Is the Child Free movement anti-feminist?

I didn't become a mother till I was 39. Up until then, I was more inclined towards identifying myself as childfree-by-choice not least because that was a good stupidity-detector. Saying that I didn't want to marry or breed (and most definitely did NOT want to 'marry-AND-breed' did send quite a lot of people into paroxysms of panic and rage. I think there is something in the patriarchy's alleged 'reverence' for motherhood that is very much about putting women in their place - patriarchal thinking also values motherhood for the way in which it increases a woman's dependence on a man, at least in partiarchal societies (a woman who is pregnant or has a newborn will find it a lot easier if she has a supportive partner, and htis gets twisted into 'being a single mother is AWFUL so make sure you keep your man happy, you NEED him to be happy). 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.
THis is why I feel there is feminist merit in a childfree position.

"I can see why some people don't want to be seen as a mother - because people have negative ideas about motherhood and it can be detrimental to you at work if people are still seeing you as a mother in that situation"

Not just that though. The patriarchy likes to see women as mothers and potential mothers. That way we are 'useful' and easier to keep in our place.

Well, you get bonkers people everywhere, Milly!

I don't think I was responding especially to your posts, Sakura. Some of the wording used, in some posts above, gave me the strong impression that womanhood was being equated with motherhood. As a woman without children, naturally I felt offended! Other posters have put this better than I did, I think, and SGB has expressed my own view on this whole topic very well.

While here, I may as well reiterate that there is a persistent background of social disapproval & interference for women like me. I'm fairly outspoken (oh, you guessed?!) but a more sensitive person might feel bitterly attacked and might react by becoming anti-motherhood. I feel she'd be wrong but I can see how that could happen.

Thinking about it, maybe that's why I reacted so strongly to what I read as subtle denigrations to childless women on here.

.. oh, sod it, I've got shelves to put up ...

I've just clicked on the link to the childfree forum. The first thread I have clicked on (about summer jobs) is calling kids brats, and saying that child labour laws should be relaxed so that preteens can do less desirable jobs in order to stop them from ruining the Summer holidays of the childfree.

I agree with Sakura that motherhood is an intrinsic part of womanhood, if we see women as a group (which as feminists we have to do, otherwise whose rights are we talking about). Women are the only people who do motherhood. It is an issue particular to us - we are the group of people who give birth and breastfeed. That doesn't mean that women who are not mothers, are adoptive mothers, or who don't breastfeed are somehow less.

I don't want to be considered a person rather than a woman. I don't want to be seen as a person rather than a mother. What sex you are in not incidental if you have been pregnant and given birth. This is not some extreme situation where if we acknowledge pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding as important, the consequence of that is to let those things solely define us and demonise those women who haven't done it. It is not some either/or situation where women can only be seen as mothers or only be seen as people.

I can see why some people don't want to be seen as a mother - because people have negative ideas about motherhood and it can be detrimental to you at work if people are still seeing you as a mother in that situation.

But I am fortunate in that I work in a place where people don't have a negative attitude to me because I am a mother, so I can still talk about the fact that I have children and aspects of my children's life, what I have been doing with them and so on, and nobody will think less of me for mentioning them. One of my colleagues has a baby, and her baby is brought into work at lunchtimes for her to breastfeed in the lunch area, and there is no issue with that. I am a mother all the time, not just when I am with my children. And when I am with my children, I still have more interests in life than just my kids.

So with the childfree movement, what are the women in that movement asking for (of course there are men, but I am concerned about what the women want)? Are they asking for a society in which they are seem as being important, valuable people whose lives without children should be seen as worthwhile, whose lives, thoughts and experiences are of interest to others? Are they asking to be treated in an inclusive way, to have their choice not to have children to be seen as a valid one that they should not be called upon to ever justify or explain?

Of course they should have all of these things. It is ridiculous when they don't.

