The explosive coverage of mothering by The New York Times with “Motherhood vs. Feminism” and TIME with “Are You Mom Enough?” seemed to hit a nerve of cynicism faster than any other ‘mother wars’ media event I have witnessed. Finally, almost everyone got it. Yes, there was a morsel of interesting discussion here but generally, this was a beat-up, this was click-bait, this was damaging. The only people missing from all the weary exasperation being expressed about the exploitation of yet more faux female competition were certain feminists. More on that in a moment.
Here’s the best of what was written in reply by feminist mothers in big media –
To be fair, there were occasional flashes of common sense to be found. Author Erica Jong said, “Let’s first agree that there is no such thing as perfection in motherhood — or in any human activity.” And Maria Blois, author of “Babywearing: The Benefits and Beauty of This Ancient Tradition,” sensibly pooh-poohed the whole question, saying, “Attachment parenting does not do anything to us, it does not ‘destroy feminism,’ it is not ‘bad for working moms.’ It is simply an ideology we can use within the context of our own life and priorities.” And blogger Annie Urban wisely declared that “To achieve meaningful equality, we need to push for a society that values fathers” as well. It’s unfortunate their insights are mired in such a steaming pile of editorial tosh, and the flimsiest of pretexts. Most of us do the best we can with what we’ve got. And in 2012, there shouldn’t be any room for debate that being a mother and being a feminist are very much in harmony.
Missing from Badinter’s philosophical schema is any sort of intellectual middle path that, instead of pitting mothers against children, might lead to solutions that could benefit both. The importance of finding that middle path has been suggested for decades by social scientists whose research has consistently shown that when mothers are able to carry on satisfying lives, their children tend to do better as well. The evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, for one, has argued strongly, in her important book “Mother Nature” (the chief argument of which is badly misrepresented in “The Conflict”), that a life combining both nurturing and providing for family is not only the most satisfying, but also the most traditionally natural for mothers. Hrdy’s research teaches that the split, or conflict, between a woman’s nurturing maternal role and her out-in-the-world, family-provider role is a false one that flies in the face of the mothering practices of our primate ancestors, and that has been greatly aggravated by the work patterns of the modern industrialized world.
This sort of argument leads to the suggestion that it’s as much, if not more, the culture of work as the culture of motherhood that must change for the promise of the women’s movement to bear full fruit. This idea, unsexy though it is, provides the only realistic starting point from which to think our way toward greater progress in America, where meaningful work-family policies are all but nonexistent.
From Deborah Siegel and Heather Hewett:
There are kernels of wisdom here.
Badinter, for example, wants all women (and particularly those who are French) to resist ideals of mothering that view women as the primary, more “natural” caregiver, which can make it all the more difficult to balance motherhood with work and a full, adult life.
We applaud the way she asks us to examine these intensive ideals of motherhood and their reach. No woman should feel shame because she fails to breastfeed or give birth without an epidural. More fundamentally, we agree that care-giving shouldn’t be the province of women alone.
We disagree with Badinter, however, that the obstacles are merely in our heads. We think they’re in political structures, too. Despite Badinter dismissing as irrelevant the French policies that make health care and day care accessible and affordable, here in the U.S., we lack such support for parents, mothers in particular, who work and do the second shift at home.
The battle for pumHping stations and flextime seems a worthier cause than the trumped-up war between those who breastfeed and those who don’t.
So, if Salon and CNN and The New York Times can do this then why not a big feminist site like Feministe? How did Feministe watch this debate being cooked up in mainstrea media and not get how anti-women it all was? Why doesn’t Amanda Marcotte want to question men’s roles or the incredible inflexibility of American workplace practices more? (I mean, you want to talk about privilege, how about how poor mothers are left behind on paid maternity leave?) Why does Hanna Roison deliberately bait mothers now, instead of just questioning one-size-fits-all parenting?
Because I’ve got a couple of frustrations here. If you see people criticising women’s lives and how women perform their work (and raising children is work); if you see people reducing women to stereotypes that women, themselves, are saying don’t fit them; if you see women being told that the problem is all about them and how much they need to hate another woman to fix the problem, then as a feminist, you’re supposed to be a little fucking suspicious.
