File under ‘Places he has been in a sling’

His first holiday at the beach.

Pop, drag, baby

How much do I love this article about ‘Pop’, the gender-free toddler? A lot.

Sometimes when I dress Cormac I feel almost like I am playing with ‘drag’. Gee, I’ve really dressed you “Boy” today, little one.

Cormac is still so young that there seems little reason to dress him in a way that highlights gender, particularly when he looks so beautiful in white (instead he is regularly mistaken by passers-by for a girl, and I try to reassure them that I’m not insulted that ‘he’ might have been thought a ’she’ for a moment, really it is ok). Right now, to dress him overtly as any particular gender feels like ‘costume’ to me. But I remember it felt this way with Lauca when I dressed her in anything frou frou before she was old enough to look like a ‘girl’ or choose for herself to be girly.

Still, who doesn’t like playing with costume sometimes? I haven’t actually bought Cormac many clothes yet – I have plenty of left over baby clothes from Lauca in addition to gifts from friends and family. I’m not yet sure what clothes I’ll choose. But I like him in his ‘boy costume’ and it took me a while to realise why. Mostly it is because his boy drag consists of all the wintery shades of colour that I wear – gray, black, white, charcoal, chocolate brown etc.

So, mother and son, dressed alike. How naff.

Anyway, this article about Pop. Unlike some feminists I don’t believe gender is entirely a social construct, but I certainly think a good deal of it is.  I’m sure Pop is fine but I would love to know more about how Pop’s parents are coping with their revolution, because nothing is quite as rigid as gender stereotypes and babies. In reality the parents aren’t even being that revolutionary, it is not like they’re trying to imagine an entire lifetime for Pop without gender. These parents seem so reasonable, letting Pop choose what clothes to wear, and when it feels right to identify as a particular gender rather than just as Pop.. and yet imagine all the fretting going on. Take Susan Pinker for instance.

“Ignoring children’s natures simply doesn’t work,” says Susan Pinker, a psychologist and newspaper columnist from Toronto, Canada, who wrote the book The Sexual Paradox, which focuses on sex differences in the workplace.

“Child-rearing should not be about providing an opportunity to prove an ideological point, but about responding to each child’s needs as an individual,” Pinker tells The Local.

Precisely, Pinker. This is exactly the point the parents are trying to make: each child’s needs as an individual.

(Thanks to tigtog for the article link).

Tireds

Everybody in this house has a bad case of the tireds.

I messed up

In relation to my last post, this one.

Someone has emailed me privately and very politely (more than I deserve) pointed out to me that the hairstyle I refer to as “crazy” in the photograph in that post is in fact a very common hairstyle for African and African descended girls. They were understandably offended that I described the hairstyle as crazy. Now that they’ve told me this I can of course recall seeing the hairstyle many times on little girls, but I rarely recall seeing the hairstyle on white girls (at least in the places where I’ve grown up) such as is seen in this photo and so had not initially recognised the context of the hairstyle. However, I write on the Internet, a place broader than my own backyard and I need to think accordingly.

When I referred to it as “crazy” I was thinking it seemed like a lot of effort for the mother to style such short hair that way, on twins no less, and at least in my experience of doing little (white) girls’ hair it has been a pain in the arse to manipulate into tiny little pigtails. But all the same, crazy was not a good way to describe the hairstyle. And now that I am aware of messing up, I apologise completely for being racist.

(Also you may recall that I have a history of being a little lazy with doing little girls’ hair, so in general I should just shut it on the topic of hairstyles for little girls).

P.S. I just spoke to my partner about this post and he is little appalled with me. He pointed out that the little girls in the photo, and for all I know, the mother too, may be of colour. I have total white privilege going on. Sorry again.

Photography contest winners: mothers and daughters

The Association for Research on Mothering has announced the winners of its 2008-2009 photography contest. The competition had the theme of “Mothers and Daughters”. The photo above by Helen M. Stummer came third place.  I love it, the daughter filing her mother’s nails, the mother’s cigarette, and the crazy hairstyle* the little girls are wearing. “Shirley and Her Twins – E 6th St. – Lower East Side of Manhatten”.

Check out the ARM site to see the other winners.

