I kind of sympathise with Elizabeth’s sentiment here in her comment on a post of mine – Sorry, is our struggle stifling your productivity? (though am not so fond of its lack of tact, and certainly not the way in which that thread has suspiciously since turned into a troll attack – more on that later), while also having serious problems with it.
I don’t understand why women have not figured this out yet. Yes, YOU (the wife/gf/woman) will be doing 90% of the work, so if he does not pull his fair share (and he won’t) please do not bitch about what a piece of shit he is on TruMom Confessions. What did you expect?
Sure, complaining can seem a little futile, reinforcing of the status quo even, when it is done among ourselves and where all we do is nod in agreement with one another and share in a little mutual pity, then wrap ourselves tightly in a blanket of martyrdom and go back to more of the same. How safely non-threatening for men. The worst complaining of all is when it is expressed as some sort of endearing trait – “oh my poor darling Bill is terrible in the laundry, just terrible, he could never figure out colour sorting and he would just end up colouring all our whites. We would end up all dressed in pink. Hah. Oh, men!”. I have been around conversations like this where it feels like we have been dropped into some kind of dreadful retro TV comedy. But it isn’t always this way.
Sometimes venting is empowering – sometimes it allows women to feel less alone and feeling less alone can make you stronger in confrontations, plus, seeing that others experience the same problem as you allows you to recognise systematic oppression in your life, and where you can identify that, and understand that the problem is so much bigger than the ‘bitchy mood’ you’re being accused of carrying around, there you are more likely to also feel able to challenge oppression and negotiate a fairer outcome. When you do that, you have feminist action, and surely Elizabeth couldn’t complain about that.
This idea that men can’t/won’t change so what is the point in even getting worked up about it, what is the point in even trying for something akin to equality, what is the point in feminist thought anyway is a ridiculous exercise in defeatism. Oh no. There is no hope, so let’s throw ourselves under a bus.
Maybe Elizabeth would argue that the post was self-indulgent. Sure, I was kvetching into the ether but in that post I also note possible solutions to the inequality I am encountering; I identify some wider issues; I own my bit of martyrdom in the mix and what’s more, that post has been picked up and spread across the Internet more than almost any other post of mine. I have seen it discussed positively on forums, I have been notified of its use in university lectures and in conference presentations, and I have heard from people (many of them young and without children) who experienced an ah-huh! moment upon reading it – who suddenly understood the profound misogyny that confronts mothers. And writing that piece and reading the comments it received allowed me to see my own problem more clearly. I went and negotiated a better deal with my partner. So, probably good then that we didn’t all throw ourselves under a bus.
Now a little word on Kathryn’s trolling comments, which appeared right after Elizabeth’s…
You know, getting to know the baby-daddy, before you decide to pop out t kid, would solve many of your problems.
You could also try having a kid if and only if both parties agree that they want a kid and will accept equal responsibility for it.
Oh, there’s also the ever-popular strategy: put in some research time, before you decide to make a life-altering decision.
If you make it comfortable for baby-daddy to do nothing, well guess what? He’s going to do nothing!
In these comments you probably won’t ever find a better example of the naivety of post-feminism and a better insight into why so many of us were brought to a screaming halt when we entered motherhood and crashed into the virtually immovable wall that is gender roles in parenthood. That we are ‘not stupid like our mothers’, that we found a more evolved man than our fathers, that we earn our own money and always will, that we have entirely cleansed ourselves of ‘good mother’ mythology, that we will have the stamina for continual relationship negotiations, that we will simply divide household chores in the same carefully equitable and rostered fashion that we employed in our share-houses, that we will have all the choices we feel we deserve, and that the world won’t in fact benefit from our servitude and do all that it can to hold us there.. these are all things we think we know before motherhood. Welcome to Stupidville, you live here too Kathryn.
P.S. Lauca is an idiotic name. You clearly weren’t thinking about the child, when you were naming it.
