Archive for January, 2010
The chicken or the egg: Paternity leave and gender roles
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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
Women’s bodies, men’s work (part 1)
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Vered at MomGrind recently wrote a post in which she relayed a conversation she’d had with friends about whether displaying cleavage is acceptable, inspired by some of the more ‘daring’ outfits worn by female celebrities at the Golden Globe awards. In the course of this conversation, it emerged that there seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to cleavage: Cover It Up, Sister and If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It. The first is generally thought of as the more conservative, repressive option and the second as more liberal and empowering.
Now, this may seem like a trivial issue to some but to me it is actually a great example of a real division within the feminist community and the public at large. Why? Because each school of thought on cleavage has two conflicting ‘sides’ supporting it; supporters who are, in many ways, diametrically opposed to one another. The Cover It proponents are usually either quite socially conservative and rank modesty as an important virtue in their personal morals (often on religious grounds), or they are quite liberal-minded, socially progressive people who think that while breasts are of course natural and an inherent part of women’s bodies, covering up is essential if they are to to get ahead and be taken seriously, especially in the workplace. Many feminists, particularly those of the Second Wave who had to fight to get into the workplace at all, fall into this category (though this is just a generalisation based on observation, not a hard-and-fast fact or attempt to pigeon-hole anyone).
Those who are in favour of the Flaunt It approach almost always think of themselves as neo-liberal, open-minded and supportive of sexual expressiveness and, again, includes many self-proclaimed feminists, especially those of the younger generation, or Third Wave. They think women should be able to wear whatever they want, however they want and whenever they want. They will defend a woman’s right to be ‘sexy’ and ‘feel good about herself’ and exclaim loudly that breasts are nothing to be ashamed of. This is all well and good. I support that view, in theory. However, within that ideology lurks dangerous territory; a faux-liberalism in which supporting women in their quest to be ever-sexier and conform to modern beauty standards is actually harmful, reinforcing the link that ties a woman’s body and perceived attractiveness directly with her feelings of self-worth and her abilities.
A perfect example of this is those What Not To Wear and How To Look Good Naked shows on television that purport to accept and even glorify women of all shapes and sizes, but which really, at their core, are just showing these women the tricks of the trade for getting as close as possible to the beauty ideal and giving them a patronising, ‘there, there love’ pat on the head about the parts of themselves that come up short. What’s so progressive about taking a woman who has had three babies (with the saggy tummy to prove it) and giving her a corset to wear underneath her clothes instead of the less acceptable methods of telling her to starve herself or have surgery? It’s not as bad as the latter, obviously, but it’s still not true acceptance. Every woman knows that no matter how proud she is of her ‘curves’, she must try to minimise and detract attention away from the parts of her considered less desirable and that don’t meet the criteria of perfection. Drawing attention to your large breasts because you know they will focus eyes away from your ‘thunder thighs’ isn’t exactly Body Confidence, is it? But I digress. Back to cleavage…
The other, oft-quoted caveat of some within the Flaunt It school is that it’s okay to show off your breasts, but only if they are of an acceptable size and appearance. If you are relatively young, of at least average weight and without any obvious disabilities, you will be encouraged to use your breasts to attract a partner and garner praise. At Mardi Gras? Show us your tits! At a club? Show us your tits! On the beach? Show us your tits! But if you’re not any of these, or with any other ‘affliction’ marking you out from the sexually available vixens, woe betide you. Wrinkled or exceedingly freckled? Ew! Naturally very large and/or ‘saggy’? Tuck ‘em back in! Too small? Who are you kidding! Pulling up your shirt to breastfeed a baby? Jesus, we don’t want to see THAT! So, still, the message is that ‘flaunting it’ is acceptable but only if you fall within the range of what is considered worthy of flaunting. If you are not pre-approved by the pornulation and empowerfulization committees for hawtness (be it because of your age, shape, weight or race) you won’t get your Dove blue ribbon award for not hating yourself quite as much as you used to.
