond. In the case of war protest, women speaking out against the slaughter of their children is more acceptable than men doing the same thing, just as it has been, and is, more acceptable for women to display their emotions. In addition, because women in military service is a recent development beginning with World War II (although women have served as nurses in the military since the Spanish American War) and serve in far fewer numbers than their male peers, war is associated with masculinity, not femininity. Thus women have more leeway in their protestations against war. These conditions, compounded with the biological reality that women, not men, bear children, have allowed women much more freedom in expressing emotion and anti-war sentiments. Fathers, as men, are supposed to more clearly (read rationally) understand and accept the necessity of war and its sacrifices. As men, they would not stand in front of their sons to shield them from military service as to do so would rob their sons of their manhood. But motherhood, while encumbered with the constructions of femininity, is free from the constraints of masculinity and the violence which accompany that construction.

[7] Mother sacrifice also carries more ideological and cultural weight than father sacrifice. While the pain of the father is acknowledged as well as his sacrifice, it is given short shrift in comparison to the mother's loss. This should be no surprise as the dictates of gender create a relational experience for women--women are wives and mothers before they are women, humans and citizens; their relationship to their children is rooted in their "natural female responsibilities" (Williams 1998, 65). The idealized construction of motherhood provides some protection for women when they step outside the accepted mores of femininity and transgress the gender boundaries that shape women's lives. Dissent under the banner of motherhood allows women to fulfill the traditional expectations of womanhood yet at the same time violate and transgress those expectations; protesting as mothers also affords women some protections not available to men.

[8] The freedom of women to protest as mothers carries enormous weight and benefits for women, but it also provides a space to negate that very power. The same maternal discourse that allows motherhood an area to protest also constructs motherhood as an irrational force (female) that must be tempered by the rationality of the father (male). In this respect, the father (the state) allows for the remonstrations of motherhood and the acknowledgement of its sacrifices, but can dismiss mothers' protests as merely emotional and hysterical.

Politicized Maternity in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries

[9] Women activists in the twentieth century understood well the impact of their protests. As a celebrated identity, motherhood enjoys political clout. Because motherhood stands as a symbol of self-lessness and nurturing, actions taken under its pretext are not subject to the same negative responses as actions taken as independent citizens. Women who agitate for change are selfish and rowdy; mothers protecting their children are "acting in accord with nature." Thus, women could be more effective in political actions based on their relational citizenship than independent citizenship--and relational citizenship for women is deeply embedded in our national identity. While the identity of the citizen soldier appears as early as the American Revolution to describe the male citizen who takes up arms in defense of his country and home--an image couched in the concept of the independent male ensuring the continuity of that independence--the citizen mother is framed in the gendered concepts of female citizenship as limited and dependent on her relation to the male citizen, whether as wife or mother. As such, politicized maternity, even while it also limits a woman's political independence, provides women with an outlet for their activism that might otherwise be scorned if they practiced that activism as independent citizens instead of mothers. It is one thing to protest war as a political stand, quite another to protest war as the antithesis of everything that motherhood symbolizes.

[10] The politicized maternity of the twentieth century was foreshadowed in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe. Howe, in the years following the carnage of the Civil War, issued a "Mother's Day Proclamation" in which she proposed a common international identification of motherhood: "We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs" (Howe 1870). Howe's proclamation called for the women to share the nurturance of motherhood by refusing to raise sons to slaughter the sons of other mothers. By imposing a universal identity of motherhood, Howe's proclamation elevated mother love above the desires of the state. More than forty years later, WWI mothers sang "I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier," acknowledging their right to protest the harm their sons faced (Piantadosi 1915). Howe's proposal of an international motherhood and the WWI mothers' protests of the state's desire for their sons illustrate their sophisticated understanding of politics and gender. While they might not have used the term, they were cognizant of the impact of mother identity and its political force. Motherhood provided a space that allowed women the ability to protest foreign and domestic policy in the absence of formal political power in the years before women voted.

