Reclaiming Birth
Mar 7th
I wrote a guest post over at The F-Word last week, getting the word out about a march and rally called Reclaiming Birth, which took place today. The aims of the march and of the participating organisations can be read in this handout. In summary, they are:
- Ask the health service to provide more midwives so that every woman is supported throughout her labour and never left alone
- Provide access to at least one stand-alone birth centre in every local area
- Disseminate good information on and the option to choose home birth, birth in a midwife-led unit or birth in an obstetric unit in every area
- Maintain at least one case-loading midwifery group, free at the point of use, for every area
- Launch an inquiry into maternity care at King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust, London, which recently terminated its contract with the Albany Midwives Practice
Here are some photos from the event.
I was really impressed with the number of people there, including quite a lot of men and many, many children. One little girl, no more than 7 or 8, was leading chants and blowing a whistle while shouting “Choices! Choices!” and “We need midwives!” There were grandfathers, great-grandmothers, teenage boys with shirts reading “Born at home,” mothers of all different ethnic backgrounds…it was really fantastic. I felt inspired, empowered, invigorated and part of a community and a movement that really cares about women and their families.
If you want to help Reclaim Birth, please write to your MP, the Secretary of State for Health and to the Maternity Services Liaison Committee at your local obstetric unit. You can email letters directly through the NCT website. Please take a few minutes to send a couple emails, and then pass it onto others who care about birth and ask them to do the same. This is our chance to demand real change to the maternity services, providing women with the choices, continuity of care and positive birth experiences that every one of us deserves. Let’s make our voices heard!
Book review: The Equality Illusion
Mar 5th
This is the first in a run of book reviews I hope to do in the coming months, seeing as I have a backlog of relatively new feminist non-fiction to read. First up is ‘The Equality Illusion’ by Kat Banyard, former campaigns officer for the Fawcett Society, an organisation that campaigns for social and economic justice for women in the UK.
Before I get to the review, I’d just like to make a somewhat-tangential aside about Ms. Banyard’s place of employment. While I know that there are sectors within which unpaid internships are the norm and that non-profits are one of the biggest culprits, I was pretty disheartened when I emailed the Fawcett Society a few months back to eagerly ask how I might assist them with some volunteering of some description. I didn’t mind if it was stuffing envelopes or whatever, I just wanted to get involved with an organisation I’ve always admired and would love to work for some day, when my return to paid employment outside the home is imminent. In reply to my query about volunteering on an occasional basis, I was sent details of an unpaid internship (what other kind is there?) instead. The kicker was that the job would’ve been perfect for me and I would have happily applied right then and there…if it actually paid any money. Travel expenses and £4/day for lunch isn’t going to pay the bills or the childcare though, that’s for sure. When I wrote back to say as much and again asked if there were any more occasional tasks or weekend events I could help with, I was told they “don’t really do that sort of thing.”
Now, the only reason I bring this up is because I think this is a good example of an organisation trying to do good work but putting restrictions on who can actually work for it. I mean, who else but the wealthy or those just out of university and living with their parents, sans any immediate financial responsibilities, could afford to work for three days a week for 3-6 months, completely unpaid? The assumption that those interested in feminist activism can do unpaid internships (especially by an organisation that campaigns for fair wages and equal pay for women!), just comes across as astoundingly arrogant and clueless to the realities most of us face. And the only reason I’m pointing this out is because some of my criticisms of this book are based around this general appearance of excluding some topics in favour of others that may be more sensationalist or controversial but less relevant to the majority of women’s everyday lives in the UK, ones that are affecting their livelihoods and personal lives in deeply-ingrained, meaningful ways. So with that grumble out of the way (and with it having no direct bearing on Banyard because she is not the sum of her employer’s policies, obviously), on to the review.
First off, I will say that my overall impression of the book as a tool to get the general public thinking about ways in which gender inequalities still exist is a fairly good one. If you ever heard someone say “We’ve/you’ve got equality now, what are you complaining about?” or use a term like “post-feminist world,” (has a more laughable phrase ever been uttered, aside from ‘post-racial’?) you could do worse to hand them ‘The Equality Illusion.’ For those unversed in gender issues, this is a good starting place. However, as Jess at The F-Word already pointed out in her review, Banyard is kind of preaching to the ‘yes, we all know this’ choir as far as how already-established feminists are likely to react to it.
The first chapter, on body image, does a pretty good job at dissecting the main issues — media representations of women, objectification, gender conformity, beauty standards and the beauty industry and how all of it is damaging to girls and women. The young women she interviews for this portion of the book indeed have heartbreaking tales of shattered self-esteem and distorted views of their bodies, but I couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t include much in the way of how we can combat these images in our daily lives, not just by taking on the huge structures perpetuating and capitalising on it, which is a huge task that no one is really sure how to undertake.
One of the most important ways we can help girls (and boys, for that matter) build healthy self-esteems and realistic body expectations is through involved parenting and leading by example. The messages sent by a constantly-dieting mother who is always (only half-jokingly) calling herself a pig can be far more harmful and seep into a child’s subconscious than a parade of billboards with conventionally attractive, airbrushed models on them. Talking to your children about the messages they receive and the images they see can be a very effective tool in keeping their expectations healthy, yet Banyard does little, if anything, to mention empowered parenting as a potentially massive part of the ’solution,’ as it were.
I have similar complaints about the chapter on education. Overall it’s very good in presenting facts and providing a context in which we can see the gaping inequalities still present in today’s schools, but where are the interviews with parents? What do they think of gendered behaviour, gendered education, the arguments for and against biological and socially-conditioned differences in the way boys and girls think and perform? What are theirthoughts and concerns on how gendered education is effecting their kids and if they are counteracting that at home in any way? Speaking to the teachers and to the children themselves is all very well and good, but leaving parents out of the education equation just because they don’t actually attend school with their kids is trying to complete a 24-piece jigsaw puzzle with only 18 of the pieces.
I have similar complaints of the reproductive rights chapter, which deals, unsurprisingly, with teenage/young pregnancy and abortion but not much else. There is no mention of feminist issues relating to pregnancy or birth rights, or of the changing role and consequences of reproduction throughout a woman’s life. Again, the focus seems to be on young(ish) women and those who have chosen not to have children, at least for the time being.
From my corner of the feminist parenting blogosphere, there hasn’t been much hope that this book would be any different from most of the others in really dissecting some of the issues important to mothers, so I was pleasantly surprised to find the ‘Sexism in the City’ chapter to be dedicated almost solely to the injustices and inequalities that women face with regards to work and childcare and the division of domestic labour. The case study she uses to open the chapter is about one woman’’s struggle to care for her children and earn enough money to support them. Banyard asks some good questions and raises relevant topics, such as:
Why do so many women have to work below their skill level because those are the only jobs that fit around their caring responsibilities? Why are cleaning and other forms of traditional ‘women’s work’ (like carers and caterers) paid so little — and in particular less than traditional ‘men’s work’ (like plumbers and decorators) that require equivalent levels of skill and effort? Because gender discrimination in the workplace is illegal and women make up nearly half the workforce it is easy to assume that all is now fair and equal. But the near equivalent numbers of women and men in the workplace is where any ‘equality’ ends: 30,000 women are sacked each year in the UK simply for being pregnant, women make up only 12 per cent of FTSE 100 company directors and women are paid on average 22.6 per cent less per hour than men.
