When I became a mother, I lost my body?

[Sizzlysausage]

Has anyone else read this?

When I became a mother, I lost my body – and realized it never belonged to me | Life and style | The Guardian

I am really fascinated by it - the author describes many deprivations and challenges surrounding motherhood. As just one example:

The motherhood content I located online and the advice I read in parenting books told me that mothers should study and perform model parenting at the cost of all else, and meet their child’s needs with monkish detachment.

It's not that I necessarily disagree with this but I just can't identify with it. Where are all these books and online content? I don't think I read any of it! Of course, there are tensions and compromises but my expectations of motherhood were that (like most things in life) sometimes it would be great, sometimes really shit, often just fairly ordinary and routine (ordinary can be good!), and that is pretty much how it has been. I knew motherhood would change my life, but I don't think I ever felt I had to sacrifice my entire being to motherhood and if I thought about it at all, I think I thought I'd be a far from perfect mother (who is?) but I hoped I wouldn't be terrible because, after all, most of life is muddling through.

I am slightly struggling with articulating this but - as a feminist who is very aware of the motherhood penalty at work for example - I do sometimes wonder about these very doomy depictions. If you have any privilege, including for example an involved partner and healthy kids, is the extent to which motherhood 'devours you,' as this author suggests at least to some extent, a matter of choice?

I am sure I am missing something really important so please do set me right. Is there a circularity here: if you expect so much from motherhood and put so much in, you are bound to be disappointed?

And if I had not given up work or made those sacrifices our family as a result would have likely been worse of caring for a dependent adult with an uncertain future given the benefit system, state of and cost of residential care or care in the community in the UK.

Off

"Generally I have found when I read more about these types of authors... they lead and have always led lives of privilege, but it make it sound like they are the put-upon desperate poor, who are "stuck" in some way. ALL SHE HAS TO DO is hire a babysitter for a few afternoons a week! And quit working day care, she clearly doesn't like being around children (that's OK, not everyone is cut out to work at day care). This could also be prolonged postpartum depression, which is very serious."

@LolaMontez2, I don't think victim blaming is the answer in terms of empowering women to take control over their lives. Yes, it is possible to take control however the thing with structural inequality within society is it can affect people's perceptions in terms of what they think is possible. Responsibility becomes a moot point. To be responsible a person needs to have the ability to respond and this ability will inevitably be hindered if someone seriously doubts their response would make any difference.

I think positive encouragement rather than blame and criticism is more empowering.

Here is my problem, "meandering brook"... she is NOT A VICTIM. I am not blaming her... because there is no blame here. SHE is the one alleging victimhood of some kind, though she is affluent... married... probably living in a posh home with plenty of money from husband's job... he earns enough for her to STAY HOME (day care jobs in the US pay $14 an hour, no benefits)....

Also, if you wish to throw around bogus Marxist academic terms like "structural inequality"... you'd better be prepared to both DEFINE IT and DEFEND IT. In general (again, in the US or western industrialized nations), wealthy married women are a pretty privileged group! we are not talking about Yemen here. She is not in a burkha, being beaten by her husband who has 4 other wives. She can leave at any time she wishes.

She has a college degree, is presumably over 30 (probably over 35) and worked for at least a decade in a professional career. This is not some ignorant hillbilly with a 4th grade education, no teeth and no access to the internet.

What is weird... what steams me... is how the most privileged and affluent women have this HUGE victim "poor little me" attitude as if they were utterly helpless or 100% dependent on a man. She clearly is not. She did not have to quit work; she was too cheap to pay for 4 years of day care. She could demand more help around the house, paid help or her husband pitching in... but she refuses to do so. She could bottle feed or wean her children, but must be a martyr perfect mother who breast feeds for two or more years.

WHO WOULD STOP HER if she did any of those things? WHO? in Yemen, she would (legally) be beaten, or jailed, or thrown into a jail-like mental hospital. In the US... exactly nothing would happen other except possibly losing some of her affluence & privilege.

This is really important, please re-read: THERE IS NO STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY... not here. Not for a college-degree professional woman who is married and had full agency & choice in having children. She is a prisoner of her own unrealistic expectations ("society OWES her free day care and years of paid maternity leave!") and her preference for whinging vs. being proactive.

