There is a fascinating discussion over at I Blame the Patriarchy about motherhood and radical feminism. All the usual tensions are raised (and they are tense) but fear not, generally the discussion is pretty respectful and non-defensive, and if you make it to the end of the 100 and something comments you’ll probably see your view, whatever it is, represented there somewhere. Twisty’s post is actually a call for unity between mothers and others in feminism but in it she makes an unfortunate appeal, both heartfelt and condescending. (I’ve indicated the statement in bold but have included the surrounding paragraph, which I pretty much agree with, for context).
We are desperate for women to reject the specious narrative that within the nuclear family we have “choice,” when in fact the “choice” (regarding motherhood) is between doing one full-time job (stay home and raise kids) or two full-time jobs (do paid work and also raise kids).* We are desperate for women to stop buying into the patriarchy-sponsored message about women’s fulfillment — that is, the notion that you are a selfish blob of failure, or worse, that you are missing out on life’s greatest joy, if you don’t martyr yourself to home and family and totally subsume your identity in the process. We want women to reject marriage and the nuclear family. We want women to not have kids in the first place.
Twisty’s plea made me wonder if when you don’t share a particular desire it is very difficult to understand that desire. You can reduce that desire entirely to a misguided will, an inability to exercise one’s true desire, a self-delusion, an excuse for other more legitimate desires, or simply a capitulation. How do you explain the desire to be a mother? How do you explain a desire, a very strong desire, one of the strongest you’ve experienced to someone who doesn’t share that same desire? It must be as difficult as explaining sexual desire to someone without a libido. Women don’t just have kids because the patriarchy believes we should, women don’t just have kids because some of us have sex with men; some women also want children, truly desire children and even desire the ongoing life of motherhood. And this desire for motherhood can be entirely divorced from a desire for patriarchal structure. But articulating that very complex and yet very urgent (and consequently seemingly simple) desire is difficult, which is why I think we end up with so many clumsy statements from parents crying out for either therapy or tact – like “wanting someone to love”, “wanting an embodiment of their love for their partners and families” and “wanting to do something meaningful with their lives”.
Mothers do themselves a disservice when they only speak about the sacrifices of motherhood – the drudgeries, the unfairness, and the costs; when they make their role appear to be one of complete martyrdom. It is not difficult to see how for someone with no desire for children and/or motherhood that this seems to be the route taken by the very stupidest of the herd-animals. If only they could think for themselves, they could liberate themselves and stop dragging us down with them!
I’m still reading Daphne de Marneffe’s Maternal Desire and her writing was fresh in my mind when I read Twisty’s post. De Marneffe really perturbed me when she suggested in her book that bitching about motherhood wasn’t really so fresh and liberating for women. One of my motivations for starting a blog was to be able to bitch about motherhood. But continually discussing the miseries of motherhood isn’t all that taboo, de Marneffe argued, denigrating more of women’s work is not really rocking any boat; owning your desire for children, your love of mothering, fighting for its legitimacy and value, that is the truly unspoken for mothers. Oh, there are plenty of ‘family values’ types and mothers’ day card producers willing to give voice to your desire, to articulate it and place it for you, but their understanding of the desire for motherhood is as limited as those who outright oppose motherhood.
[…] This is thought-provoking. blue milk: How to explain ‘desire’? […]
To think that truly loving and embracing motherhood is somehow subversive is quite bizarre, but I think you are right. It is so hard to find voices intelligently articulating the joys and rewards of mothering (and the desire) whilst still exploring it with, I think, inevitable ambivalence. But it is those voices I crave, and those things I want to talk about. One of the reasons I’m here reading this (and writing). Now… to get around to reading ‘Maternal Desire’…
Here is a topic I feel like a should be able to contribute to, but I can’t think of much articulate to say.
I didn’t want kids. Not at all. Then my father died, and something changed. I guess for me it was a very… primitive thing. It came utterly from within me. I left my husband as a result of it. This truly had nothing to do with patriarchy. It was utterly, totally about me. About my desire to contribute to the human condition. To leave behind a person or two who could benefit from what I had learned.
And the fact that I am not much of a fan of babies, and have no desire for unconditional love (I’ve got that from the new and improved hubby), shows that it isn’t about a girly need for love or justification. Damn it, I want someone to indoctrinate. I want to have a direct influence on the next generation. Not that you can’t do that without having your own kids – but what is more feminist than wanting to pass your ideals on to the next generation? Having kids was all about educating them for me. I’m loving the 6 year old. He’s getting it. He wants to move to Canberra to marry his best mate. He doesn’t understand why anyone would be racist. Unfortunately he also likes pink – but no-one can expect 100% success. 🙂
That’s a lot of non-articulate crap. Sorry. I really object to that opinion. Must ruminate further.
Oh, and about the bitching? Everyone needs to bitch. Do you think it devalues your profession to bitch about it? Maybe this is entirely a matter of opinion, but I have never met a person who doesn’t bitch about their profession. And that doesn’t devalue it – at least for mine.