But there are some things that they can't have (and hopefully most in such a movement don't want). They can't ask for more public spaces not to have children in them (and consequently the primary carers - usually women) of those children. They can't put unrealistic demands on what behaviour children are going to exhibit in those public places (although clearly there has to be a balance). They can't expect primary carers of children - usually women, to not mention they have children, or to not talk about their children, or to show no interest in what those women are saying. Treating mothers in such a way is rather like how some people want gay people to behave - You can be gay, just don't really mention it, and certainly don't talk about the person you're in love with and spend a lot of your time with.

No person can live childfree. You can not have children of your own, but children are a part of society and a part of life. I know people who are not parents - they still interact with children and expect children to be part of life. So perhaps it is really the name that causes the issue.

It is odd.

perhaps it comes from seeing the world through male eyes.

The idea of separating childless women and mothers into two separate, opposing groups just doesn't make sense.
Under patriarchy, mothers are despised for being mothers, and childless women are despised for being childless.

no nobody has said that.

garlicbutter, you are arguing against things I am not saying. Perhaps it's my fault for not being clear, perhaps not.
It is truly ridiculous for you to read those things into my posts.

garlicbutter - I am really struggling to read in this thread what you are. Where has anyone said that being a woman is all about having a womb? And where has anyone said that feminism is only for women who are mothers?

Nobody has said that.

I don't think there's a "Childfree Movement" either, except for the strange h8rz referenced here. I have to say, I've never perceived a need for one. This discussion has challenged my perception! If I took its main thrust as representative of all feminism, I'd be feeling devalued not only by traditional society, but by my sisters-in-arms as well. Luckily, I don't believe it is representative ... If I did, I might think feminism was only for women who are mothers, or wish they were

There is more to a woman than a womb.

But sakura, I'm not reading things into what you have written that you didn't say. You did say that motherhood is an intrinsic part of womanhood and that we should incorporate the role of "bearers of life" into our image as women. As a woman who isn't sure if I want children or not and would veer towards the not, motherhood is not an intrinsic part of my self image. I don't see how your argument is any different from the normal patriarcial view that women are there to reproduce.

FWIW, I do agree with you that mothering children is important and should be fully supported by society. For mothers, it is no doubt a huge part of their identity as women but that doesn't mean it is true for all women.

I have 3 children and I did go through a phase of thinking the sun rose and set out of their backsides and that everyone should think the same. I'm over it now There are plenty of parents who feel that way and have a certain level of expectation - others should accept their child's peccadiloes and perhaps even find them appealing and should understand why they, as parents, need special treatment, eg parking spaces.

There is though an unpleasant childishness about the sort of resentment that makes people angry when others make different choices to them and are to a certain extent lauded for it, that IMO goes far beyond simple irritation about society's expectations.

By and large I think the people who post unpleasant comments about children and mothers are disturbed and should be ignored.

Anti-feminist? Only if you think mothers are and should be more involved in the rearing of children than fathers. There are 2 issues; 1. greater respect for the job of rearing children, 2. fathers should be as responsible as mothers for the job.

" the trouble with this idea that motherhood is the most important thing about being a woman "

I got as far as here. Read what I said. it's really obvious you haven't.

Like karmakameleon you are arguing against something someone else, somewhere, has said.

Sakura: the trouble with this idea that motherhood is the most important thing about being a woman is that even women who do want and have children do not all want the bearing and raising of children to be the only or the biggest thing in their lives. What I dislike about this sort of motherhood-is-everything is it is very easily twisted into telling women that they shuldn't do anything else and goes hand in hand with the most joyless hessian-underwear-and-veganism brand of feminism which condemns women who want to earn money, participate in sports, devote their lives to art or business or just engage in serious hedonism 'because that's what men do'. Not all women want to do such things but I don't think that telling women these things are unavailable to them or undesirable for them because they are women and 'better than that' is at all progressive.

"in an ideal world (deep into utopia for a mo) then fatherhood would be regarded as the symmetrical opposite to motherhood"

Well, perhaps that's why I'm a radical feminist. I don't believe in utopias, I don't have time for reverie, just the cold hard reality.

And the cold hard reality is that fatherhood is so far removed from motherhood that it will never be the symmetrical opposite.
Your sentiment, to me, is an MRA, father's rights activist tagline.

