When politics hits close to home
Pandemic moms are today’s votes-for-women moms
In the 2020 presidential election, millions of mothers will be the key to victory, just as they were in the battle for women’s right to vote. Women who do not relish the political spotlight are the ones you have to watch — and watch out for. President Donald Trump may be about to learn that lesson the hard way, just as the forces opposing women’s suffrage did.
Militants make more interesting headlines and often take most of the historical limelight. There is no question that “nasty women” play a significant role in making change. Their shocking tactics can force those in power into making mistakes that benefit the causes the women espouse. They do not have to be numerous to gain media attention.
That was as true in the suffrage fight as it is today. During President Woodrow Wilson’s administration, Alice Paul and her rabble-rousing suffragist supporters picketed the White House. Known as the “Silent Sentinels,” the group totaled no more than 2,000 women. While their picketing might seem quite a mild protest today, at the time society considered it unwomanly, radical and appalling.
Wilson had a few hundred of the Silent Sentinels arrested and jailed. That led to a “Night of Terror” in which prison guards viciously beat jailed Sentinels, including one who suffered a heart attack and another who was 73 years old. Wilson took a public relations drubbing, and his administration’s overreaction contributed to a shift in public opinion toward suffrage.
Mama bears and soccer moms
Still, women who typically stay in the background of the political fray can be fierce mama bears for causes that affect their families.
Who are these women? In pre-pandemic days, political analysts called them “soccer moms.” In her previous life as a pollster, White House counselor Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway noted, “Soccer moms of the 1990s were the ‘supermoms’ of the 1980s. Many of them have kicked off their high heels and replaced them with Keds to watch their kids. If you are a soccer mom, the world according to you is seen through the needs of your children.”
These days, the pandemic has women sheltering in place with their families, so it has been months since they cheered for a kid’s sports team. They are frantically concerned about how to support their families, keep them safe and get work done while kids are underfoot and without camps, sports or other outside activities. Their political choices are at the forefront of their daily lives.
How these women react to the presidential race and candidates is complicated and fluid. Shifting school reopening plans and local and state orders, child care woes and the latest news about pandemic tragedies keep them in a constant state of agitation. And then there are the president’s tweets, including those directly addressed to them (anachronistically and, many would say, insultingly) as “Suburban Housewives of America,” saying presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden “will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better!”
Women vote at higher rates than men, and their votes make a difference. They turned out in force in 2018 to change the makeup of the House of Representatives and state legislatures, and they could well determine the outcome of the Nov. 3 election.
Well-being connected to voting
These women are descendants (spiritually if not literally) of the women who won the battle for their own right to vote. Over 100 years ago, legions of women canvassed, cajoled male voters and found ways to convey to nonactivist women that the vote was crucial to them and the well-being of their families. They didn’t have tools like television or social media. They raised money and consciousness for their cause by peddling cookbooks, hawking suffrage at state fairs and selling pigs from their farms.
The influence of these mothers is micro as well as macro. One hundred years ago, Febb Ensminger Burn of Niota, Tennessee, changed history with a wrinkled letter to her son that invoked the name of suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt:
... Hurrah and vote for suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt . ... I’ve been waiting to see how you stood but have not seen anything yet . ... Don’t forget to be a good boy, and help Mrs. “Thomas Catt.” ... With lots of love, Mama
Following her instructions, on Aug. 18, 1920, 24-year-old Harry cast the deciding vote in the Tennessee legislature — giving the 19th Amendment the last state it needed for ratification.
In the face of multiple defeats, the suffragists kept going. They took suffrage over the finish line first in Congress in 1919 and then with ratification votes in 36 state legislatures.
The pandemic moms of today have a lot in common with the votes-for-women moms who helped make that happen. They protect their families and expect society and their political leaders to do the same.
Laura Kumin, a lawyer turned food historian, is the author of the new book “All Stirred Up: Suffrage Cookbooks, Food, and the Battle for Women’s Right to Vote.”
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