She also writes:
When discussing women in the workplace a standard media refrain is to ask whether women can ‘have it all’, i.e. a family and a career. But women have always had to combine work and caring. For many, particularly those from working-class backgrounds, that question is redundant; if they don’t work their family doesn’t eat. The real question is why is it only women who have to choose between a family and maximising their career potential? And, in fact, why should anyone have to choose between these two things at all?
Banyard goes on to talk about discrimination against mothers at work, the belief that women’s careers are curtailed by their ‘choices’, not because the system is set up to favour those without caring responsibilities, and the concept of a ’sticky floor’ that exists well below the ‘glass ceiling.’ She interviews a charity that supports working parents and talks to working mothers themselves, making a real effort to understand and explain the disparities they face. There were things she didn’t touch on, of course — issues relating specifically to mothering are about more than just combining work and family — but for a feminist book by (from what I gather is) a relatively young, childless woman, I thought it was pretty well done.
Finally, the chapters on violence against women and the sex industry were informative, compelling and passionate. It seems pretty obvious that these issues are the most important to Banyard, and many young feminists, and she/they are doing a great job of speaking out against them. However (didn’t you know that was coming?), I will say that while I am 100% supportive of feminist aims to help women exit prostitution and to combat the pervasive and often-unpleasant sex industry, I can’t help but feel that the intense focus on it can be a bit off-putting to the general public. As Rachel Cooke pointed out in her review in the Guardian:
Mostly, she is preoccupied with finding ways to help women exit prostitution, and while I’m all for that, too, there are 30 million women in Britain, of whom not even a quarter of 1% sell sex for a living. What about the rest of us?
That’s not to say that prostitutes or sex industry workers don’t deserve our help and attention, because they unreservedly do. But if a book about gender inequality is trying to reach out to large swathes of people in one country, many of whom probably don’t identify as feminist in the first place, it needs to be relatable to their lives. Focusing on the sex industry, or female genital mutilation or forced marriages in other parts of the world (for example) can be, rightly or wrongly, seen as directing focus away from the issues that women right here in the UK face, all around them, every day. Portrayals of Western feminists as young, childless, middle-class, white girls who want to save ‘those poor women’ (sex industry workers, African women, child brides, etc..) from themselves may be off base entirely, but the fact is that this is the image they (we) have been saddled with by some. If a book’s aim is to foster greater understanding and enthusiasm for gender issues within a Western framework and amongst the women who inhabit it, I have to wonder if narrowing the focus a little bit and not necessarily worrying about casting the net wide in an effort to be ideologically diverse would actually catch more fish, as it were.
Again, I don’t want to insinuate that international problems or ones affecting a small, specific minority are not our problems or that we should be discouraging others from thinking about and acting upon them, but if Banyard truly wants to inspire ‘grassroots feminism’ (to which she devotes most of her last chapter), she would do well to remain focused on issues a bit closer to home and our hearts and remember that most of us — especially those living with children, or with disabilities, or financial hardships — can’t easily attend meetings and marches, or get online to check out all the latest blogs and conferences, or partake in unpaid internships.
Overall, this is a good ‘primer’ book but it’s approach is too broad and there’s not enough fire in the belly. We need less theoretical pontificating and more solid ideas for action. Because until we start organising the latter, the former is all we will ever do.
Cross-posted at Noble Savage
This is not a whisper
Mar 1st
A few weeks ago I discussed women’s bodies in the workplace and how our biological and social needs were never truly integrated, even when we were finally ‘allowed’ to work. I said:
The problem is this — nearly all of the business world was built around the male biological and social imperative. It was understood that a working man was either single and carefree or with a wife at home who took care of his house, his children and all domestic tasks, aside from the more ‘manly’ chores like grass-cutting, wood-chopping and car repairs. The male worker had no need for flexible hours that fit in around school or shopping hours. The male worker had no dramatic hormonal changes, pregnancies, breastfeeding or post-partum recovery to deal with.
I also said:
But one of the biggest problems remaining, in my view, is that women’s bodies have not been integrated and accepted into the workplace. Pregnancy and maternity leave are still career-killers.
…Some people would even begrudge a woman the right to pump milk at work, calling it an ‘extra break’ and complaining that she’s getting ’special treatment,’ which I think any mother who has ever breastfed or expressed knows is misguided. Trying to get as much milk as possible out of your breasts while hunched over an electronic pump in a storage closet, hoping no one walks in on you, is not a ‘break’. It’s just more work, though of the unpaid, ‘unimportant’ variety in capitalism’s eyes.
Finally, I concluded that:
Because industry and business were built upon male norms, the working environment reflects this attitude as well. We got on the ladder alright, but what we should’ve been after was an entirely different climbing apparatus, one in which we could move horizontally across a continuum we helped create, not forced to climb vertically up those rigid, historically-male rungs (in high heels, naturally) before hitting that infamous glass ceiling.
Essentially, I was arguing that we can’t ‘fix’ the current system or try to force our way into existing frameworks because those systems and frameworks don’t serve our needs or our lives, which is what author Hilary Mantel says in today’s Guardian as well. What both of us are trying to say, I believe, is that moulding ourselves to fit a system designed without our bodies, our wants or our priorities in mind can do us harm. It does do harm to women the world over, every day. Being forced to delay children until our 30s and 40s in order to establish successful careers is harmful. Being denied educational and professional opportunities if we choose to have children in our teens or 20s is harmful. All this analysis of feckless, fertile teen mums and desperate, over-achieving 40-somethings undergoing IVF sends one clear message and it is this:
You can’t win.
You can’t win because the perfect time to have a child, according to current advice, is in one’s mid-20s to early 30s. Unfortunately for us, that also happens to coincide with the prime years for establishing a career and moving up the ladder, or pursuing further education. Taking long ‘career breaks’ (because, as we know, having and raising children is not considered ‘real work’), even if short-term, harms our long-term financial and professional potential. Women who take career breaks at this time in their lives rarely end up in senior positions, earning as much and on the same par with similarly-aged male colleagues. If we want to have even a chance at joining their ranks we have two choices — don’t have children for another 10-15 years (or at all) or have children but get back to work quickly by placing them in care, the provision and management of which will be made preposterously difficult given the restrictions of the working environment.
Each of these ‘choices’, of course, has negative consequences. Risking infertility or having to pay someone else most of your salary to care for your child in the first years of its life are not ideal options, though they are the ones we have to live with in the here and now. Without truly flexible academic and professional accommodation and without access to affordable, quality childcare and meaningful, fairly-waged part-time work, we are getting nowhere. Giving dads a bit more paternity leave or giving mums a bit more money for their leave, while a nice gesture, is pointless in the end. It’s an adhesive, cartoon-faced bandage for a gaping, bleeding shotgun wound of a problem. No matter how many smiley-faced plasters we stick on it, the wound will ooze and fester without first extracting all of the detritus and cleaning it up. Putting superficial fixes on a wound of this size only masks the rotting infection underneath.
