My 10 Questions live on

In the midst of everything I’ve been going through lately, thank you for reminding me why I started a blog…

This is a beautiful and timely response to receive to my long-running 10 Questions About Your Feminist Parenthood from Slow Growing.

(Can you believe that my 10 Questions have been going since 2007, have received a couple of hundred responses from all over the world from all kinds of feminist parents, and have by now, also been published by me in an academic book?)

5. Do you ever feel compromised as a feminist mother? Do you ever feel you’ve failed as a feminist mother?

The moments when I feel like I have failed most are when I haven’t done my best to act in solidarity with another mother; whether that be by listening well to a friend who is tired in her parenting, or supporting another mother in a tough situation in public, or by finding an authentic response to the suffering of women in other places. I feel this failure daily but I know that for me, and the work of feminism in itself, there will always be work to do and mistakes to be made–it’s a big world out there to respond to. So there’s got to be grace as well. Ultimately the work of feminism is a uniting work, one that illuminates and works through–and for–our deep inter-connectedness and dependence on one another. When I lose sight of that, that is when I feel I have failed the most.

6. Has identifying as a feminist mother ever been difficult? Why?

In the circles that I move in it can be difficult identifying as a feminist–this is mostly because I am not sure that my definition of feminism necessarily fits with the definition in other people’s heads. I think many people still think that feminism equates to hating men, or thinking that you have to run a successful corporation… but as you can see, this is nothing like my feminism.

Through my partner’s workplace and through our church life, I meet a lot of women from more conservative backgrounds who are often at home with their kids too. I wonder if they feel marginalised enough by the celebrity/corporate type of feminism, so much so that they choose not to identify with feminism altogether. I don’t know. I just know that I often feel misunderstood by this group, and misunderstood by some successful working mothers who don’t see the value of the care work I do, or the complexities of professional, cultural, and financial systems that make it hard for many mothers to work outside the home. However, it is never so difficult that I don’t identify as a feminist.  

There’s a lot in this response that I relate to, but particularly, her thoughts on vulnerability and connectedness. I love this latest reply to my questions, and thank you for keeping the 10 questions alive.

(You can find all the many other responses in this series here. If you’d like to respond to these questions yourself you can either email me your answers and I’ll put them on blue milk as a guest post or you can post them elsewhere and let me know and I’ll link to them).

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Power and vulnerability and sexual politics

I don’t agree with much of this by Laura Kipnis – for instance, I have trouble being that casual about university teacher-student sexual relationships – but I think her article, “Sexual paranoia strikes academe” in The Chronicle of Higher Education is raising some worthwhile questions about vulnerability and power.

Reading this article it strikes me that the over-simplification of sexual abuse/assault/harassment means that victims are only victims if they are ‘good people’ and conversely, abusers can only be that if they’re ‘bad people’. Realistically, both are ordinary people and there’s vulnerability all over the place. And ok, the woman in this situation might have forgotten that the man is also vulnerable. But he has forgotten that the woman he desires in a fairly objectifying way is actually a human, like him.

What struck me most, hearing the story, was how incapacitated this woman had felt, despite her advanced degree and accomplishments. The reason, I think, was that she imagined she was the only vulnerable one in the situation. But look at the editor: He was married, with a midlevel job in the scandal-averse world of corporate publishing. It simply wasn’t the case that he had all the power in the situation or nothing to lose. He may have been an occluded jerk, but he was also a fairly human-sized one.

So that’s an example of a real-world situation, postgraduation. Somehow I don’t see the publishing industry instituting codes banning unhappily married editors from going goopy over authors, though even with such a ban, will any set of regulations ever prevent affective misunderstandings and erotic crossed signals, compounded by power differentials, compounded further by subjective levels of vulnerability?

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My latest book piece

I am proud to announce that I have a chapter in the newly published book, Mothers at the Margins: Stories of Challenge, Resistance and Love, edited by Lisa Raith, Jenny Jones and Marie Porter. My chapter is on the responses from all my lovely readers to my 10 Questions About Your Feminist Parenting that I have been running on this blog since 2007.

You can purchase the book here if you so desire.

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My latest article is about Mark Latham, macho hangups and feminist mothers

My latest article is here.

