I keep saying to writers and editors that the really dark stuff still to be unpacked with the topic of feminist motherhood is not the stuff about your relationship with your kids, as explosive as that can be it’s really being talked about more these days; it’s the stuff about your relationship with your partner (if you have one), and particularly if he is a he, that could do with a lot more honest discussion. The editors look excited when I say this, until I tell them that I am not in a head-space to do that writing, myself. And the writers nod and then just look very nervous .. but someone should write about this stuff, don’t you think? You, maybe?
This line from a piece in The Hairpin by Claire Zulkey got me thinking about that again.
Here is what I’ve learned: Having a modern, equal, loving relationship before having a baby does not mean you’ll continue to do so once you have a baby.
I totally agree. (But, like you, I’m too close to it, I think, for it to be something good for me to write about.) I did my undergraduate honors thesis at Wesleyan about the transition to first-time motherhood. I interviewed couples around CT before and after their child was born and also the women alone. At the time I thought it was ridiculous that these women poured their hearts out to me, often crying to me — a 22 year old undergrad — mostly about their changes in identity and their relationships with their partners. But now — as a new mom — it completely makes sense. Unless you have a shrink, it’s difficult to talk to anyone, even your friends, about your bafflement, sadness, and, yes, even anger about what sometimes is going on in your relationship. There’s a lot of academic research about the rocky first years of new parenthood in a marriage. But I think it really does get better!
Ugh. Yeah, sometimes I think that one of the biggest problems with the conversation about feminist mothering is that it’s all about feminist *mothering* instead of feminist parenting.
Not sure I entirely agree with this. I think if we labelled it “feminist parenting” we could mask the fact that it really is mothers’ lives that are overwhelmingly changed in a way that fathers’ lives generally aren’t. There are issues that really are particular to motherhood.
But I agree that we may not need to call it “feminist mothering” if there really was genuine equality.
I’ll give you that. I guess it’s a cart/horse issue. I feel like continuing to talk about parenting as if it’s solely a women’s issue contributes to the fact that women continue to disproportionately shoulder the parenting burden.
It *is* a women’s issue in the current kyriarchy, but it’s only a women’s issue when you’re actually talking about the disproportionate division of labour. But I don’t think that’s a great reason to continue talking about broader parenting issues (i.e. every parneting issue that isn’t directly related to the fact that women do most of the parenting) as if they are mothering issues, if that makes sense.
We don’t talk about teachers’ or nurses’ issues as if they are women’s issues, though we do acknowledge the pink-washing of those professions, and the negative effects of that pink-washing; similarly, we shouldn’t talk about parenting issues as if they are women’s issues.
I completely agree that it seems that the addition of kids unbalances quite a few relationships that had been equal. I see it in a lot of the relationships around me (mostly those of the parents of our daughters’ friends). I have noted the phenomenon on my blog (see, for instance: http://www.wandering-scientist.com/2011/11/on-being-feminist-mother.html), but never tried to figure out why or really discuss it. I think there are some interesting ideas in Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s work that might shed light, but I haven’t tried to pin them down. I wonder about the role money plays in this in individual relationships, but have only anecdotes about that, and no data. I also wonder about the role that maternity leave plays, but that is a fraught area to explore. (However, someone once pointed me to a study that found fathers who took paternity leave were more likely to be equal parents or something like that- but I can’t find that study now. I think it was done in Sweden.)
I think there might also be a tendency not to include the parenting work in our chores divisions, both conscious and unconscious, so even if the division of other chores is equal, the fact that the mother often does more parenting- particularly in the early baby years- can derail things without us even noticing. I know that my husband and I had to make a very explicit decision to trade extra dishwashing and the like (by him) for the amount of time spent breastfeeding and expressing milk when I went back to work (by me). It is true that of the two chores, breastfeeding was more enjoyable, particularly once I got past the first few months. But it is also true that no one wakes you up several times in the night to request that you wash dishes.
I’m not really sure why I haven’t written much about this. It isn’t really a problem in my own relationship- we do occasionally argue about chores and the division of parenting labor, but always from the starting assumption that things should be equal. Usually we’re arguing because one or the other of us thinks things have slipped into an unequal place. Writing about having an equal relationship tends to annoy people, and I get tired of the snark and people telling me that I am lying. It also means that I can’t really give advice on how to move a relationship back to equal after kids, because I just sort of lucked out in that department. I think another reason I haven’t really written about this is that writing about it requires me to be very careful in my phrasing or I offend a bunch of people, and that’s just tiring.
