Is the Child Free movement anti-feminist?

yes herB, i did, and did say it was a little tongue in cheek. the obvious point is that women lack power, the minor (and slightly facetious) point was that equality might mean that women lose a little bit of that 'the mother is always right' argument.

we're not arguing different things. millyr's point re scandinavia is similar - the policies allow parenting rather than mothering. the rights and responsibilities thing is a red herring, really. equality clearly means equal rights and responsibilities, so i'm unsure where my idea of 'equality' differs.

the access thing re grandparents is interesting, but probably strays off into the rights of minors v adults rather than feminism per se. (another fairly odd imbalance, granted, and sort of linked in the infantilisation of women issue)

i'm still unsure why the desire to be viewed as a person is a bad thing (less the criticism of 'person' being equated with male). which side of the breeding fence i sit on (if i choose to breed at all) is secondary to the fact that i expect equal rights alongside every other person. even if i am a woman (or a man) i don't want every opinion about me to be primarily defined by my sex.

herb, you're quite right wrt priorities of course. and in terms of activism, there are far greater things to be concerned about than whether i identify as a woman, and then a person, or as an (equal) person, and then as a woman.

i was just quite surprised by the reaction to gb, tbh.

if i'm brushing off my cv, for example, i don't specify my gender, or my childbearing status. i want to be judged on my qualifications and competence. my sex should not be relevant. (i don't need to go into the studies using male/female names on identical cvs, or the ones looking at ethnicity - we all know that the playing field isn't equal)

as i said, herb is right, the priority is to work out how to get to equality, rather than ponder about it.

i was just slightly surprised by the reaction. being proud of being a woman is not a bad thing - and i understand the arguments re the wonder of childbearing/ miracle of birth etc - but the 'inextricable' linking of motherhood to womanhood to identity is really interesting in the terms of the child-free debate. interesting to link the child-free aspect to that of pg women wanting to be seen as more than a womb on legs in terms of attitudes to pg/ alcohol/ smoking/ caffeine etc.

There's a difference between men having more rights in the situation society is currently in, where they would get more rights despite not having more responsibilities, and a potential future situation where things other than raising children had improved for women.

In some Scandinavian countries, there is a lot more shared care of children both before and after relationship breakups. That seems to have happened within a society where adequate childcare was in place, adequate career breaks and maternity leave that did not end up with a woman returning to a damaged career, adequate housing, education and a society with less inequality of income. It is easier in such a society for both men and women to have a balance between being a parent and having a job, which means both parents can invest more in their children and make a greater commitment to being a parent.

In the UK a career requires such a commitment that it often makes sense, if you want a roof over your head and to bring up your children, for one parent to commit fully to work (often a lot more than 40 hours) and invest less time in the kids, and one parent to commit fully to being with the kids and have a part time job when the kids are older.

It would be interesting to know how Scandinavian families have experienced this change.

I agree with HerBeggs' point. It is the same with fathers and now grandparents. They want the right to see their grandchildren, but there is no right for the child to see those grandparents or the father if those people don't want to see the child. The same is true with money. Grandparents can now go to court for access to the child, but the child has no right to be financially, emotionally or physically supported by those grandparents.

But madwoman, you pointed out "the imbalance" as you call it, by drawing attention the fact taht some powerless women mgiht want men to have responsibilities without rights.

Whereas in the RW, powerful men actually have rights without responsibilities.

As a feminist, I think the issue of the power real men have right now, is far more important than the potential power imaginary women might have in the future when it's "all gorn too far"

Feminism isn't about equality for me, it's about liberation.

IMO.

Equality just means being accepted in a man's world on a man's terms.

I want the world to change so that it belongs to both halves of humanity and women don't have to do like men to be valued.

not making women out to be the bad guy really tbh (i was aware and a little bit tongue in cheek) just pointing out the imbalance - and that achieving equality might mean that in terms of their children (one of the few places women do have some residual 'power') there might be gains and losses on both sides in the rights and responsibilities argument.

but as i said earlier, i do see that it could be construed as me wanting to hand over even more to fathers.

precisely, men dropped out of teaching, pay dropped, and it became feminised and not respected.

if both men and women still taught, the respect for the profession (and the pay) would have been maintained.

the parenting thing is slightly different because it's chicken and (B)egg -

policies need to change to make sahping an economically equitable/ respectable activity, and then more fathers would sahp. or more fathers need to sahp, so that childcare is more valued, and then policies would change to reflect that. no idea which way round would work, if any tbh.