Speaking of personal stories, Latham has an interesting story, too. He’s a stay-at-home father with a wife working outside the home. Having made the transition from political leadership to primary caring he might offer an insightful perspective, instead, he seems clouded by a kind of defensive masculinity. And his hostility towards feminist parenting is curious when you consider Latham’s own role reversal is exactly the kind of freedom feminists are seeking as an option to be available for more parents. But critiquing parenting has long been an underhand route for simply censuring women.

Women well know that when male commentators talk about women’s lives they are prone to holding unexamined views that run contrary to one another. So, being the primary parent has allowed Latham to see the hoax that fathers can’t be nurturing, but somehow mothering is still essentialist enough for inner-city feminists to be capable of running a secret campaign to “free themselves from nature’s way”. And further, mothers who take their experiences seriously enough to write about them are “self-absorbed”, but to not take them seriously is to be “breeding a generation of shirtless, tone-deaf, overweight, pizza-eating dummies”. Although Macdonald, apparently, manages to do both.

 

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New response to my 10 Questions About Your Feminist Parenthood

This is a very interesting reply to my 10 Questions About Your Feminist Parenthood over at Meet Jesus At Uni. It touches on Tamie’s Christianity and her combination of faith with feminism as well as her experience of being a white woman living in Tanzania.

One of the things that stood out for me in reading her response is how culturally-bound some of our experiences of the patriarchy are while others are universal.

8. If you have a partner, how does your partner feel about your feminist motherhood? What is the impact of your feminism on your partner?

My husband is also a feminist, a true partner and advocate for me, just as passionate as I am about feminist parenting! Our situation at the moment is more flexible than it would be if we lived in Australia. The lines between ‘work’, ‘home’ and ‘social’ are much more blurred in Tanzania, and particularly in our role, living on campus at the university where we work. That means we haven’t had to deal with issues surrounding maternity leave and housework in the same way we would in Australia; the structure of society has given us more room to job-share and to parent together.

 

(You can find all the many other responses in this series here. If you’d like to respond to these questions yourself you can either email me your answers and I’ll put them on blue milk as a guest post or you can post them elsewhere and let me know and I’ll link to them).

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The latest response to my 10 Questions About Your Feminist Parenting

This response from Eliza at tea plus oranges is such a considered response that it’s hard to imagine it was written with a sleeping baby on her chest… and reading it was a lovely opportunity to revisit those first early months of motherhood. All my love to new parents.

If you have a partner, how does your partner feel about your feminist motherhood? What is the impact of your feminism on your partner?

I’m interested to see how this will pan out. It’s something we’ve talked about a lot at various stages of our relationship, mainly in relation to balancing two careers. We met at uni as two ambitious law student types, and he fully supports the idea that I should be able to go forth professionally and do interesting, meaningful things in paid work, as well as being an available and attentive parent. However, there is an inevitable tension in trying to carve out an equal relationship in a non-equal society. “Lean in” feminism emphasises the need for a supportive partner; but the limits of individual action in working around structural problems also apply to the concerted actions of a couple. He wants to support my career, but doesn’t want to sacrifice his. That’s fair enough. Why should either of us have to? Why can’t employment conditions accommodate family life for both partners? Yet, they don’t. So we intend to find some way of realigning the division of labour once we’re through the early years of parenthood (in which I want to be at home with my babies). Watch this space.

He took four weeks’ leave when bubs was born, which was really really fantastic. I’m now passionate about the feminist importance of paternity leave. There was a revelation in that month – he “gets” household management now. Five years of living together, I’ve done more than half the domestic load, but since bubs arrived that has changed. All it took was four weeks in which I completely abdicated responsibility for everything other than breastfeeding… He’s back at work now, and while our relationship may look very traditional at the moment, in many ways it’s more equal than ever (we’re both exhausted). I’m really grateful to be able to spend a full year at home with bubs. In an ideal world, we’d have better maternity leave provisions, so that women’s ability to do this doesn’t depend on the work status of the father. In the meantime, I’m pretty glad to have a breadwinner spouse just now.

(You can find all the many other responses in this series here. If you’d like to respond to these questions yourself you can either email me your answers and I’ll put them on blue milk as a guest post or you can post them elsewhere and let me know and I’ll link to them).