P.P.S. If the train ride is such a hassle, why don’t you DRIVE? You have a car. What’s the point of using it solely to get to the station?
After all, baby-daddy doesn’t use HIS ride to get to the station.
And for good measure, we have Kathryn swamped in her unidentified privilege as well. Everyone has Anglo-Saxon names, everyone can afford city parking, everyone controls their fertility, everyone struggling is poor, everyone poor is immoral and ignorant, and of course everyone is fully empowered and fully informed.
Wow! The patronising is strong in Kathryn.
sometimes [venting] allows women to feel less alone and feeling less alone can make you stronger in confrontations
I definitely found this when I was having housework- and men-related trouble at home. As I said at the time, there’s something very comforting about knowing that other people have these kinds of arguments too.
Yes. Sometimes it goes beyond comfort and transforms “What is wrong with me or my partner that we can’t work this out?” into “Oh, it’s not defects in either of us; turns out there’s a whole system setting us up for this problem. The system deliberately applies stiff costs to getting out of this trap, but if we can apply the social-justice energy budget along with the relationship budget, we may actually make it.”
That’s exactly what I meant, I just couldn’t make it sound right 🙂
I read through older writings and comment sections on this blog precisely for ideas like this. I tend to direct my anger and fears about the inequality of work in our relationship squarely at my partner and wonder if we can work it out. Thank you for eloquently stating that it goes beyond just us. That this is so much a systemic issue that of course it isn’t going to be easy to unravel.
Wow, that trolling is awful.
I think venting can be quite cathartic. It makes me feel stronger to face the challenge. And I am often more positive after venting my negative feelings too.
I could really identify with your observation about women who talk about their partner/husband’s incompetence/laziness in endearing terms. I get SO annoyed when I hear women talk about their husbands this way for three main reason: 1) they usually generalise these comments to all men. All men aren’t like this and I find it insulting to my husband who is actually amazing around the house; 2) they seem to actually LIKE their husband’s incompetence. It gives them power. But it is power in an area that women don’t need to find power and distracts from the power struggle in other areas of life; and 3) they essentialise men by saying that this incompetence is part of their nature, they were just born like this, thus giving their husband (and men) little incentive to change/an excuse not to change.
A thousand times yes.
And why the harping on “baby-daddy” when you don’t use that word and it isn’t even accurate given that the normal meaning is an *ex*-partner?
I can think of several reasons, but they all boil down to “Kathryn is an arse”.
My guess was that she was being intentionally classist… given she reacted to Lauca’s name she may have decided I was not white so there may even have been some racism in her use of ‘baby-daddy’ too.
There are definitely groups and messageboards that mock mother blogger posts and individuals may then come over and troll. The language is kind of suggestive of that, but if BM had been linked from a troll forum it would probably be more than a few trolls.
I have definitely been linked to on this occasion, but I am reluctant to link to their forums here, however blog-fodder and feminist case study-worthy they may be, as I am not interested in a flame war.
Anyone desperately curious is welcome to email me.
This idea that men can’t/won’t change so what is the point in even getting worked up about it, what is the point in even trying for something akin to equality, what is the point in feminist thought anyway is a ridiculous exercise in defeatism. Oh no. There is no hope, so let’s throw ourselves under a bus.
I wonder if the sentiment might have been more that by roping ourselves into heterosexual parenting we’ve already “sold out” to the patriarchy altogether…not so much “what is the point of feminist thought” as “what is the point of being feminist if you’re going to go and get suckered into THAT.”
Not that it’s any more helpful when put like that, mind you.
Sometimes I do see that sentiment (that by roping ourselves into heterosexual parenting we’ve already “sold out” to the patriarchy altogether) in women who have given up on men altogether and really do believe that strict separatism is the only path to freedom. But they’re very clear that they are arguing for separatism: leave your home/marriage/job and save yourself.