I think it is Jessica Valenti’s book that talks about the research that shows that fathers who take paternity leave (particularly in academia) tend to use it to advance their careers by doing extra research or publishing an article during that time. That ultimately harms women. This is what is just about to happen to me. My husband is, on the record, taking paternity leave but will actually be working during that time while I, supposedly back at work, will not be publishing but actually looking after the children. Incredibly frustrating but for some reason I can’t actually summon the energy to fight it.
Jen, that is incredibly frustrating. And plays into the insane notion that women on maternity leave are “resting” or “goofing off.” Ugh. My husband took some paternity leave, not as much as my maternity leave, but some. And we live in the US, so neither of us took much! (3 months for me, 1 month for him, an additional month when we were both part time.) But while we were home with the baby, we didn’t try to work beyond checking emails and making sure no gigantic fires erupted in our absence. My husband did get some bigger household chores done and I didn’t, but then, I was lactating and he wasn’t.
I must read that Jessica Valenti book sometime. I keep hearing good things about it.
As bluemilk knows, I am not really a fan of the Valenti book. I don’t think it is well-written and it has some pretty major substantive problems also. But I do remember the odd statistic being interesting.
One thing I find hard is having the conversation about equal parenting with my partner can often result in too much point scoring and tallying up, which can seem harmful to a relationship. So I start counting up in my head how many hours of childcare I am doing compared to him and watching for when he checks out at home etc. I find myself asking whether he deserves a sleep in because he has done more childcare than me rather than thinking it might be nice to give him a sleep in because that is what a kind and loving partner gives to the other sometimes. Things just become so much more selfish and calculating when our parenting becomes so consciously about trades – trading childcare for alone time later on etc. I hate it. Michael Sandel makes this point in his book Liberalism and the Limits of Justice – would you rather a family governed by the justice or love (presuming we cannot have both). Would you rather your partner made you dinner out of love or because they owe you because you picked the kids up from school and helped with their homework. I supposed I want the motivation to be love but the outcome to be just but it is really hard to have both. Waiting for them to do a fair share of parenting because it is the kind and loving thing to do means so many inequalities crop up. So we just end up back at with the tallying up method.
At the risk of doing my usual trick of offending people when I talk about relationships and chores… to me, the willingness to discuss and negotiate and arrive at a fair arrangement IS a sign of love and respect. If my husband didn’t care about things being equal and/or fair, then I would question his love and respect for me, because it would feel to me that he was saying that his time was more important or valuable than mine. I have said before that I would end a relationship in which the division of chores was not fair, and that horrifies some people (“divorce over chores? It seems like a trivial reason to end a marriage!”) but to me the split would not be over chores, it would be over the lack of respect. The problem with chores would just be the symptom.
With that said, I realize that (1) some women feel quite differently, and I have no problem with that and absolutely do not judge that, (2) some women do not have the option of being able to walk away from a relationship, and I acknowledge the privilege I have in this regard, and (3) there are large forces at work that make it hard for women to assert themselves in this regard (and that make it overwhelmingly a woman’s “job” to assert herself to get what should just be given).
I also should reiterate that my resolve in this regard has not been tested, and I can claim no credit for that and just count myself lucky.
What Cloud said. In my experience, justice and love are Siamese twins: you get both or neither. Because if love really is present, it will lead people to implement justice. If injustice is just fine with them, they don’t really love you.
The only exception is if they have not yet perceived the injustice of $circumstance, and even then, if they love you, they will actually sit still and listen while you point it out to them, and actually think seriously about what you said. Not taking you seriously and refusing to do their share of the work is the beginning of a path that ends in divorce.
I do think, though, that equal doesn’t mean the same. I tend to apply the Siblings without rivalry kind of thinking to my relationship. It doesn’t matter to me that I had a long maternity leave (7 months) where I did the vast majority of the child care, or that I do most of the childcare now, due to the circumstances of our lives. There are a lot more years ahead of us, and I know things ebb and flow. Sometimes one person takes a hit, sometimes the other person. It’s not that I’m never resentful of my partner, because I definitely am from time to time, but I think that mostly if one feels the love and respect from one’s partner then it’s easier to avoid falling into the tallying pitfall, because you aren’t tallying, you have a partnership. You’re for each other in a profound way. I can’t imagine my partner any other way than how he is – looking to help, participating in the life we have built together, worrying about me, and also out for for himself, all those things together. Frankly, I think a lot of men are raised to see their wives as supporting actors to their main characters – they think, she should do these things for me. (that’s the essence of male privilege, of patriarchy.) They don’t think, how is she feeling? what is her stress level like? What can I do to make her life easier? And if asked to think about these things, they can become angry and resentful.
there’s a third motivation that I noticed in my own relationship and several of my friends have talked about recently – not wanting to be your own parents.