Eventually, the infection will spread and what little good the bandages did will be for nothing. We will be pushed out of the workplace again, unable to operate within the male-structured system, or continue to rely on luck and technology to have children later in life. The poor, the working class and even much of the middle class (i.e. most women), for whom talk of career breaks and IVF isn’t even relevant or possible, will continue to have children at their reproductive peak and be punished for it by being priced out of decent housing, higher education and training, and quality childcare. They will also continue to have the blame for perceived societal breakdown lain at their feet, convenient scapegoats for a system that set them (and all of us, including our children) up to fail.
I am not being dramatic at all when I say we need radical, revolutionary change. Asking the men behind the curtain very nicely and calmly if we can have this or that concession, only to see if taken away again with budget cuts that deem “women’s issues” unimportant in comparison with military spending or lining bankers’ pockets has proven ineffective. The overwhelmingly white, male, middle-class parliamentarians will pay lip service to equality and fairness, sure. They’re not stupid and know they need our votes. I’m sure many of them do know the system is unfair and would like to change it. But when push comes to shove, people protect themselves, their own families and their own jobs and interests first, we know that. We all know who is doing the shoving and who will be shoved. An increasingly hostile, ‘anti-PC’ segment of the public who feel threatened by challenges to their long-standing privileges also contributes to this climate of intolerance, narrow-mindedness and unwillingness to change on any substantial level.
No one is giving anything to us. Wringing our hands and writing moving essays or angry blog posts is not enough. As far as I’m concerned, it’s time for battle and we need more soldiers. I’ve had enough. And though I understand completely that not everyone feels so passionately about it, or thinks we can actually change anything, or even has the desire to, I can’t help but feel completely, helplessly angry when I know that if we really could get a million women to rise, we’d finally be noticed. If, like our sisters of the first and second waves have done before us, we sat down, refused to move, refused to accept the status quo or meek little promises of incremental change, we would be an undeniable force to be reckoned with. We are 52 per cent of the population. We vote. We live here. We matter. And I, for one, am tired of playing it down and carefully explaining and ‘being reasonable’ and keeping my voice down.
I’m fucking angry and I want you to be too.
Economic independence and the happy housewife
Feb 25th
I had an interesting conversation with my husband last night about economic independence (and its sometimes-evil cousin, dependence) and what it means for women, particularly those in relationships in which their partner is abusive or adulterous. As you will know if you’ve been anywhere near a newspaper stand, television or computer, there have been two big ‘he cheated’ scandals in the media lately — golf star Tiger Woods on wife Elin Nordegren, and footballer Ashley Cole on wife and popstar Cheryl Cole (nee Tweedy). While Cheryl has reportedly dumped her philandering husband, Elin appears to be ’standing by her man.’
What my husband wondered is whether Cheryl’s economic independence and social status as a star in her own right had anything to do with why she finally felt able to dump her cheating partner and if Elin’s significantly lesser status and economic wealth (in comparison to Tiger’s — she was a retail clerk, nanny and sometimes-model before they met) may have contributed to her willingness to give him another chance. My feeling? Yes and no. Aren’t I helpful? But hear me out.
I do think that Elin’s greater economic dependence on Tiger may have played a part in her decision, whereas Cheryl, who has largely created her own wealth and cemented her status as the (supposed) ‘Nation’s Sweetheart’ through her own actions, not her husband’s, was undoubtedly less concerned with what she would do and how she would get by if she were to leave Ashley. That said, there is a big difference between the two couples that has to be taken into consideration as well; the Woods had children and the Coles didn’t. Subsequently, it becomes a much, much tougher decision to make. The upheaval and trauma is a lot for any child to take on and no mother wants to subject her children to that unless it’s absolutely necessary for her own emotional health. Considering the added pressure of going through divorce in the very public eye and what that could do to her children, Elin may have made the choice that was right for her them, not her.
Having said that, I’m not one who thinks that a couple should necessarily split up when cheating has occurred. Every person, no matter their economic dependence on or independence from their partners and regardless of their parental or social status, will have a different reaction to being cheated on from the next person. There are women who are completely economically dependent on their partners and who have children with that person who still walk right out the door at the first hint of unfaithfulness, while many woman of their own financial means and without children will stay with cheating partners in the hopes that he or she will change and that they can put the affair(s) behind them. Some of the ones who stay go on to have happy, fulfilling relationships. Others aren’t able to. Some women who leave don’t regret their decision for a second while others wonder if they should have granted their partner a second chance. There is no easy, ready-made answer. And that’s just when we’re talking about already middle-class, relatively privileged people! When you look at women from economically and socially deprived areas and those in truly abusive relationships, not just adulterous ones, the stakes change entirely.
This put me in mind of an article I recently read in the Guardian (h/t to Brinkster) that wondered ‘Why do women want to be Wags?’ (Wives And Girlfriends (of footballers), for the uninitiated). In the piece, women who actively pursue marriage to footballers as a lifestyle or career move (and some of whom have been successful at this) were interviewed to find out if the publicly-held assumption of Wags as ‘gold-diggers’, ’slappers’ and shamelessly self-absorbed Barbie dolls trading on their husbands’ hard work is true. I could pick apart the article piece by piece but, really, my response to it could be formulated having only read the title. Frankly, I’m a bit surprised that there’s anyone out there who doesn’t already know why women from disadvantaged backgrounds actively ‘chase’ men of wealth and status. Does the saying, “It’s the economy, stupid” ring any bells?
Instead of taking a long, hard look at why so many girls and young women feel their only hope of ever lifting themselves out of poverty is by capitalising on their looks and being completely reliant on male approval and the security a wealthy male can provide, the public seems bent on making these women look slightly sad and pathetic, and more than a little lazy. The question should not be ‘Why do women want to be Wags?’ but ‘Why is a woman’s perceived sexuality a commodity?’
There’s also a large element of class snobbery at play here — a large swathe of the middle and upper classes seem to think it’s only ‘those’ (read: ‘chavvy’ or ‘trashy’) girls who do this kind of thing and, therefore, are safe to mock and belittle. Refusing to recognise the lack of educational and employment options for these young women as their chief motivator in seeking fame and fortune and instead putting it down to some kind of innate character flaw of the poor and misguided is absolutely abhorrent, not to mention ignorant. These are undoubtedly the same people who complain of people ’sponging’ off the government and some of whom sneer at women who stay at home looking after their children, claiming they have it easy in comparison to their poor, hen-pecked, worked-to-the-bone husbands.
And indeed, not that many people consider being a housewife or a stay-at-home mum ‘work’. Oh, sure, we get lip service about how we’re (cue the violins) doing the hardest, most important job in the world and how amazing and selfless we are, and all the rest of it, but when it comes to trying to secure a longer, better paid maternity leave to give more women that opportunity, we’re suddenly whiny, entitled breeders who should have saved up for our squawking brats if we wanted them or be prepared to work to support them from the day they’re born. No taxpayer money will be spent on the fruit of your womb, madam, regardless of how much you earn or have paid into the system yourself or been denied opportunities based on arbitrary things like skin colour or postcode.
Thinking about things like this makes me look at my own economic dependence on my husband and shudder with fear. While I absolutely love and trust him, know that our marriage is solid and that he considers my contribution to the household just as valid as his, I am undoubtedly at his mercy. If I found out he cheated on me today, would I be able to just pack up my things and leave, with only my principles and dignity to guide me? Unfortunately, I couldn’t. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t. I would have to think about where to go, how I would live, what I would do for money, how I would provide shelter and food for my children, how I would get my daughter to school and wash her uniform, not to mention the intense emotional fallout for both myself and my kids. Would it make me think more carefully about whether I should stay in the marriage and try to forgive him, because I am dependent on him? Definitely. Does that scare the hell out of me? Undoubtedly.