First of all, men have less invested in fatherhood than women do in motherhood, for biological reasons. Men do not risk their life to bring a child into the world. They don't bear it in pain. They don't feed it from their bodies.

So from the moment of conception, women have more at stake in parenthood than men ever will.

Then you inly have to look at behaviour of men, their insistence on eschewing fatherhood, to realise that in many cases, a father is a drain on the mother's resources.

Do you actually realise how many men try their best to get out of paying child support? What kind of human thinks it is reasonable not to invest in your children? Women, on the whole, give so much more to their children. Not that this is a compulsory part of motherhood (but that is a different argument)

But when it comes to rights over children, all of a sudden fathers are right there, claiming them, even at the expense of the mother. OFten, mothers are forced to allow their kids to spend time with an abusive ex. It's just incredible, the sense of entitlement fathers have over their kids and how disproportionate it is to what they actually contribute to that child'd upbringing.

So yes, your idea is very utopian and I don't give it the time of day.
Better to concentrate on truth and reality.
Women are better off living in groups without men (and this is before you get into how many women are killed every week by their spouse )

but sakura, in an ideal world (deep into utopia for a mo) then fatherhood would be regarded as the symmetrical opposite to motherhood. ie fathers would be seen as equal parents with the same responsibilities to their offspring. in such a place, your sex would be incidental to some extent.

it is only important that i am a woman if i am discriminated against as such because of my potential or actual child-bearing capacity (whether or not i choose (or am co-erced) into using that capacity).

if i exist in an equal society, then my sex is irrelevant. it is relevant in some contexts in this society only because of the inequalities that is exist due to it.

given that i want equality - i also want to be seen as a person before i am seen as a woman. it's dangerously close to denying the feminine, but it doesn't quite overstep the line it's recognising the feminine but not prioritising it.

s de b recognises that we do not exist in an equal society and is of course a deeply depressing read . i haven't read her for yonks, tbh (and the second sex is about 35 years old iirc - depressingly it probably is still fairly timely!) but quoting s de b must surely lead to lengthy posts about her incredibly depressing views of motherhood... which would be interesting, too, on a 'child free' thread.

but all that french stuff leads me off down the ecriture feminine path, and that really is a case of revering the feminine and creating difference for the sake of it.

Regarding the child free movement.

I would say that the concept of a child free movement is very feminist. Women should be able to make the choice to have zero, one, or more children. This seems like a feminist issue to me.

It would seem that such a movement does not really exist and that its name has been usurped by a child-hating movement.

I think I agree with garlicbutter.

I have value as a woman
Vs
I have value as a person

The first suggests that my value is of a different kind or to a different degree than it would be if I were a man. I don't believe this to be true.

(value to who or what, incidentally?)

"If women are defined by their ability to create life, where does that leave women who choose not to or can't apart from out in the cold?"

karmakameleon I've got used to people being "deeply fucking offended" by radical feminist ideas. You are projecting a completely unrelated idea onto my words..

SGB'S point, for example, is not connected to mine in anyway. Mothers are not reverred, they are despised. Oh yes you do get the odd one they allow to slip through the net, and are put on a pedastol, usually a celebrity or wealthy woman, in order to remind women that that is their role in life.
BUt poor mothers? No, they are not reverred.
Childless women are not reverred either. in "Spinsters", which is an amazing read, Sheila Jeffreys points out how childless women were despised as well because they weren't chained to the kitchen sink.

ANyone who wants to miscontrue my arguments to mean the only women that count are mothers can please just take their nonsense elsewhere.

Pitting childless women and mothers against each other? WHat a ridiculously patriarchal concept. I am offended.

I'll try again.
I believe that one of the biggest mistakes some feminists have made was to try to define "personhood" in relation to men. Of course we needed to show that women were more than just wombs, that women could create art, run businesses, and work... BUt men already knew that. Most of the hard labour that built the industrial revolution was done by women. Women have ALWAYS worked hard in many different fields. Women have always been more than their wombs.
This has been written out of history.

My point is you don't have to be a mother to see that mothers are vulnerable in our society, and society has been created in order to make them vulnerable; just like you don't have to be an African to see that Africans are exploited.

