When feminist writer, Jessica Valenti had a baby it turned out to be a life-threatening experience for both her and her daughter. It was an immediate introduction to the ambivalence that is possible in motherhood. In fact, Valenti described her early months in motherhood as being – “(c)rippled by fear and post-traumatic stress.” It’s the kind of gut-wrenching description that stops a reader in her tracks. There’s a great potential to trivialise motherhood and in doing so we miss out on understanding both its bleakest moments and its soaringly romantic ones. I suspect ambivalence is a near universal experience for women but it’s so taboo we rarely fully identify it in parenting books. This book, more than anything else, is attempting to fully examine that ambivalence.
Why Have Kids? is an interesting and brave approach to the conversation about parenthood because it frames the discussion in a political sphere. At one point the book quotes Katie Allison Granju and Jillian St. Charles as saying – “many women will tell you that becoming a mother was the most politically radicalizing experience of their lives”. Absolutely, and it is refreshing to see an author treat the subject with just this level of seriousness. Valenti covers a range of topics that deserve attention but which rarely get featured in books about parenthood like, the history of state control over women’s bodies and child-rearing practices; the infantalising pregnancy diet and the alcohol-abstinence messages; the incessant downplaying of the role of fathers; the success of non-nuclear families; the classism around how we view at-home mothers differently according to their wealth; the tensions in achieving work-and-family balance; and the predatory success behind the ‘parenting expert’ anxiety industry. Because this book is a commercial one about parenthood, rather than an academic book, these topics are probably ground-breaking for the genre.
The chapter, “Bad Mothers Go To Jail” is particularly thoughtful. Here, Valenti examines the phenomenon of child abandonment and neglect as the heartbreaking evidence it provides that motherhood is not nearly as serene and unconflicted as we are led to believe. It is a chapter like this that makes you appreciate a feminist like JessicaValenti taking on parenthood for her book. This chapter also highlights the sense of losing oneself that is common for women entering motherhood and one of the book’s strengths is the manner in which it normalises the desire in some women not to be parents. As Valenti goes on to argue, most women spend a great deal of their lives using contraception to avoid getting pregnant; so, it would seem strange that we stigmatise women for not wanting to ever be pregnant, given that it is a view we can all relate to ourselves for much of our lives. Why Have Kids? is not going to offend those readers who are ultimately deciding against parenthood, Valenti is clearly wanting to draw the non-parent and parent communities together and it’s an excellent ambition for a parenting book. This means the book doesn’t touch on any of the extreme individualism that is sometimes being directed towards mothers and children by elements of the childfree movement and which leads to a misogynistic judgementalism about mothers, but deciding that is beyond the scope of the book is reasonable.
Why Have Kids? is occasionally prone to some simplistic generalisations about attachment/natural parenting that can come across as divisive. For instance, elimination communication (EC) is labelled a “feminist’s worst nightmare”, staggered vaccination schedules are seen as helicopter parenting, and the backlash against French feminist, Elisabeth Badinter’s anti-breastfeeding book is described as “(h)ell hath no fury like La Lech League scorned”. Why Have Kids? is right to critically examine parenting trends, given their impact on women’s lives, but broad sweeping statements are likely to alienate some mothers. Valenti, a mother who breastfed initially but who chose formula-feeding when the breastfeeding became part of the trauma she was experiencing with her premature baby, is particularly concerned with the heavy-handedness of the breastfeeding message and it’s a very important story to be telling. But it is frustrating in a book like this one, that seeks to debunk myths, that scrutiny is not being applied with the same persistence to the misogynist barriers against breastfeeding. The ways in which public space, workplace practices and marital expectations are arranged is actively hostile to women trying to breastfeed and tend to their infants, and this is a serious feminist issue. I feel quite certain that Valenti gets all this; she selected quotes from an interview with me where I am making some of these arguments and she ultimately ends this particular chapter by acknowledging that “(p)arenting and caretaking are only as oppressive as our society makes them.” But still, the discussion around attachment parenting is uneven and could benefit from more nuance.
However, where Why Have Kids? gets it exactly right is where Valenti confronts the perfectionism and policing that happens in motherhood these days and some of this is coming from the attachment/natural parenting movement – “(i)t may be that American mothers are so desperate for power, recognition, and validation that we’d rather take on the burden of considering ourselves “expert moms” rather than change the circumstances that demand such an unreasonable role for us”. These will be uncomfortable truths for motherhood experts and websites that make their money by schooling us in exactly these pursuit, but, yes and yes to what Valenti is saying here.