I get that some of you find attachment parenting freaky. For the record, it is mostly because you don’t mix with a wide enough variety of parents, because seriously, attachment parenting approaches are done all over the world and have been forever and really aren’t that controversial and almost every parent is doing a bit of it. I get that some of you find mothers judgey. I’ve been to playgroup, I understand the judgementalism out there and that it hurts, but attachment parents don’t have any kind of monopoly on that. (And as feminists we can do better than to perpetuate it). I get that some attachment parents are incredibly privileged and unaware of it. Many of us aren’t, a lot of attachment parents are pretty bloody marginalised actually, like the Sudanese refugee mother in one of my playgroups or the single mother by choice who is also a little person that I shared the stage with at a panel event recently or the transman breastfeeding his son that I wrote about recently. I get that some attachment parenting types aren’t all that feminist. It’s a battle out there for feminist mothers everywhere, you know.
But here is what I don’t get. I don’t understand how you keep hearing from us and you still keep shutting us down and reducing us to stereotypes of stupidity and oppression. I don’t get how there’s this one little bit of women’s lives where you want a free pass to poke fun and tell off. Because, yes, I’m a vegetarian, Montessori-schooling, baby-wearing, no control crying, hen-keeping, co-sleeping, extended breastfeeding mother (my son is three years old and except that I’m not as cute as the mother on that TIME cover it could have been us); but, my blog is also named after the myth that breastfeeding women shouldn’t drink alcohol! I work outside the home, in corporate land; I ride a motorcycle; I swear; I drink; I buy my kids hot chips from McDonalds; I used disposable nappies; I chose an epidural for my second birth; I can’t sew; I’m good at maths, I fight with my male partner about inequality in our relationship; and I’m a feminist.
What I am not is your stereotype for ridicule and contempt and neither are any of the other parents, attachment-leaning or otherwise, that I know. This discussion should be moving on to a higher level. Mothers are ready for a more sophisticated, more useful, more political discussion of motherhood than what gets offered to them in ‘The Mother Wars’. They’re ready to be asked questions about what they see as the problems with the institution. They should be finding that discussion on feminist websites.
(For a complete list of posts I have written on this topic before, see the list at the bottom of this post).
I agree with your post, and wanted to add that for me the most maddening part of reading those feminist attacks on attachment-mothers is their creation of an ultimate straw-man argument. Even in one of the excerpts you quote above there’s the old, tired statement about how mothers are not less for not breastfeeding/having epidurals, which is true enough, but seriously people – formula supplementing/feeding and epidural-having mothers are actually the majority of people in the US, not the minority. The cultural discourse of motherhood in the US is actually shaped by formula and medicalized birth, strollers (not baby wearing) and CIO. AP mothers are isolated and marginalized. I understand that in some sub-cultures, the norm is reversed – but I really wish that everybody would at least try to recognize the persistent oppressions and judgments that alternative parents face in the US. This is a particularly important point because of the public health crisis that is unfolding in the US, in terms of maternal and infant mortality rates. Women in conventional hospitals are subject to a really horrifying number of coercions and restrictions on bodily autonomy and basic human rights (especially African American women, who have the highest rates of maternal mortality, and women of size). Every feminist should care passionately about this, no matter what they think of unmedicated birth (though women pushing for physiologic birth are at the vanguard of the movement for women’s health care rights), partially because it is deeply tied up in all the erosions of women’s bodily autonomy in the US (abortion rights being the most widely discussed). Formula promotion and feeding did NOT arise out of a feminist desire to allow women to work more easily outside of the home, though it eventually had that application – rather it was a part of the assertion of medical authority over women, and demeaning and marginalizing female bodies (good mothers use formula; your milk is bad/inadequate, your body doesn’t work). How can we as feminists ignore *that* history? The whole medical industrial established is aimed at keeping birthing women in *bed* and *quiet* – epidurals are not about female empowerment. I mean, they *can* be, and they can also be tools of oppression. One simply cannot talk about one application without acknowledgment of the other.
The critique of “natural” caregiving is worth making, but I’m gobsmacked by having to explain to feminists why their general critique of AP (esp breastfeeding and co-sleeping) perpetuates the patriarchy and kyriarchy by promoting and sustained the male-model of work, life, and parenting (that is, you can only be truly feminist if you model yourself on men by being as hands-off a parent as possible, return to work quickly, and subordinate all interest in child rearing to the desire to make money). The only way to be a woman is to be a man, apparently.
