Robots give birth

For almost a century now, doctors have been trained in obstetrics by practicing on patients in teaching hospitals. Finally, there's a new way to learn and practice without working on a real, live mother and baby: a pregnant robot. The robot labors and gives birth, with all kinds of programmable complications simulated on the monitors.

While it's great to get some experience without disturbing a real birthing mother, this seems like it will reinforce some trends that are hurting mothers throughout this country. First, the nurses and doctors in training obviously aren't looking at the robot's expression or listening to its words. All eyes are trained on the monitoring instruments. The robot has a pulse and blood pressure, but no emotional or psychological barriers. Its contractions have a intensity and frequency but no discomfort. This reinforces the trend to look only at instruments and the numbers they provide, not at what matters to the laboring woman. Second, the robot doesn't care whether it has an episiotomy. It doesn't care what it jammed into its vagina or screwed into the baby's head. It doesn't have goals for the birth related to empowerment, personal integrity, and modesty.

The birthing robot is great for practicing the mechanics of interventions and complications. It is terrible for teaching people how to help a woman give birth. I wish for all the people who are in training the opportunity to see a woman give birth physiologically, without intervention or interference. They're trained in the ways a woman's body could fail -- they need to see the many ways a woman can succeed.

Mothers have a branding problem.

In The State of Discontent, Jaelithe and Johnson and Johnson executive Ray Jordan suggest that "Moms have a branding issue."

Moms, especially stay-at-home-moms, are much more educated, intelligent, and motivated than common perceptions suggest. The stereotypical mom is wrapped up in her children. She hangs on their every word and disregards the world outside. She is mildly delusional, convinced that her children are above average and that her family is the center of the universe. She obsesses over household chores and parenting books, and argues with other mothers in the "Mommy Wars."

Mothers these days are not June Cleaver. We're not willing to follow a script laid out for us in mainstream advertising. Mother who stay home with their children are often college-educated, experienced career women. Scientists, executive vice-presidents, accountants, lawyers, and thousands of other career paths are well-represented in the homes of America. Even mothers who didn't go to college know they're capable of it, capable of making decisions just as important as those working men make. These women are thinkers.

So we're obsessed with our children. That's an asset. That's a motivation to be involved in politics, in environmentalism, in activism. We're not thinking just about the economy of the next few years, or about how much fun we can have or money we can make right now.

Mothers who are not working full-time have ambition and time to devote to causes commercial and political. They have networks of friends who vote. And now they have blogs and the internet, to connect with each other and promote our common agendas. We vote and we speak out.

Society at large has not yet recognized that the new stay-at-home-mom is an ambitious career woman, even if no one pays her for it. This is our branding problem. The mother who strives for cleanliness and on-time dinners has moved on. We're striving for goals much bigger than our household, and we will have an impact.

Mothers have the brainpower, the initiative, and the means to impact the way this country moves. Watch out, political establishment. Mothers are no longer complacent, and we're growing increasingly influential. You'd better start pandering to us.