I went to a seminar last week organized by cross-disciplinary feminist scholars to discuss the latest book by Ann Crittenden. After Ann finished her summary of the book, the discussion took an odd turn. Instead of talking about how mothers could be using their skills in the market place, the scholars instead brought up the issue of security moms.
Security moms are supporting Bush because of they feel that he will keep the country safer. In academia, Bush supporters are Satan’s minions. The discussants felt more comfortable talking about mothers as Satan’s minions than talking about the positive nature of caring work.
A few months back, I was sleuthing around for political mothers groups, and I went over to the NOW website to see what they had to say. There had very little information devoted to mothers and children. There was a lot information for women who didn’t want to become mothers, but not much for the others. And certainly nothing for women who raised their children at home. NOW could be advocating for a social security credit for SAHMs.
Some mother friends are down right resentful that nobody ever told that this would be so hard. The promise of “having it all” has not materialized and, frankly, they blame the feminists for glossing over the difficulties.
Other friends are angry at older feminists for downplaying the work at home. Success has been defined solely in terms of keeping up with the guys in the office. Caring for the family is old fashioned, conservative, and even dangerous. Mothers are now flocking to self-help groups because they have such bad self esteems.
Have feminists undermined the work of mothers? Can they take some responsibility for the unhappiness of mothers today?
Apt. 11d 
Laura, this reminds me of when we were all arguing about Barbara Ehrenreich. On the one hand, she is–besides being a spectacular writer and thinker–a feminist who actually manages to look beyond the relatively narrow, liberal, middle- and upper-class (you might even say…”academic”!) concerns of professional women; she talks about women in poverty and jobs and schools and all the rest. Yet at the same time, she (on the basis of Nickel and Dimed, at least) refuses to enter into the cultural world of such lower- and middle-class women; she didn’t read their books, or attend their churches, or try to get why they disliked abortion and focused on their children the way they did. Is it any wonder that her kind of feminist populism still finds so little cross-class traction?
Worse, can you imagine what she would have to deal with if she went out and researched and wrote NaD today? She’d be surrounded by women with Bush bumper stickers on their cars, talking about terrorism–dubious of the war in Iraq, to be sure, but still genuinely concerned about being “safe.” She’d probably have ended up throttling some of those women she was crusading on behalf of.
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I consider myself a feminist and I always have. And I don’t feel let down by the feminist movement. I thank Gloria Steinem and other second wave feminists for opening doors to me that were once closed shut. And I celebrate my reproductive freedom, which has allowed me to plan my family — of two children.
That being said, I often feel left out of the feminist movement now that I’ve opted to become a mom. When I visit Ms., NOW, or the Feminist Majority sites, I sometimes feel invisible. Moms are often not mentioned, and if we are it is in dealing with our reproductive rights solely.
I guess my wish is that “feminist moms” were recognized as a force to be reckoned with. Most of us are not just talking theories of feminism, we are trying to live it each and every day in a world where motherhood is often devalued. And we are trying our best to raise the next generation of enlightened men and women.
I realized a couple of years ago tht “having it all” was only possible if I pursued life and the opportunities presented to me, the same way a man would pursue them. The problem was that I wasn’t a man, and I didn’t have a wife waiting at home to support my every other need.
I do agree that “motherhood” is the unfinished business of the woman’s movement. We’ve presented options for women sure — but how realistic are those options for those of us who wish to have both a career and family? Why are we still being penalized for taking time away from the fast track to support and nurture our families? When will the world recognize that many of us can move in and out of work and home rather seamlessly? Why don’t we stop discussing flexible work options and start fighting for them instead?
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I don’t feel let down by feminism at all. I am a feminist and feminism is what we make of it. I also think it is self-destructive and counter-productive to blame feminism for the failings of a society that most feminists wish to improve. I think it would be _great_ for feminism to be more energized by an influx of politically-oriented mothers, expanding the discussion of what feminism is and who feminists are. This should be the next big frontier for feminism.
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I’m a feminist, too, and I don’t see the point of bashing feminists/feminism because it hasn’t managed to solve all problems. You have to prioritize, and, given the centrality of control over our reproductive abilities to being able to do anything else, and given the threat that those rights have been under, it’s certainly understandable that the focus has been on reproductive rights. People like Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger understood that women’s liberation had to come from the freedom to choose when or whether to bear children. I’m happy to have NOW focus on reproductive rights, because I see those rights as absolutely central to the other parts of the feminist struggle.
I also think that feminist moms are the force of the future (which is why I get discouraged when I hear moms adopting the sexist stereotypes of my parents’ generation). One of the difficulties I’ve faced is finding men who really believe in equality and who are willing to engage with the struggle in figuring out what that can possibly mean on the ground. Why? Because, even as my parents encouraged me to be smart, etc., they–especially my mother–privileged my brother precisely because he was a boy. (We all joke about this now; it’s not some long-standing burr under my saddle, merely a statement of fact.) That is, many of the men my age were rasied similarly: their mothers encouraged their sisters to go to college, to get degrees and jobs and so on, but they didn’t insist that their sons respect that. Yes, I know, vast overgeneralization and oversimplification, and there are many men who managed to get it anyway and I love them all. But I do think that raising children is a potentially revolutionary act, and I hope that everyone who’s doing it or participating in is part of that revolution. ideally, I want men to consider staying home with the kids as often as women consider it.
