Quitting motherhood
This article about Rahna Reiko Rizzuto—mother of two who gave up her rights to be their custodial parent when she divorced about ten years ago, and then decided to write a book about it— has gathered over 9,000 comments as of this writing, and the comments keep coming.
From what I can see, nearly all those who took the time to write a message in response to the story think that Rizzuto’s act was selfish, and condemn her for it. It’s also probably true that she did her kids a favor by absenting herself and letting their father take over, if she was that resentful of parenthood and that self-centered.
Here’s Rizzuto:
Ten years ago, when her sons were 5 and 3, Rizzuto received a fellowship to spend six months in Japan, researching a book about the survivors of Hiroshima. Four months in, when her children came to visit, she had an epiphany: She didn’t want to be a full-time mother anymore. When she returned to New York, she ended her 20-year marriage and chose not to be her kids’ custodial parent.
Now, Rizzuto is an author and a faculty member at Goddard College in Vermont, where she teaches in creative writing. Her boys are teenagers””and, she says, they’re fine. In fact, their relationship not only survived her leaving, but “has improved.”
“I had to leave my children to find them,” she writes in an essay at Salon.com. “In my part-time motherhood, I get concentrated blocks of time when I can be that 1950s mother we idealize who was waiting in an apron with fresh cookies when we got off the school bus and wasn’t too busy for anything we needed until we went to bed. I go to every parent-teacher conference; I am there for performances and baseball games.”
“I had to leave my children to find them” sounds like something out of the movies, or the apocryphal (perhaps fake) Vietnam war quote, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Rizzuto’s self-serving justification of her act, and her contention that her kids are unscarred, seem to ignore the reality of what she did when she chose her career over them.
Some women and some men are just not cut out for parenthood. It would be best if they find that out before becoming parents rather than after, unlike Rizutto. People should be aware that parenthood is both a rewarding activity and an arduous marathon. Fortunately, love for their children and the joy experienced in watching them grow, coupled with a sense of duty and responsibility, usually see people through the hard times and the sheer work of it all to the pleasure and satisfaction of parenthood.
“Some women and some men are just not cut out for parenthood.”
For a lot of people, myself included, it’s not that we’re not cut out for it. Or, at least, not only that. It’s that we genuinely don’t want it.
I think that’s more of a problem than what you say – kids are resilient and can take a lot of haphazard and even poor parenting, coming out at the end as good people. It’s the parents who really don’t want to be there who do the most damage, and I really wish that people would figure this stuff out before they procreate.
I really think this woman gets a rougher deal than a father would in the same situation. Realistically, this is what a lot (NOT all) of fathers do after divorces, and how they rationalise it. (Most don’t write books about it, though, but they’re not exactly keeping it a secret.)
Goddard is still qoing?! Wow, just wow!
It’s a rough deal all around after a divorce. Fathers *do* write books (articles, letters, court pleadings) but most are unpublished, self-published, or published to little notice. There are reasons for that, multiple reasons, but among them is the overwhelming backloading of the publishing industry with women — many divorced, many unmarried and young, many unmarried and old, and not a few in gay marriages or the equivalent.
This strange creature of the estrogen persuasion got a book published and comment on it because she is, in a sense, allowed to and encouraged to “plead her belly” by an industry set up to make such a book possible, one that implicitly approves of her. And her message.
In an odd way, it’s the postscript to “You can have it all, baby,” but it reads –pace her assertions — “Then you shall have nothing.”
And the reasons for a father’s estrangement from children are not always of their own making. Sometimes the mother has a lot to do with it. Most men do keep secrets about this situation but only because speaking them leads to restraining orders and worse.
Her assertion that “her kids grew up just fine without her” reminds me of all the assertions and so called “Studies” that supposedly demonstrate that kids who grow up in homosexual and lesbian homes with two “daddies” or two “mommies” do just fine, too, which I find very hard to believe.
Having been left by a mother who just “didn’t want to” anymore, I have no sympathy for this woman. She chose to have children. She wasn’t raped or otherwise forced. She dumped her responsibility on the man which is no better than a man abandoning his.
She deserves our scorn.
She teaches creative writing at Goddard.
That figures, doesn’t it?
