to worry that the feminism of the 1970's is erradicating feminitity...

[MrsTwinks]

Im fully prepaired to be flamed... but the other thread reminded me of a conversation I had with my stepsister and cousin a while ago.

Both were career women of a sort before they had their kids and became SAHP, and were talking about how guilty it made them feel, yet SS said she loved being a mum and it was all she ever wanted. It seems to me that the attitude of our mothers (all mad feminists in my fam i'm afraid) got so engrossed in trying to have a fantastic career and being the perfect mum they lost sight of the truth that you cant have both.

I remember my mum feeling that she had to go out and have that wonderful career she was told she was entitled to (not that she wasnt dont get me wrong) contantly trying to find something that made her has fulfilled as being a homemaker because she was made to feel she was "letting the side down" by not going for a career and being a mum. Ironically shes doing the same to me now, as is being done to alot of my generation (in my fam and friends at least), we are being made to feel guilt because we DONT WANT to be career women. Homemaker has become an ugly word and makes you lazy/stupid/scrounger or whatever.

Add to that the likes of Newsnight last night where we are told putting girls in sparkly and pink clothing (nevermind cut or item or whatever) and telling them to kiss daddy goodnight is tantamount to sexualising children?!!!?? what next.. Im all against revealing clothes and all that, but seriously.. how is a little girl wearing pink sparkly clothes and kissing daddy goodnight bad?? and yet our mothers generation of feminists is telling us that its wrong. It appears to me they are telling us that being FEMININE is bad. What is wrong with the way we are made??

ok rant over, but it REALLY gets my goat that (to me) all these women are telling me its bad to want to be a STHP who has a home made dinner ready when people get home and a clean house, and whos life is more about her kids than her high powered career because I have a brain. All I wanted to be when I grew up was a mum and now Im supposed to have a new dream because someone tells me mine isnt enough and I am pandering to masocism or some such.

Please tell me i'm not the only one? or was i really born decades too late

Are the older generation slightly jealous that you have made that choice?

It has been well commented on that high powered career women of that generation were more do it all than have it all.

Perhaps they feel you have rejected their attitudes/ upbringing. Another poster said that women's place is in the wrong and I think that is very true.

When I considered working full time (let alone high powered career) my DM who is a product of the 50's was horrified. the wails of child neglect were finally trumped by when would I fit the cleaning in?

stripey I conceed I used the wrong terms. Its hard to quantify my definition of feminitity in a way that wont make me sound like a crazy person or indeed at all. Its dependant on personal definition. My own meaning I was trying to get across is I see it as that side of you that the maternal nature comes from, to nuture and care, as oppoised to the paternal nature to guard and protect IYKWIM, the attributes you see in animals. Yes lionesses hunt and male seahorses have the babies but that part that is the same in each.

see im shit at quantifying it in words :(

It's always happened. To women.

Does anyone think the judgement over if a mothers working choices are getting worse though?

Why do people feel so free to comment?

garlicbutter... if he ran off I'd prob be better off overall ironically. It's not that at all.

YAB a bit U, but only a bit.

If feminism is interpreted in a simplistic way as saying 'You're letting the side down if you don't go and get a career' then it's no less dictatorial about what women should be doing than saying 'You're letting the side down if you don't stay with your children'. On the other hand, if feminism is interpreted as saying 'You have a choice, where previously you didn't' then it can hardly be accused of 'eradicating femininity but simply extending the options available to women.

Why do you care what other people think?

To me, the biggest problem is that women across the board, no matter what their choices in life, have been socialised to care way too much about what others think, to feel guilty about their choices, to feel pressured by social norms and trends.

As women, we should be trying to liberate ourselves from this weight of social judgment. Instead we argue amongst ourselves about who's right or wrong.

Do what makes you happy. If you feel guilty about that don't blame the feminists, just stop feeling guilty about it.

The thing is that women are always judged. I don't give a shit about whether men work or not. I notice however if mums' work or stay at home. I don't judge but I notice.

I work only because dh's salary is not enough. I used to have a big job wtih big money but I jacked it in because I was told I needed IVF and I didn't quite believe it and thought we could do it without.

It was my choice and hence I've dealt with the consequences (ie half the salary I was on) but it was my choice. I can't have it all just because our fertility was not all that. DH can't have it all - he's now the big breadwinner - not by choice but by circumstances. Not his fault - not mine. But I do need to work as we need the money.