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Remember when Ms. magazine had a children’s section in the back called “Stories for Free Children?” Remember how some of them became “Free to Be You and Me?” I loved that stuff growing up. It has been a long time since I’ve seen Ms., do they still do stuff like that?
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I don’t feel let down by the feminist movement. I think they’re doing some great things that will make the world a better place for my children. I don’t want Sophie to grow up in a world where she doesn’t have freedom of choice, for example.
My husband has it just as hard as I do. Parenting is tough work. I also remember growing up in a one-income household. That was not easy, either. My memories of childhood are of being poor, of having my 5th grade birthday party and then deciding I would never ask for another birthday party again because it was too expensive. (I never did have a party again.)
Russell’s comment about Ehrenreich is interesting. I think part of the really important work that feminism can do is to hammer at restructuring gender expectations. Only when we accomplish that will our institutions adjust (or am I being too cynical? Well, look at same-sex marriage–we really have had to wait for a generation to grow up living and working with out gays and lesbians before they could start realizing that the institution of marriage needs to accommodate this portion of our population). I have a dear friend, Bush supporter, divorced mom. And I think about how many of her issues are due to weak men in her life, so it’s no wonder she wants a “strong” man as president. I think part of what we need to do is to shore up the “new man”–the man who is a partner at home even while working.
So I guess now we are back to adjusting our expectations about employment. 🙂 Well, I think the difference I’m trying to articulate is that we *need* to make this about men as well as women.
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I’ve tried to post something here three, four times today… Like Claudia over at Halfway Down the Danube http://www.bookcase.com/~claudia/mt/ I feel like no matter what I say, it’s defensive.
After much consideration, I think modern feminism has given us, yes, wildly expanded choices, options women in my mother’s generation only dreamed about, broader opportunities and the ability to do pretty much whatever we want… but it’s also given us a side order of guilt that comes with everything else on the menu.
You’d like to have a satisfying career without a husband or kids? Fine. Want some guilt with that? Because, you know, by doing that, you’re giving in to “the Man” and making it harder for your sistern who aren’t unfeeling robots who ignore their procreative urges for the almighty dollar.
You’d like to stay home, raise the kids, bake brownies, go to PTA meetings, den mother for the cub scouts, and otherwise provide the activity-filled structure for your kids that you remember having (or not having) back when you were a sprout? Great. Here’s a side helping of guilt, because wars, actual damn wars with bra burning and everything took place so that you could have a real job instead of being “just a housewife…” and you’re not even TRYING to take your rightful place in the business world. Good heavens, why did you even bother going to college?
Or maybe you’re one of the majority, one of the women who has a job AND a family, so you’re walking the (plank) tightrope between the two demands according to your various needs and abilities, making choices that are as close to optimal as the world allows for. You get *extra* guilt with that option — it comes with guilt about the time you spend with your kids, guilt about the time you spend at your job, guilt about the time you don’t spend with your kids, guilt about the time you don’t spend at your job… and unless you’re able to be in two places at once, the guilt never stops.
Yep. Feminism has given us everything… with a non-optional side order of guilt. No matter what we do, it’s somehow wrong. Y’know, I don’t like this game and I don’t want to play anymore.
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I disagree. I do not believe that motherhood is the unfinished business of feminism. The unfinished business of feminism, and what I hope we get some changes in, is social and cultural images. We’ve had a helping of political reform, we’ve had a helping of economic reform, it’s time to add cultural reform to the mix and get rid of the notion that every woman wants to be a traditional woman, that every woman wants to be thin, and that every woman wants to have a family and smile beautifically over her happy children.
Motherhood, along with fatherhood, needs to be considered a separate category of civil rights: parenthood. For feminism to move forward, we need to acknowledge as a society that mothers are not the only parents, that fathers have responsibilities towards their children beyond merely providing the money to raise them, and these issues fall truly under the umbrella of “parents’ rights”, not feminism. To continue creating an equal world for the next generation and the one after that, we need to separate ourselves from this idea that parent=mother, and our male counterparts in this endeavour need to care as much about spending quality time with the family, about being able to leave work to pick up a sick child, et al. as women do. There’s a lot of men who’ve made this step, but even more who haven’t.
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I agree with Miranda and even more so with Poppy. I am a feminist and I do not feel let down by feminism. The feminist project is still a work in progress, equality has not been achieved. I don’t feel less of a feminist because I’m a mother. If anything, I’m even more committed than ever because I have two daughters.
I also believe that parenting is a separate issue, and that parenting (usually) involves two parents. If the feminist project is to be realised then men need to have the same options/responsibilities as parents as women.
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I’m not sure why mothers have to have their own movement and why feminism can’t encompass their interests. Aren’t mothers women, too? Why should this be a personal thing between mothers and fathers? What about all the single mothers? Feminism often seems to address the needs of only a very small percentage of women. That’s a problem.
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It does seem, sometimes, that when I support feminist causes (which I do), I am sending money to help “them” in their fight for abortion rights, equal pay for equal work, etc. — the same way I’d send money to end apartheid in South Africa 20 years ago. Clearly a good cause, but not really about ME. I’m not getting any abortions, or doing any paid work for which I want equal pay.
Take a look at NOW’s key issues page. Is there ANYTHING there that directly effects me as a SAHM? I tried “marriage equality”, but it was all about same-sex marriage (which, again, I support, but will likely not be engaging in!)
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