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

I've never understood the "feminist" choice of paying someone poverty wages to look after young children to go and earn poverty wages.

Nor have I.

Equally I've never understood the 'shared' parents who do everything 'equally'. Bollocks as well. And we know it.

(I'm thinking that women are socialised to be more verbal.)

I can't be the only outlier whose hormones did them no good whatsoever either as a baby or in selecting a partner nor even as a mum. I think you are overemphasizing the nature and disregarding the importance of nurture.

Is it not more likely that, generally speaking, women are taught how to talk to babies and children and that men, who are taught that it isn’t their job, actually don’t have the skills but can learn them.

Completely anecdotal to me and DH but that's what I was thinking. DH is a quiet person in that "blokeish" way - if you talk to him, he's happy to have a conversation but if you don't, he's happy to sit in companionable silence. And he kinda transposed that to babies. Once he realised that his (conversational) input would benefit their language development and that it is a parental obligation to be an instigator not a passive responder, he went for it. But if I hadn't pointed it out, I think he would have been a long time coming to the realisation by himself.

That’s a kinda nature:nurture argument. It’s impossibke to seperate these things. You have to rely on the evidence available and that evidence is gained largely from societies where mothers are the maincarers.

I don’t think the science supports either of those claims!

Hormones have a role in both of those human behaviours... neither of those behaviours are hormone dependent.

Human mating is hormone dependent (which is why you shouldn’t take hormonal contraception - it interferes with good choices). Human parenting is hormone dependent (which is why birth should be as uninterventionist as possible).

I think it’s a fairly obvious point that if one group of people are raised from birth preparing for a role as a parent and another are raised from birth preparing for a role as provider then the ones raised to parent will have a head start on parenting.

Like crunchy says this doesn’t always happen with women who have had abusive and neglectful childhoods themselves and this results in them sometimes not having the necessary skills...

And yes, we know regarding vocab, syntax and input.

What we are interested in is the claim that language development is highly dependent on maternal input.

Not socialisation into child rearing, not the reality that child rearing is almost exclusively a female role etc etc but that it is highly dependent on input from the parent with the female sex for reasons of biology.

I think that is perhaps stating things a little strongly!

Human parenting is not hormone dependent!

Yes, the stuff on hormones is interesting though.

Most children learn to speak but their vocabulary and syntax (which are necessarily correlated - you can’t learn words without grammar and vice versa) vary wildly. This is largely dependent on input (though ability has a role too).

There are good hormonal reasons for women communicating in a specific way with their baby. Hormonal interaction between family (group) members is a fascinating topic.

But unless you are severely neglectful, most kids tend to learn to speak anyway. Including kids who don't get that much interaction from the adults around them.

Also adults unless they make a conscious effort, tend to treat their baby how they were brought up as a baby. I have met mothers of young babies who say they feel stupid talking to them when they can't answer back. I just naturally chatter away. I don't think that is because I am better, but because I suspect it is about the different way we were treated as babies ourselves.
Similarly I naturally sang nursery rhymes. But for those who it doesn't come naturally too, groups that do this may help.
Have also read that the babyish voice that most adults speak to babies in, actually helps them learn to speak quicker. It makes it easier for them to hear the differences between different sounds.
One of the most common causes of delayed speech is supposed to be hearing issues.

Is it not more likely that, generally speaking, women are taught how to talk to babies and children and that men, who are taught that it isn’t their job, actually don’t have the skills but can learn them.

And yes, there is research into gender differences between the ways mothers and fathers may communicate with DC. The point that’s being made is that it’s not at all a given that this difference is biological in nature.

Yes, that’s what I’ve read too which is why I was hoping to hear more regarding the claim that language development is highly dependent on input specifically from the mother.

There is plenty of research that shows that fathers speak to their babies in a very different, and less enriching way, to mothers.

Offred What I have read is that young kids need an adult who think they are the bees knees. That does not have to be the mother.

Babies need an adult/s who loves them and spends time with them. They learn language development from being talked to and watching adults talk together. This is not specific to a mother. Mothers who don't talk to their non verbal babies much, but are the primary carer, have poorer language development.
But generally all except very neglected kids learn to talk unless there are disabilities involved. And kids who are slower often catch up.
What the real difference is in terms of the number of words used and that is down to the number of words used by the adult care givers, which often correlates with education.
I do think mums reliant on benefits should be able to stay at home with kids and not forced into a job. But I also think that the difference in doing that is being exaggerated on this thread.

I think it would be interesting to try and understand whether it was simply using mother interchangeably with primary carer because that’s the usual state of things or whether there is a particular difference between mothers and other primary carers and if so, what that difference is and how much of it is biological, how much is in that grey area and how much is socially constructed.

Well there’s all kinds of things like that e.g. given that globally it is almost exclusively mothers that provide primary care for small children during this period and that if people other than the mother are providing primary care this is only quite rare and also often the result of problems with the mother’s care re the child, how do exclude stress as a contributor to a poorer outcome?

Is the difference significant?

How do you control for the effect of gendered expectations re parenting between mothers and other primary carers re the standard of care?

How do you control for gender differences in communication when we haven’t really had an answer re whether these are the result of biology or socialisation or a mix of both?

It’s peehaps more about proximity? A newborn knows it’s mother's voice, heartbeat, smell, emotions.
I don’t think this is unique to mothers but perhaps mothers are more influential due to the time they spend with their children.

Mind you I just overhead a three year old casually remark to his little pal: “aye, ya fucking dick”
Not sure if that influence came from Mum or dad

I can't agree with terfulike's claim that SAHF make a crap job of it. That surely depends on the individual and on the relationship? Terfulike's experience was bad, it seems. Mine was good.

There were things my DH did better and worse than me, but you'd expect that with any two people.

Men will sometimes deliberately screw up or drag out any domestic task they hope to avoid. If a woman's in hurry it's all too easy to take over, and some women end up permanently doing a whole range of tasks that have become ""hers".

I would think that this faked incompetence was more unusual among SAHF, because I would hope most of them will sincerely want to make a success of the job.

However I've had the experience of discovering that when a woman was complaining about how their DP had done some domestic task, what she was complaining about was that he hadn't done it exactly the way that she did it. In fact there was nothing actually "wrong" with what their DP was doing.

Being a SAHF shouldn't involve performing the role as a copy of the other parent. My DH and I were very different parents, so he did things and kept the house differently. Not worse.

I am not suggesting you did this, terfulike. Far more men try the incompetent act on than women who set unrealistic expectations for SAHFs.

Well, not really, I was asking you because you made the claim! You’ve read the books on your bookcase presumably?

So, when you say language development is highly dependent on (specifically) maternal input what does the science you have read say, how are the studies designed?

I think we’ve all heard about the connection between input and language development but I’d be very interested to hear about the specific importance of mothers. I can’t find anything online apart from the usual ‘it’s important to talk to your baby’ stuff.