[11] Politicized maternity has its critics--indeed it has been an ideological battleground that has served as the site for women coming to terms with the political realities of gendered citizenship and the rights and responsibilities of that citizenship. One can even use the dissonance of gendered citizenship and motherhood as a framework for studying twentieth century US women's history from the suffrage campaign to the battles over the Equal Rights Amendment to the so-called "Mommy Wars" which reveal the anxieties of the economic realities and difficulties of combining motherhood and paid work in the absence of adequate and affordable childcare. For the women of the suffrage movement, the image of the mother was both positive and negative. Suffragists were torn between the constructions of female citizenship and gender neutral citizenship. Those who came of age, chronologically and ideologically, with the ideals of the Progressive Movement fought for the vote embracing their politics in the language of maternity. The "woman's vote" was situated in a construction of maternal "social housekeeping" that would benefit society as female suffrage would bring the civilizing influence of women and mothers to the rough-and-tumble world of male politics. Progressives argued that women should vote not despite the fact that they were women, but because they were women and thus mothered the human race. Because of "this special nature" women voters would temper the avarice and bellicosity of men. The construction of woman voting as an antidote to organized violence and other harm was not limited to middle-class white women. It crossed the boundaries of race and class and is especially evident in the African American woman's club movement. As Eileen Boris has shown, both African-American and white women relied on the experience and the image of motherhood in the forging of political identity (Boris 1993). In 1915, Carrie W. Clifford, honorary president of the Federation of Colored Women's Clubs of Ohio stated:

Yes, it is the great mother-heart reaching out to save her children from war, famine and pestilence; from death, degradation and destruction, that induces her to demand "Votes for Women," knowing well that fundamentally it is really a campaign for "Votes for Children" (Clifford 1915)

Clifford's equating of women's votes and "children's votes" clearly illustrates how she and other women who agitated for suffrage or change understood the power of their roles as mothers and the political clout that motherhood endowed.

[12] Woman suffrage could also address some of the social ills besides warfare; a frequent theme is the role of alcohol and politics that women as mother voters addressed. In one suffrage cartoon, a drunkard is seen entering a saloon while a young mother holding her child in her arms stands outside helplessly looking on. The caption reads: "This drunkard has a vote; This mother has none." (This Drunkard Has a Vote; This Mother Has None n.d.). Suffragists were not the only ones who used motherhood as a political tool; anti-suffragists also used motherhood to block suffrage. Motherhood looms as large in the anti-suffrage literature as it does in the pro-suffrage literature--perhaps even more so. When Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National Suffrage Association commented on how the antis successfully presented themselves as the representatives of American mothers and womanhood, the antis quickly used Shaw's statements to garner support for their cause. The Women's Anti-Suffrage Association of Massachusetts (WASM) published a pamphlet with the cover quoting Shaw's statement that "The Anti-Suffragists Are the Home, Heaven and Mother Party." Below Shaw's statement the WASM invited women to join them: "If you like home, heaven and motherhood, and are going our way, join us! If you are going the other way, join the suffragists." (The Anti-Suffragists Are the Home, Heaven and Mother Party n.d.). But regardless of their politics, when women earned the formal political power of the ballot in 1920, they did not abandon the political tactics of Republican Motherhood. Gaining the vote did not mean abandoning politicized maternity; women continued to use motherhood as a political tool.

[13] The proposed civilizing effects of woman suffrage is especially evident as the horrors of the mechanized warfare of World War I illustrated the reality of the technological advances that enabled systematic, efficient, and most importantly, impersonal slaughter. Although there are many other areas where women have used motherhood for activism, much of mothers' activism is in the context of war-protest. Numerous postcards, such as one depicting a mother with her small son at her side and another baby in her arms standing in front of a mass of skulls with the caption: "If I had the vote do you think I would vote for this" attest to the relationship between politicized maternity and war. (If I had the Vote Do You Think I would Vote For This? n.d.). However, motherhood could also be used to support war efforts as the idealized image of the mother who sacrificed her children for the good of the greater polity has been used to justify war efforts. In her study of motherhood and World War I, Susan Zeiger has successfully argued that the "mobilization" of motherhood as a national symbol coincided and was linked to the implementation of the Selective Service Act of 1917 (Zieger 1996). In some instances, motherhood can, and has, also been used to sanction war and military actions.