but that's the problem with dealing in ideologies, i guess.

i don't have any problem recognising that motherhood is devalued and not respected in current society becasue it is a female activity.

interesting that you think that men would be seen as better parents though - really interesting. like chefs being paid more than dinner ladies. it would certainly raise the stayus of childcare though. i guess all the women would be off to the law firms at the 3 month point leaving the bairns to the tender ministrations of the daddies. complete role reversal.

so feminists have given up fighting for equality then, as it's not going to happen. bit pessimistic for my liking, but you gotta have a goal, eh?

i have to say it's a first for the possibility of equality to be dismissed entirely, rather than just couched in terms of likelihood.

The reason Sakura pointed your arguments as having been tinged with MRA influence, is because you focussed on the imbalance where you hold women up as the bad guy.

Whereas the reality, is that men have much more power as fathers, than women have as mothers. The bar to be considered a brilliant father, is set much lower than the bar to be a merely adequate mother.

No madwoman, you are wrong. Teaching used to be a respected profession, because men did it. Estate agents, the same. Now both aren't , because they are dominated by women. As soon as women enter a profession, its status and pay drops. Because of course, women are shit.

Raising the status of parenthood, would merely raise the status of fathers, which is already high enough. It would actually lower the status of mothers in relation to that of fathers, because they would be seen as the better paretns, because men are of course better.

I'm amazed you haven't grasped that basic fact about our society.

and that's what's wrong with the situation. the imbalance.

i'm not arguing.

And this: "but it does get tricky when women want men to have equal responsibility for their children, but none of the rights... "

It gets even trickier when men actually have- not want to have, but have equal rights for their children, but none of the responsibility.

For example, men have the right to have contact with their children (courts pretend that a child has the right to have contact with their father, but that's not true - if a father doesn't want to ahve contact with their children, suddenly those children's so-called rights simply disappear. It is not possible for mother to go to court to pursue her child's putative right to a relationship with his or her father). But they have no responsibility whatsoever, to pay maintenance - 3/5 of them don't bother. again, courts pretend that they have responsibility, but in reality they don't - no sanction exists to punish a man for failing to dischrage his supposed financial obligations to his children.

not naive.

more statement of the bleeding obvious.

I think you're being stunningly naieve Madwoman. Of course we can't get motherhood respected by respecting parenthood, the reason motherhood isn't respected, is because it's done by women.

getting society to respect motherhood could be achieved by getting it to respect parenthood, though, couldn't it? by sharing the responsibilities for child care etc etc. not by the creation of formal and informal policies and expectations where the default position is women in the home. (aware we are talking solely in terms of two parent hetero families and leaving out huge swathes of the population).

i don't disagree with any of that - and of course it is all knotted up inextricably in the fact that most sahps are women (as well as being mothers).

i'm not really talking about women discussing different methods of childcare between themselves tbh - it seems to come up on here when someone posts a specific childrearing issue that the dh disagrees with. there are always voices of reason ('your way isn't the only way') but a groundswell of maternal opinion that the mother does hold the trump card. (interestingly, it's a bit similar to the mil threads or in fact anyone who disagrees with the parent) i can see that it is perhaps too tied up in the 'primary carer' role to untangle properly though.

'rights' might be too strong a word, though. interesting that you and dp had a difference of opinion wrt bfing, lenin (or at least a decision to make that affected her personal comfort). do you think it would have been resolved so amicably if a man had 'insisted' that his dp bf? i'm just trying to imagine a thread on here where a wife asked if her dh could insist she bf'ed if she didn't want to? i'd like to think there would have been a sensible discussion re the benefits of bf and an attempt to get the op to change her mind, but suspect there would be a fair amount of 'it's your decision'. more to do with her body rather than their child though... so a different trump card

i think it is probably confused because people use 'you are the mother' instead of 'you are the prime carer'...

anyway, apols for random wander off topic. supposed to be discussing child-free, rather than parenthood per se. oops.

Well then I will say that I agree entirely with SGB's last post. I see the value of the childfree position as she describes it; I just don't think that is reflected in the childfree movement.

Also agree with MillyR (which I seem to be doing a lot today )

What I meant was madwomanintheattic, in the UK parents don't have rights over their children - they have responsibilities. The primary carer will get custody of a child in divorce because it is in the best interests of the child. Women get maternity leave by default (but if they died in childbirth or withint the maternity leave period of time that would pass to the father) but that is granted in the best interests of the child due to breast-feeding etc - not as a right for the mother.

