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

I remember Sakura and she was very influential to me.

Although it is a long time ago, the emphasis I took from her posts was less about the "power" of motherhood and more about the importance of motherhood, which should be honoured and supported. I did take on whole heartedly from her (and I differ from many of my friends on this) that any facilitation of fathers' parenting must NOT take away from our existing maternity rights.

At the time I had very small children and so did many of my friends. Some of them (including me) had more "progressive" arrangements to do with fathers doing, or "doing" more childcare, although at the time maternity leave itself was for mothers only - there is a still a preschool period post-mat-leave when children need full time hands on care and several fathers volunteered themselves for this "cushy number". it was a shitshow in some cases - literally - two out of seven children (the ones with full time dad "carers") had undiagnosed encopresis for a while which required closer attention from a full time parent to identify and treat. (and arguably prevent)

(I was on my knees with exhaustion by working full time with a long commute and having patchily sleeping toddlers and a "partner" who dropped everything the second I walked in the door. I was so exhausted at work I posted desperately on mn about it one day and a central london dwelling stranger offered me a bed to sleep in at lunchtime

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

Very true Posie.
It's the whole capitalist-patriarchy thing.

I'll go out on a limb here, and say ALL radfems are against it! :)

Well said Offred

Women’s lives are a cycle of chained to the state, chained to a man, chained to the state, chained to a man....

The principle of non-interference in private and family life has never been applied to women. Women have too many children or too few, they are too rich or too poor, they are bad mothers or good mothers, taking men’s jobs or not working enough... there are numerous state structures employed to interfere in women’s lives and shape their choices, hold them to standards whilst if you look at the domain reserved for men (work) we have out of control hyper individualism.

Women are collectively responsible, for men, for children, for all of society but society is not collectively responsible for us.

The entire system is set up to exploit women, and their reproductive capabilities. So the only thing really, is to get out of that system. Somehow.

The only scheme targeting absent fathers is a very poorly designed and virtually ineffective targeting of minimal amounts of money.

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.

Also want to acknowledge though that for some women breastfeeding is awful and they want to give it up. And that is fine.

Plenty of countries women breastfeed and work. Because work is set up in a different way. Work in the west is set up for able bodied men, and everyone else has to fit around it.

Absolutely Offred
I also agree that the UC thing is totally wrong. Mothers should be able to be SAHM with state support until kids are 12 how it used to be. This is particularly vital for single mothers in terms of finances.

Everything Offred said too. Also...

And no, fathers are not chained to the mothers... how many schemes targeting ‘absent fathers’ are there?

For all the moaning men do, the chasing of child support is useless if a father has the mind not to pay. The ex of a woman who comes into our foodbank first went self-employed so that he could avoid paying child support and then, when she pursued him at great length about that, fucked off to work in Spain for a year. In the end, it wasn't worth the toll on her mental health to keep chasing him. Then, after three years of that, she got caught up in that Concentrix tax credit scandal where HMRC kept accusing women of co-habiting, when they weren't. Then, after that nightmare, she had a change of circumstance and got migrated to Universal Credit, with all the horror that entails. Man and state have made this woman's life unbearable for more than five years now - and for no other reason than she is a mother.

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

"Women breastfeed.

And the biological "morm" is to breastfeed for years, not months.
Combine that with several children then that effectively means that a woman is out of the workplace for years."

This is only the case if the "workplace" is set up in such a way that makes continuing feeding impractical. For me, feeding was well established at 9 months so it was easy to go back to 9-5.

But there's no reason it couldn't, if society was arranged differently, have been eminently possible to e.g. organise callcentre stints of a couple of hours at a time with an adequate break in between, sharing childcare with other parents. I know how callcentre staffing works and it would be perfectly possible to do that kind of thing if society thought it was important enough to organise around it. It doesn't really matter as long as you have the right staffing levels to deal with predicted traffic. Many other modern day jobs could be equally flexible if people cared enough to reorganise stuff to make it so.

And I have read plenty of women on here saying stuff like - if I can't afford to stay at home and look after my kids, why should benefits pay for other women to do that.
I totally disagree with that. I think should benefits should be payable until children go to school, with no pressure to get a job. But there does not seem to be much support for that these days.

I agree Offred, but it is part of the rhetoric of - everyone on benefits is scum.

We do not measure value relative to contribution to society. We measure value relative to contribution to capitalism.

I strongly feel we need to get away from ‘the right to work’... The ‘right to work’ is enshrined in this country now and it is being interpreted as ‘work is the only thing that has value, if you don’t work in a job then you are scum and lacking in moral character’ but in reality what we decide is/is not ‘work’ is totally arbitrary.

I agree that the pushing into employment of mothers with young children is wrong.
But I do think all women need to be able to earn their own living, even if they are not currently working. Otherwise they are at the mercy of male partners and are often forced to put up with emotional and financial abuse.

And everything Offred said.

Maybe it depends where you live. There are European countries where the right to work for both fathers and mothers is enshrined in law. I still think fathers are chained to mothers.

I have been a mother my whole adult life. My first child was born when I was just 17, and my youngest is 9 now (I am late 40s). This means that I never had the 'this is what feminists are on about!' moment re. inequality.

I was doing my A'levels when my first child was born and I didn't feel particularly maternal at all beforehand. I had every intention of going to university as planned when the baby was born and 'just putting it in a nursey' . When he was born, on the other hand, I experienced an overwhelming urge to look after him myself. It definitely felt biological. I felt that with all of my children and was heartbroken going back to work when the youngest was 6 months old. But we needed the money.
It's true that work structures are patriarchal and unsatisfactory for those with caring responsibilities. The whole system requires radical reform so that it meets the needs of people, rather than generates as much cash as possible for shareholders.

How many men have to ask women if they can go back to work?

And no, fathers are not chained to the mothers... how many schemes targeting ‘absent fathers’ are there?

Women’s lives are a cycle of chained to the state, chained to a man, chained to the state, chained to a man....

The principle of non-interference in private and family life has never been applied to women. Women have too many children or too few, they are too rich or too poor, they are bad mothers or good mothers, taking men’s jobs or not working enough... there are numerous state structures employed to interfere in women’s lives and shape their choices, hold them to standards whilst if you look at the domain reserved for men (work) we have out of control hyper individualism.

Women are collectively responsible, for men, for children, for all of society but society is not collectively responsible for us.

We recognise that child rearing has important implications for all of society only as far as blaming women for doing it wrong and holding them responsible but we abandon that same principle when it comes to supporting women raising children.

And other than state pension as langcleg mentioned, do people in low paying jobs (as opposed to careers) tend to get much by way of pension, especially in the private sector - let alone the world of zero hours contracts.

I worked nights in a call centre fir a while to pay bills etc while still being able to care fir the children.

There were women there who still fiercely defended their matriarchal status. They would finish a shift get home make packed lunches/care fir small children/elderly and disabled relatives snatch some sleep and do another night shift.

I would sometimes asked if their partner could do some of it and would often be met with rolly eyes.

There is status in caring for children, spotless house, being in charge of family dynamics, darling with family finances - being at the centre of things with the family. Warm
Is a means to an end - it is a way of earning money to support family and nothing more.

Identity, status is all about the family unit for these women. It is everything.

Fathers are surely also chained to the mothers of their DC?

Women are already chained to the fathers of their DC, even when they have absented themselves.