Just the fact that she brings up some bad sexual experiences in her teens, as explaining why "motherhood is so awful too!" suggests this is a person with a lot of issues and personal problems, all of which should have been dealt with BEFORE SHE HAD CHILDREN.

I have mentioned it TWICE here, but if you have not already... run out and get a copy of Betty Friedan's THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE. It is 61 years old, but speaks to all of this... the way women take all that intensity which they put into education & jobs, and out of mom guilt.. pour it all into hyper intensive and hyper competitive parenting... THEN get depressed because it is not (and can never be!) "enough"... then take it out on everyone around them, their kids and spouse and friends... until they implode in bitterness and rage and (more) depression.

@LolaMontez2, I disagree. You reference the US. I think your post shows a particular American (&right wing at that) bias. Shown by your statements here:

"This is really important, please re-read: THERE IS NO STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY... not here. Not for a college-degree professional woman who is married and had full agency & choice in having children. She is a prisoner of her own unrealistic expectations ("society OWES her free day care and years of paid maternity leave!") and her preference for whinging vs. being proactive."

If you look towards a Scandinavian model where daycare is cost effectively and readily available there are much higher levels of female employment. Women should not have to choose between being mothers and having a career. They often do because the childcare available is costly and inadequate.

"the way women take all that intensity which they put into education & jobs, and out of mom guilt.. pour it all into hyper intensive and hyper competitive parenting... THEN get depressed because it is not (and can never be!) "enough"... then take it out on everyone around them, their kids and spouse and friends... until they implode in bitterness and rage and (more) depression."

@LolaMontez2 and taking my own example (outlined upthread), would you level that accusation at me?

After the birth of each of my children I had my breasts manhandled without my consent. Each time I was shocked and disturbed - selfish me for not realising how things work. Yes, I wanted to breastfeed my baby - no I did not expect to be grabbed by an adult. It was degrading and humiliating. The message was clear, my body was no longer my own and to suggest otherwise was selfish.

Because sexual discrimination and inequality is one thing but disability discrimination and inequality is arguably worse. And the way that can affect whole families can have a huge effect both emotionally and financially. I'm not bitter at all because the sacrifices I made (in giving up work) paid off and resulted in better outcomes for our whole family, myself included.

@Horaceface
Yes, look at women's body autonomy and consent issues in childbirth. It's fright when you think of it. Never mind the abuses that took place not so very long ago within the Catholic Magdalen Laundries.

Frightening

Meandering brook: It is hard to parse what you mean here... you had a disabled child, and stayed home to care for them? Surely that is not the same as caring for a baby or toddler, who will swiftly grow up and go to school all day! That is a very special situation, and I wouldn't pretend to know the correct way to deal with it... only I have experienced disability in my family and among my friends (among both adults and children).

HoraceFace: exactly WHO manhandled your breasts after you gave birth???? a doctor? nurse? lactation coach? NONE OF THOSE PEOPLE had a right to touch you without your express consent... and you should have said "NO" loud and clear... and if they persisted, made a formal complaint to the hospital.

However, I think the author of this article meant that HER BABIES touched her breasts, which is ... what babies do. And she consented when she decided to have children and nurse them. And it is downright weird to conflate "infant nursing at your breast" with "bad fumbling sex you had in high school with some random guy".

Meandering brook: " and taking my own example (outlined upthread), would you level that accusation at me?"

My dear, I do not know you and would have NO IDEA you were conflating a woman bitching about nursing her own babies with bad sex... with your own decision to care for a disabled child at home. You don't sound bitter or angry about it and you say everything turned out well for you, your family and your disabled child... meaning FOR YOU, it was the right decision...that you arrived at via careful, mature thought & consideration and then followed through.

I am not sure why you think disability is the issue here; clearly it is not. However, if ANOTHER MOTHER said she bitterly resented staying home to care for her disabled child, who "touched her too much and without consent" (even if the child was incapable of asking for consent)... and conflated that with every bad sexual encounter she ever had... I would probably say much the same thing. You have full autonomy as a human being to make choices about such care... if you wish to do it in the home, or in a care facility or nursing home... if you wish to give up your career to do this, or not.

Well, you are wrong. And I am pretty sure this is a (mostly)UK thread and not a SWEDISH thread. Am I wrong?