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Guest post: being a feminist mother and working in fashion

Kristen Hurst is a stay at home mother of three who enjoys blogging. She received her bachelor’s degree in fashion marketing, and writes often about nursing clothes. When she’s not trying to juggle the lives of Casey, Austin and Ben, she enjoys painting and catching up with a great Jane Austen novel.

How would you describe your feminism in one sentence? When did you become a feminist? Was it before or after you became a mother?

My feminism is based in activities and attitudes towards valuing that which is traditionally considered “feminine” as equal to that which is traditionally considered “masculine.” This was not the feminism I had initially adopted in college—I definitely believed that I could do whatever I wanted, and I took my inherited feminism for granted. I knew I was “equal” to men, so why not be a feminist? I would say that this was the dominant attitude of the women at my college, and for most of us, our serious feminist identifications faded once we left the classroom, and for me, when I initially went to work in the fashion industry. Nevertheless, both motherhood and my experiences freelancing on behalf of Seraphine Maternity have shaped my feminist motherhood.

What has surprised you most about motherhood?

How much I feel empowered by it! I guess I always knew I’d be a mother eventually—I didn’t question that—but I wasn’t a woman who longed to be a mother. I didn’t even know whether I’d enjoy it or not. Being a mother and staying home with my boys have allowed me to rethink how I assign value in my life. I feel very aware of how our culture measures value through money. Motherhood is not profitable, but it feels even more rewarding to play a part in nurturing young lives and teaching my sons to appreciate art, music, family walks, etc. as much as whatever their future careers will be.

How has your feminism changed over time? What is the impact of motherhood on your feminism?

My feminism was forever altered by re-reading Sara Ruddick’s Maternal Thinking. This book is more philosophy than parenting advice, but it made me realize why my attitudes towards politics and the dominant narratives of our society shifted once I started mothering. I would say that I started out as a plucky post-second wave not-so-riot girl. Once I started working in fashion, I felt that questioning what it meant to be a woman was taboo, unless we were talking about androgyny being in vogue. Motherhood caused me to pick up feminism again because I realized that what was right for one of my sons was not necessarily right for the next, and thus, this is likely the same when we’re talking about individuals in society or our relationships with other countries (both of which Ruddick touches on.) Being a stay-at-home mom caused me to experience how undervalued caretaking is, even as it is necessary. I became an advocate in my community for speaking out in favor of resources that mothers—and therefore everyone—would benefit from, like paid maternity leave and more reliable daycare options. I was initially hesitant to continue indulging my interest in fashion, but my work with Seraphine has placed me squarely back in the present—feminism is important, and feminism and feeling good and fashionable in our slightly-disempowered present reality are not mutually exclusive. Certainly some in the maternity fashion industry have no interest in feminism, but not all of them!

What makes your mothering feminist? How does your approach differ from a non-feminist mother’s? How does feminism impact upon your parenting?

I want my boys to understand the privilege they’re set to inherit due to their gender. We talk about it.

Do you ever feel compromised as a feminist mother? Do you ever feel you’ve failed as a feminist mother?

I don’t know if being a feminist mother is something one can fail or succeed at—it’s always in the process, or the attempt. But of course I feel like a failure sometimes, particularly when my sons imitate something that I do or say that doesn’t reflect my feminist ideals.

Has identifying as a feminist mother ever been difficult? Why?

Yes, but only because I know too many folks who still feel that feminism and staying at home with one’s children are at odds with each other.

Motherhood involves sacrifice, how do you reconcile that with being a feminist?

Feminism isn’t really about “having it all,” either, it’s about the opportunity to make informed choices about what to have and not feeling—or being—stigmatized as a result of that. Almost every sacrifice I’ve made on behalf of motherhood has been more than worth it in the end.

Do you feel feminism has failed mothers and if so how? Personally, what do you think feminism has given mothers?

This question makes me want to ask “which feminism?” I feel like acts done in the name of “feminism” or “progress” that ignore the fact that women will mother have failed mothers. Nevertheless, feminism has given us the language to have a conversation like this one about motherhood, and I think that will far overshadow any failings.

(You can find all the many other responses in this series here. If you’d like to respond to these questions yourself you can either email me your answers and I’ll put them on blue milk as a guest post or you can post them elsewhere and let me know and I’ll link to them).