Clarification: My wife, the mother of my daughter. And by way of further clarification, my daughter and I ended up being very close and her mother is “dead”.
Goddard’s motto: “Progressive education for creative minds.”
Its degree programs include Individualized Studies, Sustainability, Sustainable Business & Communities (sic), Creative Writing, and Interdisciplinary Arts.
“Goddard also offers graduate-level concentrations in Consciousness Studies, Environmental Studies, School Counseling, Sexual Orientation, and Transformative Language Arts.”
Transformative Language Arts!
The bad news is straight from Gramsci, an emphasis on “Community Education and Teacher Licensure.”
Tuition is about $15K per ” low-residency”(!) year.
Place should fit Rizzuto like a glove, or maybe a condom. But it makes my skin crawl.
Ms Creative Writing has probably written the only thing that will be read by anyone outside of her friends on the faculty and students who have her scribblings assigned in class. I guess it was worth sacrificing the kids to have a theme for a book. What is really disgusting is that she wants praise and recognition for being a selfish jerk. In fact, she is a nobody. Our world seems to be full of her type–wannabe artists and breakers of glass ceilings who will end up in the dustbin of oblivion.
I’m not qualified to comment for I was a very poor father to my everlasting regret. Somehow life saw fit to give me a second chance which I didn’t deserve. Now my daughter and I are very close. For this I am humbly grateful. I hope this woman doesn’t lose as much as I did.
Her behavior was self centered and if she was a man her behavior would be interpreted that way.
It’s hard to top feminist gurette Amy Richards. Having gotten pregnant with triplets by her boy friend, Richards decided the impact on her lifestyle–moving to Staten Island, shopping at Costco–would be unacceptable, so she had two of the triplets aborted.
Cut Rizzuto a break. Maybe she’s off to Indonesia to study basketweaving there or something.
Mine walked out too. She didn’t even have a job, much less a book to write. By the way, there is no help anywhere for a white guy with two little girls and a little boy. Wrong sex, wrong color. Shall we discuss racism and misandry? Raising my kids caused me to go through 5 career quality jobs, and settle on one with the lowest pay and least amount of responsibility (if one of your kids calls sick from school, you simply have to leave work). Yeah. No sympathy here. Not for her, not for anyone who walks out on a bunch of little kids who didn’t even have a choice to be born, or who to pick for parents.
Gee, suddenly I feel better.
gs, wow, I read that link about the aborted two out of three and it’s just so cold. I don’t know how people can do things like that. Definitely hard to top that one, but these are all some unbelievably cold and selfish people. No sympathy here either.
There is a strong correlation between belief in evolution and liberal views on government control, pornography, prayer in schools, abortion, gun control, economic freedom, and even animal rights. –Phyllis Schlafly
Often times narcisstic self absorbed parents talk about how their children are doing so well without them. And how they’re a much better parent if they are happy and away from their kids, than if they were miserable and actually raising their children. Because a happy parent (even if they’re absent) is a better parent. It’s just so much better for the kids that way. Mind boggles.
Well how fucking wonderful for her. Not a word about dad’s opinion in all of this. It’s all about her voyage of self actualization. Reverse these gender roles for a moment and let dad make the same decision. Not so wonderful now is it. In fact there are entire legal and daytime TV industries wiping the floor with those fathers. If absent self centered “phone it in” fathers are to be universally condemned then this bitch get no quarter from me. FUCK HER!
sorry folks… bad day… bad life… but I don’t take back a word.
Steve: actually, it is being interpreted that way. Did you look at the comments? I certainly didn’t read all 9,000 of them (the number is now edging towards 12,000, by the way), but I read about 100 and almost every single one was highly highly critical of Rizzuto.
I made a fortunate discovery many years ago. My parents, it turns out, were “Human.” It surprised me to discover that they were fallible, prone to mistaken notions, slow to learn, and all the rest. Now I’m trying to teach that lesson to my kids. After more than 30 years, I think I’m getting through, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I had to listen to a litany of my failings someday.
Maybe someday all the prospective parents will be perfect. But not in this world.
Well giving up primary custody is one thing. If you think you are a bad parent, it is probably a good idea. But absenting yourself from your children’s life is another.
If that Goddard prof had stayed with the kids, she probably would have spent her time informing her kids that “I coulda been a contenda/professor if it weren’t for having to take care of you brats.”
