Motherhood, footbinding, and privilege

Have you read the blogpost, pax?

Do women who consider themselves feminists have plastic surgery, Botox, fillers etc?

Did you read the blogpost, Lotus?

Some women who are mothers have more choices than men who are fathers. It will be harder for husbands of mumsnetters to give up outside work and stay home than it will be for their wives. However as long as men own 99% of the world's wealth I will not be weeping for them as the pressure on them to earn is an advantage even if it feels harder for them at the time. one reason I call enhanced maternity rights without paternity rights as a poisoned chalice which cons you into taking a supposedly "easier" better path but just seduces and bribes you into something which damages you longer term.

OP that's a great blog post, it nails it.

I feel I slightly derailred the thread by mentioning WOHM/SAHM upfront which wasn't that relevant to the post. Sorry all!

I think the idea that there is a mother privilege is indeed comparable to foot binding as the OP's blog argues. The stay at home/work out of home debate is also maybe relevant to your point that it would be better to fight oppression together than amongst ourselves. A stay at home mother has her labour devalued and is often economically disadvantaged - harder to get back into work, lower pension contributions. A mother working out of the home often has her contribution at work devalued by 'working mothers always take loads of time off' attitudes and have their contribution as a parent questioned - how women are constantly asked how they balance childcare and career when men aren't. In a society that thinks women are here to have children the decision not to is often challenged, and the inability to is made harder by society's expectations. These are just quick examples, but I don't think one group is privileged over another. There are mothers who are privileged by wealth, but it's not being a mother that is the privilege.

Just about no one else is kept by men without having to work except mothers in the UK today. A very few men are but most men if they asked their wife tomorrow if they could give up work and mind the children would be laughed out of court. Some women without children can find men to keep them in return for sex and keeping pretty and all the rest.

In many societies you are divorced or shunned if you cannot bear children.

Any sanctification of motherhood is a bad thing - there is nothing special about having a womb and if a husband suggests that makes you uniquely placed to earn nothing and clean up after him you can tell him where to take a running jump and keep your full time job!

Mothers are massively more disadvantaged as a group than other women.

That is why there are human rights specific to mothers.

Neither group are privilged.

The implication that mothers don't experience fertility was offensive anddistressing.

This thread is more vile than anything posted by the trolls on this section.

Good luck with removing maternity rights or whatever other special thing you'd like to take off us.

Absolutely vile.

Great blog and I think the analogy does its job of highlighting the way women live within a structure created and maintained by men very well.

I was thinking along these lines earlier on a thread about SAHPs.

Some posters were criticising SAHMs for being a net economic drain on society.

Completely missing the point that most SAHMs do not work, and therefore contribute economically, because the whole employment system is set up and maintained by men in such a way that makes it very difficult for the majority of women to combine work with caring.

If the system were set up and maintained by women then we would design the system in such a way as to enable workers to both work and care.

Criticising women for not working within the patriarchal system we have is perhaps similar to criticising someone for not walking with bound feet - the system is set up in a way that prevents walking.

Because motherhood is magic and prevents you from experiencing infertility?

In those same countries mothers have a worse time than here- forced pregnancies for huge numbers of girls, shunning and losing your husband if you suffer disability as a consequence of pregnancy.

Many women who become infertile and get shunned and lose economic security already are mothers. It is often pregnancy and rape intended to cause pregnancy that made them infertile in the first place.

I disagree OP.

Your discussion of foot binding was really good and showed how two groups can both be in awful situations and neither have privilege over the other. It highlights one of the problems of privilege as an explanation for anything.

But, it is completely absurd for women who do not have children, as a group, to claim they are remotely as disadvantaged by that situation as women with children. It is not comparable to the foot binding situation.

There seem to be more and more cases where 'feminists' (and I am not sure what group of feminists they are from) seem more keen to deny women's situation and rights than national and international legal institutions.

oops, namechange fail.

Love that blog post - superb. And it has a much wider resonance than just the 'mother privilege' thing.