Motherhood Has Radicalised Me

[IWantThisJob]

The social and cultural conditions of motherhood are actively cruel to women.

In pregnancy and birth we are often not listened to, or patronised, or have our pain minimised by medical professionals. The induction rate is sky high and it’s not uncommon for women to suffer quite extreme birth injuries and be expected to get on with it, to care for a newborn, often with very minimal support, and not make a fuss. We are often discharged, in pain, with very limited pain relief, bleeding, to care for a baby, sometimes having been awake for 3 or 4 days solidly.

Statutory paternity leave is 2 weeks. I read somewhere the other day that the average mum on maternity leave spends 8 hours a day alone with her baby.

We experience broken sleep for years on end, in my case 4 years and counting, and are expected to just carry on, go to work, earn money, listening to and managing screaming and crying and tantrums at all hours of the day and night.

Work and childcare are non functional. Most households need two incomes. Childcare is expensive, even with funding, work is often inflexible. We’re expected to work like we don’t have children and mother like we don’t work. If you work full time you might be made to feel guilt, if you don’t work you’re lazy.

The mental load! The sheer weight of the responsibility of organising everyone and everything, the cooking, the planning, and the amount of information we need to remember on a daily basis, of who needs to be where at what time, who needs to take what to school, who we need to buy a birthday present for, is proper cognitive labour. If you ask your husband to do it, he probably will, but it’s just another fucking thing that you need to do in asking. If he’s anything like mine, he’ll be a good husband and a good dad, but he just will not ‘carry’ it all in the way that you do.

School is term time, 9-3. 6 weeks to navigate over the summer. Arranging work, sorting childcare, trying to do activities with them to keep them and yourself sane (still not sleeping, still often listening to screaming).

Then there’s the cultural and social pressure. Can’t breastfeed? Failed. Had a C section? Failed. Oh they have to share a bedroom? Failed again. Are you feeding them well? Are they on track developmentally? Are they making friends and coping at school?

This model of motherhood may not be what everyone experiences, but if it what you experience, this level of pressure, expectation and sheer workload on mothers is actively cruel. It’s a feminist issue, and I have been radicalised. I feel actual anger at the way mothers are treated at a societal level.

I have two children. I work part time in a career that I love. My husband is also doing his best, just like me. But the pressure and expectation, and sacrifice of self, work, and autonomy is just not the same. I’m not depressed, I love my children desperately and I enjoy my life. This is not really a discussion about my own personal motherhood, but the general pattern within society.

Anyone else?

And also. Men don’t go through forty weeks of labour plus physical birth in order to become parents. Their bodies don’t need time to rest and recover.

Possibly / probably.

My partner took it up - under huge duress from me. 10 years later (he was one of the first) he's still a genuine co-parent because he had to establish being in sole charge of the baby at a young age.

I'm absolutely certain if we hadn't done SPL life would be very different.

I agree, I had my children 20 odd years ago and stayed home until they were all at school. My friends were also at home with their children, as were my sister in laws, this meant we all supported each other and met up for coffee in each other's houses.
I had my mum, aunties and my grandma who all helped.
There were swimming classes, library groups, toddler groups.
I can't imagine how hard it is now for mothers who work full time, and how sad they don't have that time with preschoolers that we had.
I don't know how we can make that happen again as a society, but something has to change or women will stop having babies.
It's so worth it now I have adult children, so hang on in there OP.

I agree completely. There’s so much expectation these days, of parents of employees. There’s financial pressure. People who choose to have children often find themselves in the situation of trying to be active parents, full time employees, manage a house and somehow have time for themselves. All whilst worrying about money/bills.

i completely get why people are opting out.

This is exactly why I have chosen not to have children. I often think I'd like to be a dad, or a divorced parent who has partial custody. But being a mum day in, day out? No thanks.

I couldn't even work when my kid was little. I have delayed sleep phase disorder it's a circadian rhythm disorder it's genetic. It means I can only hold down a job at night. I had no support and it was so hard

Crikey OP that a bit of a rant. A lot of these points only apply when DC are small. Once they are at secondary school everything is a lot easier. Before you know it they will be going off to uni. Agree with the PP who said they are adults longer than they are children. Yes small children are a lot of work and expensive, but my now adult DC are the most wonderful and meaningful thing I ever did.