Her absence from her children may well have been a blessing in disguise.
It would be Goddard. Decades ago, while hitching from NE to TX to commence job searching, I got a ride in Mississippi with a guy who was about to start college at Goddard. It was apparent he saw Goddard as the ticket out of his small hick town. Given what I knew of Goddard- as a former boss was a Goddard graduate I share other posters’ opinions of the place- I wonder if he was ever able to realize his dreams at Goddard. I fear not. Not at a school that turns your mind to mush.
To me, the argument about being a better parent in absentia is just as idiotic as the argument that children need “quality time.” There are no quality issues in children’s needs for mom and dad’s time, attention, energy and care – just the unremitting grind of 24 hour days, week after week and year after year, until the child is a child no longer.
Children do not understand financial pressures and they recognize no “personal growth” needs except for their own. Children need MOM and DAD, and they need them each and every day.
After mediating, intervening and filing legal briefs in hundreds of cases of parental neglect, estrangement and alienation, I call BUNK on all claims that someone concentrated on “quality time” or that “the children were better off without them.” Unless a parent is actively abusive, the kids are better off when the parent puts their own selfish needs aside. This woman was the one and only mother to her children. She robbed them of her care and guidance. Nothing else she has done or ever could do is of any comparative value; and nothing will ever make up those lost opportunities for her children, or for her.
Does she honestly believe the kids will someday thank her for all this? Does she hope and pray that someday some other woman will do the same thing to her sons and her grandchildren? I have been studying disturbed families for 40 years and I have never seen the children come around to the abandoning parent’s way of thinking!
The book is a testament to narcissism, the children are victims of selfishness and misplaced priorities, and the mother is a diminished and discredited person. So-called feminists shame themselves when they fail to call out this whole sad situation.
Steve, your use of that most prominent of expletives is well placed, for if it is not the weapon of choice when condemning this woman’s loathful act then nothing is.
I can only hope that this woman gets exactly what she is looking for – a narcissistic solitude that will certainly bring her joy in her final years.
Enjoy that nursing home room, sweetheart. Sounds like only the nurses will be darkening your door.
I think I can speak for other parents when I say that children are the greatest joy of life. I look at my three daughters with wonder and amazement at what God has blessed me with. The thought of abandoning them so I can go halfway around the world to write a book is inconceivable; it would be far more likely that I would take my own life in the most hideous manner imaginable.
My God, some people just suck.
What happened that day? Rizutto rent “Kramer vs Kramer?” I have long advocated the establishment of “Child Pounds” or “Child Shelters” at which parents who have tired of their children as pet owners tire of their dogs, monkeys, parrots, etc. can drop off their unwanted lives. Similarly, there should also be “Women’s Shelters,” for men who don’t want those tiresome nags holding them back from the pinnacle of self-actualization. Rizutto is but a modern-day Rousseau, living her Maslowing dream, abandoning the unwanted. Unlike in his day, her children lived.
WOW, she’s a teacher of Creative Writing. Who’d ever see that coming??? It’s all about the kids, isn’t it???
Seriously though. What a pathetic piece of progressive trash. And yet she’s allowed, if not encouraged, to pound her particular flavor of narcissistic nonsense into the brains of the highly impressionable. Sad, really, really sad.
My late wife, a Filipina often said this to me:
The status of the feminist western woman is just as awful as the status of the veiled women of Islam.
We’re headed toward a world war over this.
Hard to know which side to take.
Shouter:
The western feminists totally ignore the plight of the veiled and mutilated. Bizarre but inescapable.
Thank God she is an oddity, a rarity.
In my life and family, the strong people (with some exceptions, of course) have been women. They ARE, not can be, anchors and saviors of mankind in the main because their purposes are more than selfish. When that trait is perverted, or they go wrong, like Rizzuto and the many, many now entrapped in femology, women studies, and helpless independence, the result is disturbing. . . dizzying.
That the political ship is being balanced by women tells me if balance is not achieved, calamity is near.
I just read the article (now >13K comments) with its photo of Rizzuto. I thought, she looks like a lamprey with hair. I then went to her website, wherein she states. “My face defines me.” Q.E.D.