Our dependence on men and their control over numerous aspects of our lives has been conditioned into us and is indeed a reality many women face. While women still earn 17% less than men for doing the same job, while they continue to be the ones to sacrifice their educations and careers to be carers, while they are told that it’s more important to be pretty than to be smart, it’s not a surprise and not something that will be easily fixed. It’s a complex issue and one which I am glad the feminists of the second-wave took up and made great strides in. That far greater numbers of women in the Western world are able to make decisions about relationships based on their feelings and personal ambitions rather than worries over their financial security is indeed a blessing. But we still have a long way to go before our independence (and that of women in less developed areas of the world) is a real option and a real choice, not a matter of luck or circumstance.
A new kind of war story: PTSD in childbirth
Feb 18th
The following is a guest post from one of the most influential bloggers in my life. When I found her site I was just starting to get really interested in and writing about the intersection of mothering and feminism and the veritable minefield of hot-button issues out there. Among the nearest and dearest to me is birth advocacy. I’d written about birth issues before but Jill at The Unnecesarean helped inspire me to take that advocacy to the next level — activism. She is a fiercely feminist protector of women’s bodily rights, their choices and their lives. In short, she kicks ass. I am honoured to share her words on my site.
____________________________________________________
Via Lauredhel of FWD/Forward, who included the following warning:
WARNING: story of obstetric assault and PTSD symptoms. More accurately labelled “obstetric trauma”, not “birth trauma”.
In the article, How childbirth caused my PTSD, which appeared on Salon.com, Taffy Brodesser-Akner writes of being violated against her consent by a doctor while on Pitocin and Stadol.
The delivery of my son didn’t start with a rush of water, or cramps that left me hunched. It was a decision, an edict, and with it, the drip Pitocin, a drug that induces contractions. The contractions came big and loud, almost immediately at one minute apart. My cervix wouldn’t dilate, though. I was eventually given the narcotic Stadol, which caused me to hallucinate through a very long night. Twenty-four hours later, clear-headed but still not dilated, I told my doctor I didn’t believe the induction was working, that I wanted to discuss other options. But before I knew it, he began painfully separating the membrane guarding my bag of waters.
“He isn’t examining me,” I yelled at my husband. “He’s doing something.”
In a hushed tone, the doctor asked the nurse for the hook, a mechanism that breaks your water.
“Why did you do that?” I asked when it was done. “I thought we were going to talk about it!”
His voice was cold, flat. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said.
She discusses how the diagnosis of PPD she received a week after birth didn’t fit, as she “felt that [she] was stuck in fight-or-flight,” then received a PTSD diagnosis that seemed to fit her symptoms. When she searched the Internet for information, she didn’t find a warm reception.
Just around the time I was figuring this all out, the Wall Street Journal published an article discussing postpartum PTSD. It referenced a now-famous study by Harris Interactive for Childbirth Connection, in which 9 percent of postpartum women screened met criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD, according to the mental-health diagnostician’s Bible, the DSM-IV.
Not surprisingly, it elicited a giant eye-roll from bloggers. “Something about applying the term PTSD to childbirth irks me,” said Hannah Tennant-Moore, a blogger for Babble’s Strollerderby. “PTSD is most commonly associated with war veterans and victims of extreme violence; applying it to new mothers makes maternity seem like a pathology.”
Over on Jezebel Jessica Grose sneered, “Have we become so precious and hyper-conscious that something women have been doing for time immemorial is now ranked alongside war as a painful event?” She went on to say: “Certainly having a bowling ball of a baby shooting out your vag isn’t a picnic for anyone, but the hysteria surrounding something so matter-of-fact is troubling.”
The article goes on to quote a pediatrician from the University of Chicago claiming that “[f]ifty years ago, women were anesthetized for childbirth” and are now awake to experience what he calls “misadventure[s] in the delivery room.”
The pediatrician follows the cultural script of pinning the trauma on this trend of women being awake to witness the rare events in which “the mother’s life [is] at risk or the baby’s.” He stated that having a baby is opting into a normative experience and that it is difficult to find people to turn to when you’re one of “the other 2 percent” who do not have uncomplicated births, and “[w]hen you find it’s totally different from what you were told it would be, it’s traumatic.”
Rupturing membranes without consent while a woman’s body is being slammed with pharmaceutically induced contractions is not a mere “misadventure” of childbirth itself. This is a violation of patient rights, autonomy and human decency. It’s the act of a doctor who clearly would have preferred for his patient to be anesthetized as in pediatrician’s scenario of days past so that whole annoying “informed consent” thing wouldn’t get in his way. The obstetricians that the author consulted about her birth raised questions about the necessity of the induction in the first place.
Slapping women in the face with the unrealistic expectation line serves only those wishing to perpetuate the status quo and blame women for creating their own PTSD. While is it true that the rareness of death in childbirth contributes to a “couldn’t ever happen to me” factor that is exacerbated by the unrealistic “I can control this from ever happening to you” or “you or your baby will die right now/tomorrow/next week/next month unless you do everything say” sales pitches from care providers, the time has come for women discussing the trauma associated not with childbirth but with coercive over-management of childbirth to not be thrown into some sexist, ableist Cassandra metaphor.
Akner no longer feels like “the only person who survived a normal life cycle event damaged and ruined” thanks to the community that she has found, a community that will probably continue to increase in numbers concomitantly with the increase in the number of unnecessary inductions and cesareans.
Getting it
Feb 18th
When it comes to the ways in which parents and children are discriminated against and why those discriminations are inherently anti-woman, some people just don’t get it. Kate Harding, it seems, is one of those people.
She is one of the people to whom some feminist mothers may point when discussing the (sometimes pleasantly unnoticeable, sometimes seemingly insurmountable) divide between those who have had children and those who haven’t. She is someone who I personally agree with on many feminist issues but often, when it comes to a topic relating to parenting (usually concerning parenting in public), I find myself defensively reaching for that old cliché: “You couldn’t possibly understand, you don’t have children.” Whilst I dislike that line and think it is mainly unhelpful in a goal of creating positive discourse, there are times when its use is tempting when engaging with (or reading) someone who is just so not…getting it.
Just as I’m sure attempting to explain the realities of race or class inequities and pressures to someone who has not lived through them can feel quite frustrating and fruitless, so too can reading and responding to commentary that comes across as ignorant, insensitive and hypocritical from an otherwise smart, savvy and progressive woman.
Take, for example, Harding’s latest article on Salon’s Broadsheet, which was written in response to film director Kevin Smith being kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight because he was deemed too large for a single seat and hadn’t purchased two, in accordance with Southwest’s ‘person-of-size’ policy. As a fat-acceptance activist on another popular site, Harding took issue with this and linked the incident with the general air of hostility and hostility-disguised-as-concern aimed at fat people in public. Her impassioned, well-written piece shows how important this issue is to her, and many others.