But when a drive-by commenter like this argues that “I don’t understand why women have not figured this out yet. Yes, YOU … will be doing 90% of the work, so please do not bitch about what a piece of shit he is … What did you expect?” that underlying message boils down to “There is no remedy for injustice so just keep being exploited.”
Which is very strange, because in other areas of life there are remedies for dissatisfaction. If the mechanic agrees to fix your car, and you pay them, and then it turns out they didn’t fix the car, you can sue. If you accept a job, and then your employer announces they’re not going to pay you but you still have to work, you don’t have to. You can report them to the Department of Labor to get your wages. In most areas of life people are expected to follow through on their commitments, to keep their bargains.
So when I see a drive-by commenter like Elizabeth arguing that in marriage a man can promise anything to get a wife and then not be accountable for following through on his promises, that the wife should just consider herself stuck and not demand what she was promised, I read that as pure patriarchal propaganda. It’s an attempt to blame the victim (you should have known better) and to deceive us into thinking that justice is unattainable.
Of all the 25+ friends who have had babies in the last two years, it’s the ‘Oh my husband is so wonderful, he took the baby for a walk, thankyou best hubby in the world’ posts on Facebook which make me want to punch things. Expressions of endearment about ‘hubby’s’ (argh) charming inability to do washing comes a close second.
Brilliant post, brilliant other post, brilliant all round…
Somehow coming down on a child’s name (pseudonym or not) and saying ‘it’ invalidates any of the arguments she could have made, for me even if they were not ridiculous in the first place. What a silly statement. It always strikes me as very odd when people insult a child’s name – it deserves an award for sheer pettiness. Like someone saying:
“I refute your argument! AND YOU ARE NOT WEARING FASHIONABLE SHOES, HAHA!”
The silly vitriol really does negate any attempt at logic. This is merely going back to ‘all mothers must obey this set of rules I myself have worked out and otherwise they are silly and/or poor simpletons. I shall insult them for their own good!’
A big comment for a big subject:
Elizabeth and Kathryn take a particularly individualist approach to gender relations. There is a presumption not only that we should lie in the beds we make (feminist housework joke – geddit?), but also our choices are clear cut with obvious consequences that arise only out of the relationship between two individuals who don’t live in gendered social space.
To wit: I knew my partner for about 12 years before we chose to have kids. We both agreed that parenting would be shared equally and we both agreed that my career would be the primary career in the households. And so I chose to have children.
But neither my partner nor I chose to work in institutions that were not family friendly, live in a society where stay at home fathers have few real support networks and so feel isolated and lonely (which is of course true for mothers as well), live in a society where the cost of housing and education and my low wages – particularly compared to the men in my cohort – meant we have needed an extra wage at some times, live in an area where reliable child care is extremely difficult to locate … and on and on.
And so at various times I have kvetched, struggled, spoken about my resentment publicly, watched my partners’ career take off while mine stalled, done more cleaning and lost more sleep that was fair and wondered how I got into the mess. As has my partner.
I suspect for many of us there’s no one choice that is the source of our oppression in families. I’m really interested in whether we can identify turning points in our lives, or if we slip into our circumstances without really being aware of it and then suddenly look around and think ‘how the f**k did this happen?’
To place the blame for gender inequality on the poor choices of women rather than the structures within which we find ourselves, is as you say, BM, a classic indicator of the naivety of post-feminism.
As a white, educated middle class Australian female, I have experienced gender discrimination my entire life. I negotiated many barriers, quiet shamings and sometimes incredible verbal abuse from the patriarchy of family, school, university and work, however, as an unencumbered woman I managed to find solutions to these problems as they arose without too much drama or stuggle. I was pretty lucky, or so I thought.
And then motherhood.
This female experience has completely defined for me what feminism really means ‘in the world’. Someone has to mother, and this work is hard and it is not valued highly. I thought all those down trodden mothers just had low self esteem! I did not see that the ‘institution’ of motherhood was completely patriarchal until I was inside it.