“Owning your desire for children, your love of mothering, fighting for its legitimacy and value, that is the truly unspoken for mothers. Oh, there are plenty of ‘family values’ types and mothers’ day card producers willing to give voice to your desire, to articulate it and place it for you, but their understanding of the desire for motherhood is as limited as those who outright oppose motherhood.”
I think you’ve said everything I’ve been trying to say for so long, but haven’t been able to find the words.
Thank you!
I have been working to own motherhood as a dangerous thing. I think that’s in line with the motherhood that I respect, that Twisty doesn’t understand yet, that Freud tried to tame, that modern religions try to control into submission, that was the subject of worship for thousands and thousands of years. Motherhood has been hidden under an enormous maternity tent by all of the saccharine Hallmarking and such, but the power to create another person is the most ridiculous, sublime power that people have.
I have a whole theory worked up about how it is the difficulty we have in truly comprehending that another person created us that has resulted in large society-wide psychoses of patriarchal religions and social hierarchies. Most recently I’ve been pondering how the Garden of Eden is a perfect mirror of the experience of infancy: nakedness, being completely taken care of, coming into language, innocence, asexuality, absence of responsibility. The coming into the knowledge of one’s own independence – and independent sexuality – is the moment where you are in a sense shut off forever from your mother and her own naked body, her own uncomplicated caring for you. From now on you have to do some of the work of self-care yourself, and it’s very difficult.
Anyway, motherhood is an awesome subject of contemplation and an even more awesome state to inhabit. People who don’t get that are, well, just not getting it.
Thanks for posting this! I am almost afraid to go see the discussion on “I Blame the Patriarchy”, but I may later if I feel brave.
I think the reality of pregnancy and motherhood is way too complex to tie it up as profeminist or antifeminist, or patriarchal or nonpatriarchal. 50% of pregnancies in the United States are unplanned. Every woman handles sex, birth control, heterosexual relationships, pregnancy, labor, and motherhood differently.
This is not something like choosing to wear stilettos or make up. This is not the same thing as shaving legs. This is about reproductive choice, which is a fundamental hallmark of feminism. Just like we cannot tell women when to reproduce, we cannot tell them not to. We cannot force women not to have heterosexual relationships, we cannot forcibly sterilize them, we cannot forcibly abort their pregnancies if they become pregnant. Well, we can, but those are historically patriarchal methods of control of women’s reproduction.
I find it shocking when self defined feminists seem to think controlling other women’s reproduction against their will “for their own good” is a feminist action.
It is not motherhood that is patriarchal. It is the patriarchy’s definitions and control of women’s reproduction and motherhood that is a problem.
As for justifying desire to parent, it is really not up to anyone else. Just like most feminists think one does not have to give a justification to be judged on its worthiness before being able to get emergency contraception, birth control, or abortion, neither should someone have to give a justification for someone to deem worthy to want to have a child.
Having kids gave me access to a universe of thought and feelings I would never have been able to swirl with a spoon if I hadn’t had them. I’m not saying you have to have kids to reach enlightenment (in fact, I feel more unenlightened than ever), but to understand the sum of my biology in a totally fulfilling and non sexual way, to have boobs that go way beyond being looked at or being sexed up, to have my vagina release something from within rather than be penetrated from without, to absorb and dissolve and challenge the boundaries of myself in an utterly exclusively female way…if that’s not challenging the patriarchy as the centre of existence, then I don’t know what is.
The patriarchy pokes my motherhood. I spit in its eye. I’m sorry but anyone saying ‘don’t have children because you are conducting the evil work of the patriarchy’ is doing the patriarchy’s work, delineating childbirth and motherhood and babies and children (and the future) as something for ‘the man’. It is anti-choice, anti-woman and anti-feminism. That makes me boil. If this is feminism then I want no part of it. I opted for feminism because it was multifarious, because it bloomed possibility. If I wanted to exist enclosed in a linear, phallocentric dictatorship…and so forth…
Speaking here as a pseudo-parent of 3 months (partner has a five year old) I thought have a youngster in my life would crystallize whether or not I had the desire to have kids but in reality it’s muddied my thinking even more.
I really enjoy the time I spend with my partner’s little girl, spending time seeing the world through non-cynical eyes, playing dollies, doing her hair, have her wake me up at 6.20 all bright-eyed and chirpy that another day has dawned.
But at the same time, being with her is such hard fucking work. Trying to get her to eat some damn food, having her ask 300 times if I am a boy or a girl over a 48 hour period and just generally having to be ‘on’ all the time. To be honest I’m actually quite relieved when she goes back to her mother’s house and I can back to being me again. But then I start missing her and the house seems oddly quiet without her around.
Being a mother is indeed bloody hard work. Almost from conception, I would say. And that’s without all the moral fingerpointing from random placed along the political spectrum.