But as I read her post, I couldn’t help but see extremely similar parallels between what she was railing against and what she herself had written just a few months ago in an article entitled ‘Screaming Toddlers on a Plane!’ In it, she discussed the removal of a two-year-old child and his mother from an airplane for the child’s ‘disruptive behaviour’ (which consisted of excitedly shouting “Go plane, go!” and “I want Daddy!”). While she expressed “sympathy” for parents flying with toddlers, she went on to admonish us to at least try to ‘control’ them. Because if she couldn’t see that we were ‘trying’ hard enough? She “reserve[s] the right to smugly judge [us], damnit.”
Essentially, she supports the idea that if a child cannot conform to social and behavioural norms and if its parents/carers do not actively take steps to ensure the comfort of others around them or at least apologise profusely for inconveniencing them (even if said ‘annoying’ behaviours are completely age-appropriate and nothing can really be ‘done’ about them, short of violence) she agrees that that child, and subsequently those with him/her, should be removed. At the very least, she reserves the right to express her disdain for what she perceives as the parents’ failings. Openly.
Yet, here she is in this instance, angry as all get-out that anyone would dare try to prioritize the comfort of other passengers over one person’s right to exist, or allow a long-held prejudice against a vulnerable group of people (who may or may not have any control over their ‘condition’) to be voiced. The collective disgust at the lack of ‘control’ a fat person or excitable child is seen to be exhibiting; the ways in which society seeks to punish those who encroach on our space or do not adhere to what is defined as normal or acceptable; the arrogance and privilege displayed by those who feel it is their right to criticise and complain when they are inconvenienced in any way by someone they don’t view as worthy of respect…can she, and others, really not see the ways in which fat-bashing (and other forms of intolerance) follows similar patterns to child/parent-bashing?
Now, Ruth at Look Left of the Pleiades has already drawn attention to the ways in which fat-acceptance is similar to child/parent-acceptance so I won’t repeat her many, many good points and analogies here, but I urge you to go read her post and then come back. Because I want to demonstrate why Harding’s perceptions of and attitudes towards children and parents in public are as harmful as the perceptions of and attitudes towards larger people that she so passionately disputes in her latest article and why this kind of disconnect contributes to the perpetuation of a ‘divide’ between feminist parents and childless feminists, as it does between those who are of ‘acceptable’ body size and those who aren’t.
Let’s start here, from the Kevin Smith article:
Perhaps they [those who complain about sitting next to large people] even had the special misfortune of sitting next to a rude fat person, the kind who doesn’t even seem contrite about infringing on someone else’s severely restricted personal space…There’s no shortage of rude people of all sizes, but it seems like everyone’s got a story about that whale who made a two-hour or three-hour or even five-hour flight pure hell for the adjacent paying customers.
Just like how everyone has a story of a screaming baby or toddler making their flight pure hell, huh? And, like, the freakin’ parents didn’t even APOLOGISE, can you believe it?!
From the ‘Toddler’ article:
I also believe, however, that unless he has special needs that make public screaming both more likely and far more difficult to end, a toddler hollering in a closed space for a prolonged period about something other than physical pain is very unlikely to evoke much sympathy. And the adult in charge has a responsibility to try to calm him and reinforce that this is inappropriate public behavior.
Reinforce that this is inappropriate public behaviour?! To a two-year-old who is stuck on a plane and is probably hungry, thirsty, scared, uncomfortable, bored or all of the above?! That is at least as laughable and useless to parents as “Just eat less and exercise more” probably is to severely overweight people. I’m also not keen on how Harding sets conditions on her sympathy: “If you do x and y, I’ll put up with you. But if I don’t think you ‘tried hard enough? I reserve my right to judge you and have you ejected.” Eerily similar to the conditions often placed upon sympathy for fat people: only if they are actively trying to minimise their mass and stay out of thin people’s way are they allowed any.
See, those of us who are and/or love people to whom airlines’ “person of size policies” apply don’t automatically envision the discomfort of getting stuck next to a fatty; we envision the physical and emotional pain of being the fatty crammed between two potentially hostile strangers, at the mercy of flight attendants who might decide we’re fine on one flight and a “safety risk” on the next.
I don’t automatically envision the discomfort of the people around me if my child cries on an airplane either, though I am all too well aware of the disapproval. My first duty is to my children and their well-being, not the flight enjoyment of those surrounding us. I do my best to minimise noise and disturbance but if, like what happened to me the last time I flew, my child is crying and howling because she was woken (in the middle of the night according to her body clock) by the flight attendant and made to sit back up and put on her seatbelt, I’m not going to care two jots if the people around me are put out. They might think I’m ‘doing nothing’ by simply sitting there with a hand on her shoulder, waiting for the upset to pass, but what they don’t know is that if I had kept shushing and fussing and cajoling, the wails would have undoubtedly gotten even louder. Funnily enough, some parents know their kids better than perfect strangers and what appears to be ‘ignoring’ to an outsider is actually preventing things from escalating further. The stares, the mutters, the annoyed glances, the outright commands to “shut that kid up”…these make for a pretty tense flying situation too. I would expect someone who has endured the same but for body size to be a bit more sympathetic to the enormous strain and embarrassment this causes the concerned party.
…the risk of smaller-scale humiliations — sitting next to someone who complains about their size; absorbing flight attendants’ naked disdain; overhearing someone say “I hope I don’t have to sit next to her”; being told, as Smith’s seatmate on his later flight was, that they should really purchase two seats in the future to avoid making other people uncomfortable; plus the aforementioned dirty looks and heavy sighs — is often enough to keep them at home.
Yep, know that feeling too. One man, on approaching his seat across the aisle from me and my six-month-old daughter, who was happily smiling and looking around, commented very loudly to his wife, “Oh great, we’re sitting next to a baby. See if we can change seats when the flight attendant comes by.” When they weren’t able to change seats, many heavy sighs and dirty looks ensued for the duration of the flight whenever my daughter made so much as a peep. I remember sitting there, tears silently coursing down my cheeks, as I held my finally-asleep baby — unable to move, go to the bathroom, eat, drink or read for fear of waking her and invoking the wrath of that horrid man. It made me forever fearful of the reactions of people around me and made me question whether I was the selfish one for wanting to go visit my family.
In the last paragraph of the Kevin Smith piece, Harding’s emotions come to the surface. Her rage at the lack of human decency and understanding becomes apparent and she says:
And I read comments from lots of people who are less openly hateful, but still think that fat people should buy two seats or lose weight or stay home — not that the airline has any responsibility to, say, ensure that adequate seating is available for everyone or treat people of all sizes like equal (not to mention individual) human beings — and you know what I think? Forgive me, but sometimes there’s no other way to say it: Fuck you. That’s what I think.
Sing it, sister! I agree with you 100%. I too wish that airplanes (and many other public spaces) were more accommodating of larger people, those with disabilities, families…the way most things are modelled on one body and type and under the assumption that one is travelling alone is very frustrating. I just wish you could apply those same strong feelings about accepting our bodies for what they are to accepting children and the nature of parenting for what they are. I wish you could be open-minded enough to know that even if you never experience parenting first-hand, it is something that you share a common bond with; that you (and all people) have a vested interest in making parents and children feel more welcome and included in our society, not ostracised. Those who were unaccepted for what they were as children can become the very people you struggle against now — the rigid, the selfish, the unkind. Setting out prescriptive behaviours and expectations for one group of people according to how their presence impacts others, not according to what is best or appropriate for them, is exactly what feminism (and fat-acceptance) strives to eradicate.