Now that I share responsibility for the care of other humans, I have almost no wriggle room to create the feminist world I would like to inhabit. Because I cannot utilise my old way of finding a solution to discrimination or unfair or offensive situations – which was to change myself, my situation, find somewhere or someone else to be ,work, live, love, learn – I have had to confront the inadequacy of that response as a way of creating a fair and equitable world. This shapeshifting as a way of coping with unbending discrimination/assumptions is now impossible and I can now see I never did anything to change what I was encountering, I just avoided it.
Motherhood is the definer. To be a feminist inside the motherhood experience you have no choice but to push and kick and stand firm and resolute and learn to handle disappointment and frustration at the unfairness of the situation. Venting is part of this, writing down how outrageous it is that we have to do most of the work most of the time and constantly asking each other Why is this so? is so important to finding a way forward.
Things have to change, as the ‘post feminist individualists’ have their babies and find themselves inside the fence, their shock, horror and outrage may in fact make things change, I look forward to seeing what happens.
Hi,
I am a new reader. As I read this, I am struck by the thought, if someone doesn’t agree with something you say, they do not have to read this blog. Really. However, trolls enjoy causing controversy. But the end this is a valuable conversation that would not have occurred without the trolls.
My husband was a stay at home dad for three years while I worked. He ran a tight ship and is a wonderful father. Now that I am home I marvel at his homemaking skills, as I struggle on a daily basis. Not all of us are living in the same reality. I try and keep that in mind as I listen to other women and their own struggles.
Your post had several excellent points, but what resonated with me until the very end wasthe essential need for venting. The necessity, not anything less, for expelling frustrations allows the human body release itself of all the ugly toxins that build up over time.
People forget that the human body is made up of positive and negative ions. If negative thoughts form over time, a sickening cancer develops. These words came from a neighbor of mine that was fighting a hard battle against the big “C”. For years, she dealt with an abusive husband and had no one to talk to about her situation. In turn, her body responded by getting seriously ill.
Venting is what brings communities together because everyone pulls in to come up with a solution. So, Blue Milk — vent, vent, and vent.
My feeling is that people who bottle up their problems are dysfunctional in their own way. Humans need touch, other people, a sense of validation, and what not.
Great post!
Jasmine – love your comment, especially the bit about venting bringing communities together, which reminds me I really must get around to quoting this wonderful Jane Lazarre interview I came across recently. And yes, also your point about venting as a way of dissipating energy is a good one that I didn’t pick up on in my post.
But let’s keep the ‘negative thoughts lead to cancer’ talk to a minimum because I am an atheist and spiritual talk gets nervous and twitchy when it has to sit all alone on my site here; and second of all, a good friend of mine had breast cancer and it used to shit her to tears when people told her she had somehow brought that misery upon herself, and who could blame her cos frankly there were people like me with all my snarky thoughts 24/7 and cancer-free and there was she with her crappy breast cancer and why? not fair. So though unintentioned I would none the less hate to be pissing off people with cancer who have enough on their plates right now.
I believe Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book about the whole “positive thinking” business… I haven’t read it so I don’t have a ton to say there, but I think the gist is that by putting focus on “positive thoughts” one is shifting the blame for one’s disease/shitty situation on whatever external factors should be considered and blaming the victim. As in, you gave yourself cancer, by, you know, not having the right attitude.
That being said, I believe there is actual science correlating poor cancer outcomes with social isolation, which is different from “negative thinking”. It’s not woo woo to acknowledge that social/emotional situations affect our body systems and can therefore have health implications. But certainly it isn’t as cut and dry as not “bottling up feelings”…there are clearly bigger forces at work here keeping people(women in particular) in states of chronic stress. This post is an excellent example of it, in fact.
I just read the original post and was right there with you on that train. Do you still do this? Thankfully I drop my kids off BEFORE getting onto the train to go to work, but the before and after day care times are still complete chaos.