I don’t really understand why people are blaming ‘the patriarchy’. The patriarchy is not responsible for this. It’s easy to rant and blame but it’s not the path to a solution.

The ONLY way to change cultural pressure is to challenge it. You have submitted to it and that is a choice and it’s ridiculous that it has become a radical act to not see yourself as a failure if you haven’t been the perfect parent. Competitiveness and individualism gone mad .. the end stage of capitalism

Totally agree OP.
I am losing my mind from it all.
Parenting esp motherhood bearing the full biological/physical impacts of childbearing + 2 full-time jobs (financial necessity here) + domestic load + life admin + mental load, but with zero family support and zero money to pay for all the things that could make it bearable which so many middle/upper—class families have access to (eg cleaner, nanny, grocery delivery, meal kits, ready-meals, take-aways, even pre-prepared fruit & veg 😫)

I am at my wits end, my physical end, mental end and every day I curse this insane modern way of life. (Obvs I know the benefits of it compared to the past, but really it is worse in some/many ways, and certainly shouldn’t be this bad given all the possible ways society could make it bearable.)

I would be the best dad ever.

I always say my husband is a brilliant dad but would make a terrible mother!! 🤣

but how when we need two wages to survive? Is the answer quit my job and live in poverty? The government are pushing mothers into the work place, the system is not set up for stay at home mums.

I did not agree with the free funding for nursery. It should have gone to extending or maximising maternity leave/pay.

Agreed a lot is unfairly expected of mothers these days.
You should take a look at the organisation Mothers At Home Matter - one of the things they campaign for is to make it financially possible for women to choose whether to stay at home when children are young or equally to choose to go to work with suitable childcare in place.

Often women don’t have a choice either way these days, partly financial reasons and partly societal.

https://www.mothersathomematter.com/

I think most people shouldn’t have children, we can get all the workers we need from immigration

having children is incredibly hard as a feminist. We weren’t striving for ‘equality’ (how stupid would that be?) but LIBERATION.

in this world how many women are liberated by being a parent ?

But as many PPS have said, it's very easy to share the load 50:50 before kids come along

My point was that many, many men are not already doing that. But women have children with them anyway.

I actually think this changing due to same sex male couples having children.

I spent many years wrestling with the baby question and I remember wondering if the decision would have been easier if I could have been a dad - pick and choose what bits of parenting you want to be involved in, someone else to pick up the slack when you can't be arsed, just do the fun stuff if you like

I know not all dads are like that, but it's easy peasy to get away with doing a half arsed job if you're a dad - not so if you're a mum

Talking generally, and my experience with every single couple I know that has had kids. Even the "good" dads are not even close to the responsibility and pressure mums are under. All we've done the past 50 years is relieve men from the one thing they had more pressure than women on, financial stability. They now no longer feel that pressure, it's now equally the woman's job.

An additional factor is that many women are now the higher earners before they decide to have kids. I earn more than my husband, and my company doesn't offer additional maternity cover, therefore when I had my child, our monthly income didn't slightly dip for 9 months, it was a significant fall to the statutory Mat pay which didn't even cover half our Mortgage payment. If I wanted to take the full year off I'd have had zero pay for the last three months. we had to put every penny away while I was pregnant.

I really wanted to stay home with my child until school, but I've worked my way up to my role and salary, if I'd left my job to do that, it would take me years to get back to where I was at pre pregnancy. Therefore I decided to stick it out, it's all too much but honestly for most mothers we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. It would have made sense for my husband to take the mat leave, but as a mother, all I wanted was to be with my baby, the maternal instinct stops us doing that.

I also think with the lack of respect for marriage in this day and age, men are more likely to up and leave with no judgement, women therefore need to be prepared to have their own income in that scenario. We are all aware of it.

All these factors lead to sticking to one child.

😂

I genuinely wish I could answer this, but it would out me totally. My career is in this.

Oh such an interesting thread. Complete agree. Will be back later to read the comments!