Reclaiming the Value of Motherhood

0:01I've always believed that what we put on our bodies matters just as much as what we put in them and that includes our bedding. We spend hours in bed every night and Koyuchi makes the most beautiful organic sheets that support a healthy restorative sleep. Their relaxed linen sheet set is crafted from French flax that's sustainably grown and naturally breathable. It's soft, airy, and somehow gets even better with every wash. The linen regulates temperature beautifully, cool when it's warm, cozy when it's not. So your bed hits peak comfort year round. As leaders in organic bedding since 1991, everything Koyuchi makes is designed with care for both people and the planet, free from toxic chemicals and microplastics.

0:50It's what conscious luxury should feel like. Effortless, thoughtful, and incredibly well made. and they're offering 15 % off your first order. Just go to koyuchi.com. That's C-O-Y-U-C-H-I.com.

1:10When I travel, whether it's for work or just to take a break, I love staying in an Airbnb. I love the charm and how every place feels so different from a hotel. It gives me a sense of feeling grounded wherever I am, whether it's a weekend away in the country or filming somewhere far from home. There's something about waking up in a real home with a kitchen to make coffee in and a living room to spread out in. And whenever I'm in an Airbnb, I find myself thinking about the person whose home it is. While I'm making it mine for a few days, maybe they're off on their own adventure or simply opening their doors for someone else to enjoy the space they love.

1:49That's what I love about Airbnb. You already have the space. why not let it offer something to someone else and let it work for you? Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host.

2:09When you are pioneering anything or introducing new ideas to the culture, you get criticized. You do? Yeah. Did you hear about that? I didn't find the one. I found someone I respected and we made it the one. In a sort of longing kind of view of love, people understand each other as if by magic. Nothing in itself is addictive on the one hand. And on the other hand, everything could be addictive if there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled. I now know that nobody changes until they change their energy. And when you change your energy, you change your life. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the Goop Podcast.

2:47bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders, and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers, and seekers here to start conversations because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go. Welcome to the Goop podcast. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. And today I'm joined by the brilliant Anna Malaika Tubbs, a mother, sociologist, New York Times bestselling author, and advocate for social equity. I put mother first because so much of Anna's work is centered on the power of motherhood and the ways mothers, especially black mothers, have been systemically left out of our cultural and historical narratives.

3:34Her latest book, Erased, builds on that foundation. It's a deeply researched and eye-opening account of how women's contributions have been overlooked throughout our country's history and how we can begin to weave their stories back in with intention. We talk about why selflessness isn't always a virtue, how intuition is vital to personal power, and what it truly means to mother, not just children, but new ways of being. Let's get into it.

4:05Okay, I'm so excited to be talking to you today. And there's so much to discuss. So I just want to start out with kind of telling our audience a little bit about you. So I'm going to dive right in if that's okay. Sounds great. So I'm so happy to be speaking with you today, Anna. You are a tremendous thought leader and woman. For those of you who don't know Anna yet, She is a scholar, an author, a sociologist, and an advocate known for her work in gender studies, especially at the intersection of race, gender, and class. She graduated from Stanford University, Pi Beta Kappa, with a BA in anthropology.

4:45Her PhD is in sociology and master's in the multidisciplinary gender studies from Cambridge, and a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge scholar. I did not know that part. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Three Mothers, How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X., and James Baldwin Shaped the Nation. That came out in 2021. And her new book is called Erased, What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us, which is already a New York Times bestseller. Fascinatingly, she grew up in Dubai, Mexico, Sweden, Estonia, Azerbaijan, and the US. She's working on a unscripted show on the mothers of contemporary Black icons.

5:31I can't wait to ask you about that. And she has a TED Talk. She is a mother of three, probably most importantly, and lives in Los Angeles. So welcome to the Goop podcast, Anna. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. I've been so excited about this interview. Well, we're thrilled to have you. You know, you're like just in the sweet spot here for everything that I get so excited and fascinated about when I get to interview people like you. I think your work is so layered and so interesting. And like, I think it's super interesting to me how you bring to the forefront this idea of mothers and all of the different roles of mothers, how they impact all of the layers.

6:14I wanted to ask you a little about the first book, if that's okay. and just start there. Because I also think it like kind of sets the stage for kind of the broader conversation. But I wondered, how did you align on these mothers of James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.? Like, how did it sort of coalesce in your mind that the idea for the book around these three women in particular? And what was the thesis? What were you setting out to lay out for us? Yeah. When I wrote that book, I wasn't a mom myself yet. I was just always really inspired by the role and the power and the influence of motherhood because of my own mom.