Penni, I loved what you said about having something coming out of your vagina. Brilliant.
Being a mother has made be better at doing all kinds of things. I don’t think it’s made me miraculously a better person (in fact I’m quite confident it has made me more doubtful, anxious and angry than ever). But it’s made me realise it doesn’t matter – I can do pretty much anything regardless. It’s made me know my toughness. I think that’s a pretty feminist outcome for me personally. On a broader political level, I get to contribute to a family raising a child while negotiating all the anti-woman, anti-family and anti-person crap that goes on. I often feel like we are a guerilla family, fighting against all kinds of things just by insisting on existing. And sometimes I don’t. But I’m sick of people feeling entitled to poke around in my ovaries.
Bluemilk, you are on!!! It was so nice to get on the intarwebs here in Dili and find all these great posts. 🙂
I’m so glad you wrote about that post of Twisty’s. I thought of you and wondered what you would say, when I read it yesterday.
I’ve wavered back and forth on wanting kids in the past, but never had to think about it in the context of mothering. Now I study this stuff in my degree, work in it, and think about it in relation to myself, I just can’t agree with people saying ‘having kids props up the patriarchy; do not have kids’. You just can’t do that.
Ariane hit the change to wanting kids on the head for me: for me, on the ‘pro’ side of having kids (adopted or naturally) would be, getting to teach someone about the world. And as part of that, getting to send forth my own little feminist fighter, male or female (even if they end up deciding to be different to me). It pisses me off so much that some people indoctrinate their kids to be nasty little bigots, or waste their time on religious education. That used to make me not want kids, but then I realised, Well hell! I can be the opposite.
anyway, once again, great post.
I’ve been thinking some more about this and I keep coming back to one of my most strongly imprinted, visceral, triumphant memories: the feeling of my daughter coming out of my vagina. I keep thinking about how deeply symbolic that is for me. So when I read Penni’s comment I shouted A-HA! because she is so right. It is true that having a baby within the patriarchy has put some things into sharp relief: I am now economically dependent upon a man in a terribly obvious way, I am now judged by my marital status in a way I never was before, I am now being asked to justify the work that I do because it apparently has no monetary value. But I have never felt stronger in my womanhood, never felt more fiercely feminist, and never felt less concerned with what my body looks like as opposed to what it does. Could I have reached this empowerment without a child? Most likely. But I didn’t. I have come here through motherhood and I embrace that.
I do my fair share of the bitching. Bitching to other adults is what we do so that we don’t screech directly at the kids to STFU. We all need to release a little tension now and then. Or a lot of tension. It’s a 24 hour a day gig, the tension goes with the territory when you don’t get a lunch break.
But the good bits, the bits that make one go back for a second child even though you’ve bitched about the first one, and it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done and you can see quite clearly how it’s the cause of your financial dependence on a bloke, the good bits are so good. In amongst the “will I ever go to the toilet alone ever again” and the “will the constant chatter ever end” and “I can’t believe I can be this tired without dying” there’s “where the hell did s/he learn that?” and “oh my god that’s the cutest thing ever” and “I taught him/her that” and the whole universe of possibilities for a kid’s future and you get to be in the front row watching how they turn out.
Hi, you don’t know me but I’ve been reading your blog for a while now, and I agree with you about this.
For me, the ‘motherhood’ problem is also linked to classism. Strictly speaking, we can’t literally have all women stop having kids, or the human race will cease to exist. I don’t see anyone seriously advocating that, but when people start going on about how having children is disempowering, how motherhood is a tool of the patriarchy, how truly feminist women should eschew motherhood in favor of career/education/what-have-you… well, someone’s still going to have to reproduce, and when you set up this false dichotomy of motherhood versus empowerment, you basically ensure that the women who do choose to have children will be without support. The answer to the social and economic strains that mothers face is not to marginalize motherhood, but to reform the way society views women and reproduction.
(sorry for the soapbox-standing, this is a sensitive subject for me)
aebhel – I wonder if it’s the view of women & reproduction that needs to change or our entire economy. The economic marginalisation of mothers (and non-mothers, because they might possibly become mothers later, so there’s no point promoting them now) happens because all of our paid work culture is set up to fit men with wives. It doesn’t work out well for any of us, including the men with wives who never see their kids.
Kate – I think you are right. I also think our entire economy needs to change from an environmental point of view.
For a long time I have wondered why economists study economics like a found thing, instead of researching the construction of a new one that works better. One that values humanity, life and all the systems that support them.
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If an asexual person asked me to explain my sexual desire to them, I might not do an exemplary job but I think I’d do ok, actually. At the very least I’d try.
So, please try, ok? And yes, those statements like “want someone to love” are indeed quite clumsy, and I don’t really buy them as good explanations of maternal desire, so I hope you can do better than that.
[…] How to explain desire […]
[…] 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” […]