Really good point about the origins of epidurals & formula. Then can be empowering–I would never deny a woman an epidural if that’s her choice–but there’s also a huge profit motive behind the industries that push them. More medicalized births don’t just make things more convenient for doctors, they also make more money for the medical system too. Formula & all the associated products make millions for corporations.
But, see, these comments are EXACTLY why the feminist community is so split on this issue. You’re essentially saying that women who choose to formula feed/have an epidural or scheduled c-section/prioritize career and have partners take care of the children, are like men? Isn’t feminism about allowing every woman to decide what being a woman means to them?
Also, just because there is a profit motive behind something does not make it any less worthwhile as a practice. People make money off of slings, co-sleepers, nursing bras, and so forth, as well. Additionally, there is a tremendous financial incentive to the government if we all breastfeed, considering the cost of subsidizing formula to those on WIC or other assistance programs. You could easily argue that breastfeeding would SAVE the government millions. In fact, I think Melissa Bartick did just that a few year ago, with the Burden of Suboptimal Breastfeeding piece.
No one is going to win the “who is the most downtrodden” argument. AP-ers get grief from ignorant members of society and certain types of judgmental medical professionals. Epidural-users and formula feeders get crap from the Internet (which is the only society many new moms have until they get out of the newborn craziness) and, in the case of the latter, the medical establishment. What we should be fighting for is better support for ALL parents, regardless of how they choose to birth or raise or their children. I’m not sure what that would look like, but whatever it is, it’s high time we started focusing on it.
Thanks for this comment. I agree.
this was so powerful! thank you!
The only way to be a woman is to be a man, apparently.
Yes, that’s exactly why I find certain critiques of AP to be so puzzling.
But only now am I beginning to realize that, as a corporate-ladder drop-off, I’m not really what so-called second-wave feminists had in mind.
I’m conflicted by your post here. I’m not a mother but I fully intend to be one some day so I follow the feminist mothering blogosphere with a great deal of interest. I don’t often comment on your blog, though I read it regularly. I also read Feministe, Pandagon etc. I agree with you that the response on these blogs is faulty and that they do often criticize a strawman version of attachment parenting.
At the same time, I feel that there’s lately been a trend in middle-class parenting that seems to deal in a sort of oneupmanship about who’s had the most “natural”, most un-medicalized birth, sacrificed the most for their babies. I’m not saying you’re contributing to this trend, but sometimes it can seem like one big competition (and I don’t even have kids yet!) and the reaction to attachment parenting philosophies is probably an overreaction to that. The comment above for example, I was fine with until the last paragraph — any criticism of AP is somehow perpetuating the patriarchy and kyriarchy? Give me a break. If in my life, I find that working a full-time job and not co-sleeping is the best arrangement for me — that emphatically does NOT mean that I am any less a woman, or trying to be a man. I am an individual with my own needs and I trust that I know best what to do in my life. Choosing to go back to work early doesn’t mean that I’m selfish or am governed by a desire to make money. This is the sort of thing that gives attachment parenting a bad name.
I would like the freedom to pick and choose among the various parenting philosophies on offer without so much criticism and the recognition that parents are all doing the best they can in a world that’s often tough for parents, particularly in the US. I’m not sure, for example, why not having an epidural is held up to be some sort of achievement, like bearing a lot of pain will somehow make me a better mother. No thank you. I would like however to be able to reject having an episiotomy and would push back against an unnecessary scheduled Caesarian. But ultimately, these are different for every woman and I reject the notion that one choice is universally better than the others.
And amen, amen, amen to your call for a change to workplace policies and procedures that would make it easier to make any sort of parenting, attachment or not, to take place. Both my boyfriend and I are committed to equally shared parenting when the time comes, but are struggling with how to structure a career in the US so that we both have good jobs and can take enough time off to be with our kids. This society is woefully poor at the whole work-life balance thing. So stop picking on the mothers, and try to change the institutions, if you really want attachment parenting to spread.