Just as you don’t want to be judged for your size, nor do we want to be judged for our reproductive and parenting choices, especially by those who haven’t walked a yard in our shoes, let alone a mile. In a homogenized world, I suppose everyone would be thin, every child would sit quietly and every parent would happily and healthily manage to work and bring up their children. But we don’t live in that world nor would any of us want to, I imagine.
As feminists, we celebrate diversity, challenge privilege and patriarchy and constantly question our own prejudices in order to grow and become better allies to those on the outside who need our help most. We mind our language, respect those with different needs, backgrounds and experiences from us and know when to say “I haven’t lived that. Tell me how I can stand with you and help you battle these injustices.”
In order to do that we need to become invested in fights that are not our ‘own,’ look for connections and similarities instead of divergences and dissimilarities. We need a feminism that ‘gets it’, or at least tries to. Not just about fat, not just about kids, but all of it. Because if we can’t support these basic tenets, and each other, what hope do we have of changing anything at all?
Ninth Carnival of Feminist Parenting
Feb 15th
Another huge thanks to Anji at Mothers For Women’s Lib for putting together another Carnival of Feminist Parenting. Lots of good, thought-provoking reading here, with themes including: pregnancy and birth, adoption, education, disability, race, gender stereotypes and many, many more. Go and have a look!
The next Carnival will be held on Sunday 14th March so get those submissions in by the deadline, Sunday 7th March. Use the blog carnival submission form or send the URL to @m4wl on Twitter. You can nominate your own post, someone else’s or an interesting article you’ve read in a mainstream newspaper or magazine. Anything to do with feminist parenting, really!
Also, if you’d like to chat to others interested in feminist parenting, there is a forum at Mothers For Women’s Lib. There are a wide range of topics and discussions going on so check it out.
Mindful language: what does ‘mothering’ mean?
Feb 9th
I’ve been thinking a lot about the language we use when discussing issues pertaining to equality. Take, for example, the use of ‘mothering’ as opposed to ‘parenting’ and vice versa. When I read an article or website that continually refers to mothering (or parenting, or fathering) exclusively, with no mention of the context or meaning, it can be confusing. Which is appropriate to use and in what circumstances?
A site called Only Dads recently sent me an article they’d written about why they believe we should not call ‘Mothering Sunday’ (what it has traditionally been called in the UK) ‘Mother’s Day’ (what some people have taken to calling it as of late, perhaps due to American or corporate marketing influence). Mothering, they argue, can be done by both mothers and fathers and there are a significant number of men out there performing the mothering (i.e. sole care provider, nurturing, etc..) role. Whilst I appreciate and applaud their efforts to normalise and encourage nurturing, responsible parenting among dads, I think the language used is potentially counter-productive.
‘Mothering’ will always be associated with women because only women are mothers. And right now in our society, mothers are the ones who take on the bulk of the caring and domestic roles. ‘Mothering’, therefore, is synonymous with the way women care for children. A father who takes on the role that has traditionally been filled by the mother isn’t ‘mothering’, he is ‘parenting.’ A man caring for his children is not exactly the same as a woman doing so because they are not working within the same societal structures and paradigms. They operate under different pressures, expectations and with different challenges due to cultural beliefs.
According to Andrea O’Reilly, director of the Association for Research on Mothering and the author of Feminist Mothering, “the word ‘mothering’ refers to women’s experiences of mothering that are female-defined and centred and potentially empowering to women” (pg. 3). Mothering is, in and of itself, a valid term because it addresses these differences and acknowledges that women are expected to parent differently than fathers. It doesn’t mean it is always appropriate to use it in preference to ‘parenting’ though.
When speaking generally about the responsibilities of parents to their children and not specifically about how women experience childrearing, I believe it is essential to use ‘parenting’ rather than ‘mothering’ and to understand why these terms are not interchangeable. That leads, then, to the question: what, exactly, is fathering? A look at the dictionary definitions for both ‘fathering’ and ‘mothering’ reveals the cultural bias present: ‘fathering’ is defined as “acting as a father (to a child)” or “acknowledging responsibility for.” What it means to actually father a child (beyond the physical act of procreation) is anyone’s guess, it appears.
Mothering, on the other hand, gets a more specific definition. It is, according to many sources, “the nurturing and raising of a child or children by a mother.” So we know what is expected of mothers but, aside from ‘taking responsibility’ (which is a pretty vague, subjective phrase), fathering isn’t clearly defined. What exactly is expected of a man who is fathering a child? Does ‘taking responsibility’ mean simply acknowledging its existence and providing financial support? Does it mean providing guidance, love and discipline? Is it a father’s job to care for a child’s day-to-day needs and perform the less-abstract and more mundane tasks associated with that child’s care, or does that fall under the ‘mothering’ category, which is the domain of women? By using the term ‘mothering’ to mean ‘caring for and raising a child’, we are cementing the idea that these things are only done by women, or should be.
Have women historically been the primary caregivers for their children? Yes. Should that be discounted or ignored? No. But if we want parenting to be something equally performed by and invested in by both men and women, we need to use language that indicates that desire. As stated above, mothering is a very valid term but usually only in a political context when discussing how gendered expectations influence the way we parent or how we operate within a system prejudiced against women in general. It has a time and a place to be used, certainly. But continually calling play groups ‘Mummy and Me’ or school social events ‘Mums’ Coffee Mornings’ says to fathers that they are not welcome, that they are not really meant to be there (and says to mums that they should). Even if they are a minority in those groups, fathers need not be discounted. Perhaps more dads would become visible in the community, actively parenting their children, if the language used wasn’t so explicit in its belief that only women do these things.
Likewise, involved dads needn’t co-opt the term ‘mothering’ to indicate that they are taking an active role in raising their children. Their experiences as fathers, even those who are the sole care providers for their offspring, are going to be different to mothers’. What they do need to do is think about better defining ‘fathering’ and invite discourse among men on how that role fits into the societal frameworks already present. And if the role they play (or would like to play) doesn’t fit within that framework? Tear it down and start again. Challenge the stereotypes of what a father does. Don’t be afraid to ask for more mindful, inclusive language at your child’s school or at the community centre. Don’t be afraid to do the tasks more commonly associated with ‘mothering’. Don’t let society’s narrow view of masculinity affect the way you care for and interact with your children.
So my response to Only Dads’ article is this: dads don’t need to be included in Mothering Sunday, they need a radical overhaul and fine-tuning of what it means to father. Perhaps campaigning for Father’s Day to be renamed ‘Fathering Sunday’ would be a start? Or maybe, just maybe, we could do away with these his-n-her’s divisions and focus our energies on making parenting a word that brings to mind members of both sexes, performing a variety of roles within their individual families and communities.
Women’s bodies, men’s work (part two)
Feb 5th
Carrying on from part one, in which I discussed cleavage and how views of women’s bodies affect our views of ourselves and the way we are treated, I want to talk about women’s bodies as they relate to the workplace.
When women were finally integrated into the workplace, the move was largely concessionary. Women at that time were only ‘allowed’ in after many, many years of political and social struggle and after proving their worth doing men’s jobs during World War II. Gradually, more companies became open to or were forced to begin hiring women, with great big shoves from bodies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in the US and passage of the Equal Pay Act 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 in the UK. That these laws were only passed a few years before I was born reminds me that this really was a long and hard-fought battle by the women of my grandmothers’ and mother’s generations and that they completely revolutionised the way we navigate public spheres and live our lives. Hell, it was only 45 years ago that it became illegal for companies in the US to fire a woman immediately upon marriage! These were not easy trails our foremothers blazed.