[14] This theme of sacrificing motherhood has often been used to justify and "sell" war, by women themselves and by government forces that needed to keep the public's support for a military engagement up and its dissent down. Patriotic mothers, as Zeiger illustrates, were a force in contrast to the women who did not raise their boys to be soldiers. Throughout the century, there is this reoccurring ideological battleground between the sacrificing mother who gives her children for the polity and the protecting mother who wishes to shield her children from becoming cannon fodder. On either side, it is the practice of politicized maternity. In 1919, Mrs. Kaveney of South Bend Indiana, found herself in the unique position of being the mother of an underage war hero and deserter, thus placing her in a situation in which she was both sacrificing and protecting mother.

[15] Mrs. Kaveney's story appeared in The Woman's Magazine with the title "Raising a Boy Hero" and told of how her fourteen-year old son ran away and enlisted in 1915. After repeated attempts to get her son out of the army because of his age, entry into WWI prevented her from doing so and young Frank landed in France. Frank Kaveney was twice wounded, gassed and cited for valor. Frank was the pride of his mother and the local papers hailed him as a hometown hero. After the war, deciding he had enough, Frank, now a young man of nineteen, deserted the army and hopped a transport ship headed for Hoboken, NJ. Frank was not your typical deserter, as he reported himself to Major March after the transport was safely out to sea. When the transport landed, Frank was taken into custody. Mrs. Kaveney headed east to beg for her son's release and found a sympathetic ear in Major March. Perhaps Major March, a combat veteran himself, understood the psychological and physical toll the war had taken on the young man and released him. However, March's mercy was not portrayed as such an act, but as the actions of a man "who was no exception to the traditional weakness of the military man for pleading mothers ..." (Eager 1919). Thus March's actions were understood as an exception to the masculine constructions of bellicosity that bowed before the prostration of a mother intent on saving her son.

[16] One of the most famous displays of patriotic motherhood occurred during World War II, a war in which there was little popular dissent. Alleta Sullivan, mother of the famous Sullivan Brothers, five brothers killed in action on the same war ship, the Juneau, off the Solomon Islands in November 1942, became a rallying point for mother sacrifice. Sullivan, with her husband and daughter, toured the United States visiting defense plants to encourage war workers to maintain or increase war production. The Sullivan Brothers were a national symbol of the ultimate sacrifice in service to flag and country, and Alleta Sullivan the honored "citizen mother" who represented all the mothers who gave their sons. "Talking for herself and other mothers," Sullivan encouraged women to find war jobs. Sullivan confirmed her commitment to the war and to the United States when she stated: "If I had any other boys I sure would want them to join the Navy. We've got a little grandson. When he gets old enough, I'd like to see him join too" (Sullivans Typify War Spirit 1943). She did, in fact, give her only remaining child to the war effort and the Navy as Genevieve Sullivan joined the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) after the death of her brothers, adding a Blue Star to her mother's five gold ones (Sister of Sullivans A Wave 1943). In 1948, the United States Post Office gave its first sheet of the Gold Star Mothers commemorative postage stamp to Sullivan.

[17] "Materes dolorosae," such as Alleta Sullivan, turn their pain into something larger than the personal loss they experience. When Sullivan toured the United States to build morale, she took an unspeakable pain and burden and used it for what she perceived as the greater good; Mamie Bradley did the same thing. Bradley's son, Emmett Till, was viciously murdered in Mississippi in 1955 because he allegedly made a comment about a white woman. Till, a fourteen-year-old Chicago boy, was ignorant of the mores that dictated the racial boundaries of southern life. Till's death was not unusual; a dead Black teen-ager in the segregated South usually drew no attention. But Bradley's refusal to let the matter be buried along with her son made his murder a catalyst in the Civil Rights Movement. Bradley refused to follow the directives from the sheriff's office to bury the body as soon as possible. By calling everyone from her uncle to the governor, Bradley was able to get her son's body. When she saw the condition of the body--Till's death had been particularly gruesome and his body submerged as his killers weighted him with a cotton gin fan and threw him in the Tallahatchie River--she demanded an open casket to "let the people see what they have done to my boy!" (Feldstein 2000, 93)

[18] Bradley's horror at her son's death and the state of his body prompted her to use her pain to illustrate the realities of racism and corrupt local politics in 1950s America. The publication of pictures of Till's body, first appearing in Jet magazine, brought the racial violence of the South to the North, and gave a name and a face to the brutality directed at African-American men in the name of protecting white womanhood. Bradley knew that just describing her son's fate would not have the same impact as showing his remains: "There was no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the world to see" (Feldstein 2000, 86).