I am most definitely American, which I stated clearly upfront, but I am NOT right-wing and I think it is insulting to call me that, when it is clearly meant as an insult, to demean me and to ridicule my opinion. What I said would apply to pretty much any woman in the industrialized west (which I think I also said).

Let me repeat for emphasis: THERE IS NO STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY. Not in the US, not in the UK, not in any modern society. (Of course it does exist in some regions like the Middle East, Africa, etc.)

Scandinavia is a very tiny population of all white, homogeneous, ethnically similar people in a very harsh northern climate, with difficult spoken languages (hence, very little immigration beyond some selective refugees). It is not representative of ANYTHING. There are fewer people in all of Scandinavia than the US State of Texas!

They also have sky high taxes and VATs and oceans of North Sea Oil to pay for their socialist paradise. Oh and the US has provided ALL their defense for FREE via NATO for 75 years.

Day care isn't even free in Scandinavia, anyways, and it wouldn't explain UK day care costs or standards. There is plenty of day care in the US, at all levels of price and convenience. Either you pay for this individually OR you pay for it via insanely high taxes. Either way, you still PAY. Nothing in life is ever "free".

The woman in the article is affluent, her husband can afford to support her while she either works a "creative job" OR stays home OR works in a day care (to get free care for her own child). That is not structural inequality; that is an insanely high level of PRIVILEGE and AFFLUENCE. And she is still raging!

Also: are you seriously saying that if a woman WORKS (outside the home) and uses day care... she is not a real mother? I hope you are not saying that! because why would the Scandinavian model be better, then? isn't the woman still at work, away from her child?

BTW: you can find lists of the nations with the highest labor participation rates and Sweden (and Denmark, Norway, Finland) are not even in the top 10! In fact, the US rate is only a fraction lower than Denmark, and the same as Finland! despite their "free" (tax paid) day care and our lack of that. So you have greatly exaggerated this. On top of that. the US has 330 million people and Denmark has... 5 million. Not exactly the same, is it?

I believe the Magdalene Laundries were ONLY in Ireland, a tiny (all white and all Catholic) nation and back in the 1950s and 60s. It was an awful abuse of power and religious control of a society, but it hardly applies to other western democracies... does it? No such thing existed in the US, where a woman could be incarcerated FOR LIFE for having an illegitimate child! The US has no institutionalized national religion or church, for one thing.

Surely the Magdalene Laundries are not your explanation for "structural inequalities" and if it was... it would only apply to mid and early 20th century IRELAND. (It did not exist in other Catholic nations like Italy or Poland!)

Interesting factoid from that list of nations (by women's labor participation): GERMANY has a somewhat lower rate of women's labor participation than the US! and Germany offers THE greatest maternity leave... a full THREE YEARS per child... AND heavily subsidized child care. Yet fewer women work or return to work after childbearing than in the US... care to explain this?

It is lower even still in JAPAN, which again... has paid maternity leave AND heavily subsidized day care. (If you have more than 2 children in Japan, your child care is 100% covered for all the children.) Yet it has not resulted in more women working in Germany or Japan, than work in the US (or the UK, I assume.)

Doesn't this suggest that whether a woman returns to work or uses day care or stays home... is cultural and personal, and not a result of government policies?

@LolaMontez2

"I am not sure why you think disability is the issue here; clearly it is not."

My posts regarding disability were in response to your earlier post addressed to me urging me to 'Say no!' to demands from schools. Here:

"Meandering Brook: there is a simple solution to all those demands... JUST SAY NO! (Thank you, Nancy Reagan!) You do not have to volunteer at school, bake stuff for bake sales... you don't HAVE to do homework (it is not for YOU to do anyways, it is for your KID to do)... if you don't like housecleaning, hire a cleaning service or make your husband do his share. Or leave a mess. "

Talking about my own situation was really by way of illustrating the complexity of structural inequality and my own experience of it and engaging with it without becoming a victim to it.

Yes, I fully acknowledge I certainly felt coerced into volunteering within my DC's school. In the UK, at least, men are not subjected to the same pressures. However, I used this experience to my advantage as it allowed me to gain further knowledge about what exactly what was going on within the organisation of that particular school in order to better advocate for my child there. Which turned out to be invaluable.