*this was an insensitive thing to say, please see this post for my explanation and apology.

Image: From here, a site that parodies parenthood websites (the subject is rich with material, no?), though sadly some of it isn’t as funny as it is trying to be.

Hausfrau

Oh, I think you do patronise me some, mobile telephone company with your TV advertisement promising me that you understand just how stressful life is for me as a woman.

“Between taking care of the children, shopping, and catching up with friends and family”. Phew. Stress, stress, stress.

Seriously? When catching up with my friends or shopping is the biggest stress I face? Well, fuck me, I won’t need a mobile phone because I’ll have a personal assistant and a private jet.. and I’ll be drunk high on something.

Book Review: The Food of Love – your formula for successful breastfeeding

A review of Kate Evans’ The Food of Love: your formula for successful breastfeeding.

Motherhood, and breastfeeding particularly, can be a terribly earnest business and can consequently make for a deathly boring read. So it is refreshing when a writer comes along who can make a ‘how to’ motherhood book lively. Kate Evans is one such writer. Her style is relaxed, chatty and inclusive (not unlike really skilled bloggers), and her book about breastfeeding is both informative and enjoyable to read. Evans’ writing is greatly aided by her skills as a political cartoonist. The Food of Love is filled with hand-drawn illustrations, which as the book says means that if you’re too exhausted with new motherhood to read much you can still pick up the main points by flicking through the cartoons. Utterly charming, Evans’ breastfeeding mothers are depicted as a wonderful range of women with various ethnicities, sub-cultures and body shapes (including loads of different breasts). (Although one of Evans’ few oversights is its heteronormativity). The breastfeeding mothers in The Food of Love successfully destigmatise the physique of motherhood. When a mother in one of Evans’ cartoons hikes up her t-shirt to feed her baby you can see a post-pregnancy saggy tummy. And while her mothers will sometimes look absolutely serene feeding their babies, they might also be in a range of other real-life motherhood states like worn-out, distracted, or even simultaneously computering.

The Food of Love covers all the usual topics of breastfeeding; how to attach a baby to your nipple, how to know if your baby is getting enough milk, and how to cope with engorgement, but also goes where few other breastfeeding books have peered – including topics such as feminism and body image. And certainly no other ‘how to’ book that I’ve read has ventured into the problems of breastfeeding when it triggers memories of incest and sexual abuse for women. If I gave out stars for my reviews I would give this book an extra star all of its own for finally including this issue, which I suspect is a hidden and significant cause behind low breastfeeding rates. Evans’ section on post-natal depression, which includes strategies for partners on how to bring the problem up, is also second to none.

My only caution with this book is one that I’d have with any breastfeeding book and that is that latching a tiny newborn’s mouth on to your eye-popping new nipples is tricky stuff, maybe too tricky for any book. The instructions in The Food of Love read every bit as complicated as it was in practice for me the first time around. I’m not sure that I’d have got there through books alone, no matter how carefully they were written, and in the end it took several appointments with the best lactation consultant this city has to offer to fix my latchment problems.

The Food of Love also examines several of the stickier parenting debates, like co-sleeping versus separate rooms, and baby-wearing versus prams. Those women entirely not interested in giving co-sleeping, baby-wearing and the like a go may find Evans’ approach a little obtrusive because her enthusiasm for these practices is as great as it is for breastfeeding, but I doubt the book will drive those women away. Evans is a cheerful writer, and ultimately so endorsing of mothers (when was the last time you read a parenting book that concluded with instructions to ignore the book if in any way it has undermined your confidence as a parent?) that her book is unlikely to offend in spite of its partisan nature.

In sum, this book is adorable.

In a pinch

Image: Sarah Hanson-Young

Achieving true family friendly work practices is going to require a little flexibility – flexibility on the part of families and flexibility on the part of workplaces. For a long time workplaces have operated as though families didn’t exist, while simultaneously relying heavily upon the support provided by stay-at-home wives. Now that female labour is a significant component of the paid workforce unpaid caring work is not so easily segregated. All the same, the accommodations necessary for this change have been made almost entirely by the family, namely women and children. After several decades we have collectively realised that inflexible workplaces are neither fair nor all that successful in the long run.