[19] As the twentieth century was one of the most violent centuries in recorded history, politicized maternity has had no shortage of opportunities. The advances in weaponry, especially the invention and proliferation of nuclear weapons, provided female citizens with many reasons to protest under the cover of motherhood. The realities of the fragility of their children's lives in a nuclear world bifurcated by Cold War politics presented ample occasions for questioning the policies and sanity of the Cold War world, whether women protested nuclear fallout products, such as strontium 90, appearing in their children's teeth via contaminated milk, or civil defense actions such as Operation Alert, created to lull an anxious populace into thinking that it could survive a nuclear attack.

[20] Historian Dee Garrison has documented one of the most visual uses of politicized maternity in the twentieth century. In "Their Skirts Gave Us Courage," Garrison recounts how women used motherhood to protest against the government's Operation Alert exercises that sought to mollify the nuclear anxieties of the nation at the height of the Cold War. Operation Alert was a Civil Defense Drill that required citizens to take shelter for fifteen minutes. Young New York mothers Mary Sharmat and Janice Smith, who thought the drill a farce as New York would be incinerated in the event of a nuclear attack, helped to organize a civil disobedience protest. Sharmat and Smith "relied on an image of enraged motherhood to win public sympathy for their cause" (Garrison 1994, 202). Sharmat and Smith combined the ideology of Republican Motherhood and street theater to protest nuclear policy. Carefully dressed as the epitomes of American motherhood, women had their children in tow as they refused to take shelter during the drill. With over three-hundred volunteer mothers, most with more than one child, there was a sea of children and their associated paraphernalia--baby carriages, strollers, toys etc. Indeed there were more than enough children to go around--enough to lend some to those who did not have any of their own. Sharmat and Smith's tactics proved so effective that Women Strike for Peace borrowed them the following year when called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The women brought their babies and children with them and succeeded in embarrassing HUAC (Garrison 1994, 219)

[21] As Sharmat and Smith successfully used motherhood and theatrics to protest threats against their children, so have Cindy Sheehan and other activists protesting the current war in Iraq. CODEPINK: Women for Peace's theatrics include dressing in shocking shades of pink, the color associated with femininity, to draw attention to their protests. In May 2006 they held a Mother's Day Vigil at the White House that included Sheehan and actress Susan Sarandon to "reclaim Mother's Day as a day to work for peace." CODEPINK also organized a "letters to Laura" campaign encouraging protesters to write to Laura Bush appealing to her as a mother. Mother's Day is a frequent trope in twentieth and twenty-first century politicized maternity, using the day set aside for venerating mothers as a day to exert the political power of mothers. In 1967, newly formed peace activist group, Another Mother for Peace (AMP), protested the Vietnam War by sending Mother's Day cards to President Lyndon B. Johnson and members of congress containing the following message:

For my Mother's Day gift this year, I don't want candy or flowers. I want an end to killing. We who have given life must be dedicated to preserving it. Please talk peace (Another Mother for Peace).

Another Mother for Peace held its first annual Mother's Day Assembly in May 1969 at which it unveiled a Pax Materna echoing Julia Ward Howe's 1870 proposal of international mother identity: "No mother is enemy to another mother." AMP's Pax Materna is "a permanent, irrevocable condition of amnesty and understanding among mothers of the world." AMP was also responsible for one of the most famous peace symbols of the era, the Sunflower Peace Logo which featured a sunflower on a yellow background with the slogan: "War is not healthy for children and other living things." As other peace symbols of the era, it used the "flower" metaphor as a resistance to war and violence; "flower power" was the antithesis of violence and military power. The ubiquitous logo, designed by artist Lorraine Schneider, appeared on everything from posters to key rings and helped make AMP "one of the most eloquent and effective anti-war voices of its generation" (Another Mother for Peace). The Sunflower Peace Logo, especially in its poster format, is one of the most enduring and recognizable symbols of the 1960s and 1970s, rivaling the peace symbol as an icon of the multigenerational anti-Vietnam war movement.