6:54She was a lawyer who advocated for women's rights in the US as well as abroad. And we spent our childhood, my siblings and I, traveling from country to country nomadically as a result of her work. My dad's work too, but I was much more inspired by my mom's work. And so she always told just to focus on how women were being treated in these different places, but especially how the role of motherhood was being treated. And she related so much back to the treatment of motherhood. She thought that if mothers were being supported and they had the appreciation that they deserved and the resources that they deserved, that you would see those ripple effects across the nation.

7:31And if they didn't, if they were being ignored or if their role was not being respected or protected, that we would also see some negative ripple effects. And so I grew up believing motherhood was powerful, influential, one of the most important roles, if not the most important roles in societies that were nurturing the beginning stages of life. And so I wanted to write something for my PhD that had to do with celebrating motherhood. But I wanted to also add this inspiration I felt when I read Hidden Figures, a book by Margulies Shetterly that of course went on to become this incredible film. And when I read the book, I was so angered that this was the first time I was hearing these women's names, the first time that we knew the role of Black women in NASA's history.

8:17And I thought, I'm going to be somebody who joins Margulies Shetterly, and I'm going to find other hidden figures. And I want to pair that with this passion that I have for celebrating mothers. And so then when I was thinking of all of the Black mothers that I could have highlighted. Unfortunately, so many are erased and their contributions are denied. I thought it would be interesting to go to mothers who it would seem so obvious to spend a little time getting to know them, especially because their sons are so famous. And there have been dozens of books written about these men, and really to make it so clear that they had been erased and how strategic that erasure is.

8:56And so of course, MLK Jr. came to mind. And of course, a natural second is then to think of Malcolm X. But the reason I wanted to do three mothers was because we often, when we only have two options, we see them as opposites of each other. We start to have this kind of binary thinking, and that's not representative of their ideas nor their lives. And so I thought a third would be really beautiful to bring in, and especially a queer man's relationship with his mother would be powerful to study. And I had no idea when I had this question of who these mothers were, that they each did what their sons later became famous for long before their sons were even a thought in their mind.

9:39And so that wasn't my thesis. I didn't go in looking for evidence of that. My question was just, who were these women? They must have been fascinating. Let's just explore their lives. And at every turn, 90 % of the book is my original research. There was nothing out there really for us to go off of before. Now you can Google them as a result of my work and some other scholars as well. But before, when I was starting this project, there was nothing. And every piece of evidence that I found showed that they were the ones who directly influenced their sons to be activists. And it was really so sad that it took until 2021 for us to discover that.

10:17And you said a couple sentences ago something like it was like a conscious erasure of their work. Can you say more about that? Absolutely. I found that each of the sons actually gave their mothers a lot of credit for their work. And so in letters that the sons wrote or in communication with family members or even in some of the archives that I found, the sons continuously said, my mother was the one who taught me this. My mother was the first to introduce me to this. And so I actually also then realized in my own life that erasure was playing out and I became very aware of it. And I think that these experiences personally and professionally happened at the same time so that I could be a keen observer of erasure.

10:59And to give a little background on my own experiences, my husband was the mayor of Stockton, California. He was the first to demonstrate universal basic income in the United States. So he had a lot of attention around him. And every time someone interviewed him, he would say it was my mom. So he talks about his mom, his grandmother and his aunt, three black women who helped him become the leader that he is today. And I remember him saying that every single time he was interviewed. But when the article came out afterward, or there's two documentaries about him, they are edited out. The women become less important.

11:35And there's so much more attention paid to his father, who sadly hasn't been able to be present in his life. But people are more interested in telling about this male figure in his life, even if he wasn't there, rather than the women who were there every single day pouring into him and allowing him to become the leader that he is. So that happening alongside me completing this project and witnessing how there's evidence of the sons saying, my mother is the one who taught me this. And then we still, as scholars, historians, decide that doesn't fit the narrative. And we're going to tell a different story or we're going to emphasize a different part of what they were telling us.

12:20But you can see it even with James Baldwin. He passed, all three of the sons sadly passed before their mothers do. But James Baldwin had a wish that he was going to be buried next to his mother. So Burtis Baldwin, his mother, had nine children, but she is buried next to her firstborn as a symbol of if people want to come and honor the life of James Baldwin, you will always also have to honor Burtis. And that's just one of many beautiful testaments to the relationship that these sons have with their moms.

12:56You buy a pair of socks, that's two socks. You buy a pair of Bombas socks, that's four socks. Because one purchased is one donated. Socks are the number one most requested clothing item in homeless shelters. So when you buy a pair of super comfortable Bombas socks, you're also donating a pair. Bombas customers have powered over 150 million donations. So Bombas would like to thank you 150 million times. But we only have like 30 seconds. Go to Bombas.com and use code AUDIO for 20 % off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com and use code AUDIO at checkout.

