Margaret Sanger and Saving the World

This weekend I finished reading Terrible Virtue, a novelization of the life of Margaret Sanger, by Ellen Feldman. I read a review of this book in Elle, and got it from the library. I returned the book as soon as I finished it so the next person on the list could read it. I was a little hesitant to read about Sanger because I had read that she was into eugenics. Someone had written that she was a wealthy woman who was into birth control for the impoverished masses, which at best sounds slimy and at worst makes her kind of a Nazi.

Thankfully, that was not Sanger's motivation.

Do you have or were you born into a family with ten or more children that were conceived not by choice? If not, you can thank Margaret Sanger and the countless early supporters of birth control. I knew birth control was an important part of American life, but I didn't realize how much so until I read what life was like before it was more readily available.

Sanger grew up in an impoverished family where her father was a drunken dreamer. Her mother had thirteen children and was physically compromised from having so many kids. This book suggests that Sanger's mother's death was linked to her exhaustion from having so many children.

Before World War I, she was a socialist, nurse and suffragette. She was asked to speak to a women's group about the vote for women, and instead she spoke about women's health. Why did wealthy white women have access to birth control when working class women and immigrants did not? The more kids they had, the deeper they and their children fell into poverty. These women also suffered terrible losses--miscarriages, stillbirths, infant death--because they lacked access to healthcare. Those multiple pregnancies took a toll on the women's bodies. Often the women would become pregnant again soon after they gave birth. There bodies didn't have a chance to recover.

Sanger's goal was not to reduce the huddled masses, but to give women a little bit of control over their destiny. She wasn't forcing birth control on these women--she was just educating people and increasing its accessibility so they could have options. Why should only wealthy woman have access to controlling their fate?

Saving the world, though, can be an ugly business, and Feldman does a nice job of exposing that. Sanger might not have been into eugenics, but she wasn't she a paragon of kindness, either. She was dismissive of her children, and could be cruel to the men who loved her.

Why do so many people--myself included--have a fantasy about saving the world? Why do we dream of accomplishing big things and want to have big ideas that will help mankind? To quote John Lennon's "Imagine," I am not the only one. Many people want to save the world, whether they are politicians, young people leaving college or thirteen year old boys. I was talking to a friend at lunch recently and I thought maybe I should just get a regular job at a company, nothing where I was trying to right some major social failing.

"That is what a lot of people think," she said. "And then they wake up realize they have been working for an insurance company for twenty years." She has a point.

We often look up to these people as heroes, but saving the world isn't what is cracked up to be. I was there for almost ten years in my volunteer work. Saving the world can be tedious, hard work. It is having to fight against people who don't believe in a cause. They step on people who do agree with them, but don't agree on every point or perspective. It might involve compromises or working with people who are disagreeable. Some people who save the world are disagreeable themselves, putting their cause above civility. Sometimes they have to because civility doesn't work. They are often not recognized as such until years of them slogging away and after their changes have been in place. Many people slog away and are never recognized.

Saving the world also takes time and persistence. It is often met with defeat and after defeat, but these people keep going in spite of that. They likely have very serious stubborn streak. They might assume that their cause gives them the right to be an ass to everyone, or be blind to the hurt they are inflicting on those they love. They might be angry or drop old friends as new and more important people take their place. Loved ones might not understand why they are called to this kind of work.

I have a good friend, Sereena, who has been an education advocate for years. Her main focus has been the opportunity gap and trying to improve outcomes for kids of color. Like Sanger, Sereena is both a dreamer and a doer.* Unlike Sanger, my friend is kind and civil. She is not hostile or abrasive like other advocates I know. Recently, she posted an article on Facebook about how the opportunity gap is still unacceptably large in Seattle.

"Why?" she posted. "After all of my work and the work of others, we are still in the same place." She was pissed.

I have been haunted by this for a few weeks. My heart breaks for her. Her head and her heart are in the right place. This woman is not a complainer or a whiner. Her volunteer and professional activities range from giving input on policy on state committees to discuss plans for the opportunity gap and grassroots work where she organized meetings with Somali mothers. She has a firm grasp on both the big picture and what it looks like for people on a day-to-day basis.

What happens when you try to fix something in society that you believe needs to be fixed, and you feel like you aren't making progress? How can some people make a difference and others who try, struggle?

My son wants to do something Big and Important with his life. He is thirteen, and wants to make a contribution now. (He could start by packing his own lunch and doing his homework without being nagged, but I digress.) Saving the world is hard, and yet there are many small things we can do to make our corner of out world a better place.

Sanger made a major contribution that makes the history books, but we need people like Sereena who work just as hard for their cause. When I think of my Sereena, I think of how worse things might have been without her. And what if she keeps going? At best, my great-grandchildren will read about her. At the very least, she has encouraged a group of kids in her corner of her world to value their education and has fought to get them to resources and support.

* I read this "dreamer and doer" line in an advertisement in the New Yorker for a college in NYC. I love the concept.