This is an interesting post from Gaby Hinsliff, it is about the satirising of the ‘yummy mummy’ in the media – who is the yummy mummy? all we know is that she is very silly and that she isn’t us – but it was Hinsliff’s conclusions that I liked best. The argument that paid work often separates you from your own local community, that there is this hidden world that exists in your community during the week-day daylight hours and that if you’re not particularly proactive about it you will know nothing of it, you won’t even realise that you’re using it; unless, of course, events force you to be at home – something like having a baby or becoming disabled or retiring, perhaps …
You don’t have to have kids to care about a fair deal for tea growers, or global warming, or about dubious commercial values. Parents have no monopoly on caring about other people: indeed, are sometimes too obsessed with their own little darlings to put other people’s concerns in perspective.
But having children can also turn you from someone who merrily shoves all their recycling in the dustbin into someone at least vaguely concerned about the world in which they may grow up. You start signing petitions, worrying about stuff out of your control: threats to other people’s children – from drought and famine to abusive parents – can’t be so easily dismissed. You complain more, meddle more, are doubtless far more irritating, since the flipside of parental concern is nimbyism and hysteria.
But you also, occasionally and in small ways, do some good. You volunteer for stuff, even if only the school fete: because you now use public services more, you get involved when the library’s threatened with closure or the hospital’s going downhill. On maternity leave was the first time I became in any sense connected to the community I was ostensibly part of, but had previously left at 8am and returned to only after dark. Parenthood, and the sense of solidarity it brings with everyone else in the same knackered and sick-stained boat, is the first time many of us really understand the power and responsibility we might have as part of something bigger than ourselves. Easy to satirise: harder, I think, to dismiss.
hmm, as a poli junkie and community services worker, i spent most of my life since yr 10 engaged in one struggling community or another, from homeless teen to volunteer to community worker i was deeply involved in the communities that i lived and worked in, i once got elected to a community advisory body after reminding the assembled that i played frisbee in the street and bowed to the cars as they went past, it was the line of the night that got the biggest laugh and a chorus of “oh thats you” looks (also the first time i saw a kid, 6 or 8 or so totally absorbed with a tablet computer, a Newton, but that is another story).
the week before the Hbomb was born, there was an early spring heatwave, a coup in the pacific, a mine disaster in central Europe and a meeting to save the local pool. i have no conscious memory of any event either in the world or my locale in the subsequent year, none of it was important anymore. it took the impending 2007 election to shake me from my fog and out i went letterboxing, pushing the pram and getting to know some of the locals and getting some tips about tomato growing in the area.
My only clear memory of work was the change in my perceptions. the casual misogyny of my clients, mostly violent young offenders, morphed from an abstract socio-cultural trait to be tackled in appropriate settings with the dept approved tools into a direct threat to my daughter. i stopped caring about my clients and of course i had to quit (I should add that the the mob i worked for did every thing they could to keep my position open for me as long as possible, but i couldn’t go back, maybe in a few years if they still want me).
I guess that i’m trying to say it is sometimes the other-way around, well it was for me, there is this kind of glimmering of desire to get back in the saddle, as it were, but Dr Honey’s reports from the kinder committee have reminded me how much time i spent at meetings waiting, arguing and generally wasting my time and time now seems to be one of my most precious resources.
Cheers Blue Milk, oh and that line about abstract socio-cultural traits turning into threats to my daughter(s), that goes for the sexualisation thread as well.
Absolutely fascinating perspective, thank you for sharing it. (Aren’t you supposed to be writing a blog by now?)
‘who is the yummy mummy? all we know is that she is very silly and that she isn’t us’
that’s pretty patronizing. do you know any women you class as ‘yummy mummies’? have you ever bothered to get to know one? how would you feel if someone you class as a ‘yummy mummy’ said all feminist mothers were uptight and humourless?
whatever happened to supporting other women and their choices?
Please tell me that this was satire..? If it was then it was perfect. (As a feminist I will fight for your right to be yummy – hah!)
If it wasn’t then you probably should read the post I linked to – that line isn’t making fun of the so-called yummy mummy, it is poking fun at everyone for ridiculing a stereotype.
yes it definitely rings true for me, pre-kids I shunned neighbours, preferring to live in the industrial parts of town next to flour mills and such. And though I was involved in ‘community’ services such as volunteering at legal centres, it wasn’t actually involvement with MY community. My own community was unknown to me, my neighbours were unknown to me, My activities are in some ways more self interested now – the kinder, the local council, and the library are all things that have direct relevance to me and therefore I have a vested interest in being involved. But in a wider sense, I am also much more aware that the person begging for a buck in the street was someone’s child once and I can’t ignore that easily anymore.
I had more like dylan’s experience, though not as intense or as early – the decade when I was a childless adult, I was active in the community, active politically, redistributed free food, fixed coworkers bikes, tutored aged-out teens, assisted at the library, took the neighbor’s kids to the park, marched against the war in Iraq, marched for immigrants rights.
Parenthood removed me from the community. Pregnancy wiped me out, and new parenthood did it again. Almost 2 years off my bicycle, between my illness and the baby not being big enough for the bike trailer. Then just as I was getting a grasp on parenting (and my core muscles were able to hold up my spine again) I went back to work. Full time, because I couldn’t find part-time that covered daycare. Finally found decent part time after 2 more years, but then he started school instead of fulltime daycare and again I had no time when I wasn’t either parenting or working.
This fall, more childcare, so I’m hoping to get that part of my life back. I have finally reconnected with my childless friends this summer, met the new neighbors we have because of foreclosure and resale.
I think community connection and activism can find different foci in different life stages. I was more obviously politically active without kids, but I wouldn’t say I had a connection with my community or the immediate issues it faces, because I worked fulltime and had a social life and finances that pulled me beyond my area.
Post-girls, my focus has turned to more local issues (school fete, check; library, check; funding our public school, check) which reflect my changing interests but also my changing resources (time, money, skills sets – who knew I have the Midas touch raising money on school stalls?).
But my most important engagement in is my local community relationships, which I do increasingly see as a form of politics. Because we sent the girls to our local school, which we also volunteer at in various capacities, we’ve built really strong connections with other parents and their kids. This has opened the opportunities for us – and others- to contribute to a respectful, safe, accepting local environment for families. In terms of my impact, I think doing parent help in literacy classes has been more significant for people than marching against a pulp mill.
I guess, in short, there is big-P-and-big-picture Politics and small-p-and-tight-focus politics, and I’ve really enjoyed the shift from one to the other.
(But this has been a really slow shift and involvement, and what we do now reflects our very privelged social, economic and cultural position.)