It’s like having a baby pushes us right into the roles we saw our moms do. In weird ways – I started cooking a lot like my mom, which I never had done (partly because it was easier than my old style of cooking, partly because something about those first years made me really crave childhood food, and now partly because it suits my child’s palate). My partner got seriously anxious and expressed it through controlling behavior, especially around money, which I know was his own dad’s response to parenting. A friend who recently had a first baby told me she finds herself slipping into her mom’s pattern of never asking for things directly, just sort of announcing that it would be nice if something happened to be done and hoping her husband does it – and her husband keeps slipping into his own father’s pattern of totally disconnecting and tuning out the family when he feels overwhelmed. They’re talking about it already, which is great…we kind of let it happen until we had to have huge fights to recalibrate.
Since most of my friends had quite patriarchal parents, slipping into those patterns is a huge shift away from our pre-baby egalitarian relationships.
Susan Maushart’s “The Mask of Motherhood” is the best thing I’ve read on the way having children in a male-female partnership changes formerly equal relationships.
Taken in isolation, Michael Sandel sounds like he wants to guilt women into shutting up about domestic injustice.
My big confrontation with the effect on your relationship of becoming parents was just this past year, when my husband was working horrific architect hours, while I was trying to finish my book, and it was really brought home to me that I had no power to decide when to put my work aside to do the parenting that needed to be done, whereas he did. If he called to say he wouldn’t be home until midnight, yes, it sucked for him because he was working till midnight, but it also meant I was going to do all of the pickup/dinner/bath/bed block, and he got to choose that for both of us. I could write a blog post about that, if it’s relevant.
We have exactly that issue – I hate having to stop work every day at 4pm so I can do the nursery run whereas my husband can work late if he needs to meet a deadline. He can’t really understand it since he feels like it is harder for him because he has to work late whereas for me I would love the luxury of not having to cram my work into 6 hours in the middle of the day.
plus, hopefully his working late now will pay off for his career in the long run; you’re running the risk of getting mommy-tracked.
I finally stopped my partner complaining about how much less money I make than i used to, pre-baby, by pointing out that he COULD work only 40 hours a week and watch his colleagues get ahead of him for years, so I could also work 40 hours a week; but if he feels he needs to work 60 hours a week because everyone else is, then I can’t really do 40. I’m cool with that, I like my life the way it is…but that’s part of why he makes so much more money.
Oh yes, the money thing. That really bites because I could actually earn a lot more than him and i find it hard not being able to do that because I actually like nice things – I would like a nice home, not to be walking around in clothes from 7 years ago when I had a decent income but are actually a couple of sizes too small etc… I find it so hard that there is pressure on me to do most of the childcare/have a flexible job that allows me to do most of the childcare AND earn more money. If I get this promotion in September, I will actually be earning more than him but still expected to do my job in one third less time than he has (with the expectation that I work late in the evenings to make up).
That sounds terrible and unsustainable to me.
I had a split shift work-from-home job where I worked after dinner, after spending the afternoon & early evening parenting. I could only keep it up for a year and then I burned out and issued an ultimatum: either he took on the flex/less work thing for a while, or I was quitting my job.
I’m back in school this semester, probably getting a job this summer or fall, and I’m going to get a regular 40 hour job if I can and let Daddy figure out childcare and whatnot. He’s agreed theoretically but I’m sure will kick and scream when it’s ACTUALLY his problem to get home by 5:30 to do care pickup. But he’ll get used to it.
Saw this article today and was reminded of your comments here… http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/01/29/men-want-to-be-breadwinners-but-so-do-women/ “…while men’s and women’s ideals are very similar, their fallback positions deviate dramatically.”
I could write about this. I did have a relationship dissolve and I do think that the pressure of unequal roles contributed in a big way to the breakdown. I was terrified when I had my third child, I wanted the new relationship to wok, and I know precisely how difficult it is to remain egalitarian once parenting comes into play. My ex would not consider himself to be a chauvinistic man, and neither would I, but in reality the division of our roles (once babies came along) became unfair, patriarchal and oppressive (to me), and me fighting that was met with resentment and anger. So I could write about it, but I would probably have to do it anonymously or face quite a bit of shit in my personal life.