Unfortunately, when these women fought to get into the workplace they largely based their arguments on the premise that they could do the same work as men and, therefore, should be treated exactly the same as them. While I’m sure these pioneering ladies had done what they felt was necessary to get that first foothold on the ladder secured, I’m not sure they properly contemplated and anticipated the negative aspects of this kind of strategy. Because let’s be honest — the working environment didn’t change all that much when women moved in, and they didn’t ask it to. They were expected to simply fit in with the guys and draw as little attention to their gender as possible. That is, if they wanted to do a ‘man’s job’; if they were doing traditionally female jobs (like secretarial work, nursing, etc..) they were expected to be a bit of helpful eye candy and not much more. You’ve seen Mad Men, right? The ass-slapping, “c’mere, darlin” open patronisation and blatant sexism? It’s a true portrayal of working life for many at the time.
But that was then and this is now, or so say those who claim we are living in a ‘post-feminist’, non-sexist, utopian (read: imaginary) society. Women’s lib, equal opportunity laws and sexual harassment lawsuits took care of all that, didn’t it? We have maternity leave (though only an extremely paltry 12 weeks in the US) and the right to report our sexist co-workers or bosses to the proper authorities if they bother us and only a 17% disparity between our pay packets for the exact same work. What the hell else do we want, some wonder?
The problem is this — nearly all of the business world was built around the male biological and social imperative. It was understood that a working man was either single and carefree or with a wife at home who took care of his house, his children and all domestic tasks, aside from the more ‘manly’ chores like grass-cutting, wood-chopping and car repairs. The male worker had no need for flexible hours that fit in around school or shopping hours. The male worker had no dramatic hormonal changes, pregnancies, breastfeeding or post-partum recovery to deal with. The male worker was not the primary caregiver for his offspring and, if his wife did work for some reason, he was not held responsible for arranging their care. If a project needed more work or clients needed schmoozing or the boss wanted more hours put in, it wasn’t much of a problem. A quick phone call to say he’d be late and to keep his dinner warm in the oven was all that was required.
For women who were wives and had children, it was not so easy. Because their jobs were often seen as insignificant or merely ways to ’keep them busy’ — rather than sources of personal fulfilment, empowerment and financial independence – they were still expected to put their responsibilities to their children, husbands, husbands’ careers, home and image before their own aspirations. The fact that they were paid less and so were nearly always the secondary earner in the relationship (hence, with the ‘less important’ career), didn’t seem to register, or even matter. We’d thrown our hats into the ring and now we were going to have to take it on the chin…like men. No special treatment here, sweetheart!The fact that women were (and still are, in some quarters) viewed as irrational, emotional and lacking in intelligence didn’t help either. Hundreds of years of gender stereotypes and male privilege made sure of that. And though the distinctions are not so black-and-white as they used to be, the division between men and women in how they are expected to prioritise their careers and families is still prevalent.
But one of the biggest problems remaining, in my view, is that women’s bodies have not been integrated and accepted into the workplace. Pregnancy and maternity leave are still career-killers. Taking time off for antenatal appointments or to look after a sick child is still met with groans and rolled eyes from a sizeable minority who wonder why mothers don’t just chuck in their jobs and stay at home already, like they’re supposed to. We’ve all heard of colleagues who make that asinine remark, “I wish I could have a few months off,” as if taking time off to give birth and care for a newborn was a beach holiday with cocktails.
Some people would even begrudge a woman the right to pump milk at work, calling it an ‘extra break’ and complaining that she’s getting ’special treatment,’ which I think any mother who has ever breastfed or expressed knows is misguided. Trying to get as much milk as possible out of your breasts while hunched over an electronic pump in a storage closet, hoping no one walks in on you, is not a ‘break’. It’s just more work, though of the unpaid, ‘unimportant’ variety in capitalism’s eyes.
And then there’s the super-gross, super-secret monster called Menstruation. Ever dragged yourself into work despite the debilitating menstrual cramps, copious bleeding, excessive bloating, splitting headache and hormone levels that rise and plummet like a roller coaster? Ever had to sit through a round of PMS jokes when you snap at someone or cry after a tense conflict with a colleague? I don’t know many women who haven’t.
No, women’s bodies are not welcome in the workplace. Our biological differences are still shrouded in shame and secrecy. When we walk into our offices, we’re supposed to check our femaleness at the door. No crying, cramps, children or breast milk, please. It’s all man here.
Look also at what is considered ‘professional’ dress code for women and all of the mixed messages therein: be sexy and attractive, but not so much that other women are jealous and men are ‘distracted’ or don’t take you seriously; wear fitted, tailored clothing so as not to hide’your figure (if you have a ‘good’ one) but attire must also not be too tight or revealing, lest men are distracted or don’t take you seriously; etc., etc., etc… The workplace didn’t welcome women (and their bodies) as they were, it tried to force them into the existing mould of masculine power.
Women’s bodies have always been blamed for men’s moral weaknesses; it’s why strict adherents of many religions (and even those of a more secular persuasion) have rules about how covered up women should be and why this is for their own protection from men. From the burqa-clad Muslim to the mini-skirted rape victim, women’s clothing has always been a symbol of her modesty and an advertisement for her chasteness, or lack thereof. It’s a man’s world and we’re just living in it…and so we have to dress accordingly, including at work.
Because industry and business were built upon male norms, the working environment reflects this attitude as well. We got on the ladder alright, but what we should’ve been after was an entirely different climbing apparatus, one in which we could move horizontally across a continuum we helped create, not forced to climb vertically up those rigid, historically-male rungs (in high heels, naturally) before hitting that infamous glass ceiling.
And so the women of the previous generation — not wanting to appear unreliable, uncommitted or in any way inferior to men — shouldered the burden of both work and home and tried to turn the enormous stress and strain of it all into a message of empowerment for their daughters. Saying, “See! We can work and still have kids and houses and husbands! We’re not asexual, frigid, heartless, childless wenches after all! We can have careers and be taken seriously and earn money while still running the PTA, doing all the grocery shopping and ironing everyone’s clothes! This is freedom!”
I don’t blame those women one bit for taking on that message. They did the best they could with what they had and turned centuries of degradation and discrimination into opportunity and possibility. I applaud them. I respect them. My beef is not with them.
But.
‘Doing it all’ is not working. ‘Having it all’ is not possible. Women of my generation have watched as our mothers worked themselves to early graves, ill health, divorces, unimaginable stress, or lives devoid of personal interests once the careers were finished and the kids were grown. Men of my generation have been raised by these women and lauded their efforts, thought it ‘noble’ that their mothers did everything while perhaps their fathers did what they’ve always done — worked, and done the odd bit of housework or parenting when asked. We have, by and large, not grown up seeing functional, equitable, reciprocal partnerships. While what these women did was indeed extraordinary, it needn’t be The Way Things Are.