I can tell you that as an American mother who did choose to go back to a full time job fairly “early” (the full details are complicated, but I was essentially full time again by 4 months post-partum), and who did only partial night cosleeping (and that mainly out of desperation to get more sleep, not any parenting philosophy other than my unwillingness to listen to the amount of crying required to do CIO), and who had an epidural the first time and a C-section some would argue was unnecessary the second time (baby was breech)…. I don’t feel judged at all by this post.
But I can see where you’re coming from, because I’ve watched that trend, too, and thought that mothers who want to be in the workplace are getting guilt-slammed from both sides of the political spectrum. It is too bad, and I have no idea what the answer is, but I am pretty sure it is not the nonsense that Time did, or the extremism of Badinter.
But then, I’m 5 years into the parenting thing, and I have a much thicker skin when it comes to my choices than I did when I was just starting out. Judgment gets thrown on mothers no matter what we do, and once I really saw that- i.e., that it wasn’t just the choices I’d made that were judged wrong by some, but that any choice I could have made would be seen as wrong by someone- I found it a lot easier to shrug it off. It also helps that my kids seem to be doing great, and none of the dire predictions people made about my parenting choices have come to pass as of yet.
Cloud, I do agree with you that the further you get into parenting, the more you realise that someone will always have a judgment to make. I think that those very intense times with your first newborn tend to throw everything out of perspective a little. I remember feeling very threatened by an attachment parenting mother in our playgroup because it seemed that if she had such strong views, and mine were different, then one of us must be wrong and maybe it was me. Nine years on she is one of my closest friends and much of my parenting would fall within the attachment spectrum, and much of it would not (as would much of hers). Like most people I’m just getting along doing whatever seems to work and I’ve (mostly) learned to let go of my own judgments and not be affected by others.
I am so sick of the focus by main stream media around parenting issues constantly being on the manufactured ‘mummy wars’ between working and stay-at-home mothers, or between breastfeeding vs bottlefeeding or whatever. Mothers, and all women, have much bigger battles to fight. I find it hard to believe that any individual mother really gives that much of a damn whether any other individual mother breastfeeds or has a c-section or co-sleeps or cries it out. We do care about the systemic issues that might reduce women’s right to breast feed, or reduce women’s birthing choices as well as caring a whole lot about equal pay and access to justice and education and on and on.
Anu – Thanks for your comment. I think there are questions worth asking about attachment parenting in the way it is sold to women, there are valid criticisms to be made but that’s part of the problem with how it is being handled by some feminists.. when they’re too busy being mean and judgemental and talking out of their arses, because man I see a lot of flat-out ignorant stuff being said about parenting, that we can’t even have a criticial conversation about it. A better place to start the conversation from would be to ask attachment-leaning feminist parents how they find it, are there conflicts, are there challenges, do they relate to what Badinter is saying..
Also, I think there is a gross tendency to lean towards seeing mothers as smug or full of themselves or preachy or whatever when we need to consider that mothering is one of our jobs and everyone tends to sound a bit full of themselves and a bit self-absorbed when they’re talking about their jobs and their work. I mean, take a workaholic and engage him in a conversation about how he does his job and you will hear the same. That’s not to say that some mothers don’t drive me absolutely mad with their ideas of parenting and their views about my parenting but just to put it in some context.
Thank you for writing this post, I absolutely agree with the points you raise. All this infighting just distracts us from the bigger picture. Patriarchy is not friendly to women and it’s not friendly to children so it’s not friendly to families. So much needs to change for our workplaces and our society as a whole to be genuinely supportive of families _that’s_ the conversation that needs to happen. Not bringing it down again to individual choices/judgements as if we’re all parenting in a vacuum.
My partner and I are two women raising a two year old son, I’ve been working full time while she was on mat leave for two years and we’ve been doing our own brand of AP. We have copped flack all the way along from maternal child health nurses/our families/random people in the street. Everyone thinks they have a right to judge mothers, fathers are almost entirely absent from the conversation and structural/systemic factors are absolutely non-existent. It might seem like everyone is falling over themselves to support breastfeeding but when things got tough for us (our son has a range of food intolerances and was very underweight, diagnosed ‘failure to thrive’) the first thing they all said was ‘give him formula, why don’t you ween him?’ When breastfeeding was actually the only thing we could count on.
It’s an emotional issue, being a new parent is an extremely vulnerable time. Things never turn out the way you expect and what parents need, like what all women need, is genuine choices.