For some reason this story reminds me of Jane Goodal. In1964 she married a Dutch wildlife photographer, Baron Hugo van Lawick. The couple had a son, Hugo, who was born in 1967. The couple divorced in 1974 due, in part, to her extended stays in Tanzania to study her beloved chimpanzees.
In an interview she recounts that, after the divorce, her then six year old son begged her not to go back to Africa. She went anyway because she deemed her research was too important to drop.
She concluded that portion of the interview by saying that she hoped that, in time, her son would come to “understand” her decision.
What interests me is how liberals (like this woman), have such contempt for traditional lifestyles. To them the nuclear family is some outdated, abstact concept.
I thought the giant cultural revolution of the 60’s was supposed to give people choices that didn’t exist previously. People had more choices in many arenas, but still wanted to have a sense of security within their newfound freedom, hence traditional lifestyles are still the norm. Yet, if you aren’t a bohemian dingbat people like this view you with contempt.
Definately an Obama voter
Obviously, her children are better off without her. Sad, but often reality is sad. This is nothing new under the sun. There are women (and men) who have children and can not be there for them because of _______ , or ________ .
What is twisted is her wanting the kids to someday ‘understand’ her for abandoning them. She seems to want them to love her for not loving them enough to set aide her ambitions and be a mother. (Assuming there is no middle ground in her mind.) That her actions are respected and applauded by certain elements of society is but a reflection of what is twisted in our culture.
One other thing that bothers me about this whole issue is the feminist allegation that motherhood roles are some sort of male plot to keep them in chains. In fact, it’s the biology, stupid. A women cannot be a mother without 9 months of the most intimate relationship with her child, followed by years of protecting, feeding and nurturing, factors that allow for greater brain development of humans. A father can be a father without even being aware of it. A mother receives months and years of hormonal signals that create a special bond with her child. For men, those signals are secondary: the bond with the mother, the positive social signals from both his partner and society when he assumes a positive role in his child’s life, and, finally, as he interacts with the child, the realization that the child is his legacy.
There is no sinister male plot to keep women down. The roles of stay at home mother probably have more to do with gestation time and breastfeeding and subsequent pregnancy than with male domination. The male goes out into the world to provide this safe space and time for his partner and their offspring. The pill has allowed more flexibilty in parenting and parent roles, but it hasn’t changed the biological forces that created those roles in the first place. I wish there was more emphasis on the biological factors involved in sex roles rather than the extremely superficial “education” involving putting condoms on bananas. I also wish that women would realize that for much of history the dominant male role involved mind-numbing chores like plowing fields or quarrying stone or hammering metals into useful products. Few men had the option of being photography editors for Vanity Fair back in the middlle ages.
I know two boys whose mother walked out on them when they were preschoolers and never visited them or communicated with them again. Their good and loving father did all he could do for them, as did grandparents, aunts and uncles — but those boys were wrecked. They looked like Holocaust survivors. There are no words strong enough to describe or condemn what that mother did to her children.
Some years later, fortunately, the father found a new wife who was made to be a mother and is big-hearted enough to fully embrace and shelter those boys. What a joy it has been to watch them heal — but as for “understanding” what their biological mother did to them and why she did it — they do. Oh yes, they do.
Not my problem…
Given that their games have disenfranchised me and now even more games are doing the same to my son who just worked hard to graduate with honors…
nice to know its completely self correcting…
not in my lifetime, but eventually…
i am tired of giving up my time, energy ,and life for a bunch of demanding, complaining, never satisfied balls of want and entitlement.
my wife and i avoid them all like a toxic plague. which is what they are, from the ideas they have, the poison they inject into other relationships, the opinions you must have, and and on… ditsy with a superiority complex, more than equal, and aint worth the trouble, as the whole process has in effect weeded out substandard mothers (as anyone that can be deflected this way is substandard).
you may think i am being harsh but i am only observing and not carrying out the demographically enabled sentence, nor will those rise up and defend whats been pissing on them since their dad decided to ignore the social indications.
bed meet maker, maker meet bed, lie down…
its that simple…
most of the past 40 years its been the drowning trying to stand on the rescuers, and not be rescued.
we are now at the end of that journey, where even the children that were born, end up in slavery and chains.
only took one generation to undo freedom by calling it slavery and social engineering games…
ultimately, the people who know the difference are too old and are marginalized, and not long for this world given recent policy changes. whether we like it or not, they are on their own, for good, for bad, for whatever end..
but it sure looks like the women will do ALL the work for society… 🙂
in case they haven’t been looking where this road leads, i tend to see the men being welfare recipients sitting home. the socialists upon the ascension of women to the position of earning, will now deny that your salary belongs to you at all. having no family to support your ideals any more, you all stand along with this surprise in the face.