I should add, we went with attachment parenting, and I think that makes it very easy to slip into oppressive gender roles. I was consciously trying to remain feminist in my life while still upholding my parenting ideals, but as time went on my ex was less willing to accept a reduction of his privilege to ensure I had some autonomy and freedom. I ended up very disadvantaged by the breakdown of our relationship.
Yes to the attachment parenting thing. I know that attachment parenting was presented to me like part of its appeal is that it is more convenient and easy because you end up avoiding/minimising various challenges but it is also highly demanding in other ways, ways that I think end up disproportionately burdening women. This is compounded if the other partner is neither a committed feminist nor attachment parent. For a man to commit to feminism and attachment parenting takes a hell of a lot of privilege-eshewing. I think that there are, consequently, many attachment-style mothers feeling the inequality.
And, yes, someone should write about it. I would have liked to have been forewarned. Nothing I read about attachment parenting, written from the perspective of an attachment-style parent/advocate, addressed the risk of amplifying gender-based domestic inequality.
In fact, much of what I did read, seemed to endorse traditional, if not unequal, gender roles. Definitely put me off attachment-style parenting for a while. I came to find my own way to it. And I guess I’d wear the label but only because the shoe fits, even though I don’t like the bed-fellows – the figurative ones.
Yes, equal is not always the same or 50/50. It’s 100% dedication to supporting eachother in a healthy, loving relationship from which you hope your children benefit. That means doing the hard work of recallibrating when pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, job changes, time constraints, health changes, preconceived notions or others’ opinions throw a wrench in whatever balance in your gender roles and communication you thought you had achieved to date. Grow together through each new phase. Speak up about your needs even if you don’t know how to get your message across effectively the first (or second, or third…) time. Be encouraging of eachother’s attempts at nurturing your children. This includes trusting your partner to get it done right even if “right” is so different from how you would do it. (Make a secret pact to distance your selves from the battle of the sexes your mom/mother-in law are waging in a war by proxy through your relationship because they lost their war in the ’80s.). Be brave enough to make a change if something isn’t working for your family. Feminist parenting is a women’s issue but women’s issues are human issues. I hope that my daughter hears this from both me and her father.
Yeah. That is a good line Blue Milk. I had a sense before our first child was born that however I had lived and whatever i had thought about how to live had been mere sketches. It strikes me that it is possibly a consequence of the way we compartmentalise our lives and knowledge and the varied sites at which we learn about feminism, whether in the family, slow osmotic acceptance without critical thought or as a set of conscious realisations, or a combination and more. As each new phase of my life has unfolded I have had to examine the circumstances of this new stage and calibrate my expectations and tasks to the new environment without sacrificing that which I think is right. I mean a political philosophy is for life, not just the good times 😉
and you have to do that at the same time as learning a whole new set of skills and while your partner is doing the same giant project.
I think that’s a big source of relationship stress, too – usually, in a relationship, you can kind of take turns being the one having a crisis. You don’t usually both get new jobs or have a tragedy in your extended family or even get the flu at the exact same time. But if you have a baby together (or later, if there’s a crisis around your kids, with school or health or whatever), you also each individually have this huge life shift and all the emotional freakout and philosophy shift and learning new things at the same time, instead of one having the giant thing and the other supporting them.
Too true Rosa. We have been lucky in that regard, we have only had serial freak outs, not combined ones.
I think the thing that made the negotiation of post-baby equality so much more challenging was the all-at-onceness of it. My husband and I have been together since we were 18. We negotiated our equality before marriage gradually, sharing space over time, joining money slowly, growing up together as we figured it out. By the time that we had a child, we had been living together for six years and married three. We had done so much little work in getting that relationship tweaked and molded. Then suddenly there was a screaming, not sleeping infant who needed to be held, to nurse, constantly. All of those previous habits were immediately inadequate. We had no time to figure out new ones, and the beginning was very, very hard. Eventually though, we got that rhythm back. We negotiated new guidelines, and I’m sure we’ll continue to do so as we move into all of life’s big changes. How you get through that initial phase, though, and why that phase (at least for me) suddenly reverted to traditional gender roles, is frustrating and hard to pin down.
