Matricentric feminism - the need for feminism to recognise the experience of mothers

The work culture needs to be what changes. agree but not only this, male entitlement and toxic masculinity too,

Dh is a nice man, a good man, yet thought nothing of complaining to me post difficult csection, bloody, in pain, raw nipples, leaking, no sleep, couldn't sit up, that no one was asking how he felt. Mutiple times.

You should complain’ usually becomes ‘you should’ve complained at the time’.

What rule of misogyny is this? Men behaving badly is a woman's fault?

We don't always want to challenge though.

It's too big a fight at times and I don't always want to be using myself and my family as a battering ram.

I gave up a good career and became a SAHM.
Never did get back to that career.
But what I have found instead are huge freedoms and I am very glad I didn't stay in my career path.

Does take a supportive partner though.

The work culture needs to be what changes.

Totally agree.

Complaining also often makes zero difference and actually often results in being told you are mentally ill TBH because this is what being a mother is like and you should be able to cope.

We’re told that it is what being a woman/mother is

Challenge this. Your challenge might not work, but it is important that we don't just sit in silence.

Agree, but it's difficult to do this on an individual level when so vulnerable post birth.

It is a problem that needs something more effective than simply expecting individual women to challenge it individually when it is actually happening IMO.

‘You should complain’ is pretty useless when you can’t even wash yourself, you haven’t slept for months, you are bleeding heavily and it’s 6 month’s post birth so you are anaemic etc etc...

‘You should complain’ usually becomes ‘you should’ve complained at the time’.

I do challenge it where I can but equally when things like this happen it is usually also when you are least able to challenge it.

How h behaved when the twins were small was one of the main reasons I left him years later.

Personally IME grandfathers have been better than when they were fathers but also they retain an individualist approach still. They approach the role as ‘my time with my grandchildren’.

My dad; when DD was a baby my mum and I left her napping in the travelcot whilst we popped to B&Q. My mum had left the dinner in the oven and there was fat in the roasting tin. Five minutes after arrival at the shop my dad called my mum. He was panicking because ‘the baby is crying and the oven is smoking’....

🙄🙄🙄🙄

We’re told that it is what being a woman/mother is

Challenge this. Your challenge might not work, but it is important that we don't just sit in silence.

Feeling kind of sad. I really feel I got very little support post-natally with DD2. I was let down by the NHS, by the state in all its guises, by my parents and by DH. I bet my experience is really common.

Yy, it is. We’re told that it is what being a woman/mother is.

What an interesting thread.

Has anyone else noticed how good a lot of men get at 'parenting' babies and little children when they become grandparents? The work culture needs to be what changes.

The principle should be that universally mothers are supported after birth and that fathers are required to take on some of that work as well as being required to play an active role in the child’s life.

I don't think this is encouraged at all at the moment. After DD2 was born I would have loved a midwife or health visitor to take DH aside and have a word or simply require that - when in the house - he be there to listen to the instructions about DD2s care. Things like jaundice and appointments for that he could have entirely dealt with. He got really pissed off that they were constantly asking me how I was feeling. How I was feeling was overwhelmed, in pain, bleeding heavily and sleep deprived, and as if it would have been nice for someone to get me a drink while breastfeeding even one fucking time. Having to deal with him feeling pushed out was an extra level of torture. Would have liked him to have been treated as a responsible parent and partner (and yeah, they could have asked how he was feeling too.). As it was, his engagement with what had happened to me and the baby was entirely relayed to me & it was left to me to do the additional job of trying to persuade him to help me (e.g with c section wound care). Most of the time I just did things myself because it seemed like it would be easier and I was very close to collapse / going mad. The pain was very bad.

Feeling kind of sad. I really feel I got very little support post-natally with DD2. I was let down by the NHS, by the state in all its guises, by my parents and by DH. I bet my experience is really common.

Most environments I have worked have been totally unsuitable for children.

I don’t think many work places are health environments for babies, and I include workplace crèches in that. They tend to be very busy and over stimulating with parents popping in and out all day. Add the journey to and from work and the noise/light/exposure to toxins of the whole set up is pretty scary.

@EmilyDickinson I remember thinking that if I could just take the baby to work with me I could manage. Maybe I was naive but it does seem that most workplaces are set up in such a way that we should pretend that children don't exist.

The problems with taking kids to work are multiple:

1. As a former building fire marshal, I would not be at all happy with people routinely bringing children to work, because the parent leaves the child in the office whilst they nip out on an errand, the fire alarm goes off, and the parent has to return to the office instead of leaving directly, delaying their evacuation and risking the safety of the child.
2. There are lots of work environments that are not suitable for children, especially very young ones. Even ignoring the obvious cases of laboratories, workshops, and factories, workplaces tend not be child-proofed. Where I work has a huge feature staircase that can't have a baby gate fitted. Shop workers can hardly take children onto the shop floor.
3. I work in an open-plan office and have a roughly 2m 1.6m rectangle for me and my desk, of which around 0.8m 1.6m is taken up by my desk. I'm not sure where the playpen and the cot are going to fit in this space. I'm lucky in having my own desk: many workers don't do desk-based work or have to hotdesk.
4. You can work or you can watch your child to make sure they don't garrote themselves with the mouse cable, not both.
5. If a kid starts screaming in my open-plan office, I have to stay there regardless to do my work and this puts me at risk of a migraine. Thanks to my employer's draconian sickness policy, time off recovering risks my job.

After watching my dad miraculously learn cooking, laundry, cleaning, and even minor sewing operations after my parents' divorce, I can assure you that men can learn how to help. I would argue that a matricentric feminism would be applying pressure to men to really pick up the work at home, and pressure to politicians to enact policies (e.g. more paid paternity leave) to make that possible. I'd also like to see an increase in on-site creche provision at workplaces because minimising the time spent dropping kids off and allowing parents to pop in and see the kids at lunchtime will be good for the whole family.

We need better recognition of the tasks women have fulfilled at home for centuries and across cultures

Sure. Then men would do them.

There should be a step up from universal services of support where men fail to live up to that responsibility or where it is inappropriate for them to do so and women should have access to that stepped up service based on the lack of support rather than by targeting certain groups based on morality/stats.

I don’t think equality has anything to do with dividing life tasks (child rearing, house keeping etc) down the middle.

We need better recognition of the tasks women have fulfilled at home for centuries and across cultures.

Mothers need to be being supported to recover from the birth too during this time. There are many prejudices in the system such as being a young mother means you don’t know how to parent, being married means you don’t need any other support etc etc

The principle should be that universally mothers are supported after birth and that fathers are required to take on some of that work as well as being required to play an active role in the child’s life.

Personally, I think full equality involves men taking on 50% of the tasks currently done by mothers, rather than motherhood as something particularly feminine and female being venerated.

Broadly, yes, but I think this must be done with regard to biology and child development. I think that we should stop setting things up to be the mother at home alone with the baby for a start. 0-3 is a very important stage for attachment. Fathers specifically should be more involved during this period but I think it is also the period where biology is likely to be most important (though diminishing over that period). Boys and men need to be supported not only to see this as important but to learn the necessary skills, it should not be left to the mother to teach them whilst caring for the newborn/small child. Many of the problems stem from ‘not my job’ and ‘don’t know how to do it’.

Some men do use the baby voice when talking to babies.

There aren’t two distinct categories of parenting tasks, the 100% biological (pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding) and the 100% socially constructed (maths homework, ironing).

im think the voice things has in part to do with the larynx , surely ? - that's the whole adams apple thing and voice breaking stuff they go through in puberty.