Can We Stop Hating on the PTA?
In a country that places such little value on caregiving, we've turned PTA volunteers into a punchline.
There’s a scene in the movie Bad Moms, where Christina Applegate’s character Gwendolyn, the PTA president, castigates Mila Kunis’ character Amy, who has brought in store-bought treats for a bake sale instead of baking something homemade. “I run this school and I can make life a living hell for you and your dirty little children, do you understand me?” Gwendolyn tells Amy while swatting her tray of cream puffs off a table. The implication is that Amy is too busy with work and family to add one more thing to her to-do list, but Gwendolyn’s entire existence is focused on making moms like Amy feel miserable, and doing so in the name of PTA leadership.
In Are you There God, It’s Me Margaret, Rachel McAdams’ character Barbara takes time off paid work to adjust to living in a New Jersey suburb. She joins the PTA, where she is put to work on a hare-brained project to cut out felt stars for the gymnasium ceiling. By the end, it's revealed that this plan is a fire hazard and a complete waste of time. Barbara, searching for her own balance in the gray area of work and family, finds paid work and makes a bold rejection when the PTA approaches her for additional volunteering. This is her character culmination - choosing paid work over the PTA, which is run by a bunch of foolish ninnies with nothing better to do with their time than cut out felt stars.
When the PTA shows up in movies, or books, or collective conversation, it’s become a stand-in for women doing foolish work in place of paid work, or women fighting amongst each other, or dressing in extreme fashion and makeup while judging others who show up to drop off in athleisure wear and ponytails. When Annette Bening’s character in American Beauty was being costumed, she collaborated with a stylist to create a “PTA president coif" hairstyle, the implication perhaps being someone who had styled, poofy hair favored by a middle aged woman who must be on the PTA - because why? (And yet Bening’s character was working as a real estate agent, a job more associated with wages than volunteering).
Why do we as a culture continue to hate on the PTA? Certainly no other example of volunteerism is the butt of so many jokes and vitriol - there are far fewer caricatures of the scout leaders, soccer coaches, potluck organizers, and swim team reps than there are of PTA moms. (Even though there are estimates that between a third to a half of PTA-type volunteers are dads, a number that is expected to grow since this 2009 survey).
Devaluing the PTA may have more to do with its origins and purpose than an actual antagonism toward the work it performs. We live in a country that largely ignores the work of care and places a far higher premium on work performed for pay. We have painted those who would choose not to work for pay as having little ambition and nothing better to do with their time - or, what might be the strangest stereotype - highly obsessed with their appearance.
But that’s not been my experience at all - as a parent, or as a PTA volunteer. And as I started to do more research, I found that the way our country denigrates the PTA says more about the way we devalue care and less about the pragmatic and important function that PTAs serve.
Before the Pink Pussy Hats, We had the PTA
The origins of the PTA date back to 1897, when two women, Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst, founded what was then called the National Congress of Mothers.
At that time women didn’t even have the right to vote, social organizing was rare, and women had limited access to education and financial resources - like bank accounts. Yet this group organized two thousand women in Washington DC as part of its National Congress, with their goals being primarily focused on child welfare and endangerment. They may not have had pink pussy hats on display, but this was surely the sort of activism and organizing that paved the way for many more women’s movements to come - including the one we are in right now with a formidable woman atop the ticket.
Then in 1925, the National Congress of Mothers was renamed as the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, and began creating individual state charters. In 1970, the group merged with the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers to become the National PTA.
Today, 4 million people exist as PTA members in 20,000 locations. The stated mission largely focuses on engagement through school activities, but also networking and support of other parents. Their legislative agenda includes child labor laws, the creation of kindergarten, school safety and hot lunch programs, to name a few.
Many PTAs largely exist in a support role for our educational system, which is chronically underfunded (by $150 Billion per year according to one estimate), stepping in to hire reading specialists for more support, or creating after school programs without hefty fees, or bringing in an art or music teacher if that program has been cut.
Understanding that the PTA evolved from a mothers movement in the late 19th century gives a useful context as to what political change looked like then, and has helped set the stage for what it looks like now. The PTA is one of a long line of parent-based groups arguing for political change: grieving mothers formed Mothers Against Drunk Driving in the 1980s, outraged parents formed Moms Demand Action following the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012. Groups like MomsRising and Moms First continue to be change agents in the political sphere, and any policymaker who doesn’t take these groups seriously does so to their detriment.
And Yet, We Could Do Better
Like any powerful, hundreds-year old movement, there is controversy and criticism surrounding the PTA. Because the movement is largely chapter-based, it means there are disparate skill levels and effectiveness, and because some states and localities fund schools more generously than others, there are wider gaps to fill.
Lauren Sartain, a researcher at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has a research paper coming out addressing this disparity. When I talked to Sartain - who considered herself to be “not a PTA mom” before actually becoming the local PTA president - she explained that since a big part of the PTA role is fundraising, many of these groups raise so much money that they pay for extra positions. “If a district had to cut an art program, now [the PTA] can pay so the kids have art. Are they raising so much money that they are undoing equity among schools?” The equity issue can be exacerbated if one group (i.e. white parents) starts developing a disproportionate influence on school decisions, or if the whiter districts are the only ones able to fundraise enough to fill extra positions. So until schools are giving more funding across the board, it will often be left to the elbow grease of volunteers to fill in the gaps, leading to deeper inequalities, even those that come about with the best of intentions of improving a child’s school.
If We Can Agree On One Thing…
Many of us can agree on this: school is fundamental to our kids, and all parents want what’s best for our kids. The role of the PTA may vary from school to school in terms of prowess and power-wielding, but its day-to-day functions are staffed by volunteers doing the exact type of unpaid work our country has spent the last century devaluing but that we know has an enormous impact.
So for this school year, can we all agree to give the sniping a rest and recognize the PTA for what it is? A grassroots movement designed to help our kids thrive. It’s not perfect, and it might vary depending on location, but it should stop being the butt of our jokes, and we should do away with the caricatures of bored, overzealous women with poofy hair. We can call it what it is: a volunteer position with deep roots in child and women-focused advocacy. This type of advocacy has a deep, long history in our country, and I hope that in my lifetime it remains as strong and vibrant as ever.
The equity piece is huge. We've been at two public schools in Seattle, and the PTAs varied wildly in terms of both fundraising and ability to recruit volunteer time. The Title 1 school struggles and is even hesitant to fundraise from a population with a high percentage of low income and immigrant families, while the largely white, middle class school raises tens of thousands to pay for entire teaching positions and fancy gear. One approach some groups of schools in Seattle have pursued is to create fundraising alliances where there are joint fundraising initiatives and the funding is shared among a group of schools. Ideally our public schools would be fully funded and the PTA could be focused primarily on advocacy and volunteering!
I recognize the history of the PTA and the necessity given lack of funding. What I struggle with is that is still unpaid labor. And that there is often an undergirding pressure to contribute. I live in an area where it is near impossible to live without two incomes. We are all stretched too thin and the need for volunteers for things that sometime seem unnecessary (my schools are big on staff treats which I’m sure does boost staff morale some but requires a lot of organization not to mention baking) can get exhausting. I have found a way that volunteering works for me. I run the book fair each year which means one intense week and then I don't volunteer for anything else. But that definitely takes me away from my paid, freelance work. I wish that we could just send our kids to school without the constant barrage of forms and donations and requests.