I don't really see why the fact that you are the parent who gave birth needs to come up that often as an argument for greater rights to make a decision about your child's life. For most children, the primary carer or sole carer is the mother, which is the main reason why women tend to get custody more often. I don't see a reason why women would keep bringing birth up in such circumstances, and I've rarely come across such attitudes on MN.

I think how you want to be seen and how you see yourself are two different things. But I fail to see how being a human being can be anybody's identity. Identity formation is about developing a distinct personality and identity that you can express. And by distinct, I think we're really talking about how we relate and express ourselves to other people. I don't need to go around identifying as a human being because I'm not expressing myself to frogs, tulips or pianos.

there are always a lot of discussions on mn wrt to 'rights', particularly in custody/ access. (hence the MRA mention presumably) but it also comes up on other threads where there is a difference of opinion to do with a particular (any, really) aspect of child rearing. it's fairly common for the eventual rationale to be 'well, i gave birth so i get the final say'. and when the decision is actually an aspect that particularly includes the woman or her body (ie to bf or not), i'm entirely happy with that (and even prior to birth, in the case of abortion etc) but the fact of motherhood is quite often used as the crunch point in whatever the discussion is. as a trump card. in even the most negligible circumstances. because women know all about child-rearing, and men don't. (!) by virtue of their sex. it makes me uncomfortable to see the fact of motherhood used as a tool in this way, really.

not sure if i'm making much sense there. and i'm still looking at it from a largely ideological point, rather than the cold hard reality point.

surely (unless the point in question affects the mother specifically) rights and responsibilities for children should be equal between mothers and fathers?

(re custody decisions, as this is where the MRA accusations were thrown , if the sahp is a man, as of course 50% would be in utopiaville, then at that point would it be reasonable to assume custody would be pretty much equally split, rather than revere the position of motherhood?)

that's clearly playing devil's advicate, and not relevant at all in reality.

and i'm not a man. honest, guv.

"but it does get tricky when women want men to have equal responsibility for their children, but none of the rights" What rights are you meaning madwomanintheattic?

"So a woman who rejects the the whole deal, wants to earn her own living and spend her own money on Having Fun (and indeed to have sex with lots of different men without allowing a man to 'own' her) is a huge threat tothe patriarchy. She might Give Other Women Ideas."

Susan Faludi covers this a little in Backlash where she describes (in the 80's) as more women were entering the workplace and getting careers there were also more media articles/research done about how women weren't having children and this was detrimental to society and how marriages were going down and women were "left on the shelf". All designed to put women back in their place and all complete bollocks. There was no significant down surge in child birth rates. It is a huge threat to the patriarchy for women to not fit into their societal role (designed by men of course).

when i started work in 1991, i had to sign a contract stating that if i got married or pg, i understood that i would have to leave.

because i was a woman. clearly men did not have to sign the same contract re fatherhood.

clearly during the intervening 20 years, this particular wrinkle has been ironed out courtesy of the ECHR.

but given that context, you'd have to work fairly hard to convince me that i need to labelled a woman primarily. i'm not denying my womanhood, it is of course a huge part of my identity, but it just comes second to my identity as a human being. i've got three children, and have happily sah when they were small.

i can see why this could be construed as a patriarchal position - after all, men are already in the position where they are judged as people, rather than men (except on here, natch). but it really isn't. and i'm perfectly aware of the pitfalls of being judged as a woman in today's society - the cold hard reality, sakura. it's for that reason that i believe in equality.

it's the rights and responsibilities conundrum though. i'd be perfectly happy for men to have an equal share of parenting (and really don't believe that makes me a men's rights activist ) and actively encourage it. but it does get tricky when women want men to have equal responsibility for their children, but none of the rights... currently that balance is well out of whack, obv.

but clearly i'm a fairly liberal humanist feminist, rather than a radical. there's room for all sorts remember. or do we get back to 'anyone can call themselves a feminist these days'?

motherhood is of course an intrinsic part of womanhood when you are discussing contemporary women's rights and policies towards an equal society. to argue otherwise would be ridiculous. to claim it is always your primary identity from an external viewpoint is sadly usually true. internally, i still regard myself as a person primarily. the fact of my womanhood is ordinarily a superfluous detail.