Women subsumed into their children

This is a really interesting article xenia but then within a few posts you mention your fckng island again?

Agree that whole point of fb is that you only communicate with friends and family, not random people on the internet. It therefore seems to me to be a quite a leap to judge all mothers on the basis of those that the author of this article knows (and appears to dislike, btw)

So I'll carry on posting infrequently on fb about the domestic minutae of my life, safe in the knowledge that no authors will be reading my posts and judging me negatively for the life I choose to lead.

I know this is meant to be a thread about mothers and feminism, but the whole article is comical. There isn't a right or wrong way to use any kind of internet means of communication. People aren't obliged to use FB in some particular way. They will use it in a way that is useful to them, until something new comes along that is more useful for communicating through.

And I think she is a bit out of date to think FB's use is determined by young people. Haven't a lot of them migrated to Tumblr?

Oh and I'm a scientist by training do the liberal art graduate who wrote that pile of rubbish wouldn't find me interesting to talk to anyway as I haven't read anything she mentions.

Folks are only meaning that they don't work "outside the home" Lurking
You can see how people might find themselves using the expression ... though personally I'd probably say "no, I'm not working ATM" It's a tricky area to navigate, although it shouldn't be ... there just don't seem to be the words to adequately describe women's experiences from their/our own perspectives

brandnrw yes I thought feminism had bought women the right to have fair treatment in the work place. I didn't think it's aim was force me to.

I thought it was the Governments job to dislike me not working and paying tax.

I decline to be seen as a traitor to feminism by choosing to be Mum when the DDs need me and Startail when they don't.

100% agree with onebigwish I've been in that zone for 7 years with three kids. The youngest starts nursery next week so maybe I'll actually start reading again and have something 'interesting' to talk about

All mother are full full time mothers. :)

Sorry, huge peeve.

Surely the point of feminism is that each woman has the right to choose how they live their life - to choose to be a wife or mother is as much a woman's right as to choose to not marry, not have children, to work or not.

I do not understand how a feminist perspective excludes the possibility that a woman can choose to be a full time mother and not work outside the home - that in doing so she is not simply choosing to do what works best for her family. Whilst I understand that women have been restricted to this role historically I still believe that it is wrong to belittle a woman who chooses to be a full time mother.

'just' a mum.

Really?

Yes, I'm not sure about this identity business, and even if I did have a thing that I could consider to be an identity, I'm not sure that I'd want to put it on the internet or what possible kind of picture could be used to represent it.

What if you are really really ugly, is posting a proxy picture allowed? I don't want my ugly mug staring at me every time I log onto facebook, also I don't actually think I have an identity to actually be subsumed.

YY, Good post MySpanielHell

MySpanish like

I always feel this kind of article is like somebody jumping up and down shouting that they are the most important person in the world, what they do is the most important thing in the world and becoming really angry that some other people (i.e many mothers) don't recognise that.

Motherhood isn't some thing happening in the background while other people get on with the business of real life. Real life is about children, and teens, and retired people, and students and everybody else in between. Paid work isn't the entire real world while everything else is some kind of spectral sideshow experience.

If you can't sit and listen to somebody talking about children, be engaged by the conversation and participate, it is probably because you do live in some kind of fantasy land where everybody else is about your age and kids don't matter.

As for women putting pics of their kids as their FB profile - so what? It is just a thing women do when they have a cute toddler of whom they are rightly proud. When that toddler is 15, they will not be the profile pic anymore. And I have a dwarf in dungarees as my profile pic; I didn't know I was meant to have a picture of myself pouting.

The point is not about Facebook.

Facebook profile pictures are used as an example of the point, which is that once women become mothers they often appear to lose a sense of their own identity and identify themselves only as "mother of X" as if all of their other thoughts and opinions and relationships are no longer important or relevant because they are a mother.

Thank you .

But if women really want to be all about their DC, then that of course is their perogative. But what is corrosive is the message (often perpetuated by FB etc) that women who do not wish to be all about their babies are somehow lesser mothers.

*How does facebook perpetuate that? If anything, it's the people posting who do so. Surely they'd give off that message regardless of whether they were on facebook.

Well said Rosy71

I still think I'm missing the point here. I use facebook to communicate with friends and family, not to present an image of myself to strangers. My friends and family know what I look like and what my job is. I don't see why they need my profile picture to tell them. People that don't know me wouldn't have any interest, surely. I post things about what the boys have done (not exclusively, but often) because their aunts/uncles/grandparents and friends who have children of a similar age might be interested. I can't see a problem, nor can I understand why it would concern anyone else.

And many people who do think there is "a purpose to being here" have other opinions on what that purpose is.

Only if you think there is a "purpose".

Remaining childless renders all human beings lesser, in that they have failed to reproduce - which is the whole purpose of being here in the first place.

I'm not undervaluing parents
i am challenging assertion its most important role.I do find it a cringey cliche the ardest job in world
I am saying it isn't most necessarily most important role, as one can ascribe importance to many roles

it's divisive to judge women's importance by whether or not they are parents
if mother is most important role a woman can fulfil, does that mean being childless renders woman less important,less of a role?

I Don't feel my identity is defined by motherhood, neither is it defined by working.

if a woman wants to define herself primarily or solely as mother,that's her prerogative. it does tie into the op of women who define selves primarily as mothers

Surely this is also to do with the age of the child? No one puts pictures of their teenagers on Facebook in place of themselves do they?

Women's lives often are subsumed by their children when the children are tiny. I think that is entirely natural. This does not mean the women in question are condemned to a life on the margin of their children's lives forever. When my children were tiny I stayed at home with them. Now they are older I work as a lawyer.

Similarly I can imagine posting a picture of a cute toddler on Facebook but not my 12 year old (although actually I have always used my own photo on Facebook).

exactly nailak. i think the important thing here is to value every woman's choice and not deride those choices whatever they may be.
caring for children and the house IS undervalued, and i think should have a more elevated status in society, which isn't going to happen if women continue to undermine other women's choices.