Very insightful post, but I think there is one important point that has been ignored: a lot of the animosity towards AP practices is directed towards the male “experts” who have promoted the attachment parenting movement. The Newsweek cover story was about William Sears and his empire – and yet all we, as feminists and bloggers, are discussing is the Mommy Wars bullshit and the woman on the cover. Yes, playgroup bitchiness is pandemic, but I think that most of the articulate, educated women who are debating these issues are able to separate overgrown mean-girl antics from reality. Unfortunately, that reality has men like Dr. Sears, Jack Newman, and Jay Gordon telling us that in order to be Good Mothers, we must birth “naturally”, breastfeed exclusively, and co-sleep. Does no one else see the problem in this?
It’s true that formula wasn’t born from feminist desire or need, but it was also not invented to convince women not to trust their bodies. Women had been using paps and milks and other concoctions which were having a tremendously negative effect on infant mortality rates; physician began cooking up their own infant formulas and selling them, and then of course capitalism took over and the rest is history. I completely agree that women were taught not to trust their own bodies, but I can’t comprehend how we aren’t seeing the same parallels now in how breastfeeding is being promoted and “supported”.
In order to get anywhere in this conversation, we need to work together to stop the hierarchy of parenting from existing. Unfortunately, the big names of AP have done a lot of damage to the public perception of the practice. The more nuanced discussions questioning what AP has done to feminism are not necessarily judging those who practice it, but rather taking on the underlying meme that AP is the only or best way to parent. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone needs to “label” her parenting. Trusting our bodies also means trusting our instincts, and trusting the bodies and instincts of others who may make different choices.
As a child psychologist and a mom, one of the things that is so misleading about attachment parenting is the name. It is only called attachment parenting because of the theory it was based upon. It is not called this because it is the only form of parenting which allows parents to develop a secure attachment relationship with their children. There are numerous ways to develop a secure attachment relationship with our kids. I explore more of this myth here for anyone who is interested:
http://www.themommypsychologist.com/2012/04/15/what-does-the-mommy-psychologist-have-to-say-about-attachment-parenting/
I’ve been reading this blog for a few weeks and waiting to comment…oh Lordy, it makes my brain sparkle with happiness just to read this post and comments. Thank you.
Suzanne’s comment about the male “experts” is the one I’ve been waiting to hear in this particular discussion. I watched a US morning news show featuring the Time cover model mom and Dr. Sears cooing about how really, AP is great, and so simple, and whatever, however much you can do is fine. Pardon our titillating cover though, people, made ya look! I felt so used as a mother to sell magazines.
On that show, Dr. Sears summarized AP roughly as this: “Imagine you are on a desert island with your baby. You’d have to carry it, spend lots of time together and breastfeed…people have been doing AP for thousands of years. It’s natural instinct.”
In one of his web articles, he also references how breastfeeding doesn’t necessarily hold a mom hostage, and his wife seriously “didn’t mind” getting up 6 times a night (I believe that was the actual number) to breastfeed.
This is where a lot of women have problems with the so-called debate. Um, Bill, I don’t live on a desert island. Or in a nomadic tribe where I’d wear my baby and pass it from auntie to auntie. I’m isolated, trying to work part-let’s-call-it-fullish time, with two kids, far from my extended family, and I’m struggling, and hell yes I mind getting up 6 times a night. I could use some help on the other end, and someone to support me as I try to do this in a natural, loving, attentive way. And by the way, I’d like it not to be called “help,” as if this is all on me and concerned people are patting me on the shoulder or pitching in, but instead call it parenting, or a society that supports families and children.
Last paragraph, so true! That’s the point where the conservative Christian AP-type Mummies and I part ways (and often end up looking at each other a bit peculiarly, after happy discussions on breastfeeding three year olds, which carrier/wrap we liked best and which cloth nappy worked on our children). I refuse to do this gig alone; there were two people involved in creating this new little being, ipso facto there are two ‘primary caregivers’.
What bothers me most about the Time cover and a lot of the discussion going on is that really “The Mommy Wars” is just another way to pit women against each other while ignoring the real issues that face mothers. I am sure Time just used this to sell magazines, but it seems to be part of an underlining current to ignore the real “war” on mothers by putting them to “war” against each other. It makes me sad that so many feminists seem to have fallen into this trap as well.