For me it's about practicalities. if we had more money I'd have more choices. My dh would have more choices. But we don't so my current work decisions are not influenced by feminism but rather with more urgent needs. And for us it was all down to our fertility.

You sound fairly feminist actually. 'Feminists' are not a tight knit group with a party line. They are a broad church, with all sorts of variation within that. One thing that you would find most agree on is that the role of a SAHM and indeed all 'caring' jobs traditionally done by women are undervalued both economically and socially. Childcare, cleaning, cooking (note cook not chef) care of the elderly. These are jobs that are regarded as low skilled and are badly paid. They're regarded as lowly because (traditionally) women do them. Even if it's only on tv, I'm sure you've heard the expression, 'that's women's work'.

There's nothing wrong with choosing to do what you want to. Feminism is about choice. It's about not assuming that it will automatically be the woman who stays at home, and that if both partners work fulltime then it's not the woman's job to do all the housework. It's about acknowledging that fathers aren't careless lumps pulsing with testosterone, and that they are perfectly capeable of caring for their children, changing their nappies and dealing with grazed knees. It's about not telling little boys to pull themselves together when little girls would get a hug, and allowing men to show vunerability without the fear that it makes them less 'manly'.

Femininity, like masculinity, is an artificial concept. Rejecting the concept doesn't mean being 'manly' because that's just a different concept! It could mean having bubble baths and knowing how to change the oil in your car. Or loving football and baking kick ass cup cakes. Or being an engineer who collects porcelain miniatures - someone must. It's not buying into the concept that some things are 'unfeminine'. Believe it or not there are some men who don't like sport and aren't really fond of beer.

Thinking about it, from my own experiences I would say it was men who has passed judegment more than women.

I think you will feel guilty whatever you do.

If you stay at home, you are clearly an idiot beholden to a man (not my view but seen it time and again on mumsnet)

If you work you will be seen as leaving your child in a "day orphanage".

You know you can't really win don't you?

I say if you are happy making dinner, looking after kids and aren't career driven and your famnily's finaces allow for you to stay home. Awesome. Go for it.

If you are career driven, need adult stimulation and have to work out of the home for your own sanity and cause frankly you're pretty damn good at it. Hey go for it.

I think whatever your gender both(or some mix of the two) should be see an viable options.

It's funny that you mention that people feel as though they can comment on whether a mother works or stays at home. cocoflower As I was thinking the other day that it feels that since the moment the sperm hit the egg, any fool (man/woman/beast) feel they have some sort of right to comment on my life choices.

In my experience it's woman that are more judgmental - but I feel it's more them projecting their doubts in regards to their own decisions that causes them to do it. Rather than the old 'woman are just bitchy' staple argument that gets thrown around

Yes *Weedle" I agree with

feels that since the moment the sperm hit the egg, any fool (man/woman/beast) feel they have some sort of right to comment on my life choices.

And that extends to everything! From if you decide to use pain releif in birth or no to if you let them eat coco pops or not!

Is there anything that attracts much more judgement than becoming a parent?!

OP you seem to have missed the point that as women we're damned if we do and damned if we don't! Don't you know that abolutely everything that goes wrong in this world is some how in some way women's fault?

It occurs to me that quite a lot of the problem is that many women worry far too much about what other people think instead of valuing their own judgment.

Don't blame the other people - it's something you've got to deal with yourself ultimately.

My MIL now thinks I am the epitome of excellence because I am a Housewife (I'm sticking with the old fashioned term, I'm not sure if I'm still entitled to SAHP, my child's at school). My husband is very happy with it now but had kittens and puppies for some time over the prospect of being the only wage earner. My ex-boss was honestly jealous that I had the option to request part time work as that wasn't available when she had her child and then that redundancy was giving me the chance to spend some extra time at home.

Other than that the only external criticism I've felt is from the press and from government, we don't get anything but the basics but they obviously want everyone out to work.

I've chatted with other mum's about this, none of them had a problem with what I do, it's practical for us right now, (realistic wage - childcare before and after school and holidays - travel = less than I can save us by having time to budget, shop around and cook from scratch and my husband earns too much for us to get extra help) so this wasn't a dream, life just evolved this way.

My biggest critic is me. I've got qualifications, I was flipping good at my job, loved it, so sometimes I get cross with myself. (It's unlikely that I can get back on the same career path now so I've started working a couple of hours at the school in the hope of better things to come, one day, maybe). Then I remind myself that I'm despite that, happier now. No office politics, no doing laundry at eleven at night, no panic when my child's sick. I think it's easy to project that crossness I feel with myself onto other people, I'm far more likely to justify myself* than to judge.

