Guest Posts
Guest post: It’s a MAD dad world
30If you follow the parent blogging world at all, you can’t have failed to have noticed the launch of the MADs Awards. That stands for Mums And Dads. You can read about them here. Stage 1 was nominations, when anyone could nominate anyone. And we did. Literally hundreds of blogs were nominated. We’re now at Stage 2. The most popular 5 blogs in each category have been named, and we’re all invited to vote on those top 5. Voting closes on 6th June.
When I looked at the list of finalists, I was very struck by the preponderance of Dads. Don’t get me wrong. There are some very fine Daddy bloggers out there, and their presence adds to the parent blogging mix. But I’m honestly a little puzzled why they feature quite so prevalently in the awards. I mean, it can’t be, can it, that they’re really so very much better than the Mummy bloggers?
Do the maths with me, if you will. There are 50 finalists. That’s 5 in each of the 9 categories, and 5 nominated for overall Best Blogger of the Year. Of these, 8 are male. That’s 16%. You’re thinking that’s not a very high percentage? Well, let’s put it against the percentage of Dad bloggers in the parent blogosphere, which I’ve taken to be British Mummy Bloggers. BMB has over 1,300 members now, and there are around 25 Dads. That works out at less than 2%. Is that 2% really so gifted that they deserve the disproportionate 16% of finalist places? If the ratios were proportionate, there would be over 200 Dad members of BMB – nearly 10 times the actual number. And what about this? For the top accolade of Best Blogger of the Year, they are in the majority. Yes, 3 out of the 5 nominees for Best Blogger are Dads. Is it not surprising, in any sphere, if a 2% minority of the population produces 3 out of the 5 candidates for top recognition?
What to make of this? Well, I’d like to be really angry about it, because that would have given the opportunity for a clever title to this post along the lines of “Why I’m truly a MAD finalist”. But I find it hard to be angry, because the awards have been designed very democratically. Bloggers nominated fellow bloggers, so who can we point the finger of sexism at here? It’s at ourselves, isn’t it? And when I look at myself, I can see how that happens. It’s partly the novelty value of a man’s viewpoint in what is predominantly a woman’s world. A Dad blogger arrests the attention, as a woman in the board room does, or a lady doctor used to (did we really call them that?). They stand out simply for being different.
I think it’s more than that, though. I sense in myself something that wants to reward a man for being a good father more than a woman for being a good mother (and I’m not, by that, implying that blogging equates to good parenthood). If I see a father accompanying his child on a school field trip, I feel that he must be a good dad, as he’s taken a day off work to do so. If I see a mother who has a full-time job on a field trip, do I feel the same? I don’t think I do. How often have I read in the blogosphere of a mum who is going away for a week-end on her own, and there’ll be a comment “How lovely that your partner is so supportive and is happy to look after the children on his own for a whole week-end”. Do we feel the same way when a husband goes away? I don’t think we do. I know a lot of this stuff is wrapped up in practicalities, bread-winning, role patterns and daily norms, and of course it may be a bigger hurdle for the woman to let go of her parental responsibilities and duties than for the man to step up to them (I’ll put my hand up to that one.) But at an emotional level, I think we love to love a man who’s being a father, more than we allow ourselves to love ourselves for being mothers.
It’s the same syndrome by which men who are chefs or primary school teachers seem to do so well in those careers. It’s almost as if we’re so flattered that these individuals will enter our women’s world, that we want to reward them with our favour. I know it’s more complicated than that. Those men may typically have more time to devote to their careers, or may be more ambitious, or may value promotion and publicity more than their female colleagues. But I do also sense that there’s some kind of self-destruct button that we women press, to allow them to thrive so successfully. It seems we get all star-struck by the dads in our female midst, and assume that their voices are more worth listening to than our own, and that their achievements are more valuable.
It’s interesting to see which other categories the men fared well in. There’s 1 nominated for Best Writer, 2 for Most Innovative Blog, and 2 for Funniest Blog. Am I reading too much into these to see them as representing the characteristics that we admire in men? Perhaps. I don’t want to get carried away here. I hesitated to write this post. It’s going to sound awfully like sour grapes if I don’t win, isn’t it? That’s why I’m publishing it now, before we know who the winners are. Of course I’d love it if you voted for me, but I hope this post will persuade you to do so on the basis of my writing, not my gender – because that would miss the point rather, wouldn’t it?
Iota Manhattan blogs at Not Wrong, Just Different and is a UK-to-US transplant. She describes herself as “an erstwhile civil servant, then fundraiser (arts and voluntary sector). Now Mum/Mom at home.” She likes reading, going to the cinema and a good cup of tea.