The Mancession
By CATHERINE RAMPELL economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/the-mancession/
this means that the WOMEN will have to run the home, run the house, do the shopping, fix everything, and work very very hard to support all of society. they will HAVE to turn their kids over and they will HAVE to expand that time just so they can use their superior work ability to support all of society. especially the rich!
the men with no work on welfare, and watching sports and playing nintendo are not even marraige worthy.
they have been changing each generation… moral momentum slowing down shows that each kid who has a father or friends fathers does less than the parents of the last level. so those married in the 70s, and 80s, got broadsided… those married late 80s and 90s had less to offer. and now 90s, 2010, we have the complete slacker set. you cant even complain like the other generation that they are not getting jobs, they even made sure not to learn, so they cant get one!!!
given that men live minimally even when supporting a family, the productive output now is dropping heavily. (at least in wealth CREATION, not in wealth movement).
in essence this is what women were convinced to do to their own children… and somehow think that it wouldnt come back to their own daughters.
i put up with a lot of flack on this stuff, but not because i am wrong, but because they would rather drive off the cliff having fun like thelma and louise.
they found it really easy to beat up on the men that would love them… now they are going to have to figure out how to live with the men who are indifferent to them, and the invaders who are not so easy to beat up as loved ones are who don’t want to hurt you.
but as i said… not my problem… and there is a huge young mass of men with that attitude for years. lots writing that there isn’t, but that’s only because slowing down would make the leap off the cliff less exciting…
but dont worry…
everything that they loved from the past in the culture that they remember, like weddings, and family dinners, and holidays like xmas, thats all in the trash bin…
all you have is a future of work, work, and yes, more work… (with a medical system that is primed to hasten you off… from a room of your own of course). no family around you, your friends disgusted with the vagaries of age avoid you, no one to hand your stuff down to, or your wisdom (state educated tend to fritter away and have little time).
couple more generations and we wont be able to tell the abstract difference between the lower classes and lab hamsters fed to work on their tiny little wheels. if they happen to have some fun, their kids are taken to be raised, to be good hamsters.
Learn to love the wheel! 🙂
For the defenders of the home have been defeated!
pop the cork.. the ladies won years ago!
(though their blaming men for conditions from their improvements makes no sense since us guys OBVIOUSLY dont make policy – the leaders make PC rules)
Too bad the prize was the end of everything they liked, loved, or really wanted… but i guess they had to pay with something!
(cant even blame us “chauvinists”!)
how does the song go?
oh yes…
I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe, But at least I’m enjoying the ride!
we aint driving this tour bus no more…
if behind every great man is a woman, what do we have when no woman supports their men?
well, i dont know either, but its coming this way!
Children/people are disposable, it’s the law for one stage of life and soon to become law for the geriatric stage of life .
Rizzuto’s actions should not be a surprise to anyone reading here, the disease of narcissism is part of the Left’s MO. What’s worrisome is the publicly released timing of this “new” behavior in which the Left wants us to accept; they’re pushing the envelope hard.
Children/people are disposable, it’s the law for one stage of life and soon to become law for the geriatric stage of life .
Aktion T4 equivalent…
heck, we cant tell men and women are different we certainly cant tell two policies that reach the same end are the same in end, regardless of detail.
[ie… do you care if you walk off a cliff to your death, or if you wander into a den of hungry lions… while some may want a choice, ultimately which one is irrelevant]
just remember that they are now openly saying they have to remove white men…
thats as it was in germany, to openly say to remove jews.. for the SAME REASON… (took feminists to teach it to us though). what reason? to fix the problem of race inequality using disparate impact arguments as justification.
if we are equal, then white people have to go..