I always love reading your posts as they make me feel that I am not alone as a mother. I believe that the way many of us struggle with it is too often suppressed and people tell us not to complain if we don’t like the situation.
I think you speak for many of us blue milk and hope you continue to do so.
“What did you expect?” Well I expected that the man I married would love me enough to notice when I was struggling to cope. Or failing that he would respond when I confronted him about it. And he has. He’s not perfect, but he does respond. I’d prefer he was more proactive rather than reactive but we manage. That’s what I expected and that’s what I got. I’m still allowed to whinge that sometimes he doesn’t notice stuff, just like he’s allowed to whinge that sometimes it seems like I’m always tired. I’d rather that than a big screaming match. Sometimes little whinges help you get something off your chest before it explodes into a big thing, plus it’s easier on the kids.
Reading your blog, I’ve never made the same assumptions Kathryn does. I assume, if I ever met most of the men you write about, in a social context, I’d judge them to be good people, well-educated, pro-feminist, enlightened. I’m pretty sure you think your “baby-daddy” was and is one of the best/the best available choice. As I read it, that’s your point: even ‘good men’ are socialised and constrained by the kind of society we live in.
About Elizabeth: saying “it’s your fault, you got yourself into this” is a very old, borrowed-patriarchal technique, used to shut women up. I don’t agree with victim-blaming in this, or any other context.
Venting has a long and proud history in feminism: it’s called consciousness raising. It works, too for all the reasons you and everyone else mentioned.
The comments on this post are amazing! Thanks everyone for such incredibly thought-provoking responses, Loved the various tangents these have fired off in too.
[…] entire interview is just wonderful but this bit particularly stood out for me, particularly after this episode here concerning whether mothers complain too much and that episode over there concerning whether ‘mummy blogging’ is mindless. We seem as […]
@ Goldenblack
“Like someone saying:
“I refute your argument! AND YOU ARE NOT WEARING FASHIONABLE SHOES, HAHA!”
Fabulous! I’m going to start using that myself at work: I refute your argument because your shoes are clearly late 1990s, early Noughties at best! Come back to me when your loafers are sans tassle.
As to Elizabeth’s comment, let’s hope she follows through on her promise and never has kids – because she’ll enter a world of pain and heartache she cannot even begin to imagine.
I knew. Despite it all, I knew. I’d read all the stats relating to, y’know, no matter how equal the relationship before kids, post-kids the inequality was enough to sink a ship. I knew. And still, it came, truly, as a surprise. Y’know, just exactly how it works. How, suddenly, your partner becomes like another child who can’t accomplish the simplest of tasks because, if we’re honest, they simply don’t want to take on board the level of CONSTANT responsibility kids entail. And because they can, largely, get away with it.
The only interim answer for mothers is to not allow them to get away with it. I sympathised with every step of your daily grind except for one part which really jarred: he packs the bag, but I check it because he usually forgets something. Don’t check it (I know Lauca’s much older now but still…the point stands). Seriously. He’s an adult (presumably – if he isn’t, this is an entirely different issue!), and he (again, presumably), manages to function in a work environment without, for example, forgetting to take his presentation into a meeting in which he’s, er, doing a presentation. And yes, I know, it would be you who would suffer the Lauca breakdown when the missing item was discovered – the only option is to film said breakdown and livestream it to dad so that he really gets what forgetting an item in the bag can mean and then ask; is your daughter really so unimportant to you that causing this is OK with you? It’s harsh I know and everybody suffers – mostly (and most unbearably) – Lauca, but this is war, after all, and nobody said it wouldn’t be painful. And when you’re doubting yourself and thinking you’ll give in for Lauca’s sake, remember that it’s her future you’re fighting for. You’re doing this so she doesn’t have to go through a lifetime of the same crap you did.