People of my generation are, more than ever, seeking the kinds of partnerships they saw as lacking in their own parents. More men are involved in the rearing of their children, the cleanliness and order of their homes and the day-to-day tending of their romantic relationships. More and more women are realising that they perhaps can’t or even don’t want to do everything all at once. More mothers are choosing to stay at home when their children are young and then returning to work later. This is, of course, usually to the detriment of their careers. More women with successful careers are choosing not to have children at all due to the constraints of their professions, or delaying motherhood until the possibility of it occurring naturally becomes slimmer and slimmer. So, at the moment, we seem to be faced with two choices, neither of which seems all that appealing: Do it all at once, or choose between career and children.
There must be a better way. There has to be a better way. We deserve it. Men who care about their partners and their children deserve it. Children most certainly deserve it. We can’t carry on the status quo anymore, it is (by and large) not working. This is why we are fighting for the right to decide when and if we will become mothers at all. This is why those who are already mothers are getting angry. This is why I think we’re approaching some of the major feminist dilemmas from the wrong angle. And in the next post, I will outline some of the changes that I think we need in order to really revolutionise the way both men and women combine careers and families and how women are treated within the public spheres.
Here’s where you come in; I want to hear your experiences, ideas and suggestions. What do you think we need to do to get real change rolling? Let’s think outside the box and brainstorm here. From the smallest detail to the bigger picture, I want to hear your ideas for how we can make motherhood truly compatible with having careers and equitable marriages. What small things are you doing within your own lives to help reach that goal? What kind of legislation do you think would be helpful in effecting these changes? How can we overcome patriarchal norms and heteronormativity and reach out to those who hold the reins to these stifling structures?
The chicken or the egg: Paternity leave and gender roles
Jan 31st
So as you probably didn’t hear (because I’ve not seen it covered anywhere within the feminist blogosphere – sigh – and only given marginal press within mainstream media), Labour announced a couple days ago quite radical changes to the maternity and paternity leave laws, which will apply to children due on or after 3 April 2011 (provided they win the next general election).
Right now in the UK, a woman who gives birth to or adopts a child while in paid employment* is entitled to nine months’ paid maternity leave (most of which is on the Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) of £123.06 per week; only the first six weeks is paid at 90% of one’s regular salary) and then three further months unpaid, with her partner being eligible for two weeks’ paid paternity leave, also paid at the SMP rate. Some employers pay more on top of that but many don’t so it can be assumed that this is what the majority of employees who take maternity or paternity leave will earn.
The proposed changes would give a woman the option of returning to work after six months, transferring the remaining three months of paid leave over to her partner. Her partner would then have the option of taking a further three months’ leave from his or her** job, unpaid. The total leave would still amount to 12 months (9 paid, 3 unpaid) but would be more easily split between them. In theory, this would give female breadwinners and those who would like to return to work after six months the ability to go back sooner without having to put their babies into non-familial care. It would also give men who earn less than their partners or who want to be more involved in their child’s care in the first year an opportunity to stay at home for 3-6 months without losing their jobs.
That’s the bare-bones of it and how it’s laid out on paper. However, whether and how it is taken up in practise is another matter entirely. Let’s run this through a reality check.
First, let’s look at the various combinations that could be employed with this new legislation. One reality is that some women won’t be able to afford being on the SMP rate at all (a more likely situation for single mums) and so will return to work even sooner than six months. This change does not help her at all, sadly. Another likely scenario for many people will be for the mother to stay at home for the full nine months until the unpaid portion of leave kicks in, which she may or may not take depending on the family’s circumstances. This may be due to personal choice, social conditioning/pressure or practical reasons (such as financial concerns or breastfeeding).
But a woman who takes her six months’ leave and then decides to return to work after this period of time (because she is the higher earner or because her income, though less than her partner’s, is needed, or simply because she wants to) now has the option of putting her 5-6 month-old baby into care or transferring the remainder of her leave entitlement over to her partner (if she has one). In families where it is financially possible for the father to take a 3-6 month financial hit after the mother already has as well, without any severe consequences, this is potentially great news. But in a family where unpaid or reduced-pay leave for the father (even for ‘only’ three months) is not an option, does it seem likely that the male partner will be willing or able to take over the childcare duties for those three months? Will he even want to? Or will it “make more sense” for the woman to stay at home for the three remaining ‘paid’ months, as she has done for the previous six, especially if she is paid less, is breastfeeding and/or already has a daily routine and support system in place?
Though I do think that there are certainly couples out there in which the woman either needs or wants to return to work after six months and the father would be willing, perhaps even eager, to be the sole care provider for his child for at least three months, I don’t think as many men will take it up as one might expect or hope. First, there is the social stigma to deal with. A man wanting to look after his baby in theory faces the reality of having to ask for the leave from his employer and then explain to his colleagues why he will be gone. For most men, caring for children is still widely viewed as ‘women’s work’ and taking on a role almost exclusively performed by women can be viewed as a threat to his status, both socially and professionally; if not by him then certainly by at least some of his peers.
A man who looks after his children is often viewed as a bumbling, inept ‘helper’ to the mother, doing her a favour or humouring her for the sake of the ‘easy life’. Fathers I’ve spoken to (including my own husband) have told me of the times they’ve taken their children out in public without the mother present and gotten comments about how great he is for “taking them off mum’s hands,” or “giving mum the day off” as if that’s the only reason he would be solely responsible for them — as a favour to his wife or partner. Heaven forbid he actually wants and is able to look after them by himself! Some dads even report being asked if they’re divorced and on a ‘weekend pass’ with their children.
The social conditioning that men (and all of us) have been subject to sends the strong message that fathers are the second-string, the back-up team, only needed when mum isn’t around for some (usually selfish) reason. Even then, fathers aren’t expected to perform as well at parenting as their female counterparts. I’ve heard many a story of other women rushing in to offer to make a cake for a single dad who is supposed to contribute to the school’s bake sale, or telling a stay-at-home dad that he doesn’t have to take part in the snack rota at playgroup because he “has his hands full already.” The message to men, from all sides, is that parenting is not really their area of expertise (or at least, combining parenting with household responsibilities isn’t) and that just keeping the children alive and fed and the house standing is all that is expected of them.
The second hurdle in encouraging men to take this option is financial. If a man is the higher earner (as is the case in the majority of partnerships), it will be much more difficult and sometimes even impossible for him to collect SMP wages instead of his normal salary. Of the small proportion of families who would be able to do this, few within that group would be able to function without any income at all on his part, if he were to take the final three months unpaid. It isn’t clear from the wording of the new legislation but I’ve read from other sources that if a couple wants the father to take his three months at SMP but cannot afford for him to take the final three months unpaid, they lose the option for the mother to take it, effectively shortening their total entitlement to just nine months instead of twelve. This is supposedly to encourage more fathers to take at least their three months at SMP.
Again, it sounds good in theory, giving a bit of incentive for men to take the paternity leave they are entitled to, but I remain doubtful that the incentives will be enough to overcome the social and financial hurdles that a lengthened paternity leave presents. Until the social stigma of men caring for children and performing domestic duties is broken and until women receive equal pay and opportunities at work, free from gender discrimination, paternity leave and maternity leave will remain quick fixes for a much wider, more complex problem that is endemic in our society.
**Paternity leave applies to female partners of women who give birth or adopt but for the sake of simplicity and because heterosexual relationships that produce children are more prevalent, I will be using ‘he’ to signify the partners of new mothers