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

Taken to the limit, we have bitcoin. Completely utterly useless 'work' which achieves nothing but squandered energy and computer hardware somehow being deemed to create monetary value.

I think it’s interesting to track the knock on effect that this philosophy has had on other things too. How closely something fits into the immediate financial return model seems to directly affect it’s considered value. Increasingly ‘for good’ or ‘for art’ or ‘for knowledge’ things are being devalued and it is all about ‘for money’.

And worse, it is very much about short term gain. Get in, get the money, get out and let others clean up the mess.

The argument is that there is a difference between your own children and someone else’s. That’s absolutely true but is placing the distinction in that place the right one?

Crossposted there so didn't see your most recent post Offred

But it's only so for the comparatively wealthy though - I mean childcare workers other than nannies are notoriously poorly paid, as are care workers.

Childcare of any kind has become a ‘cost of motherhood’ which is outrageous a. That it is another thing added to the list of things mothers are responsible for and b. That people don’t see that the cost of childcare is translatable to mothers providing the care themselves.

The point re wealth and nannies is that the better the service replaces a mother the higher the cost and so wealthy people don’t choose nurseries but nannies.

It’s an elephant because it is a replacement for the work of ‘mother’ and it has an economic value, therefore rendering the argument that mothers are useless eaters worthless.

It’s testament to the power of the gender roles that no-one has cottoned on to what the cost of nannies and cleaners and social care actually says about the contribution of all this unpaid work.

I think some get it. They just rely on women's love for their children / families to keep them doing it. They'd rather profits from society at large go into their offshore accounts rather than back to the next generation.

I don't see why the cost of a nanny is an elephant in the room? Surely at least one reason rich people hire a nanny is the convenience of having individual childcare who don't stop at 6pm sharp and can travel with you?

That aside, I am less interested in the childcare choices of the wealthy and more interested in why so much effort goes in to keeping the world of children and work so separate.

Some is due to quite reasonable legislation to protect young children from exploitation. But the sheer outrage and horror on some threads about women taking their babies in to work is more than practicality - it is enforcing a cultural norm that children should remain separated from the world of work. Who benefits from the strength of that prohibition?

And then no job=black mark...

I keep making points like this to my social worker; ‘ok so from a services perspective you have risk assessed that you have to have trained people working in pairs, those people are paid and supported by health and safety legislation, training, qualifications and managers, the case is discussed amongst professionals with training so that decisions can be made re the best strategy etc etc but the majority of the time the approach re me as the mother is ‘just do it on your own’ and no consideration is given to whether I want to do it, whether the other dc want to live with it, whether I am able to do it or supported to do it or knowledgeable about it. Do you see why this is ridiculous? To assume that because I am the mother I just am the default and that’s that’

It’s testament to the power of the gender roles that no-one has cottoned on to what the cost of nannies and cleaners and social care actually says about the contribution of all this unpaid work.

Until money is not a central measure of success motherhood will always be seen to lack value.

True yet the big elephant in the room is the cost of nannies. They do less than the job of a mother (only housework related to the children), but approximate what a mother would do (compared to a nursery). The nannies near me that I've met at baby group earn 35k plus per annum (plus pension etc now). In the debate about childcare and whether it's good for very little children to be in nurseries the fact that no rich people ever put their kids in nursery and always employ a nanny / nannies seems to always be conveniently ignored.

There are no special social systems targeting absent fathers as a social problem that I know of, no schemes which measure them as a ‘problem’ which requires state intervention to correct... If they leave they have left and are no longer tied socially to their children.

This is a major problem and reveals the sexist hypocrisy at the heart of government. If the benefit bill is such a big issue why not go after those absent parents (usually fathers) to reduce the benefit bill rather than penalising the parent that stays (usually mothers) in ways that actually harm children.

Which is part of the problem... standards for ‘what counts’ re mothers and fathers are very different.

Which is why women who have those kinds of jobs are ‘bad mothers’ and why men make the mistake of thinking that ‘providing’ is parenting.

And I would also argue that doing the kind of job where it’s necessary to have either a SAHP or a live in nanny/au pair is more accurately described as ‘having children’ than ‘being a parent’.

It’s lucky for some women that their choices are aligned with their circumstances it doesn’t mean women have the freedom to choose.

All a man needs to do is keep working in his job or quit his job and by default the woman’s role is to accommodate that.

It’s true that if men were supposed to be responsible for children, elderly relatives, neighbourhoods, communities etc that being a SAHM would be ‘supporting a man’s career’ but the reality is not that and much as women would like that to be recognised it isn’t.

If you wanted to stop being a SAHM then you would usually need both the agreement of the state and the agreement of the father of your children and you would need accommodations to be made by both to allow you to change your role.

Invisible chains still exist

But we support men's choices.

My OH would not have been able to do the job he does and be a parent without me being a SAHM.

I would like a career TBH. I’ve tried very hard to have one and I never wanted to have any children...

Not how my life has turned out!

Yes, we had that on the class analysis thread but when it came down to it it was there in the form of having a male partner who supported the choice.

Many women do not notice that the important factor is not that they are making the choice they want but that if their partner had decided not to support their choice then they wouldn’t have been able to choose it.

The thing is many women don’t see themselves in chains. They have power and influence with the people who matter to them.

They don’t want a career. Work is a necessary evil.

And we are now at the point where assessments re parenting capacity now include value judgements re having a job... pure political ideology of capitalism... now you have a black mark re your ability to provide ‘good enough’ care to your DC if you are a single parent without a job... No help or support to get a job, no concern regarding whether you do or don’t want to have a job or why, no concern re whether the other parent has a job, no concern re whether it is appropriate for the DC for you to have a job... just no job=Black mark.

The importance of motherhood is really the importance of childhood IMO.

UK is very bad re the importance of childhood for a supposedly developed society.

Experiences in childhood effect the entirety of a person’s life.

That more attention isn’t given to this, given how much we know about it, is absolutely and profoundly shocking to me on one level but totally understandable if you look at it through the lens of capitalism.