What happens when the most productive work on the planet isn’t recognised? What happens when this work, the work of rearing the next generation of productive workers is mythologised into “mothers are angels in training”? This is what happens. Any success you achieve goes uncelebrated as work, because this work, while done with love, is really just ‘nurturing’, an innate biological function of your gender, a generosity and a purity that came with your ovaries. And any failures you experience, rather than being related to the complexity of the work or the precariousness of your status as an invisible worker, are instead nothing short of your own moral failure.
This is why when newspapers report on research studies they look like this – Mother’s make-ups and break-ups may determine child’s later drug use. Here are some significant excerpts.
Preschoolers whose mothers had three or more break-ups or new partners were three times more likely than their peers to take up smoking and almost 2½ times more likely to use cannabis.
And this.
“If we can identify what increases a child’s risk in the first five years by looking at their family structure, hopefully we can prevent people becoming substance abusers later.”
This too.
When it came to alcohol, a mother’s drinking habits were the single most influential factor. Preschoolers whose mothers regularly drank were 8.5 times more at risk of taking up alcohol at an early age.
So, mothers who drink and sleep around are causing substance abuse problems in their children in later life, but wait… right at the end of the article –
Due to a lack of data the study did not include fathers but previous research had shown they were as influential as mothers, Dr Hayatbakhsh said.
I haven’t read the study (it’s not readily available), but I’ll hazard a guess all the same. And my guess is that contrary to the implication, correlation doesn’t mean causation.
Thanks to Lauredhel for pointing me to the article.
“Preschoolers who’d experienced desertion by three or more unreliable men…”? No, course not.
Anyway, it’s Friday night, the kid’s asleep, the Bloke’s gone back to work, I’m on my second (light) beer and I really should do my homework. It’s just a bit tricky on account of our household having no wife around to take care of us and clean up.
So the article is, of course, fucked up, but your first paragraph encapsulates something I’ve been trying to say concisely for years. I may needlepoint it onto a pillow.
@kate: Brava! I love your rephrasing.
[…] Blue Milk looks at the latest instalment of the popular pastime of slut-shaming and mother-blaming: Lesson one in “Mother Blaming and Shaming” […]
Also something I’ve been trying to articulate for years. Perfect. Thank you.
Word.
I also love your first paragraph.
Can someone please tell me why editors do not understand that the very first rule of science reporting is that correlation does not imply causation? I mean, journo’s should know it too, but how does this stuff so consistently get published?
It’s always great to find someone to blame, I suspect that had the study been in any way balanced and actually found that Dads have a similar correlation, they’d have been just as happy to blame dads.
Having said that, it is always a better headline that mothers are damaging their kids, because after all it is far more likely that fathers will hurt their kids. Well known fact.
Anecdote to back up the study (not in the way they intended, so har har to the writer):
My mother AND my father regularly drank around me and my brother… and we were on to the booze at an early age indeed. I once asked my mother when I had first had alcohol, because I couldn’t remember, having had it so much, and she said she thought it was when I was old enough to sit up at table – maybe around 4?
So this was my parents – parents that drink a wine or beer with dinner and don’t baulk at giving their kids a splash at age appropriate levels. My brother and I had small wine glasses of our own, and a little more wine in our glass as we got older.
Funnily enough, neither of us have ever been big drinkers. When my friends were all 13 and nicking their parents’ alcohol, I wasn’t interested because why bother nicking something I was allowed to have? I think there was something else in the association of having alcohol with dinner and therefore it was a strange idea just to have it on its own.
So what? Life is short and if can’t smoke a good reefer and laugh at what was just written, then where are we? Let’s go invade Georgia and phuqe with the Russians.
Very well said. I love how it’s always about what mom’s doing. In my household, dad is actually the more natural nurturer. I’m not bad but he’s better. I think it’s assumed that women are better here(thus more to blame when things go wonky) because our social structure has not allowed men to be nearly as free to be affectionate, warm, compassionate, all these things that are seen as weak or female.
Maybe when we instill in our boys pride for accomplishments in these areas things will change. My husband and I frequently tell our eight year old son how good he is at helping his younger sisters and compliment when he does things like soothe his sister after a fall of her bike or something.
Ha! Is it wrong that I laughed?
I can totally imagine the authors of this article hunting around in their spreadsheets looking for correlations between the bad mama behaviors and juvy delinquent behaviors…saying, “ok, nope, nope…that one doesn’t work, that one doesn’t work, crap, do we have nothing here after all that data collection?” and then “Aha! We knew it!” when they finally found one.
[…] Lesson one in “Mother Blaming and Shaming” – What happens when the most productive work on the planet isn’t recognised? […]
[…] a strange land calls the bluff on ‘get sole parents to work’ political campaigns. And blue milk reveals the sleight of hand that is combining mother blaming with shaming. […]
[…] Lesson one in “Mother Blaming and Shaming” […]
[…] during pregnancy are reported in the media. This kind of dumbed down public health policy approach, with all its moralising and infantilising of women really irritates the shit out of me… I’ll add public health […]
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As a Mom with two autistic children I am glad to know we got released from the burden of causing autism (google: fridge mothers, if you don’t know what I mean). Of course our new job is to cure them. Ahhh…mothers, what fresh hell can be blamed on them today?
[…] Lesson one in ‘mother blaming and shaming’ […]
An anecdote that underscores your first paragraph:
After being enthusiastically and emotionally praised by my son’s educators (I mean, tears, people) for my dedication and hard work in pursuing therapy for his learning disabilities, my husband said “I don’t see what’s the big deal. You don’t deserve any credit. You were just doing your job.” Never mind the 3 daily hours of work on sound and tongue positioning, the 2 hrs of fine & gross motor training, plus all of the various professional appointments, while pregnant & during my other son’s infancy. Maybe I’m just lazy, but that sort of agonizing boredom done for a child against his vehement protestations didn’t come ‘naturally’, and was anything but easy.
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