Even the language we use to describe how we feel about our breasts is telling: Women with small breasts will talk about not feeling as feminine or ‘womanly’ and being unable to ‘fill out’ tops and dresses, while women with large chests, like a commenter on Vered’s post, say that men talk to their breasts, not their faces, and that normal clothes look “pornographic” on them, suggesting that large breasts are equated with not being taken seriously and sexual promiscuousness, which is a common and long-held prejudice that we’re just supposed to accept as the norm.
This leads me to the issue of women’s bodies in the workplace, the main crux of this discussion, for which a second post is forthcoming. I don’t want this sucker getting too long — brevity is not my strong suit and I’m trying to work on making posts more manageable and easy to read. Watch this space!
And in the meantime, tell me your thoughts and experiences with cleavage and body image. Are you a Cover It Up sort of person or a Flaunt It believer? Do you think showing off our bodies is empowering, harmful or a combination of the two?
The name change game
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Everyone knows that you have to pick and choose your battles. Not every single fight can be fought by one person, at least not without compromising one’s mental health, and perhaps even physical health, with all that bashing of heads against brick walls and whatnot.
So it was that I found myself, while eight months pregnant with my first child, changing my surname to my husband’s; something I hadn’t done when we got married six years previously and that I hadn’t envisaged doing at all. The feminist voice inside me screamed but I shut her up by telling myself that it wasn’t that big a deal, really; that I was only changing it from one man’s name (my father’s) to another and that the tradition had roots too far entrenched in society for my stance to make much of a difference. But mostly, I was just tired. I was tired (already) of having this conversation with people:
“So, will Mr. D (my surname) be attending the next scan with you?”
“Yes but he’s not Mr. D, he’s Mr. R.”
“Oh, I see, I’m sorry. I thought you were married.”
“We are but I didn’t change my name.”
“Oh. Okay. So what surname will the baby have?”
“Um, his I guess.”
“Oh.”
It wasn’t that I thought he or she was being judgmental of the fact I hadn’t changed my name or that I was embarrassed to be mistaken for an unmarried mother, but something bothered me nonetheless.
I had endured a rather painful pregnancy, with SPD so bad that I had trouble sitting still for any period of time and could often be found on my hands and knees underneath my desk at work, rocking back and forth in agony trying not to cry. Spasms of pain leapt through my back and wrapped themselves around my vertebrae like the fingers of hot lightning that streak violently through the summer sky during an electrical storm. It felt as if my pelvis were the good-luck wishbone at a turkey feast, being pulled apart with feverish abandon. I couldn’t walk anywhere without a support belt on and even then it was difficult. Needless to say, I had a pretty miserable third trimester.
So when I thought about going through all that pain (not to mention labour!), upheaval and life-changing craziness and then not even getting to share my name with the baby I’d helped create and solely incubated, sustained and birthed…well, it made me quite upset, actually. I knew that, rationally and intellectually, it was just a name and shouldn’t matter what anyone else thinks or what social conventions dictate, but the desire to be a full part of this little family I was creating and not feel like an outsider or in any way detached or different from my little girl was very strong. So strong, in fact, that I gave up on trying to convince my husband to adopt a double-barrelled name with me (he’d grown up with one and hated it so much that he’d officially dropped the second part when he was a teenager) and decided to just take on his. At the time, I had no patience for anything I construed as complicated or a pain in the ass and this was one way to simplify things.
My husband never asked me to do this for him, by the way; it was all my own anxieties and the pressure that I was feeling to conform and be a ‘good mother’ and a ‘good wife’ by the messages all around me, every day, about what that entails. I bought into the idea that not submitting to this tradition would cause more difficulties for myself and confusion for my children than it was worth. And now, almost four years later, I can say that it has and it hasn’t. There hasn’t been any name confusion, certainly. All four of us have the same last name and it is admittedly quite convenient to just jot down ‘The R___ Family’ instead of listing all of the variations. I don’t get misaddressed forms and Christmas cards and paperwork is pretty straightforward.