As well as the attachment parenting chapter I also found myself somewhat conflicted when reading the chapter, “The Hardest Job in the World”, where Valenti justifiably questions what can be a patronising and exploitative message for women about the role of mothers. It is sexist that the boring, mundane tasks of mothering are sold to women as some kind of special task for which we are biologically designed and therefore not entitled to reward or status for doing them; but it is equally sexist to reduce all caring tasks to the trivial, the mindless and the twee. Mothering can be complicated and compelling and also, intellectually and emotionally satisfying. The fact that we describe it as involving problem-solving no more difficult than “kissing boo-boos” is telling. Given all this, what does it say when we characterise some women as falling “for the trap of believing that parenting is the most important job they’ll ever have”? This is a difficult balance to strike in feminism – between denigrating ‘women’s work’ and liberating women from domestic servitude, but it is one where white, middle-class feminist mothers, like myself and Valenti, risk universalising our experiences at the expense of disabled mothers, mothers of colour, trans parents, mothers in incarceration, poor mothers and other marginalised people who are still fighting for their mothering to be respected and for whom mothering can be a radical feat of activism and community building. The availability of high quality childcare is not the answer to every problem.
Why Have Kids? is probably at its strongest where it approaches tricky subjects but openly acknowledges its own bias. So, for instance, the chapter “Women Should Work” is buoyed by this rather lovely piece of self-reflection from Valenti after admitting that she thinks women should generally avoid being at-home parents (a view I share, in part): “I’m not sure how to reconcile these beliefs with my feeling that people’s life choices should be honored. I think there’s a way to discuss and think critically – and be critical – of parents’ choices without resorting to personal attacks and hyperbole. And I trust women and mothers to be able to have this conversation with the knowledge that we want to make parents’ lives better”. There is some great stuff in here on what the studies are really showing about long-term outcomes for mothers and children when mothers stay attached to the workforce and it refutes conservative propaganda. The chapter also includes the most interesting and humanising interview I’ve seen with Linda Hirshman in some time. In it, Hirshman notes the social impact of elite stay-at-home mothers on the rest of us in terms of raising unrealistic expectations – “Setting aside for a moment the people who have to work, an important question is why do they do it? It’s like the really skinny models; it’s some bizarre norm of female accomplishment that no one can really achieve”. Hirshman has her blind spots (some of them large) but she makes solid points in support of women’s participation in the workforce – “If the rulers are male, they will make mistakes that benefit males” – and her interview reminded me that Hirshman is mostly motivated by a desire to improve the lot of mothers.
For all the doubts raised about the over-prioritising of parenthood in women’s lives in Why Have Kids?, Valenti arrives at a conclusion, not unlike a lot of us: “I, unfortunately, didn’t have a choice in deciding whether or not she would be the center of my life. She just was; her health and survival depended on it”. Making peace with this fact – that children are vulnerable little beings who will sometimes justify great sacrifices on our part and yet, somehow we must be allowed to remain intact as ourselves – is important feminist work. Personally, I would love to have seen more sharing of experiences from Valenti in Why Have Kids? because I eat that stuff up with a spoon, but I can see that a memoir is not the book Valenti set out to write here. You won’t agree with everything in this book no matter which direction of parenting you’re coming from, Valenti acknowledges that, but it is taking the mainstream conversation about parenting to a meatier level and it’s about time that happened. When the book ends with its wonderful conclusion about why we need to move away from individualism – because when one mother is punished, we are all punished – I am hoping all readers hear that.
In accordance with disclosure guidelines, please note that I was sent a copy of this book for review by the publisher and I am also quoted in the book.
(Cross-posted at Hoyden About Town).
This is one of the most interesting book reviews I’ve ever read. Thank you! The book review alone gave me a great deal to think about. I was especially touched by this:
the classism around how we view at-home mothers differently according to their wealth
There’s something about the way you wrote it that made me immediately spin through my mental rolodex and contemplate things we hear and see in real life and in the media. Wow.