I think you are right about the all-at-onceness aspect. Also, I find that when I am tired and stressed from looking after the baby all day, the last thing I really want is a fight with my partner when he comes home from work. So the kids will be screaming and it will be a nightmare putting baby to sleep (screaming the whole way through me getting my daughters dinner), and for some reason, a couple of minutes before the husband gets in the door all will go calm. He’ll ask how things were and I’ll say fine because I don’t want him to come home to my stress every day. I think that is part of women’s guilt – the pressure to create a harmonious home. I try to strike a middle ground by telling him about it in a way that explains how hard it has been without making it his fault but sometimes I worry that he really doesn’t understand. Most evenings I would SO rather be at the office than dealing with the 5-7pm stint by myself.
Interesting discussion everyone. I realise I set it up this way by including the Hairpin quote.. but the dark, challenging, twisted, beautiful, raw parts of being a feminist and co-parenting with someone and how that unfolds, that I would like to see explored more in a feminist way in writing, extends beyond the debate over the sharing of domestic labour and child-rearing. I am talking about the whole bag. Every part of the dark negotiation and embrace.
There’s probably something interesting here with regards to your recent posts about writing about motherhood as a feminist activity, in that writing about co-parenting, or life-partnering as a whole, as a feminist activity is even harder because of the relative power of the other adult, who may be hurt or angered or feel silenced or we picture their hurt/anger/silence for them, or…
It’s also my personal experience that writing about my partner (especially things about his job) are significantly more policed by concerned third parties than anything I’ve ever written about my child to date.
Anyway, here’s an observation: an adult person’s emotional/relationship style with other adults may not resemble their emotional/relationship style with children (or their own children specifically) at all. And it is quite a shock to discover this in another adult (as presumably they discover it in you also). If you don’t like or struggle to like or simply don’t recognise the adult you thought you knew in their parenting style, it in turn affects your relationship with them.
I suppose parenting and housework are the easiest things to talk about. Relationships are intensely personal, and just as we have to be careful what we write about our children, we need to be careful how we write about our relationships with our partners. My DP and I are very open with each other, we’ve seen how our relationship has changed since having our child (separate to the way it was when I was parenting MY children and he was my partner only, not the father of one of my children). It’s still difficult. And because I have experience that he doesn’t have, I have anxieties that he can’t even understand. Sometimes I would prefer to go it alone rather than negotiate but that is just when I hit rock bottom. Intimacy is something I try to prioritise now in order to avoid that physical-growing-apart that happened in my previous relationship. I see intimacy as something *I* need too, (I’m not just talking sex here but that is part of it). The difficulty is in writing about ALL of it you may very well end up with a rambling mess, some of which doesn’t resemble feminism in the slightest ;).
Good topic. Popular topic. It’s easily most discussed, though in many different contexts. Tons has been written on it. A few examples off the top of my head, from me:
http://americanhousewifeinlondon.blogspot.com/2010/11/marriage-and-sex-after-baby.html
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/06/29/the-chore-wars-continued-husband-vs-wife-edition/
I’ve got a few other pieces in the works that will hit similar themes.
It is one of the reasons Caitlin Flanagan is so hated:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/01/the-wifely-duty/302659/
Studies have been done:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_highbrow/2006/03/desperate_feminist_wives.html
This is on my to read list:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-05-26/entertainment/35265232_1_woman-fights-american-marriage-unlucky-partners
Marriage centered, or not child centered parenting is often the overriding tenet of parenting advice on the right, see anything by John Rosemond for one example. Or Google anything about The Bitch in the House.
If you read those, you’ll notice that most of the discussions have much to do with sex. It’s not that sex is the problem, but it is the indicator of the problem of partnership discord as well as an easy way to start treating that discord. As an indicator it is a refusal often founded on other things, like domestic chores. As a treatment it is practice in prioritizing a relationship and sometimes doing something just because it would make the partner happy. For example, Lube Jobs is about maintenance sex.
Note the reviews about what about meeting her needs. Of course a man should meet her needs as well, but what the reviews tend to miss is that a woman might have an equal libido to a man prior to kids, post baby when that area might be post trama, when breastfeeding has sapped natural lubrication and made a woman smell like cheese, when hormonal changes have enhanced sleep debt–well that equal libido is often temporarily out of sync. Under such circumstances, the idea that we shouldn’t help our partner out because we aren’t in the mood or that we only will if the scoreboard says he’s doing his fair share of domestic chores, those can build quite a bit of resentment.
of course, maintenance sex that is only for “helping a partner out” not only builds resentment but it is part of a terrible cycle of associating your partner with bad sex, which is the worst way to build up a libido. It’s not just scoreboarding that makes having lots of boring chore-type sex bad for a relationship.