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Another pro-feminist father answers my 10 Questions About Your Feminist Parenthood

I think a pro-feminist man can probably say nothing more honest about his feminism than this: “My feminism is awkward. My feminism is a bit abstract, but so is my life.” I love that – because if a man is not finding feminism a bit of a struggle then chances are he is not being all that self-examining about it. That line was a favourite from the wonderful response by Not Unimportant to my 10 questions about your feminist parenthood.

The blog, Not Unimportant is written by Cameron Mann and it is a lovely, introspective blog which also very often covers parenting from a feminist perspective. Incidentally, the last pro-feminist man to tackle my 10 Questions was Jeremy Adam Smith and if you would like to see more about pro-feminist dads then you can read about his response here.

Do you ever feel compromised as a feminist parent? Do you ever feel you’ve failed as a feminist parent?

Compromised feminist? Entirely. Frequently. This makes spotting and calling out sexist assumptions in me and in others a continual activity. As much as my ego can handle it, I invite others to point out and critique my failures.

There is no way to get all the sexism out of my head all the time. I learnt not to see sexism long before I learnt to see it. I strongly believe that what we learn first has a stronger hold than any subsequent correction (which is why I am concerned about feminism and gender and my preschooler son). A habit of carelessly using he/him in cases of unknown sex is probably the least of it.

Policing media (books, music and movies) is terribly hard work. I can’t find the energy to block Cinderella out, so basically hope that Abby Cadabby introduces variety. I am quietly confident that since my wife and I have made it to feminism through a less politically correct time, the attitudes to the content are more important than the content itself.

The arrival of gun play really forced me to accept that my son was going to be as gendered as anything. So, I don’t fight the gender nearly as much as I fight the universalising traps and the dichotomies. Just because he’s running around with a group of boys pretending to kill with finger guns that go ‘pew-pew-pew’ doesn’t mean that it will interest all boys, or interest only boys or interest him always.

(You can find all the many other responses in this series here. If you’d like to respond to these questions yourself you can either email me your answers and I’ll put them on blue milk as a guest post or you can post them elsewhere and let me know and I’ll link to them).

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Louise Curtis responds to my 10 Questions About Your Feminist Parenthood

Louise Curtis is a reader of my blog and is also the author of a contemporary fantasy ebook. Recently she turned her attention to responding to my 10 questions about your feminist parenthood and her answers are both fascinating and honest. After writing this not so long ago on my own blog, I really appreciate the way Louise examines the relationship dynamics with her male partner as one of the more potentially difficult challenges faced in feminist parenting. I have included part of her response below and you will find links to the rest of her response and her book at the end of the post.

(You can find all the many other responses in this series here. If you’d like to respond to these questions yourself you can either email me your answers and I’ll put them on blue milk as a guest post or you can post them elsewhere and let me know and I’ll link to them).

How has your feminism changed over time? What is the impact of motherhood on your feminism?

Getting married turned gender roles into an obsession long before I had a baby. When little Louisette arrived, the spotlight on my marriage grew even more intense.

For me, the weakest point of my marriage is the risk of falling into a mother-child relationship with my husband. Anyone who can’t be trusted to do their share of household chores is not an adult.

I knew it was the weakest point of our relationship before we married, and have carefully (often tearfully) explained it to my husband over and over. He simply doesn’t understand what I’m saying. The more powerful members of society never do understand what it’s like to be the less powerful member. That’s one of the perks of power – everything seems fair from where you’re standing.

It’s not all his fault, however. Organising things and making household decisions (from groceries to what kind of house to buy) makes me feel powerful, so I have a tendency to jump in before he has a chance to do his part. It’s not like he’s the only one sending us in that fatal mother-child direction. (And yes, it’s definitely fatal. How can I be in love with someone I see as a child? How can he be in love with his mother?)

Having a daughter also gives me a highly convenient litmus test for feminism. All I have to do is think, “How would I want my daughter treated in this situation?” and I know when someone is treating me badly. I hope that by the time Louisette grows up she’ll have enough self-worth to figure out her rights without needing a prop.

What makes your mothering feminist? How does your approach differ from a non-feminist mother’s? How does feminism impact upon your parenting?