When the BoogieMeister ‘forgets’ to do something or when he refuses to do something on the basis that ‘you’re better at it than me’, I ask myself not ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ but the far more enlightening, ‘Would he forget this if it was work?’ or the equally interesting, ‘ Would he admit he was crap at something in order to get somebody else to do it at work?’ Invariably, the answer is no. And we go at it from there. As you may have guessed, it’s not all wine and roses round our way…
Oh, I sound like I’m carping and, really, I’m not; believe me, I know how hard this shit is! As a mother of ‘one of each’ I’d also love to know your thoughts on the ironies of raising one child to tear privilege from the hands of the other – because, frankly, it’s starting to give me a headache trying to work out exactly how that works…I could post something on that topic myself but I find it’s way easier to point out other people’s flaws than set out your own..!
I’m late to the party but I find this interesting. I have, many times, grit my teeth and deliberately not checked a job or repeated work because my partner is learning to take responsibility after a lifetime of shifting it to other people. To his credit, he is involved (integrally) in this. When I explained what his ‘responsibility shifting’ was doing to my mental health and our relationship, he agreed I should stop taking his responsibilities and he should start looking after them. The situation has improved enormously, but it has also resulted in some sub-standard situations that worry me – our infant left unattended and in distress for hours while I was absent, older children (boys) who think it is OK to tear up the house then walk away from the mess. I have also learnt that we can leave the house without a nappy, baby food, or a change of clothes and have it be OK… most of the time. I have relaxed a fair bit thanks to biting my tongue and waiting to see where the consequences fell, and discovering that they weren’t as bad as I imagined.
On the subject of ‘Would he forget this if it was work?’, honestly, my husband would. He is great at what he does (which requires a lot of creativity and people skills), but his organisation and follow-up are patchy, so yes, he does half a job at home, and he does half a job at work too. At work, people are generous with him and pick up his slack or forgive him his faults because they genuinely value the excellent work he does do, they like him, feel cared for by him, and the damage is spread over many people. At home… I value, love him and forgive him but the damage is not spread. It’s pretty concentrated on me and our children, and compounded because the damage done to them, is damage done to me as well. So perhaps this analogy works if you are married to someone highly competent or conscientious, but not for my husband.
Hi, I stumbled across your blog and am loving it. I feel moved to leave a comment on this post because the post that started it all is brilliant. My husband and I have in fact worked out a reasonably equitable split, even post-kids, but for some reason packing food and other crap for day care is exclusively my domain. I think it is because in the early days I was prepping bottles of breastmilk and he was rightfully petrified of spilling any.
Also, I wanted to say- the disparity between the sexes when it comes to housework and child care causes real problems, even for women who have managed to make their own personal situations fairly equitable. I am a scientist, and the supposed difficulty of achieving “work-life balance” in a scientific field is often advanced as the reason for the continuing gender imbalance in those fields. This argument drives me bat-shit crazy for many reasons, not the least of which is that it gets used as a mask for sexism. “Well, of course there are fewer women who are full professors (or group leaders in industry or whatever) because they have to spend so much time on child care/housework.” Nevermind that the available research shows that even though partnered women are indeed spending more time on housework and child care than partnered men are, they are spending the same amount of time at work. So, whatever the men are doing with their “free” time, it isn’t working and shouldn’t naturally lead to more of them advancing in their chosen professions.
Um, OK. I’ll stop now. But I’m adding you to my blog reader.
Thank you for the fantastic comment.
Reeeeally nice to meet you here and will definitely come over and read your blog.
“Would he admit he was crap at something in order to get somebody else to do it at work?’ Invariably, the answer is no.”
You clearly haven’t worked with the same men I have, many of whom have pretended to be crap at using basic software programs, formatting documents, filing, and anything else they consider “admin” in order to try to get a woman to do it for them!
[…] Geez, why the hostility towards wives expressing some dissatisfaction with their lives? I wonder if it is a little bit of this and a little bit of that going on with you, Ms Hardy, bundled up with a whole lot of this? […]