I have such compassion for Ms. Valenti and her horrific experience with the birth of her daughter. I particularly winced at this line in her interview with The Hairpin, on the subject of people complimenting her for losing her pregnancy weight: “To me, though, being thin felt like being empty – like I was missing this baby that was supposed to still be there. So yeah. Fuck that.”
We all know, of course, that being “thin” is ACTUALLY the Most Important Job In The World for women.
I am also heartened that she is taking on the notion of motherhood as this idealized yet trivialized experience. We should talk more about how hard it is, without fear of “YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE” recriminations.
Where I feel a bit of irritation is when people – especially other mothers – opine that women should NOT “stay at home” with their kids. (Yeah, LInda Hirschman, I’m looking at you!) Because not every woman can, so those who can must sacrifice their desire to do so, in order to be “fair”? Or because women who don’t work for pay are too stupid to consider the dangers of “depending on” a man for their llivelihood? Or perhaps because they owe something to feminism? Or because it sends a bad example to Our Daughters to labor at something so trivial and boring?
What if, instead, we actually valued and supported motherhood/parenting? What if we made it possible for more people to be with their kids in the early years – not just well-off, mostly white women?
I think there is still a bias against this, even in the feminist community. On one hand, women who do not have paying jobs do not “work,” but women who are as child care providers certainly have “jobs.” And another contradiction: mothers who work at paying jobs certainly get credit for raising their children, but when I’ve referred to myself as “raising my own children,” I heard HOW DARE YOU SAY WORKING MOTHERS DON’T RAISE THEIR OWN CHILDREN, AND BY THE WAY YOU DON’T REALLY WORK, TAKING CARE OF CHILDREN IS JUST PART OF YOUR DAY (unless I am minding/helping to raise other people’s children, of course. THEN it’s “work.”)
As a geezer mother of a teen & pre-teen, I’m past taking these comments personally, but there are plenty of unpaid, “at-home” mothers who feel let down by the feminist community over this.
Finally, I offer hope, but not a strong hope, at Ms. Valenti’s conviction that being a mother is just another part of her identity as a person, and it won’t take over. Unfortunately, as children age, this role of “parent” becomes more pervasive, not less so. And the longer one is a parent, especially a mother, the more one realizes that in a patriarchy, it’s not just our individual battle to stay a “whole” person. We’re fighting an unfair system. But I remain hopeful that parents, especially mothers, can continue to insist on society’s giving us room to stay intact as people.
Sorry for the length of the comment. I know, I know – GET MY OWN DAMN BLOG! But let me just shamelessly sick up and whine: “But I can’t doooo it as well as yooooouuuuu can!”
For me, the work of being at home with a small child was actually so overwhelming and exhausting that I returned to work part time because I could not handle the sheer load.
Whenever anyone at work says ‘I bet you wish you were home’ I feel conflicted because I have what is considered to be an ‘easy’ baby. I have only one, she appears to be normal, she’s very large and healthy and physically very well ahead for her age. I do not have to medicate her, worry about her aspirating food, I live in a community where she has been fully vaccinated and is quickly and easily treated. She is an affectionate baby who happily plays with anyone and is very verbal, confident, and demonstrative.
And I find the work of mothering her is absolutely beyond me to do full time. A part of it follows exactly what you said – I found it monumentally challenging being ‘just a mother’ when people talked to me, and no longer a senior IT professional. People made assumptions about my vocabulary, talked down to me. This despite the fact I was absolutely struggling with her at home. People acted like it was reallllly crruiiiisy.
I imagine my job seems difficult to many as I juggle life critical systems with security, user testing, disability accessibility, design, coding, etc. But for me it was far easier than being responsible for a helpless being to the point where the stress ended up with me on medication and sobbing to my partner that I had to return to work. People perceived the mothering as ‘trivial’ and for me, I couldn’t cope.
Mothering is represented as this monolith when it’s so keenly, desperately pinned to individual personalities and experiences. Had I known what I was getting into, I would never have dared be up for it. I cope just fine with the cost/benefit analysis at work, I don’t with being a full time at-home parent. I absolutely perceive full time parenting as more difficult than my job, and for me, it is.
(I got asked how I lost the babyweight so fast too. Losing litres and litres of blood and having sixty stitches sure will do that.)