[22] Motherhood was a common motif in protesting the Vietnam War. In the mid-1960s, members of Women Strike for Peace established the Mother's Draft Resistance Movement (MDRM) to support young men who resisted the draft; MDRM issued the following pledge:

I am the mother of son(s) under eighteen. I will exert my legal right and duty as parent to guide, cherish, and protect my son(s), and will refuse to allow him (them) to register for the draft (Mother's Draft Resistance Movement, 24).

MDRM emphasized the transcendent qualities of motherhood. In its "An Appeal to Mothers, Black and White," MDRM targeted Black women as well as white women to resist their son's conscription during a 1968 Mother's Day demonstration. Noting the irony of a day honoring motherhood, their appeal stated that "EVERY DAY IS MOTHER'S DAY!" (emphasis in the original) and their resolve to fill up the jails with mothers if necessary (Mother's Draft Resistance Movement, 24). MDRM also distributed badges with the slogan: "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle--Should Rock the Boat." On the reverse of the badge were the lyrics to "I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier," providing a connection between the anti-war activism of mothers in the 1960s to that of World War I mothers (Swerdlow 1993, 176).

[23] Disputes over motherhood as a political tool and symbol plagued the anti-war movement of the Vietnam Era. In the 1968 Mother's Day protests, Chicago and New York radical feminist groups staged a counter demonstration during the women's war protest in DC. A coalition of women's pacifist groups, including Women Strike for Peace and MDRM, organized the march under the umbrella of the Jeanette Rankin Brigade, named in honor of the former congresswoman who was the only member of Congress to vote against both World War I and World War II. The young women of the Women's Liberation Movement objected to the rubric of motherhood as a political symbol, under which women traditionally voiced their political concerns and demands. This anti-war display of Republican Motherhood infuriated the feminist sensibilities of the Chicago and New York women as it defined women relationally. Calling for the Burial of Weeping Womanhood, which later became the Burial of Traditional Womanhood, protesters, in a scene reminiscent of the symbolic burial of Jim Crow during the Civil Rights Movement, staged a funeral procession with a large female dummy representing traditional womanhood. Lying on a bier surrounded by "S&H Green Stamps, curlers, garters and hairspray," the blank-faced dummy represented the death of female acquiescence and political action under the guise of motherhood and femininity (Firestone 1968). The young radical activists rejected the rhetoric of motherhood and protested as citizens. This rejection of politicized maternity had a precedent in the tactics of Alice Paul in the 1910s suffrage movement. Paul and the feminists of the early twentieth century insisted on women being recognized as citizens, not female citizens or citizen mothers.

[24] The incidents at the 1968 anti-war demonstrations illustrate the difficulties and hazards of a political identity resting on a foundation of relational citizenship. It also highlights the generational divides between women, especially in the hell-bent radicalism of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. As motherhood is an identity that relies upon the construction of women as nurturers and givers of life, younger women, at times, have rejected that identity and insisted that their protests be respected because they were citizens, not because they were mothers. However, despite the tensions over the validity of politicized maternity as a political and civic identity, it is clear that politicized maternity is still a viable recourse for women, conservative as well as liberal, and one that has survived into the twenty-first century.