However on face value, and as some would see it, I gave up a level of financial independence when I chose not to work so I could (successfully) advocate for my DC to receive the education they were entitled to. Questions can be and often are (certainly on these boards) asked why this role often falls to the mother. In my own case, my particular background and expertise made me the best qualified but again questions are asked concerning why this is so. Why are so many of the professionals within early years education female?

However, I am pragmatic and fully appreciated if my DC could not have overcome the additional needs and developmental delays they were described as having at preschool age then the outcomes for the whole family would be more catastrophic than me simply not working whilst I advocated for them. Appropriate long term care for additional needs is not cheap or readily available in the UK. Families have to step up. Thankfully my DC did successfully overcome their additional educational needs and developmental delays and is currently at university studying without the need of any additional provision.

"This is really important, please re-read: THERE IS NO STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY... not here. Not for a college-degree professional woman who is married and had full agency & choice in having children. She is a prisoner of her own unrealistic expectations ("society OWES her free day care and years of paid maternity leave!") and her preference for whinging vs. being proactive."

So educated, married women who choose to have children cannot experience structural inequality? This, as I understand, is a huge oversight. I just have outlined how I myself have. I'm educated and married. Thankfully, it didn't totally destroy or traumatise me but that's not to say I didn't at all suffer. Many criticisms have been levelled at me against the choices I made and I have felt obliged to spend what little energy I had left defending them. It certainly had knock on effects upon my stress levels and health. Which can feel very lonely. Thankfully, I bounced back but not every body can find the strength which is certainly forgivable.

One recent book you might find enlightening upon the subject of modern day structural inequality and how ingrained within our society it is is this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Invisible-Women-Exposing-World-Designed/dp/1784706280/ref=sr11?crid=LFTBY14LELQ&keywords=invisible+women&qid=1694934181&sprefix=Invi%2Caps%2C134&sr=8-1

You can read a sample of it on the link I provided. 🙂

@LolaMontez2 there really is a lot to unpick in much of your posts. I notice you don't seem to have posted much on any of the other threads from the feminist boards. I think you might find some of the view points here interesting and suggest you have a read around. They might go part way into answering some of the questions you raise here:

"I always have to add in these discussions: there is not one good reason on earth why a woman cannot return to the workforce after recovering from childbirth and HER HUSBAND STAY HOME and caretake the children. Not one. Feminism is 60 years old, and we had these discussions when I was a teen in the 70s and yet women are doing the same d*mn things (staying home with little ones, giving up careers) as women did in the 50s and Betty Friedan wrote about this 1962!!! 1962!!!!"

These boards certainly illustrate some of the barriers and injustices all women still face now, currently, not only within the workplace but across every aspect of life. Feminism certainly didn't start or end in 1962!

It is more like they are both emblematic of a broader culture that disregards the female's needs to allow for unrestricted extraction of her resources.
This is spot on. Women are only allowed to have their own needs and desires when they don’t conflict with the needs and desires of others. Then they have to submit and put others first. Whether that’s letting a man have sex with them when they’re not interested, or giving up work to raise children.

The fact is, motherhood is a heavy burden to bear alone. Some women don’t have this experience because they have family, friends, an involved partner… they have help. But when it’s all on your shoulders it’s overwhelming and it devours you. Especially if your child has high needs.

The ignorance of Magdalene Laundries is astounding. Pretty much everything you have declared to be true about them is incorrect. Even a brief google would have enlightened you.

@meanderingbrook: feel free to unpick, but I stand by my comments.

You cannot seriously be alleging that I cannot comment on an ARTICLE publicly posted on the internet, without proving to you that I post on other feminist boards? How on earth do you monitor this, for every person in the English speaking world?

I promise you that I have been a feminist ALL MY LIFE, and I am almost certainly older than you, and seen the arc of feminist thought and writings over a longer period of time... and yes, what we call modern or maybe 2nd (or 3rd?) wave feminism is generally believed to have started in the very early 1960s and with writers such as Betty Friedan. Undoubtedly there are similar writers of this period in the UK as well, and I would be happy to discuss them... but Freidan's work was really powerful and had long-reaching effects over what is now 3 generations of women.

It shouldn't be that hard, given all you have written here, to prove a few examples of how women cannot go back to work after having children.... why men cannot contribute equally or even partially, and make almost no sacrifices (even with a disabled child!)... why women KEEP CHOOSING THIS, even when they could have jobs & careers and when they have had equal (and today, even superior) access to university educations.