But that feminist voice inside my head has never stopped whispering “Why’d you do it? Was your reason really good enough? What kind of example are you setting by bucking so many sexist traditions and gender roles but embracing this one without much of a fight? You’re not you any more, you’re somebody’s WIFE.” Sometimes I let that voice get to me and at others, I leave that inner battle well enough alone, content that I’ve made my choice and that there’s no going back now. Let that be someone else’s Waterloo, I say.
Still, I wish women didn’t have to make this decision at all as it brings so many questions of identity to the surface. If by not changing our names we are making some kind of political statement of independence, does that mean that if we do change our names we’ve willingly given up a part of ourselves just for the ease of form-filling and avoiding awkward social situations? Does that make me a (gulp) conformist?
What has been your experience with name-changing after marriage, if that’s an institution you’re involved in? If you aren’t married, have you had any problems with the name presumptions, especially if you have children? Do you ever regret your decision?
Blog For Choice: Trust Women
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Blog For Choice Day 2010
Each year, NARAL Pro-Choice America poses a question to pro-choice bloggers before the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and then asks them to blog their answer on January 22.
Blog for Choice Day provides us with an opportunity to raise the profile of reproductive rights in the blogosphere, all the while celebrating Roe’s 37th anniversary. Plus, it’s a great way to let your readers and the mainstream media know that a woman’s right to choose is a core progressive value that must be protected and advanced.
Last year more than 500 people participated in this effort. We hope you will join us this year!
If you don’t have a blog, you can still participate! You can post your response in a Note on Facebook, or tweet your response on Twitter and use the hashtag #bfcd.
This year’s topic
In honor of Dr. George Tiller, who often wore a button that simply read, “Trust Women,” this year’s Blog for Choice question is:
What does Trust Women mean to you?
I don’t know about you but I’m loving this year’s topic. To me, trusting women is the crux of the abortion issue and all of women’s reproductive rights, really. Because if we can’t trust women to make their own decisions about their own bodies and lives, what in the world is the government and our society doing even pretending that they consider women fully sentient human beings who should be afforded the same rights as men?
Regardless of what some people might think, the decision to keep or terminate a pregnancy is not an easy one. Sometimes a baby is wanted but not feasible and sometimes it’s the other way around. There are as many different reasons for choosing to carry a pregnancy to term as there are for deciding not to. Not all of them are selfless. Not all of them are selfish. But really, it shouldn’t matter why a woman exerts her choice to reproduce or not – all that matters is that the choice exists.
Trusting women to make the best choices for themselves, their health and their families extends not only to abortion, though, but to all aspects of their reproductive processes. Informed consent and real choice in childbirth is also being threatened with alarming regularity. The technologies invented and the methods adopted in the last several decades in an effort to improve outcomes and maternal satisfaction with the birth experience has swung from the useful, life-saving end of the pendulum towards the other side, where maternal and infant mortality rates actually rise instead of fall with excessive interventions and unnecessary surgeries performed, leaving scores of health-impaired babies and traumatised or dissatisfied mothers in its wake.
Trusting women means trusting them to know whether they’d like to or are able to become mothers, and when, and how many times. It means keeping public scrutiny and laws and judgment off their pregnant bodies. It means providing them with the tools, knowledge and support to make their own decisions in childbirth and allowing their instincts to flourish and guide them, with confidence. It means accepting that sometimes people will make choices that we wouldn’t make ourselves and trusting that they were the right ones for them at that time.
What does Trust Women mean to you?
The public policing of pregnancy
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Any pregnant woman who has ever ordered a glass of wine with her dinner, asked for a regular (non-decaf) coffee, or nibbled on a piece of brie from the cheese plate will know what it feels like to be watched, monitored and judged. Many women have told me stories of barmen asking if they’re sure they don’t want him to add some soda water to that pinot grigio, or a barista saying “You mean decaf, right?” with her eyebrow arched. Some women have even been refused service or kicked out of establishments for drinking a pint of beer or attempting to buy a block of cheese.