I tread a compromised path, like all mothers. To survive in our society, I think a woman must be able to believe in her own attractiveness, and I choose not to fight that particular battle, because I know Louisette would suffer for it. My prettifying efforts started from her birth, when I dressed her in attractive and usually pink clothing. I believe a girl who is constantly told how pretty she is as a child will be better able to handle the sudden awareness of societal messages saying, “Shouldn’t you be thinner? Shouldn’t you have bigger breasts? Shouldn’t you have blonder hair?” as she grows up. I will teach her to use make-up, to shave her legs, to do her hair. She can stop doing any of those things if she wants to, but she’ll have the skills to fit in if she chooses the more comfortable path.

At the same time I already try to steer her away from the stories that equate goodness and worth with beauty, and that tell the reader the purpose of life is to get married – like Cinderella. Beauty is nice, and everyone has a little bit – but there must be more to you than that.

As a writer, I believe stories tell us who we are and what matters. When I write my own novels, my protagonists are almost always female. They have problems, and they solve them – actively. When they like a boy, they generally tell him, and if a boy treats them badly they don’t stick around. Why would they? But generally they’re too busy saving the day to care too much what boys think. Isn’t that true of all the world’s most interesting women?

Most of all I try to be aware of the contradictions in both society and myself, so that when my little one is old enough she can sort truth from lies, and choose what compromises to make in her own life.

Mental illness runs in my family, so I try to teach Louisette resilience as both a preventative and a cure. I watched a psychology video once that presented toddlers with a problem. Both started off by crying for help, but when no help arrived in a few moments the boys stopped crying and attempted to solve the problem themselves. The girls continued crying.

I try so hard to sit on my hands when my own baby has a frustrating problem to solve – so she learns that waiting to be rescued isn’t the solution to everything. You can’t learn resilience without frustration, and you can’t learn it without pain. Sometimes I have to let her fall down. I remind myself constantly that we all unconsciously let little girls fall down less often than little boys – and that’s not a good thing. (We also shush little girls more than little boys, but that’s another story.)

Louise Curtis blogs here and you can read her full answers to the questions here. Her first published book (young adult contemporary fantasy) is for sale here for $2.99 (the beginning is free).

SEE THROUGH

Amy is a young empath stolen from her Normal parents by law on her fifth birthday – with deadly consequences. Her carefully constructed serenity is ripped away a second time when her empath community in Canberra is attacked from within.

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Being a feminist mother in Italy

This is a thoughtful and very flattering response to my 10 questions about your feminist parenthood from Maple Leaf Mamma. The writer is Michelle, a Canadian woman married to an Italian and living in Italy raising their son together. (I do like reading blogs by people living in places I would like to visit).

Michelle’s feminism really began to emerge after becoming a mother and was kicked along by meeting Prof Andrea O’Reilly and discovering my blog – hooray! How much do I adore reading about Michelle’s journey into feminism? So much. I have long thought motherhood will be a radicalizing experience for many feminists.

3. How has your feminism changed over time? What is the impact of motherhood on your feminism?

As mentioned above, my feminism has been bubbling below my surface for years. It has long informed how I live and the decisions I make, yet I’ve been a bit of a coward about actually calling myself a feminist. One of my greatest weaknesses, one of the things I like least about myself, is how much I care what others think of me. And let’s face it, it’s still not very cool or glamourous to call yourself a feminist. I credit motherhood as the catalyst for helping me finally make significant steps to get over that.

I still feel like a baby feminist. The most radical thing I’ve done is write this blog. I’ve never taken a women’s or gender studies class so I’m still learning how to use all the proper terms like cisgender, intersectionality, even patriarchy. I sometimes feel intimidated by the women’s studies majors and would like to see and interact with more Caitlin-Moran-style non-academic feminists. Professionally I’ve been most fulfilled acting as a kind of translator/interpreter, whether literally from one language to another or figuratively by using accessible language to explain difficult concepts to wider audiences (which, interestingly, is a very non-Italian thing to do). I know a lot of intellectual/academic purists accuse fence-straddlers like me of dumbing down their subjects, but the democratic idealist in me thinks everyone deserves some kind of access to beautiful and/or important ideas.

On her blog Michelle regularly turns a feminist lens towards life and current affairs in Italy, which makes for wonderfully interesting reading.

(You can find all the many other responses in this series here. If you’d like to respond to these questions yourself you can either email me your answers and I’ll put them on blue milk as a guest post or you can post them elsewhere and let me know and I’ll link to them).

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