Charlotteotter re-examines and re-posts her response to 10 Questions About Your Feminist Motherhood

I really enjoyed seeing someone revisit their response to these questions; what has changed and what remains the same is a really interesting question for any parent to consider. Mothering experiences shift so enormously over the years, I sometimes forget to have that perspective. From charlotteotter here:

Things that have stayed the same since I wrote this piece: I am still outraged at injustice and I still fiercely love my children.

Things that have changed: I am enraged by glass ceilings and the buffer of (mostly) white and (mostly) middle-aged men who actually believe that they got where they are today through merit. It’s called the patriarchy, boys, and it’s a system of privilege that put you first. Call it quotas, if you will.

So my feminist motherhood now includes: fighting a system that is inherently unjust so that all my children enter the world of work with the same chances.

And from her original response to my 10 Questions About Your Feminist Motherhood:

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

Occasionally, I’ve wondered how I, with my feminist principles, have ended up as a work-from-home mother but I believe that’s a choice I’ve made out of love and good fortune. I feel compromised and grumbly if my family have left the house in a mess and since I’m the one at home, I’ve got to make the choice of ignoring it or clearing it up. I certainly don’t feel that I’ve failed as a feminist mother.

(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).