Often the changes necessary to make a workplace family friendly require more mental adjustment than significant institutional change, although the mental adjustment can be no less difficult for some to achieve. The incident which happened last week in the Senate is a good example of this.

Briefly. During the debate of a bill (which ironically was about a matter involving children) a division was suddenly required. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young was spending some time outside the chamber with her two year old daughter, saying goodbye to her before she flew home to her father, and found herself caught in a difficult situation. She was immediately required for a few minutes to attend a vote but being nowhere near her office she was unable to leave her daughter. Hanson-Young decided to take her daughter with her into the chamber for the vote, something she had done without incident once before. Although the toddler was quiet and settled, Senate PresidentJohnHogg enforced parliamentary rules and had the child ejected from the chamber. As soon as the toddler was forced to separate from her mother she burst into tears. Hanson-Young sat through the vote listening to her daughter crying outside the chamber while feeling all eyes upon her in the gallery. She says she felt both humiliated, and distressed for her daughter.

To his credit, Leader of the Greens Bob Brown argued strongly in support of her and the Greens are planning to bring forward a debate on the matter this week.

“It wasn’t a stunt, it was just an event that unfolded with Sarah wanting to be with her little infant for a few minutes more before they got separated for the coming day. It was a mum and daughter thing that was creating no harm. Most workplaces are not going to worry if a child’s there for a couple of minutes and a mother or father sees their child for a couple of minutes, particularly if they’re not going to see them for a little while. This isn’t a call to allow children to be 24 hours a day in the Senate or any other part of the Parliament. I think a little bit of common sense has got to prevail here.”

In an ideal world more paid work would be able to be performed alongside family work but in the meantime the two spheres remain relatively separate and parents make arrangements accordingly. Every now and then arrangements will fail. Shit happens, and not including lunch hours, I can count the times on one hand that I have had to have my daughter at work with me for an hour or so when our care arrangements have temporarily broken down*.  It isn’t ideal but the alternative would have meant leaving work altogether for the day. My employer turned a blind eye, Istrived to minimise the impact, and with constant gentle reminders from me my daughter even did her bit to try and control any intrusive child behaviours.

A couple of bullshit arguments are being used in the public debate around the incident involving Hanson-Young and around family friendliness more generally. Firstly, while it is true that few workplaces could accommodate their employees’ children on a regular basis most of them can for a short time, in a pinch. To say that in changing parliamentary rules to allow for unforeseen circumstances like those of Hanson-Young’s that politicians will be getting some kind of privilege beyond that other workers is nonsense. Further, federal politicians are required to spend a lot of time, more than most working parents I’d estimate, away from their family homes. A little flexibility isn’t going to tip the scales too far in their favour. Thirdly, most parents are capable of making a reasonable judgement call about their children – can my child handle this situation without disruptingeveryone’s work or am I better off ditching this idea however much that inconveniences my boss? And to argue that family friendly work arrangements will be automatically abused is just mean-spirited. Like Bob Brown, I’m not advocating that the Senate be turned into a daycare centre. Few parents could, or indeed would want to work under siege from a dozen toddlers.. but when shit happens a very young child should be able to stay with its mother for a short period of time, in a pinch, without any humiliation or tears.

Sometimes workplace flexibility changes won’t work, sometimes they will require adaptation, sometimes they will need to be reviewed .. but this is flexibility, and with all due respect, it is the kind of adjustment working parents are doing day in and day out at home.

* On one occasion when my mother was caring for our toddler she received short notice of a job interview. Neither my partner nor I were able to take our daughter at work on that particular occasion and so my poor brave mother took our child along with her to the job interview – and successfully got the job!

Rock and Roll

This adorable baby is moth-eaten, thus his need for a hat, it is winter here. If only he was balding uniformly, instead he is all patchy. I can only hope it won’t end up looking like this, I guess.

I know LesbianDad is over hipster t-shirts on babies with slogans, but this one is too cute. And I realise saying it is ‘too cute’ is kinda over too. But it reads “I pulled an all nighter”. Cute.

Lauca took the photo by the way. Also, cute.

Cute, cute, cute.

I think Cormac has my eyes. Cuuuu.. alright, I won’t use that four letter ‘c word’ again.