I really liked how you put this. It is basically exactly how I feel. I was shocked a couple of months ago when I tried to talk about something to do with my work with my toddler in my arms and the person patronised me by translating academic concepts into everyday language. It was a real eye-opener. I could have sworn she actually spoke more slowly to me too and changed her voice tone.
that “women should work” really hits me too – I’m not working right now, because my son’s special needs made afterschool care really difficult for him and paid work really difficult for me – my partner’s choices are part of this too, his ridiculously demanding job, but we’d all be homeless (and without the medical services that make school possible for kiddo) if he didn’t work, and that’s a function of the whole economic structure, not just our own choices.
But anyway, i don’t want to be always talking about how intense his needs are – he’s actually doing quite well because of intensive support from us and the school, and I want him and other people to see how well he’s doing, not how much work it is for us – but then I’m either always getting snide comments – must be nice not to work when the kid’s not even home all day, right? Or else kind of letting people think I’m involuntarily out of work. And my partner (and his family, my god) thinking i’m kind of lazy.
The solution is going to be me getting another not-very-highly-paid “flexible” job pretty soon, I think – and doing it until my partner realizes, hey, this is actually not something that works for us, again. Or kiddo will hit that magic moment professionals assure me is coming, when he is doing better on his own.
I’m with tinfoil hattie. The women who can’t stay at home with their kids who then extend some kind of guilt burden on “those who can” are ignoring that some mothers at home with their kids may not be able to find suitable work. I don’t know if it’s true of all male-dominated professions, but IT/geeky/tech-y areas don’t have part-time jobs*, and academia expects you work 60-80 hour weeks at a full-time level – “part-time” casual positions require far more work hours than you’re paid for. (I’ve long felt that academia ought to show its hand and admit that qualified applicants for full-time positions must have a wife, in the “taking care of most other life functions” sense.)
Also, how does one look for work, prepare job applications, and prepare for, travel to, and attend interviews when one can’t afford childcare until one lands the job? I’m not the only mother who’s noticed that particular catch-22.
*This doesn’t just disadvantage mothers, but basically anyone who would prefer or benefit from a part-time job. There’s a lot of macho bullish!t assumptions built into the industry.
Great points. There are also mothers unable to find suitable work due to things like agoraphobia, severe physical disabilities, or mental illness who might rely on staying home as a default–like me. In addition to that, there’s the experience issue: few busineses will hire you unless you have an extensive work history that isn’t “spotty” or part-time.
It’s messed up.
This review brought back memories of a mother’s group I saw meeting at a shopping centre in The Shire. Just about everyone had a Bugaboo stroller, including a ‘denim’ one that I had seen advertised recently as the one to have – it was about $2000 worth. That level of competition would have been pretty much unsustainable I reckon. So glad that I never had to face that.
I always felt guilty, and still do, that staying at home with my babies 24/7 was too hard and made me depressed. Even now they go to afterschool care, although I probably could push for school hours work and probably get it. It’s not that I don’t enjoy their company, or sometimes wish that I could still cuddle the babies that they were, I just can’t cope with constant demands to play this or that mind numbing game for hours on end. I have always envied parents who can spend a whole day ignoring housework while they play with their kids but it is something that I will never be able to do myself.
Aaah, Mindy. Don’t feel guilty, please! Playing baby & toddler games isn’t fun for most people! I used to get SO BORED sometimes.
It boils down to this: So, you don’t like logging hours and hours playing with your kids as much as you might have once hoped you would. So where’s the crime in that?
They probably like spending time with their friends, anyway.
I know, and those parents who did like spending all day with their kids felt guilty for not wanting to go back to work. Parenting guilt gets you some way shape or form I reckon.
Mindy, I cannot stand playing mind numbing games for minutes on end, let alone hours. I’m happy to DO stuff with my kids – take them places, make things with them, but when the sylvanian families come out and I’m instructed by my 2 year old that I am the cat mummy and she is the cat baby I can almost feel the rash breaking out. Can’t get out of there fast enough. I’ve pretty much accepted that I’m like that and pretty much given the guilt away now. I do admire people who genuinely enjoy it, but I sure aint one of them.
I am a horrible mother. Once, while waiting for the KINDERGARTEN bus, my son asked me to play Power Rangers with him for five minutes. I was the bad guy. His power ranger said something, and I put on my scary-bad-guy voice and told PR that I would soon defeat him. PR challenged Bad Guy’s claim and asked how BG proposed to do that.