(white women are ok, they betrayed their own, so they have a place, unlike the white men who helped and saved the jews, and now will share their fate).
so what is Aktion 4?
and funny.. just like the Jews of Germany, they are losing their jobs, their businesses and they are not allowed to retaliate or defend themselves… any group of them not siding with the nazi party, whihc became the GREEN Libertarian party (green field, black swastika), or its affiliated groups, like black national socialists, etc..
are going to just have to lay down and die…
think it cant happen here?
its too late…
it now cant be stopped..
heck… the women will end up enslaved…
how so?
easy… OPEN YOUR EYES..
women join organization which promises their dominance. they marginalize their mates, they favor their enemies, they work for communism, and collude and cheat and use the state to make unfair laws!!!!
the men are marginalized, they have no place or purpose… then comes an organization, which promises a return of their dominance… return of the family… return of a place in society rather than no place…
what do you think they will do?
join islam…
and when its the gay men of the US army, and the powder puff league of women… against the socialists, the jihadis, their own marginalized men, and all…
who do you think will win?
and when they do, what will happen to the losers and such given the ideology, the practices, and punishments?
subjugation, or death…
not only that… but if the guy joins up now, the left women will love him and treat him nice… so there is little resistance not to… (including western women who are also moving that way).
the choice of American men (especially white men), is to support your own, be marginalized, demonized, made an idiot, and slowly anemically die out not allowed to opposed any injustices..
or
oppose them because they are not your own people, as they declare. no longer defend or help them, as they have rewarded the effort with disrespect, marginalization, calls to state punishmetn for existing, etc… sign up with Islam, be allowed many wives, have many help to subdue them (gang rapes no being an uncommon way to do so), mutilate their sex organs… force them to cover up… remove them from companies as they are doing… and so on… until sharia is in place and they cant do that again to their own. (at least thats how the ones signing up will feel)
the people who did this, are on that side…
so the response to that will be hegelian..
it will not be women separated from men, and women win..
no… its women separated from men, as the men are held down until the women make the side… then the men are allowed their out from the holding down… in this case, a man who joins islam, moves from oppressor, to what? approval.. so once the men abandon christian values of individual equality and all that, they will take up islam as a way to live (christianity failed them, failed the women, and so…).
in their own neighborhoods and homes, they will no longer be marginalized. they are willing to kill lots of people to have their way…
and true to hegel…
they will crush the opposition.
whats the point?
easy.. its a game of leapfrog.
we had all the power as a nation, husband wife and families… so… they separate women from their mates, and the nation declines…
if a war comes, the process reverses, and the men sand up and defend those who dont deserve it. but its all they have… so that dont happen yet.
the men, eventually move to the other camp…
and the women who eradicated the power and morality of the US and all that, are then removed by these men!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
these men will follow the new totalitarian order a mating of religion and state… (what the russian orthodox church was hoped to change into).
enemy cant beat US and their people.
so enemy convinces women to unseat their own people
their own people now cast out, side with the enemy
they now are defeated by this new opposition, and put the enemy as ruler.
the enemy makes sure women have no say, no place, no humanity… why? well just look at what they were able to accomplish because their opponents didnt stop women or teach them, or even women having common sense…
(which is why the bible and koran teach this… not to oppress women… but to keep women from oppressing society as they do each other!).
how are the neo liberal progressive women going to stop all that?
after all, china dont like them… russia dont like them. cuba and others dont liek them…
once the men they beat up dont liek them…
then what?
of course christians, and the males have been declawed as long as they are on HER side..
Artfldgr – I’m on your side, that was my point. They’ve made it legal to eliminate an entire class of people, that the people are alive is irrelevant. They’ll keep going until someone stops them. My mother walked out when I was a kid, I’ve experienced it. I know what it’s like to be an unwanted pregnancy and be alive to hear the literal words of “wish you were never born.”
Sorry to hear the sad part NJcon…
Okay, here’s a question.
She teaches Creative Writing, presumably to undergraduates. Why?
Seriously… why? Is this just a job to her? Or does she have some vague feeling about educating youngsters, helping them to express themselves better, and so on?
How does she reconcile that with not even wanting to be there for her own kids?
How does she reconcile that with not even wanting to be there for her own kids?
she fights for the CAUSE which gives her meaning