13:29Why do you think that it behooves the patriarchy to erase a mother's role like that, that profound influence that she has specifically on a man? Because it's funny, like you imagine someone's writing an article, your husband, for example, is talking about his mother. It doesn't seem like a conscious choice, right? Like, oh, I'm going to uphold the patriarchy by not writing her into this article. But what is the unconscious bias against that theme? How does it keep the patriarchy propped up? The thing that patriarchy relies on is defining who gets to be in control, who gets to have power, who gets to be recognized really as a human being in our nation.

14:13And in Erased, I'm pointing to the origin of American patriarchy. Yes, patriarchy exists across the world. I'm not saying that our U.S. system is worse or better. That's not what I'm interested in. I think all patriarchal systems are not great. But I do want to say that it originated somewhere. And we want to question who wrote it into our national system. And so our founding fathers define what it is to be human by saying what it is to be man in the United States. Men are the ones who can vote. Men are the ones who can enter into business decisions on their own, according to the Constitution, without somebody having to speak for them.

14:51Men are the ones who pass on their legacy and their status to their children. And based off of the exclusion entirely of women, even in the Constitution, we see that they aren't really a recognized group outside of their ability to reproduce the power of men. So if I'm going back to just even this original kind of social order that the founding fathers envisioned and it was just their opinion, but then it was systematized through law and through our policies, I think we still see a lot of traces of that to this day. One of those being the erasure of women's roles and women's contributions, especially those contributions that show us that no man is self-made, even though that's something that is really important in American patriarchy is this notion of the self-made man, that they were the ones that were able to create everything from scratch.

15:46And therefore, it makes sense that they're supposed to be in charge. And anything that questions that or that shows us something different is typically erased. And we see that play out over and over again. And with the three mothers, so many people feel shocked when they learn the stories of these women. And they always ask me, how is it possible that they were erased when these sons are so well studied? How is this possible that we didn't know this? And the answer is patriarchy. And it's just one symptom of many. Yeah. And you know, what's interesting as well is that there's like a psychic weight to motherhood.

16:25And what you just touched on really interestingly is like the propagation of the male, that the importance of women culturally could reside in their ability to reproduce more, presumably white males, right? To run the patriarchy. So I feel like endemically, then what you're saying is in this country, we're always fighting that system, right? We're always pushing back against this idea that we're not written into the Constitution. It's not our God-given right to go forth and prosper. We're relying on men and we're sort of begrudgingly given permission to be working women. And then the mother aspect adds a whole other level.

17:05And there's this kind of psychic weight of motherhood, I think particularly Black motherhood, as a place of resistance and also responsibility, right? So how do you hold that duality? Yeah. And I think going back into that definition that is set up by American patriarchy, first they set up, okay, this is what it means to be man in our nation. And in the letters that they write, we see what it means to be woman in our nation. And in the letters that they write to their daughters, to their wives, they say, you're supposed to be obedient. You're also supposed to be protected because you're fragile and you can't think for yourself.

17:47You can't do for yourself. And anything that you acquire in terms of skills, let's say to learn how to play an instrument, for instance, all of that is in service of your role as a mother to our children and the reproduction of this male legacy. So that right there shows us that the way the founding fathers are defining the women in their lives doesn't actually include a lot of other people. So we know that they're setting up this kind of problematic and flawed and limited binary as it is saying what it is to be man, it's either you dominate or what it is to be woman, you are dominated. However, when we look for examples specifically at Black women in American history, and especially during times of slavery, we see that Black women were not being included in this notion of womanhood.

18:38And in fact, they were told the complete opposite. For a woman who was enslaved, if she came to have a child, no matter how this came to happen, and we know there's horrific ways in which Black women were forced to have children, that child would always carry the status of the mother. And so we also know that historically, by law, Black women are the only ones who have been told that we were the birthers of non-life through our children, that by law, our children were somebody else's property. And so Black women, in a lot of ways, we have been reclaiming our humanity. And we've been able to see beyond what the law offered to us.

19:20We've been able to see from the beginning how made up it all was, how this clearly was just, again, a story, someone's opinion, because we weren't going to accept the fact that we were not human. We were not going to accept the fact that our children were not human, but instead, we were going to fight for this nation to see things through our eyes, and we were going to fight for policy and for law to change and be in alignment with us as we were building a country that would be worthy of our children. And so Black women have often not been tricked into protecting this system. And you said something earlier around all of us are kind of fighting this on a day-to-day basis.

19:59But I actually think subconsciously, many people have been tricked into assimilating into the two roles that we were offered because at least there was some path to humanity there. We were told that's how you'll be treated as a human being. And so when you see anybody protecting that social order, even though it clearly doesn't serve any of us, it's largely because we think that's the rule. That's the path. That's what we need to do in order to be recognized, in order to have access to resources. But Black women in particular, one of the reasons I say we have to listen to Black women in these moments where we're all so afraid is because we've been cast so far away from it.

