Iris Krasnow: Girlfriend, mother, journalist, daughter, teacher

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Iris Krasnow is a writer, a journalist, a psycho-journalist, a professor, a mother, a daughter, a wife, a friend. She may feel the need to rearrange the order of these nouns that describe her. She may say the order depends upon the company she is keeping. She may also say she is all of these things at the same exact time, that there is no order. She may say she is a mother first and foremost even though she is a best selling author. While Krasnow has four books to her name, Surrendering to Motherhood, Surrendering to Marriage, Surrendering to Yourself and I Am My Mother’s Daughter she feels a fifth one perculating.

There's no title yet, but it's about friendship, specifically female friendship.

As a woman with all sons, Krasnow, a journalism professor at American University in DC, says she understands the healing and energizing power of female friendship. She says that nothing makes us feel better about ourselves and our lives than getting together with other women. “There is something about women that binds us through time. However different we are in ages and backgrounds, the theme that binds women is that we want to give love and to receive love. We are the gender that tries to be everything to everyone, thus the angst, and large therapy bills, thus our love of wine at 5 p.m.!” Krasnow says with a smile, but she is not joking! She adds: “You can be married to the most sensitive and wonderful of men, but only a woman understands what it is like to live in the skin of another woman. The trick to a successful marriage is to make sure you surround yourself with great girlfriends.”

Our Children: Surrendering to Motherhood
 
I wish Krasnow had been my friend when I made the decision to  stay at home with my children. As Betty Friedan paved the way for women to enter the workforce, Krasnow paved the way for women to choose to stay at home. Though it wasn't the easiest path.

Feminists took homage with Krasnow’s ideas. “I was at Stanford in the 70s when women were fighting for equality. I was a features writer for UPI before my son’s were born, roaming the world interviewing celebrities (although my mother didn’t really understand what I did and told her friends I was an executive with UPS – ha!). Then I made the choice to stay home with my children. My decision was seen as an abandonment of feminism.” But what it really was, Krasnow says, was a choice, her own choice to surrender to motherhood. “I knew it was a phase that would fly by and it was. Surrendering to motherhood was highly criticized by feminists. I was told I was setting back women’s liberation 25 years. God forbid I suggest to young mothers that we spend time with our children. I am happy for the choice to leave the newsroom for the living room. There’s nothing more powerful than staying home with our children. We cannot go back to our children’s childhoods, we can always go back to work. The gift of predictability is a gift that a stay at home mother can give and the strongest gift.”

Krasnow is like that big white Hamburger-Helper hand, the one from the commercial, patting women on the back for whatever choice they make, a cheerleader telling us it's okay if we want to spend time with our children. “I did it and look what I have been able to accomplish while being an ever present presence in the life of my boys,” Krasnow says without conceit. With her bushy gray hair and slight frame, it’s easy to underestimate the power of Iris. She can make a crowd laugh then cry then laugh again, even laugh and cry at the same time.

Asked if, when she was in the thick of it at home with the kids, she ever wished she was back in the newsroom, "did I wince a little bit when a friend of mine interviewed Clinton?  When a lawyer friend earned tons more money than me? Did I wince? Yes.  But I knew that I would never get the time back and I never regret that I stayed home.”
 
Even now, now that her sons are more connected to their ipods and text messages than to her, Krasnow says the early childhood connection is there. Recently she was talking about her next book on female friendship and “my son said, ‘why do you have to write another book, when you write a book it’s harder to talk to you.’”  So she has shelved the book to spend time with her kids. The good news for her fans is that her youngest will be going off to college soon.