Ideally, we could all just agree that there are aspects of AP (and mothering in general) that are incompatible with feminist beliefs and there are those aspects that are completely in tune. That way we could move beyond this bullshit me vs you and focus on the political, economic, social, etc. policies that prevent women from having the full freedom to parent in the ways they want and that work best for them and their families.
I agree with your first paragraph. I am not so sure about the first sentence of your second. Could you give example of aspects of mothering that are incompatible with feminist beliefs?
I do agree with the goal stated in your last sentence.
[…] than I, have parsed through these responses with an even hand and critical eye (see fellow blogger Bluemilk for one of my favorite commentaries on the AP debate). However, at the end of the day, regardless […]
Yes to Suzanne and czechmate about the “male experts.”
Only in the last week or so have I wondered if I should just give up on the AP label. What good does this label do me? On the one hand, Dr. Sears (who came up with the label in the first place) downplays the role of attachment relationships with allomothers and alloparents (and API itself is possibly even worse on this topic). On the other hand Katha Pollitt (whom I’ve adored, ADORED, for years) is accusing me of having “fallen” for a “spiel,” while in the same breath claiming not to be attacking me.
I count myself very lucky for having read the work of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (cited in the quotation from Judith Warner, above) early in my life as a parent.
In my experience, Hanna Rosin has a really rocky relationship with feminist ideas and politics. She tends to latch onto certain mainstream representations of what it means to be feminist, then castigate herself for not meeting those expectations, and then reject “feminism” because it made her feel like crap. Specifically regarding breast-feeding, she wrote an article a couple of years ago (“The Case Against Breastfeeding,” The Atlantic, 2009) about how she’d been made to feel (by “feminists”) that she’d failed as a mother because she wasn’t able to or comfortable breastfeeding.
As a feminist myself, a not-parent but with strong feelings about including parents and children in feminist conversation, I find her pieces unnecessarily polarizing. The sort of journalism that finds generalizes out from a personal experience to imagine a cultural “trend” that isn’t. And then blame feelings of guilt or whatever on The Feminists (’cause we’re targets so many people enjoy talking shit about).
[…] My friend wrote me an email to point me towards this amazing post by Blue Milk: Feminists, a little perspective, please. […]
Thank you for putting differing, well thought out and respectful opinions about this issue on your blog. I read it often but have never commented. Everyone is asking how I feel about the Time cover because I use many AP practices/philosophies in my parenting style and still breastfeed my 19 month old at bedtime, through out the night if she wants and in the morning before work. I am a single, feminist mom and can see both/all sides of this debate. It does pain me that (as many other commenters have mentioned) women always get pitted against each other and its not a new thing…APing and breastfeeding advocacy did not create “mompetition”.
I had my daughter naturally at a midwife run/hospital affiliated birth center and having a non-medicalized pregnancy and birth experience was important to me. I feel that historically so much of the pregnancy and birth experience has been co-opted by a male dominated medical profession. And you cannot get around the biological aspect of having a biological child. I can see the where the idea that it’s a benefit to “free” women from some of the biological responsibilities but I see that more as a need to reframe it.
Women’s bodies and all of its functions have been degraded and we have been told for so long how wrong and dirty they are. So logically anything so identified with women’s naturally functioning bodies is going to be disprespected, disempowered and entire marketing schemes will be developed to provide us with solutions to our messy stinky selves. As opposed to freeing women from the biological aspect of childbirth and rearing I see it as separating women from a very powerful experience. Any time women gain power from something the patriarchal forces are going to try and either co-opt it and/or disempower it.
The more I think about this “mommy war” the more I see the need to reframe how we see motherhood in general. Much of the feminist response is (rightly so) based on women being marginalized and oppressed by motherhood. This has been and continues to hold a lot of truth professionally, economically, socially and intimately. I never felt more powerful than when I was pregnant. My love for my daughter has stretched and filled me with more love than I could have ever imagined and feminism has also found those new nooks and crannies. I honestly think I am more radical now and I find motherhood to be extremely powerful.