Mainstream feminism and motherhood: solidarity extends beyond the personal
14
I approached a group of contributors at The F-Word (none of whom have children) to see if any of them would be interested in writing an article for the readers of Fertile Feminism; Laura Woodhouse responded with enthusiasm. I asked Laura to give us her thoughts on why mainstream feminism is often (or at least feels) exclusionary to parents and what her ideas are for bridging that divide. This is her response, in the form of a guest post. In return, I’ve written a post at The F-Word explaining why I created this site and what its goal is, which you can read here.
A note before you get reading: It takes courage and insight to write sensitively about a subject with which one has no personal experience, so please, if you are able, leave a comment and let Laura know what you think — if you liked it, agree with her, disagree (and why) or your ideas for building on what she’s written. Taking part in these discussions is what Fertile Feminism is all about so I hope you’ll feel moved to comment.
_____________________________________________________
When FertileFem suggested that a childless feminist blogger contribute to this site, in the spirit of building bridges between mainstream feminism and the feminist mothers it often excludes, I was really keen to get involved. However, I’ve found it difficult to figure out quite what to write. I feel a little like an impostor entering a territory where my personal experiences and knowledge are suddenly exposed as somewhat lacking in relevance. The temptation is to say, ‘Actually, I’m not sure there’s really a lot I can do here. I’ll leave it to the experts.’
It seems that’s the position taken by many of us childless feminists who make up a significant portion of the current UK feminist community when it comes to motherhood. We either prefer not to try and tackle issues of which we have no direct knowledge, or – worse still – we are entirely oblivious to their existence, and to their relevance to feminism. The personal is political, right? So for those of us who, like me, came to feminism fresh out of our teens, sick to the back teeth of being sexually harassed, assaulted and objectified by our male peers and a sexist dominant culture – launching ourselves with headstrong gusto into campaigns against lads’ mags and for abortion rights – issues such as childcare, birth trauma, maternity care and breastfeeding rights just weren’t on our agenda. Which is understandable. But when these campaigns united young women into larger feminist groups and later developed into conferences and events, and those groups and conferences failed to take the childcare needs of feminist parents into account, or offer any talks or workshops that recognised motherhood – and mothers’ – relevance to feminism, this short-sightedness became discrimination. And that’s not what feminism is about.
It doesn’t help that the middle class feminist aim of freeing women from the shackles of enforced motherhood and housewifery in order that we could make it in the worlds of education and employment (ignoring the working class women who often never had the option of staying at home in the first place) inevitably paints motherhood in a bad light, nor that the dominant cultural narrative of the feminism-liberated modern woman struggling to ‘have it all’ makes it seem nigh on impossible to have children while achieving any of the things middle class feminism promised us. Until you start thinking about having children of your own, or until you’re faced with an unexpected pregnancy and motherhood becomes a personal issue, it can be all too easy to separate it from feminism.
Yet, for me, some of the reasons I have always thought I would be unlikely to have children were rooted in sexism: employment discrimination against pregnant women and mothers (how can I progress at work if I’m going to have kids?), the horrible gender role indoctrination of children (would I ever be able to counteract it?), the lack of affordable childcare and flexible working hours (how on earth can I have it all?). And as I’ve begun to think more seriously about having children (I can’t even tell you how much it’s freaked me out realising that having kids with my partner would actually be really rather lovely!) I’ve started to feel this mother-directed sexism on something close to the same visceral level that I felt sexual objectification and beauty fascism when I first became a feminist. And I want to do something about it.
But it shouldn’t take that level of visceral, personal identification with an issue to kick me into gear and start trying to do my bit for mothers. Feminists should advocate for all women; ‘the personal is political’ just isn’t enough. We need to remember that not all women’s ‘personal’ is the same, but that all women’s ‘personal’ matters.
I think it’s a reflection of my privilege as a young, sheltered, middle class woman that my early activism was centred around things that affected myself, and it’s only been through reading the experiences and theories of disabled, trans and BME feminists that I’ve succeeded in breaking out of my own little personal bubble and expanded my range of activism to include issues that don’t affect women with whom I can identify. And it’s a reflection of the marginalisation of mothers within feminism – and the dismissal of mothers’ needs in wider society – that it took a change in my personal circumstances for me to really identify motherhood as a feminist issue.
That’s why I’m so pleased to have discovered all the feminist mother blogs that have been springing up recently, and why I want to work with feminist mothers to help bring your voices and battles and mainstream feminism together. It’s been all too easy for childless feminists to ignore motherhood, and it really, really shouldn’t be. We need to listen, learn and become allies to mothers by not only centring your voices but using our own to advocate for mothers everywhere. I know when I wrote a short blog post on the proposed maternity reforms last week I felt rather out of my depth and a little embarrassed by the blandness of my writing compared to the informed passion of the mothers who left comments. But discomfort and ignorance is no excuse, particularly when mothers like FertileFem are putting the necessary information out there to enable us to learn. It isn’t good enough to say ‘I’ll leave it to the experts’; we’re supposed to work in solidarity with all women, and when the women in question are working their arses off raising the next generation, the least childless feminists can do is make some noise on your behalf!