20:43We've been able to see it very clearly. There's never been a path there for us to gain humanity. It had to be, let's make up something else, something new. You've never been tricked. Exactly. That's never been afforded to us. I think some of the proximity to it allows people to think, maybe this will work for me too. That's so interesting. So is that then an additional burden for Black women? I think it could be read as a burden, but also I see it more as a leg up on American patriarchy. I use an example of a woman named Ellen Craft in my book to explain how she was a student of American patriarchy, and that's what allowed her to achieve freedom.

21:30So at a time where she and her husband were enslaved, she had lighter skin and she could pass. And so the way in which she and her husband make their way to the north is that she impersonates a white man and she cuts her hair. She knows how to act. She gets on the train. Her husband, well, he is a slave, but he's pretending to be her slave the entire time. And she's pretending to be a white man. And it's such a courageous act that they are boarding these trains. They They are making their way up north. But it also shows just how arbitrary these categories are, how performative these categories are, and also shows how Black women are some of the most astute observers of this American patriarchy and therefore the ones who can really address it and do something about it.

22:24In terms of the burden that sometimes comes with that is this expectation of Black women to continuously lead us with others not fully listening. And so in my opinion, if you want to actually follow the lead of Black women, if you want to actually elect Black women, that's less of a burden than to say, OK, Black women are going to continue to vote in a way that is useful for all of us, but then we're not all going to get behind them. We're not going to listen to them as the experts that they are. And then instead, once the problem has happened, we continue to return saying, tell us what we're supposed to do versus listening when we can actually make a difference.

23:10So I think it's both. I do think there is a lot of burden associated with it, but I also see it as the most inspiring thing. And a lot of people ask me why I still am so hopeful when I'm somebody who deeply studies these things that are so ingrained in our nation and can feel like there's nothing we can do about them. And my hope stems from the tradition of Black womanhood and always envisioning beyond what's being offered to us, always saying we can create something different. And that's what we need so many people to feel right now at a time where it can be really scary and it can feel like we don't have options and that we're being scared into submission.

23:53Truly, it's to remember we can always do something different. We can always choose to imagine beyond and build towards that vision. You feel that way really truly now, even when I feel like it's been really interesting to be alive during this time. for many reasons, but I never thought that the Overton window moved backwards. I thought it always moved forwards and offered us the path to progression. And it's been very eye-opening to live in a time where I feel the regression and obviously there's axioms like reproductive rights and many other things. But do you still feel hopeful even now? I mean, I feel it's a regression.

24:41I don't know if you feel that way, or I don't know if like a sociologist, you recognize there's pattern recognition here. Yes, I do still feel very hopeful. I think the three mothers gave me so many gifts. And one of those is that I studied black women who were born in the early 1900s and who had children in the 1920s. And then they lived through until the 1990s. So when I see what they witnessed throughout their lives, right? Jim Crow, of course, how they needed to protect their children in the 20s, how they are inspiring their children to participate in the civil rights movement and fight for their rights to be finally realized in a way that had never been the case before.

25:23It is hard for me to say, this is the worst it's ever been. And we can't have hope. And yes, there are moments in which we are regressing. But one of the reasons I wanted to write this book is because we have lost the traces of how American patriarchy as a system has continued to operate. And so we've never fully dismantled it. So that's why our rights continue to be so vulnerable. And so even while I've been on this book tour, several people have asked me, how could you, a woman with three degrees, say that patriarchy is still a problem? Does it even exist anymore? And that's exactly the issue that we're facing right now, is we can't assume that because we've made incredible progress, that we aren't still coming up against the system that is built into the fabric of our nation that didn't recognize our full humanity from the beginning that set up this really problematic, again, flawed binary that now is being recycled in conversations in this current administration in not only attacks on trans people, not only attacks on women, but also attacks on immigrant people.

26:39These are also people who were not recognized in this initial definition. And so I just want us all to feel like these are not new battles. And that when we see moments where we are regressing, or we see things like Project 2025, if we draw the lines between this original intended social order, and even, for instance, our current Supreme Court, where I argue in the book, we've never seen an anti-patriarchal Supreme Court in the history of the United States, we need to stop being shocked by what they're deciding. But when we can recognize it, then we also recognize the strategies of resistance that have always been there.

27:18That's the most important part of my goal is for all of us to restore the things that have been kept from us when we've been taught that American patriarchy is unavoidable, that it's the natural order of things, so that we continue to be surprised when it shows up. And so I think my hope stems from the fact that I'm just not surprised by it. I don't spend a lot of energy letting myself be caught off guard. Instead, my energy is spent saying, I'm pretty sure this is something he's going to try to do. And we know how to counter that. We know what we're supposed to do. We know that we need to lean on each other more.