Second wave feminists fought so hard and I appreciate beyond words how much they accomplished. But I think it serves us well to think about the jump off point they started from and how motherhood has been used to oppress women. I can see especially from their perspective that APing is going backwards but to me I see it as reclaiming the experience from patriarchy by having an non-medicalized pregnancy and birth experience, breast feeding, making my own food, using cloth diapers, not letting my daughter CIO (I feel like this, especially in America, is built on a foundation of self sufficience and toughening it out).
Patriarchy has many guises – consumerism and corporate greed are biggies. Keep in mind that The Baby Business generates a lot of money for corporations and they have a literal vested interest in parents buying lots of stuff. For example, I use cloth diapers for economic, health and environmental reasons. In many areas of my life I have tried to become “greener”. Imagine if every parent decided to use cloth diapers? That would have a huge impact on the bottom (pardon the pun) line of many companies. In just this one lifestyle choice I feel like I am teaching my child to make alternative choices.
Many of the “natural” aspects of my parenting style are more time consuming but I do not see them as anti-feminist or chaining me to the home. I made these choices with full knowledge and I over-researched every option. I get a lot of grief from people about my choices but they are mine and I own them…I was not bullied or marketed into these choices.
I have to say I was shocked when I went looking for Natural Parenting info on the web and so many “Natural Mommies” were conservative Christians. I saw Katie Rophie (not my fav person anyway) on a talk show and she was saying in a way that upset me that Dr. Sears is conservative and La Leche League was started as a Catholic women’s organization. OK, so granted as a pretty radical feminist single mom I am sure there are many areas in which I would disagree with conservative Christian natural living mommies. But does that mean there can be NO commonalities???? That is so sad to me. Because I am a feminist I sometimes feel that I can’t relate or feel under attack by the other side of the political spectrum….mostly the men on the other side of the political spectrum. I often feel quite sad that we are so polarized. I actually see a glimmer of positive that something like parenting styles can transcend some political boundaries. For me it ultimately comes down to being informed about and comfortable with your choices.
[…] Blue Milk has a great post about the time she broke the P&C (equivalent to PTA in NZ) meeting. And she has a brilliant post on attachment parenting and feminism. […]
[…] is a lovely message of solidarity from (the very crunchy) writer of Sew Liberated on that ‘Mother Wars’ thing. This is a particularly important message because Meg McElwee of Sew Liberated is the creator of a […]
[…] After all that debate around whether attachment parenting is anti-feminist for mothers or not this is an interesting finding: Results showed that feminists were more likely to support attachment parenting practices than non-feminists, and non-feminists were more likely to endorse strict schedules for children. These results suggest that attachment parenting is a type of parenting that is attractive to feminist women. […]
[…] Reading these posts at Feministe on stay-at-home mothers, and then this one on the ‘choice’ to be mothers, and then this one on birth activist mothers at Mamamia – I just want to remind complainers that mothers aren’t sensitive about mother-blaming discussions like these because we’re such sensitive little flowers, we can take a good, juicy discussion, really; we’re sensitive about these discussions because you are running roughshod over the truth of our lives. […]
I just don’t get it – how can anyone call themselves feminist and criticize women’s choices. I thought feminism came about for two core reasons: 1. equal pay for equal work, 2. to allow women choices. Choices on how: she parents, works, finds her place in her community, sexuality etc. Good/bad mothering choices are all a matter of perspective – what works for my family doesn’t work for every family. We are not breeding clones, nor are we clones ourselves – and I’m pretty sure most of us value our sense of uniqueness. If we value individuality and uniqueness and then we need to learn to respect other’s choices, despite the fact it would not be what we choose. Respecting (instead of judging) the choices of our fellow human beings – now that, I think, is a large part of what feminism is about!
[…] “Blue Milk” blogger, who is a favorite feminist mother blogger posted and excellent analysis of this issue, and the best breastfeeding meme to come out of it. There was a lot of chatter about […]
[…] These two ways of feminism approaching issues of maternity leave and mothers working outside the home more broadly, reflect a deeper split in feminism in coming to terms with motherhood. It’s no surprise this division is deep – it’s decades old. I’ve talked about that here before with “How to explain desire”, “The split” , “Let’s get something straight about maternity leave” and “Feminists, a little perspective please”. […]
[…] My friend wrote me an email to point me towards this amazing post by Blue Milk: Feminists, a little perspective, please. […]
[…] Feminists, a little perspective, please […]