Still in my scary voice, I declared, “By stomping on your ASS!” and proceeded to make my guy jump all over his Power Ranger’s butt.
Boy, was he MAD! That was seven years ago and he still only half-laughs at it. We agree that it was funny, AND that I was sorta being an asshole.
Yeah, those games are freaking BORING.
LOLOLOL my husband is just saying he’d rather play cat mother and cat baby than play even one more mind-numbing game of Stratego! Thank goodness the kids are past that stage now.
Lord, same here. Enough with the mummies and babies stuff!
For the record, I have a Masters in Biochemistry, and I stay home with my kids.
I generally do not play the mind-numbing games with them. Honestly, they need to entertain themselves sometimes, Mommy has work to do. They “help” with dishes and laundry, and play outside when I’m tending my 20 fruit trees and decent size veggie garden. I read them kid books about 30 minutes a day, and will snuggle or play about the same amount, but they need to realize they are not the center of the universe, and stuff needs to get done.
Out of interest, how many kids do you have? I have two and the more they play together the less of that I have to do, thankfully.
I also try to work outside to encourage them to play outside, but it sure rains a lot in Auckland.
I have two boys, ages 2.5 and 5. They play together a bit but generally devolve into taking each others toys or irritating each other. They run to me to referee, and I encourage them to talk to each other, say what makes them unhappy, and think about a way they can both be happy. If that doesn’t work, I confiscate the offending toy. They eventually stop asking me to referee. Until tomorrow, anyway.
[…] Bluemilk in einer Rezension von Jessica Valentis Buch “Why have kids?” […]
This link to where I have reviewed The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts explains a lot of where Valenti is coming from in that chapter on whether women *should* work, it’s not quite as inflammatory as I may have made it sound.. but yes, this isn’t an easy conversation for mothers. https://bluemilk.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/self-reflection-and-the-feminine-mistake/
But I think byou articulated exactly what annoys me so much:
“The Feminine Mistake has little to say about how our community and economy could be organised differently to focus less on a traditional male life-course, and much to say about how women can best ensure their security in this patriarchal landscape by moulding themselves to its contours. Work with it, not against in, in other words. And don’t expect it to be easy.”
Yes! Exactly! No room for not chasing the almighty salary and consumerism, no discussion of whether our current community and economy should (or could) change.
Thank you!
I didn’t even finish the review before going to Amazon to buy the book (BTW, $1.99 for the Kindle version).
This book review and the discussion in the comments reminds me yet again that this is one of my favorite blogs.
I’m still waiting to hear the term, “fathers who work outside the home” or “working fathers” as often as I hear the terms that apply to mothers. “Stay-at-home dad” is in the lexicon now, but it’s still pretty rare. On the other hand, you don’t have to say “her father works” or “he has a job outside the home” when you talk about fathers. The automatic assumption is, of course he “works”! At something real. That pays.
Absolutely. And what I find interesting is that many of my generation who are Dads are very involved in parenting and talk to each other about their children, schooling and so forth. My partner shares offices with two other dads with 3 children each and they all talk about their families regularly. So, its not as if they are pretending to be childless when they are at work. However, I suspect they still wouldn’t refer to themselves as “working dads”.
Thank you for this thoughtful and meaty review. I really enjoyed it and I have to say that it made me want to read the book, even though I hadn’t much desire before.
The last section in your review where you quote Valenite: “I, unfortunately, didn’t have a choice in deciding whether or not she would be the center of my life. She just was; her health and survival depended on it” and then discuss how almost all of us feel exactly the way – well, I found it brilliant, and also deeply moving.
Fantastic book review and wonderful comment thread. I love your blog bluemilk. Thank you.
[…] And Blue Milk has, as we have come to expect from her, a beautifully nuanced review of Jessica Valenti’s book on feminist motherhood: Why have kids, by Jessica Valenti. […]
[…] the blogging and internet forum community where the battles of the mommy war are often fought. Here is a thoughtful review of the book by the blogger blue milk, who’s quoted in the book. Her […]
[…] are often highly political. For many women of my generation, motherhood is a time when we are confronted with the full force of patriarchy and the seemingly insurmountable challenge of maintaining […]