I know that one of my biggest pet peeves when I was pregnant with my first child was the assumption that I was completely helpless, vulnerable and unable to make decisions based on calculated risk by myself. While I acknowledge that heavily pregnant women are at a physical disadvantage in certain situations and do indeed have a decreased sense of balance, a harder time standing for long periods of time and shouldn’t be lifting a load of bricks or anything, it got ridiculous at some stages. I had people rushing forward to pry a door out of my hands and open it for me, or insist on carrying my one bag of shopping, which consisted mainly of a tub of ice cream and extra-soft toilet tissue. And on the occasions when I was only going to be on the Underground or bus for a stop or two and so politely declined the seat offered me, I would get annoyed, even hostile reactions. I had one lady absolutely INSIST I take her seat, even though by the time we had this conversation, she got her things out of the area and I heaved myself into it, I had arrived at my stop and had to extract myself from the tangle of bags and limbs to get back to the doors again. The patronisation from some quarters was palpable.
Don’t get me wrong; I always appreciated the offer and more often than not, took them up on it, grateful for the protection from being smashed and elbowed in the stomach during the rush hour commute. But as my bump grew and I got closer and closer to my due date, I got not only looks of sympathy but ones of distaste. I remember one man grumbling under his breath when I waddled onto the train carriage one morning: “Jesus, is she going to give birth here too?” and rolling his eyes. It was astonishing, and obvious that some people felt that I should be confined to my home, a la the Victorians.
Funnily enough, that concern seemed much less prevalent when I was pregnant with my second child and had my daughter in tow with me. There were many times when I genuinely could have used some help while trying to get my pushchair, shopping and massive belly out of a narrow shop while holding the heavy door open and had completely able-bodied and pushchair-less people wait patiently, not offering any help, while I struggled and heaved and got flustered. It was as if the fact I was already a mother meant I didn’t need any help or consideration at all. Kind of like “Well, you knew what you were getting yourself into this time…”
I know it’s hard for people (especially those who have never been pregnant themselves) to know what to do and that each woman is different in what kind of help she’d like or need, but I think it’s safe to say that offering = good, insisting or completely ignoring = bad.
Of course, none of this compares with what Samantha Burton went through. Burton, who was 25 weeks pregnant and had two older children, was hospitalised against her will in Florida last March when she questioned her doctor’s order for complete bed rest after he suspected an impending miscarriage. Burton, who simply asked for a second opinion, was then forcibly hospitalised and forced to submit to “any and all medical treatments” the doctors felt necessary to ensure the safety of her foetus, even though a) there is no clinical evidence to support the commonly-held belief that bed rest improves outcomes for miscarriages; b) she had two other children to care for and so bed rest wasn’t feasible; and c) IT’S HER BODY AND THEREFORE HER DECISION. For three days she was held captive until undergoing a forced cesarean section that revealed her foetus had died anyway.
Thankfully, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken up the case and will be following it and keeping us updated as it goes through the Florida Court of Appeals since it (amazingly) lost in the original trial, Burton v. Florida. So far, the state of Florida has (appallingly but not surprisingly, in a state with a nearly 40% cesarean section rate) defended its actions as simply “maintaining the status quo.” Sadly, the status quo in America (and increasingly in other places as well) seems to be about treating pregnant women as incubators and their rights secondary to that of the foetus residing in and dependent on their bodies.
Making sure that we are afforded the same rights to make decisions regarding our health, safety and care as anyone else (even if an onlooker or doctor doesn’t approve) is absolutely imperative in ensuring we have full human rights, let alone “women’s rights.” And part of exerting that autonomy is by being able to eat cheese, drink caffeine, have a beer or carry our own shopping, Pregnancy Police be damned.