If you cannot name even 3 "barriers and injustices" in a dialog, but simply say "read every other forum on the internet" (?)... maybe there is nothing there? maybe nothing would EVER make you (or the author of the original article) happy?, and that lack of ability to be content (with either career, staying home or a combination of both) is at the heart of the problem... after all, what does the original author ask for? MORE WELFARE... for herself, an affluent educated homemaker and SAHM (stay at home mom)! more welfare would not make you more equal, if you keep making the same lifestyle choices as your GREAT-GRANDMOTHER did.

I never said feminism ended in 1962; indeed I said the opposite... that it went on to become very powerful in the 60s and 70s, and affect every aspect of the lives of young women, including that we are now able to have opportunities our grandmothers and great-grandmothers could never dream of having... that women today in 2023 are the majority in universities & colleges, the majority of doctors and lawyers, etc. If all of that had exactly ZERO effect, and women are still not only giving up all that opportunity to stay home, and do drudgery, housecleaning, volunteering at schools, etc. and RESENT IT BITTERLY while complaining constantly about "the patriarchy" and "structural inequality"... what the heck was the battle FOR over that 60 years? why did it fail?

I would like to suggest it is YOU who is hiding behind very outdated and exaggerated or untrue stereotypes from two generations ago... meaning you cannot talk honestly about the choices you and other women (such as the author) are making today in the freest, most fair and egalitarian societies in all of human history.

@LolaMontez2 I'm afraid this is where our conversation will end. There is just too much in your last post to pick over. It is clear that you do not understand my situation or the situations of many other women. I cannot communicate this effectively to you if you fail to read my posts accurately.

I do suggest you do some more reading. The book I recommended (even just the preview) is very good and might give you greater insight into some of the very real issues modern feminism is up against.

@Zebdya: what part of "broader culture" forces women to stay home with children? the reality today is that most mothers work outside the home! Only a relatively few affluent married women have the PRIVILEGE to CHOOSE to stay home for lengthy periods of time... sometimes for only ONE child.

What needs and desires do you (or any woman in western culture) have, that you must sublimate to others? to men? to your own offspring? Who makes you "submit" and to WHAT exactly?

Are you forced to marry, in arranged marriages... on the threat of HONOR KILLINGS? I don't think so. Are you forced into degrading polygamous marriages? do you lose the right to vote when you marry or have children?

I know that, tragically, rape does happen... and btw, it happens to gay men ALSO (and presumably they are not victims of patriarchy)... but the vast majority of sex that women have is consensual with partners of their choice. Western societies have no arranged marriages.

The original author of the article and YOU allege that women are continually forced to have sex when not interested in doing so. I cannot think of a single instance in my life where this was true, nor that of my friends or family. (Again: it is worth thinking about whether gays or lesbians are ever in that position, and why you say "only women".) If I was forced to have sex with a man I was not interested in... and just leaving or saying no was impossible do to threat of violent harm... I would report this to the police as it would be RAPE.

If a woman CHOOSES to give up work to have children, when the vast majority of mothers (75% to 80%) DO work outside the home... how is this forced on them by "society"? or a man? I am puzzled! women are the majority of college graduates today, and hold down the highest jobs in medicine, law, politics, education, etc... how does one force a lawyer or doctor to give up their career to stay home, care for children and do housework?

If motherhood is such a burden, why do you choose it? why choose to do it ALONE? if you are married, isn't your husband obligated 50%, while YOU are equally obligated to help provide financially for your JOINT family? are you talking about SINGLE PARENTHOOD then? because the original poster plus "meandering brook' here are married, affluent, have husbands with high paying careers and the CHOICE to stay home or work... a CHOICE that poor or single or working class moms simply never have, as their income is required!

While a disabled child is higher in needs than normal or average children... surely you know that the vast majority of children are normal and average! they are small only a couple of years each, and then go off to school full-time until 18, so that "stay at home mom" is largely staying at home in an empty house.

Meanderingbrook cannot or won't answer this question, so I pose it to you: why, 60 years after modern feminism, are women still making the CHOICE to give up paid work and career, to stay home and do drudgery they clearly hate... and blaming "society" for their own choices? and how is YOUR OWN CHOICE something that is "structural" or "unequal", if you CHOSE IT?