Posts tagged parenting
Full-time mother: occupation?
23A site called Full Time Mothers reported yesterday that a woman whose sole job is to care for her children was successful in convincing the General Register Office to allow her (and, presumably, any other women in her position) to use ‘full time mother’ instead of ‘housewife’ or ‘home-maker’ as an occupational title on her child’s birth certificate.
Karen, now full-time mum to four children said : ‘Although I appreciate that all mothers are mothers all the time, whether out in paid work or looking after their children, there is clearly a significant difference, which would affect all kinds of socio-economic analysis, between holding a paid job and arranging various forms of childcare, and taking care of your own children all the time as your only job.’
She continued: ‘It is important to me personally that my children’s birth certificates accurately reflect my occupation at the time of their birth, but surely it should also be important to the Office of National Statistics that all information gathered can be used to analyse the actual situation of our population.’
Karen felt strongly that ‘housewife’ or ‘home-maker’ were not adequate descriptions of her daytime occupation, since her main activity during the day is caring for her young children, not cleaning the house, as this gets done in the evenings when the children are asleep, not unlike ‘life-before-children’ when the couple tackled domestic chores after returning from their daytime jobs.
Karen explained: ‘ You could easily define yourself as a house-wife or home-maker and in fact not have any childcare element in your day at all!’
While I agree with much of what Karen says, I’m still uncomfortable with the term ‘full-time mother,’ for exactly the reasons she mentioned in the first paragraph. We’re all mothers, all the time, no matter where we are or how many hours we spend caring for our children. Would a different term be more suitable and less dismissive of those women who do work outside the home? I know I personally hate ‘housewife’ and ‘home-maker’ too. Stay-at-home mum isn’t much better. Could ‘Primary care provider’ or ‘At-home parent’ be a valid alternative? Does it even matter?
I’m interested to hear your opinions, whether you work solely at home or also in a paying job. What do you think?
Getting it
21
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?
Mindful language: what does ‘mothering’ mean?
7
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.
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.