How I got here and where I’m going: an introduction
9Before I became a mother I was moderately interested in women’s issues and occasionally ranted about some sexist attitude or another, but would probably only call myself a feminist if pressed. While I knew that injustices and prejudices existed, I’d led a relatively privileged life as a white, straight, cis, middle-class, Western, educated woman. As a result, my experiences with inequality were limited. In short, I wasn’t fully invested in the movement. I thought I had no reason to be.
Then in 2006 I had my first child, a daughter, and the veil fell from my eyes.
My pregnant body became public property, subject to unsolicited comment and touch. Birth was something best left to the professionals; an event to be endured and controlled instead of experienced and enjoyed. Breastfeeding in public became something I had to learn to do ‘modestly’. Taking my baby into a cafe or on a train was suddenly a nuisance and cause for hostility from other adults. Trying to navigate public areas and access services that had not taken the needs of children or their carers (or those with disabilities, for that matter) into consideration became a constant source of frustration. For example: train stations without lifts, toilets with no baby change facilities, shops with aisles and doorways so narrow and overstocked as to prevent entry or movement once inside and limited scope for taking a pushchair onto a bus.
I quit my job to look after my daughter because I wanted to be with her but also because I couldn’t afford good-quality and reliable care for her. I would have loved to return to work in a part-time capacity after her first year but there was little on offer and financially it just didn’t make sense. So I buckled down to do the ‘full-time -stay-at-home-mum’ thing, even though it didn’t feel quite right. I enjoyed being there for my daughter, to watch her every developmental milestone, but I found it quite isolating and I was keenly aware that for the first time since I was 15 years old, I didn’t have a job or any source of income. And what made that such a bitter pill to swallow was that I was actually doing the most challenging and intensive work of my life, with the longest hours and fewest accolades. Everything started to feel quite…unfair, somehow. There seemed to me a distinct lack of ‘choice’ about this situation but since Mother’s Guilt says we should all be overjoyed if we can afford to stay at home with our children, I swallowed my uncertainties and plastered on a smile.
Everyone had told me that having a baby would be difficult, but I thought they’d meant the actual caring and being responsible for a child. No one told me that the really difficult part would be reconciling the fact that how the world viewed me had irrevocably changed and, consequently, altered my view of the world and how I navigated through it. I felt invisible and powerless.
Then one day, while looking for some baby-related information online, I stumbled onto a few websites that changed my life. Finally, I had found something that encapsulated and acknowledged everything I was feeling and going through: Feminism. I began devouring feminist and feminist-mothering websites, books and magazines as voraciously as if they were food and I hadn’t eaten in days. In a way, the words and the stories and knowing I was not alone in my experiences were my sustenance. My hunger for them grew alongside the seething bubble of anger in the pit of my stomach.
I was completely transfixed as I read story after story about women’s rights being trampled on “for the safety of the baby:” Pregnant women being kicked out of the pub for having a beer or refused the purchase of cheese at the supermarket; women being coerced into unnecessary c-sections for reasons related not to her or her baby’s well-being, but the hospital’s convenience or lawsuit concerns; women experiencing trauma and even assault in the course of or as a result of their child’s birth, their bodily autonomy stripped away without a second thought. My eyes moved with indignation over articles about women being kicked out of aeroplanes, department stores and restaurants for breastfeeding their babies in view of other people and without adhering to some indeterminate and wildly-varied idea of “discretion.”
I read news and discussions on these topics, and more, with a mixture of disbelief and horror. I became very interested in broadening the scope of my comprehension, both socially and academically, on issues ranging from reproductive rights to gender stereotyping to the proliferation of sexual violence and how all of these intersect with race, class, and heteronormativity. But still, my interest was drawn strongly towards issues facing mothers, particularly after I had my son (via an amazing home birth) in 2008.
