From Salon

I never thought I could have children of my own. Though there was, in fact, absolutely nothing wrong with my reproductive system, childbirth seemed somehow impossibly out-of-reach. Motherhood was the province of other women -- stronger women, more substantial women. My breasts weren't meant for breast-feeding. My hips weren't made for pushing a baby out. I could not imagine myself carrying a child to term, giving birth. I had an eerie certainty that becoming a mother would kill me. In my twenties and early thirties, I didn't feel I had a right to be a mother. That whole part of life -- the mother- daughter part -- had eluded me as a daughter, and it seemed only natural that it would also elude me as a mother. But really, that was fine with me. There was more to life than motherhood. Or daughterhood.

By the time I reached the age when many of my friends had started their own families (this age being a relatively late one, given that I lived in New York City) the idea that childbearing was lethal became tangled up with the idea that I didn't desire children. I was thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five. If my biological clock was ticking, I didn't hear it. I watched my good girlfriends as their bellies grew; I threw them baby showers, and visited them at home with their children, and listened carefully inside myself as I left for any hint of envy or regret -- and found none.

From Alternet

You use words like "patriarchy" and "crone." You have a dream group, two book clubs, a medical psychic. On your bathroom wall, you have a photograph of a middle-aged naked woman stretched out in the curve of a leaning tree. I love you, but sometimes your ideas of feminism seem sappy, sentimental, unproductive.

I am not one of those Sophie Kinsella fans who likes my heels high and my man Cro-Magnon. In fact, despite my teasing, you are the most powerful person I have ever known. You founded the longest running women's film festival If you like a book, 10,000 of your closest friends immediately buy it. You can sense that I am sad from thousands of miles away. You gave me feminism, and when I was old enough to comprehend the profundity of that gift -- 18 years old and watching all of my friends fall apart from eating and anxiety disorders -- I embraced it with a vengeance.

On Mother's Day, I first and foremost want to say thank you.

From AlterNet

I love your spunk and confidence, but are you sure you know what you're up against?

You say words such as "cheesy," "hooker boots," and "like" too often. You own polyester tops and plaid skirts exactly like the ones I rejected in the late '50s as totally uncool. You drink "40's," email obsessively and love your writers' group. You roll your eyes at me a lot, a whole lot, especially when I nod to the beat of the latest rap song on the radio but don't realize that the words are misogynistic or violent.

Similarly, I love the beat of your feminism, your generation's spunk and confidence, but I don't always understand the message. It seems vague and undefined. It trickles out in bits and pieces instead of bursting out in decisive shouts like ours did. Sometimes I wonder if you get the bigger picture of how the power structure in this country (mostly older, white and male) is still gridlocked, letting only the few token women actually come to the table no matter what their education or experience.

From Ms. Magazine

Ms. decided to do a little communications research of our own: We chatted with three prominent feminists and their equally impressive daughters, asking them to reflect on aspects of their mother-daughter discourse.

The result: lots of laughter, lots of expressed mutual respect and surprisingly few stories of miscommunication.

From The Nation

In the deep quiet of a still-dark morning, Renee reaches her arm out from under her thick flowered comforter and across the bed to hit the snooze button on her alarm clock. Renee hits the snooze button exactly three times before finally casting off her covers. She does this each morning, and each morning she sleepily thinks the same thing: "It's too early. I was just at work two seconds ago, and I don't want to go back already."

This Mother's Day, why not step back and reflect about how we as a country can really help mothers like Renee? For example, the option of flextime would make a world of difference for Renee and her family.

She and millions of other parents across the country are seriously struggling to meet the demands of work and parenthood. Vast numbers of women are chronically tired and drained. But the American credo teaches us to be fierce individualists, with the result that most parents toil in isolation and can't envision, or don't expect, help. It's time to recognize that our common problems can be addressed only by working together to bring about broad and meaningful change in our families, communities, workplaces and nation.

From The Huffington Post

On this Mother's Day we are thankful to our mothers and all mothers of the women's liberation movement for enduring the misery that comes from trying to do it all.

After all, who wants to work 40 hours a week at a job, come home and work another forty hours a week raising her kids?

Don't want to stay on that sleep-deprived treadmill? That's what we thought. We're part of the next iteration of women's movement that says, "Yeah, I could do it all but I'm not going to."

From Feministing

This year, between Planned Parenthood's Mother's Day campaign and AlterNet's mother/daughter feminist conversation, I found myself getting cranky and bitter about not having a mother who's equally committed to feminist ideals. Fact is, I’m incredibly jealous of all you lucky ladies with feminist moms who raged in the 60s and 70s to get us where we are today, who bought you a copy of "Our Bodies, Ourselves," who can share in your disgust for the Bush Administration.

My inner five-year-old was whining, "But I want a feminist mom, too."