[25] Politicized maternity, both by mothers themselves and others who use it to their advantage, is alive and well today. In titling her book, Not One More Mother's Child, Cindy Sheehan focused the anti-war movement as a relational protest. She redefined the soldier as a mother's child, thus reframing the loss of the individual to the pain of the mater dolorosa. Her son Casey was no longer available as a metaphor of war for pro-war forces; he was no longer a fallen hero but a life stolen by an unjust war and a son snatched from his mother's arms.:

"How many more of other's people's children are you willing to sacrifice for lies?" And we're going to say, "Shame on you. Shame on your for giving him [Bush] the authority to invade Iraq." And we're going to say, "Not one person should have died. Not one more should die." Can you scream that to the White House? Not one more! Not one more! (Sheehan, Not One More Mother's Child 2005)

[26] In contrast to Sheehan's anti-war mother, in the 2004 presidential election, the Bush campaign capitalized on the image of the "Soccer Mom," the suburban, mini-van driving mom (with the underlying and unsaid assumptions of whiteness and middle class status) who supported military action and Bush because she feared for the safety of her children. The Bush campaign used the Soccer Mom to heighten the fears of terrorism that his war, and his candidacy, depended upon. The campaign successfully turned one of the base functions of motherhood--protecting one's child--into a reason to vote for Bush and his anti-terror policies. The campaign created an image of mothers voting for Bush as he was the man who would protect their children from the evils of the world. What was unsaid in the Soccer Mom debates is that the construction of motherhood in those debates inferred fatherhood in the body of Bush who was acting as protector of the family unit, reifying the nuclear family at the core of the Right's "family values."

[27] In the 2008 presidential election, vice-presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin blended motherhood and civic duty. Palin called herself a "hockey mom" the northern version of the "soccer mom" used in the lower forty-eight states of the mainland. Palin's famous quip, endlessly lampooned in the media, that the only difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom was lipstick, created an image of a ferocious motherhood that still remained within the proper feminine role and did not transgress gender boundaries despite the image of a wild dog that will not let loose its prey. Implicit in this phrase is the white, middle class suburban woman as hockey, because of the costs of the sport and its origin in cold weather areas, is overwhelmingly played by white children. Palin's use of the term implied that she would bring that maternal ferocity--but within the acceptable boundaries of femininity--to the office of the vice-president. As with the Bush campaign's soccer mom, it suggested a larger paternal figure in the body of John McCain, with Palin's politicized maternity in service to the father and to the conservative Right.

[28] Palin's patriotic motherhood stands in opposition to Sheehan's "mater dolorosa." Palin, in September, 2008, acted as mother and governor when she saw the 1st Stryker Brigade, 25th Infantry Division's Combat Team off at Fort Wainwright, Alaska. Among the troops was Palin's son, Private First Class Track Palin. Palin alluded to parental protection when she told the troops "This is one of the moments when we have to face the fact that you may not need our protection anymore. In fact you're the ones who will now be protecting us, protecting America" (Davey 2008). Palin represents the brave mother who sends her child into danger for the greater good of the state while Sheehan is emblematic of the grieving mother who uses her pain to question the state's policies. In Sheehan's own word she practices matriotism, in stark contrast to Palin's patriotism (Sheehan, Peace Mom 2006).

[29] Despite the dichotomy of Sheehan's and Palin's political positions, both Sheehan and Palin practiced forms of politicized maternity that have a long historical precedent. American women as well as women throughout the world have long understood the value of the sentimentality in the constructions of motherhood. When John Adams failed to heed the plea of Abigail Adams "to remember the ladies" he opened the door for women to find a way to engage in political and civic action in the absence of formal power. Republican Motherhood granted women an avenue to make their voices and desires heard vis-a-vis their clout as mothers and women have practiced politicized maternity ever since. Motherhood can be and has been used as a way to limit the actions and advances of women, however women have used motherhood to undermine the very docility associated with the ideology. But there are also pitfalls associated with the power of politicized maternity. Women have successfully used the political currency of motherhood but it also reinforces a form of relational citizenship for women and the gendered discourse of maternity provides a space to negate the political activities of women as emotional and hysterical as well as a space to express political action and discontent.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. I would like to thank John Landreau for his insightful comments on earlier versions of this essay

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Contributor's Note

ANN MARIE NICOLOSI is an Associate Professor at the College of New Jersey where she holds a joint appointment in the Women's and Gender Studies Department (and serves as the chair) and the History Department. Her current research focuses on 20th century women's Movements.