Some feminists have made the mistake of thinking that motherhood is incidental to womanhood, or even that having children is a lifestyle choice. WHat a way to trivialize what women do so society doesn't have to support them.

Because motherhood is what women do, even if all not all women do it. Men physically CAN'T do it, so saying that child-bearing is an irrelevant add-on to the group of people defined as "women" is a mistake that feminists have made.

That de Beauvoir quote was perfect: "Women are still the second sex, but we have now earned the right to dissasociate from our sex" . Separating womanhood and personhood is a dead-end.

HerBeggs: But I've seen stuff about 'reverence for motherhood' which uses feminist-sounding arguments and yet is all about regarding women as nothing but wombs - and women who don't, for whatever reason, want to bear children being regarded as wrong/in denial/pandering to men.
Some people don't really like little children and don't want the longterm 24/7 commitment of raising one, but are interested in helping troubled teenagers, for instance. And I am not much impressed by all the 'waa, waa, if no one had children the human race would die out' squealing that is directed at the childfree movement - a lot of childfree people don't want everyone else to stop breeding, they just don't want to have children themselves. Surely one of the most important battles is that for everyone's right to be different: one of the most annoying things about the patriarchy is the way in which anything that one woman, or some women, do, is always being held up as 'This is what women are Really Like'.

I saw this one it seemed okay
www.thechildfreelife.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=4&sid=5eb1d30c67662ac704260511ad127add

There was even a thread on feminism and population i.e this one

Population Management is Feminism

There's an article in the NYT today about population projections over the next 100 years, and the news isn't good, ya'll. Population growth at the current level is simply unsustainable over the long term. Reading this, I am reminded that it's important for those of us without children in the west not to get too caught up in our limited perspective regarding whether kids are a lifestyle choice or not or whether we get bingoed or not (I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss these things or that talking about them is not valuable). I'm saying that reproductive choice and the power to manage one's own life is an especially crucial factor in the developing world where millions, especially women and children, live in dire poverty and suffer from lack of resources. We should be doing all we can to support family planning policies (NOT coercion) and funding for such programs (including education for women and girls) around the world. After all, the vast majority of women cannot choose whether or not to have kids, have no access to contraceptives, and have very little autonomy in their lives to make such choices even if access weren't the issue.

"[S]ome studies suggest that providing easy, affordable access to contraceptives is not always sufficient to bring about a significant reduction in unwanted births. A randomized trial conducted by Harvard researchers in Lusaka, Zambia found that only when women had greater autonomy to decide whether to use contraceptives did they have significantly fewer children.

Other studies have found that general education for girls plays a critical role in that literate young women are simply more likely to understand that family size is a choice."
www.thechildfreelife.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12265&view=unread#unread

So where are all these reasonable, non-buckethead child-free sites then?

Because I've only ever come across the raving loony ones.

Am I googling the wrong thing?

If the child-free movement were or had a branch within feminism, like the lesbian rights movement, then I mgiht believe that it was just a bunch of women wanting to come together for support and to argue the case for a valid choice not to have children.

But it isn't, is it. It's a bunch of men and their handmaidens venting spleen about breeders like us. I have never seen arguments which come from a feminist perspective, although some of them do use feminist-sounding arguments, but so do most anti-feminist movements (empowerfulatingising...)

Unless someone can point me in the direction of a site which is genuinely all about support and has thoughtful and reasonable posts about mothers rather than the unhinged hostility which appears to be the norm, I'd say the child-free movement can quite safely be regarded as anti-feminist.

Thank you, madwomanintheattic :)
Yes.
And, sakura, thanks for your frequent & meaningful use of the word personhood.

karma, I felt like that too! I liked your response at 14:29.
There's some odd stuff going on in this thread - which may mean something beautiful will be born from it, who knows?

I would like some posters to remember that there are women without wombs.

I know this is mums net; it's also the feminism & women's rights section. Women have struggled for centuries against being defined, detrimentally, by their wombs. Let's be careful not to undo that. If our wombs are the most important thing about us, we may as well give up now!