Yeah to those points Rosa, and also what about enthusiastic consent? How does that fit in if you’re faking it in the hope of making it? Or are we supposed to forget about that after having a baby?
What is holding my relationship together post first baby is that, although my partner has hurt me with much of his behaviour, he hasn’t (as he has done in the past) pressured me to pleasure him when I don’t want to. I am already doing so many things I don’t want to, plus being generally knackered, and experiencing the natural effects of breastfeeding a small baby, it would be the straw that would break the camel’s back. Also, this gives me hope that he wants our relationship to survive.
Maybe if men want more sex after babies, they should be agitating alongside us for the changes that would make motherhood so much more of a positive experience? Plus, why do we have to fight against the natural and protective responses of our bodies postpartum?
Fascinating discussion. Motherhood has drained me today but hopefully I’ll be back to contribute…
Maybe not everything you’d hope for, but I was pleasantly surprised to see this article a few weeks ago: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/can-parents-share-child-raising-responsibilities-equally/2013/01/02/7ea97af6-326e-11e2-bfd5-e202b6d7b501_story.html
I don’t know … I feel like so much of what happened to us after we had kids that are the dark parts are – it feels like stirring up drama, even courting disaster, a little, because I can’t talk about it without talking about his parents, who (in our life at least) are the primary cause of friction in our relationship, doubly so now that we have children and I worry that trying to protect them from nebulous racial microaggressions looks like nothing more than being petty and trying to keep my children from his parents.
Although, someone mentioned upthread that they’ve noticed in themselves and their circle of friends that parenting regresses us into our own childhood, in that we begin to act like our own parents even against our own stated wishes. I’ve noticed this too, with my partner at least, who acts more and more like his own dad. Mostly in the good ways, but in the bad ways too, sometimes, and I have to drag him out of it by explicitly calling attention to it, which is so hard because there’s no way to say “you’re acting like your father” without it sounding as though his father is wanting somehow. And yet …
We did have a moment, once, when Libra had been badly misbehaving and throwing a tantrum, and my partner had said something like “no, you don’t deserve [love] right now,” and I was horrified, horrified, to realize that he said these things because they had been said to him. I held him a long while and told him that of course he did, of course our child deserved all the love in our hearts, and that he did, too, and I told him that whoever had told him such awful things when he was a little boy was wrong to have said them. He cried on me, but he has not said such a thing since, and maybe in time he will even believe it.
I am so hearing you right now and it is awful.
that’s a really beautiful and healing response, I think I knew that, that we were mirroring the way we were raised, but without thinking about it that deeply.
About to run away to work but WHAT IS IT with parents (ours, theirs) when a baby begins to take shape in your relationship? It seems so common that adult relationships suddenly begin to intrude and change in not so nice ways as the grandparents to be suddenly decide you NEED their advice and dictation on how you live your life – even if you were doing perfectly okay before now.
Holy shit balls WHAT!!!!! Congratulations! Welcome to the world little man x
oh was wondering where this comment went for the wrong blog – can you please delete. Thanks!
[…] then this one is a short blog entry on Blue Milk – a very interesting blog to explore if you like the idea of being a feminist and a mum. Anyway, […]
[…] week, one of our PAIL Blogroll members sent us this link, and it definitely piqued our interest. It’s just a quick blurb, but the premise is this […]
[…] PAIL’s news article this week is “Someone should write about this.” […]
From reading many of the comments above, it seems that women are ready to talk about the dark things that happen in relationships after children.
I know I’ll talk about it until the cows come home! Finally, 10 years after divorce I’ll talk about it.
I’ll talk about the dark feelings towards my own child too. I love him more than my own life itself, but I did feel resentment at a lack of bodily autonomy and privacy when he was small.
When women give birth we are at our most vulnerable; physically, financially and emotionally. If the baby is planned then you’ve chosen a partner to have a baby with which usually means you trust that person. What you’re not prepared for is the shock of birth and becoming suddenly a parent and how much your life changes. It changes your relationship to your partner completely.
I’ll not go into detail here on my own story, I emailed it to you some time ago, but I think there is more than enough material for a book about womens’ experiences and the dark side. Perhaps a compilation of stories? I know I’d be really interested in reading that.
[…] The dark side of mothering. Blue Milk has given me something to think about here. […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] shared this weeks news item, “Somebody should write about this” by Blue Milk. We had an AMAZING response to this post in the comments section and had lots […]