Anyway, to an outsider I'm a fully signed up pinny wearing, cake baking mummy. Maybe if I had an NVQ 4 in Homemaking I wouldn't have to justify myself (I'd opt for baking modules over dusting).

*see paragraph 3

regarding careers, this is something i find confusing when it comes to the feminist viewpoints i have observed recently.

i work part time, i love it, its a lovely balance between taking care of my gorgeous baby and working in a more "cerebral" way.

I absolutely do not regret for a second that i have probably ruined my chances of being promoted/made partner. i don't care. my priorities lie elsewhere.

however some posts i have seen on here refer to professions being under represented when it comes to women in the top ranks. clearly, men are blamed as opressing us women, but truely? its probably because there are millions of other women like me who choose to sacrifice "getting to the top" for typically "traditional" female roles, like caring for the children. thats why the statistics are what they are. not because a boardroom full of men are just discounting women because they are women.

i have cooked 2 meals, done laundry,cleaned, looked after baby, been to the library and done a shop today. i felt like i had acheived something today in the same way i feel when i've had a productive day at work. does that make a feminist cringe?

I'm late to this but ...

Are you telling me that feminists in the 1970s invented a time-travel machine and they have landed here in the present?

Or that there is a conspiracy of secret feminist overlords controlling us?

I'm confused if it's the latter because lots of what the 70s feminists demanded/critiqued - such as a reorganisation of the nuclear family, an ecologically-aware re-structuring of society, a critique of the power-imbalances inhering between women - they just haven't happened.

Pretty crap going for overlords.

You know, there is an argument that capitalism picked up and ran with the bits of feminism it liked, and dropped the rest. Which is partly why a lot of supposedly egalitarian things often feel a bit exploitative.

Glitterkitten, your post at 19:28 could have come straight out of the Daily Mail's middle section

Of course the ONLY reason women are under-represented in power-holding grous is because they've all decided to stay at home being fluffy It's just natural for women to want that, isn't it? You know, feminine. All is as it should be!

And, of course, the next CEO of IBM, Cisco or the Bank of England, the next Chief of the General Staff and all the board directors of FTSE 100 companies will be men, because when the little woman wants to live a comfy life without all the nasty stress of Work - well, she'll need a man with a good income to provide for her, won't she?

If you've been brought up by feminist women of my generation, I'm just amazed you don't get how it works ... or is this kind of an extended rebellion??

power-holding grous groups

so basically, a woman id damned if she does, she's damned if she doesn't type thing? that's how its coming across. feminism just seems to risk making women feel crap whatever they do.

please tell me what you think i SHOULD be doing with my life? i thought i was doing ok to be honest.

As a feminist, I have no problem with parents, or anyone else, deciding to put caring obligations and uptake of house, garden etc before a career. I think that's a legitimate choice. What I DO have a problem with is the gendered nature of that choice. You get few stay at home dads, few couples who genuinely share the parenting/caring burden. I don't think PARENTS can have it all - something needs to be sacrificed but instead of the onus being on the women not to think they 'can have it all', how about both parents both having a little bit less? That's feminism for me.

As for kissing Daddy goodnight, no problem if boys are doing it as well, but if the girls yes and the boys no, then I do see why that's sexualised. Again, it's not a CHILD kissing Daddy but the emphasis is on the gender, why?

glitterkitten and the OP, feminists (at least the ones that I know) aren't really that interested in what you do as an individual. It's the busybodies that are. There is precisely one self-identified (I think) feminist on MN that I can think of who has a one-sided opinion on the SAHP/WOHP issue.

Feminists are, however, interested in the bigger picture of why there are so few women at the top of the professions, for example. So questions like whether there would be more if, for example, true 50/50 childcare and household responsibility existed between parents. Or if networking took place in gender neutral places, rather than members clubs and locker rooms Or if women had wives...

As a 1970s feminist, I fought for you to have the right to determine what to do with your own life - not to be told what you must do, and certainly not have to ask what you "should" do. Whoever made you feel you're not fit to be responsible for your own life ought to be ashamed of themselves.

And what AyeRobot said.

I dislike the use of the word 'femininity' because it tends to suggest that you actually think there is a certain way that women 'should be'. A woman is female - no argument about that - but femininity is a meaningless term at best, and narrow-minded and destructive at worst.