Now, I cringe at how stay-at-home mothers and working mothers alike are vilified and criticised, pitted against each other in the media-constructed ‘Mommy Wars’. I clench my fist when I hear the pay gap nonchalantly explained away as being the result of “lifestyle choices” that women make (i.e. taking time off to give birth to and raise young children) without any meaningful discourse on how a male partner’s often-already-higher salary and greater earning potential (not to mention how women are the presumed carers for any and all children) are a big determinant in the female parent’s decision to quit her job, reduce her hours, change jobs to something more family-friendly or put her career on hold altogether. That some would make something so complex and with so many different factors at work out to be a kind of ‘all-things-being-equal-I-make-this-lifestyle-choice‘ decision, made as lightly and as simply as figuring out what to have for lunch…well, it gets me fuming.
Women who are the main breadwinners, the sole parent or who choose to return to work shortly after birth are often ostracised, condemned and even fired from their jobs for doing things like taking the day off when their child is sick or daring to breastfeed or pump milk for their babies beyond the confines of their allotted break time or on the premises without ‘permission’. Even before her baby is born a woman is at greater risk of losing her job — it is estimated that 30,000 pregnant women are sacked or forced out of their jobs and a further 200,000 discriminated against each year in the UK. Each YEAR!
Those who stay at home after their children are born are simultaneously scorned for being dull and unambitious, and martyred (for doing what they are ‘supposed’ to do), while women who do work for pay (usually out of necessity) are berated for not “choosing” to stay at home. And regardless of work-for-pay status, partnered women with children (and even those without) do a disproportionate share of the child-related and domestic labour.
When I first started looking into these things, I couldn’t believe the minefield of feminist issues specific to mothering that were out there. Why wasn’t I hearing more about these issues in the news? Why weren’t books being written about this, marches being organised, legislation to correct these problems being introduced? Namely, where were all the feminist voices? Did they not care about these things as much as the banner issues of abortion, equal pay, sexual violence and discrimination?
A whole world and other side of feminism opened up before me and I jumped in — unhesitant, with both feet — eager to find the answers. I discovered that mainstream feminism is talking about these issues but not with the dedication and commitment they deserve. But what I worked out relatively quickly is that this is by no means a purposeful omission. First and foremost, people tend to care about, write about and be most passionate about what they know and have personally experienced. As it is, a lot of the most active and vocal women in the feminist movement are either childless by choice, haven’t had children yet or have already raised their children into adulthood. The twenty-somethings and the fifty/sixty-somethings tend to run the show (the former on feminist websites and the latter in academia), likely because the women in their thirties and forties are quite preoccupied with the most demanding years of their careers and/or involved in time-intensive childrearing.
So while some mothers might feel that mainstream feminism isn’t interested in fighting their fights, I have not found that to be true in the vast majority of cases. Feminists who have not had children are not, as a rule, unsympathetic towards issues that are unique to parents. They might not be aware of the complexities or have experienced the challenges themselves, but nearly every time I’ve brought a mother-specific issue to the attention of a group of activists who are mostly childless, I have rarely been turned down, moved on or ignored.
Mainstream feminism wants to help mothers. There are many mothers already within mainstream feminism. The key to a better relationship between those who have had children and those who haven’t is an awareness, sensitivity and mutual respect for the issues each face and willingness to get involved in campaigning for changes that don’t directly benefit or effect us at that particular stage of our lives.
I know so many wonderful, intelligent, passionate, community-minded women who want to change our world for the better, make it a more humane, equitable and accepting place for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in our society. Some of them have children, some of them don’t. Some of them call themselves feminist, some of them don’t. Do we need the labels, presumptions and stereotypes? Of course not. But what we do need is unity, cohesiveness and enough of us willing to organise together to affect (nay, demand) the changes we so desperately need. Can we do that when we have a tainted name, no official strategy, and not enough women willing to put themselves on the front line? I fear we don’t.
That’s why I’ve started Fertile Feminism: in the hopes we can find a way to bring parenting issues to the forefront of the feminist agenda (which, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t involve exterminating men or eating babies for breakfast) and, in return, help fortify and revolutionise the movement that already exists — for all women, everywhere.