S2EP6 - Activism At Home: How Kimberly Seals Allers is Making Equitable Maternal Care Accessible to All
“Having something that you keep for yourself can actually be the most revolutionary and important thing that you could do in your postpartum journey.”
~ Kimberly Seals Allers
We are thrilled to share with you this conversation with Kimberly Seals Allers, an award-winning journalist, five-time author, and founder of Irth. A leading voice on the racial and sociocultural complexities of birth, breastfeeding, and motherhood, Kimberly created the Irth app for brown and black parents to address bias and racism in maternity and infant care.
Additionally, Kimberly is the host and creator of Birthright, a podcast that promotes positive black birth stories as a tool for birth justice and reverses the narrative of negative statistics that is often reported in mainstream media about black maternal health.
During their conversation, Kimberly and Kaitlin discussed the events that sparked Kimberly's passion for maternal and infant health advocacy.
Kimberly and Kaitlin talked about:
The Irth App, how Kimberly came to create it and what it's doing.
How they deal with resistance from health providers and what adjustments they make to their approach in the face of these challenges.
The events that sparked Kimberly's passion for maternal and infant health advocacy.
Her thoughts and experiences regarding the question “What would a valued motherhood experience look like today?”
What it looks like to really show up in activism for all of these issues that devalue motherhood, including the absence of basic systems such as affordable childcare, paid leave, co-located childcare, etc.
Kimberly’s take on productivity and how we can reframe it in the work that we do in balancing parenting/caregiving and creative practice, which is equally as undervalued as motherhood.
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More about Kimberly Seals Allers
Website: https://kimberlysealsallers.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamksealsallers/
Irth App: https://irthapp.com/
Birthright Podcast: http://www.birthrightpodcast.com/
Related resources:
The Big Letdown: How Medicine, Big Business and Feminism Undermine Breastfeeding, Kimberly Seals Allers: https://bookshop.org/a/86159/9781250026965
More about March of Dimes: https://www.marchofdimes.org/
The Mocha Manual to a Fabulous Pregnancy, Kimberly Seals Allers: https://bookshop.org/a/86159/9780060762292
More about The W.K. Kellog Foundation: https://www.wkkf.org/
Oscar Wilde's quote in The Picture of Dorian Gray: https://www.allgreatquotes.com/picture-of-dorian-gray-quotes-101/
A New York Times article by Alisha Haridasani Gupta and Catherine Pearson giving some context to the PUMP Act: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/well/family/pump-act-breastfeeding.html
France retirement age protests: https://www.euronews.com/2023/04/21/anger-at-new-retirement-age-fuels-further-protests-in-france
Jazmina Barrera's legitimization of Motherhood as worthy of Academic Investigation (Season 2 Episode 2): https://www.postpartumproduction.com/episodes/s2e2
Julie Phillips biographies of mothers (Season 2 Episode 1): https://www.postpartumproduction.com/episodes/s2e1
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