"In western society, we use sophisticated mockery to diminish the too-devoted parent.

[emkana]

We characterise women as fettishly connected to their babies if they breastfeed openly and for as long as nature intended. We seduce them back to work and the marital bed and proclaim them weak if they put their own needs on hold while attending to those of small children."

(From Deborah Jackson, Baby Wisdom.)

What do you think? Is she right or not?

Sorry, that 1st sentence should have been in quotes..

Ruty I don't think anyone is making a moral judgment on your or anyone else's choice to be a SAHM (I too have made career/childcare decisions that have impoverished me to a greater extent!), in fact I think we are agreeing that society should not put so much emphasis on women choosing to be SAHMs or going back to work full time. I have recently looked at moving from part-time self-employment to part-time 'proper' employment and it's a nightmare. Mention part-time in relation to the sort of job I was doing before and they look at you as thought you are mad, even though it's eminently do-able - it just doesn't fit the macho ballbreaking jacket-over-the-back-of-the-chair culture. Going back to the original question re the Deborah Jackson statement, how society views you regarding breastfeeding and so on is essentially a matter for you to deal with on a personal level, but taking the opposite view and trying to get back into a career when you have had children is not necessarily something you can internalise and deal with on your own. As I said before, you can just deal with one, but the other is much more debilitating.

also being self employed and having paid my taxed up to date i qualified for the maximum maternity allowance for 6 months - the grand total of 100 quid a week. Yippee!

ruty - pah! as a Spanish self employed person, I paid much more NI that you and qualified for a total of 500EUR a month for 16 weeks (should have been 700, but I had to keep paying the contributions out of it - stupid system)

gosh this looks like it might be a good one, i'll just go and read it all...

Well I know I'm lucky personally. I have parents who supported me through higher education, and don't criticise my life choice to be a working mother (although I know my mother believes that being a mother is the pinacle of any woman's life). My FIL also thinks that the woman should be at home, but has never given me any gyp. I work in the NHS which has excellent maternity and other family friendly choices in terms of flexible working etc.

I didn't enjoy breastfeeding and was happy to stop (manged 6 and 3 months, so I think I did my stuff). I didn't enjoy being at home and was happy to go back to work. I dislike reading anything that implies my choices were bad, or indeed that anyone elses choice is bad per se. Give me the evidence!

It's not that long ago that women were not allowed to work following getting married, let alone be considered the equal of their male peers.

However, I think that the battle ahead is about encouraging employers and society as a whole to accept men as having a larger role in the family.

Of course, I would also like to see men being able to be pregnant, give birth and breastfeed... Then we might be some way to acheiving equality!

gosh senora, they value us self emplyed women more in Spain.

Not on this planet Nooka!

(and I think I'd be jealous.. Hey, that's my job!)

Well, I know , but it's difficult to maintain equality in the face of such a very fundamental difference.

I think that the worlds which least accept the consequences of women having children are the ones that also do not accept the idea that men should care about their families (or indeed pretty much anything outside of work). Therefore they probably won't change until both men and women and thus wider society change their view towards the balance between work and life.

Some careers seem to require not just that the worker should have essentially no home life, but that they should have a supporting partner at home so they can a) be completely looked after, but also b)have their partner be their social secretary. I cannot imagine either playing that role, or asking my dh to do so - and he would certainly refuse (he would be very bad at it anyway!)

Hmmmm, that's why 'equality' might never be achievable.

We live in a 'man's world' and (I'll probably get burned for this) women can't compete with men on their own terms...a great many men can't either!

There does need to be a fundamental shift in the way we (as a society) think about this issue, but I fear that will never happen. Not before the flood anyways! {grin]

well, if you're not pulling all-nighters and having to buy a new shirt in the morning because you didn't have time to go home the night before then you're obviously not very successful, are you?

The number of hours we spend working in this country, compared with the rest of Europe, is really shocking. It's not making anyone happier or more fulfilled.

This book is quite good on working and childcare , lots of comparison with the Scandinavian model (bit out of date though).

ok. the whole thread and two glasses of red down here's what i think. undoubtedly will be drivel/thread killing but what the heck?

motherhood, the fact of it, makes women the most potent and powerful beings on this planet. (do you need me to go into why? no i didn't think so.)

historically those that have not been able to give birth (i.e. men, poor beloved things) have found many many ways of controlling and denying that power from chastity belts to patriarchy to monotheism (ha, that'll get some of you going).

just cause it's (slightly) more subtle now, doesn't mean it's not still happening does it? divide and conquer?

and what is always the worst enemy of the subjugated mass....their peers.

so, if you understood any of that then you understand that we are all being duped into thinking that we are not the most powerful wondrous beings on the planet for being mothers, that being forced into choices of being with our children or fulfilling our creative selves is just abhorrent and that we are our own worst enemy as always.

Beautifully said soph. It tried to go over my head, but I reigned it in, and got there in the end. It was worth it.

Sophable, how romantic!!

I'm not quite sure how this thread became a debate on women's role and (lack of) equality.

I do agree that there are many pressures on women, but as I said many posts ago, I think that the quotes from Deborah Jackson are about something else - about the idea that there is a "natural" way to rear children, that that way involves "putting their own [the parents', not the mother's] needs on hold" and that those who follow this method are ridiculed. I disagree with all 3 parts of that, although there is still a lot of pressure on women (not parents) in various directions.

monkey...oi....i've got my sheepish and perturbed face on...i thought you'd agree tbh

spider, i'm full of shite but glad you like it

fwiw, i think the seduced back into the marital bed thing is nonsense...hopefully if you're co-sleeping it's all three of you, and in the cultures that do, children grow up ignoring as common place the sound of their parents shagging...ha! no one talks about that bit of co-sleeping do they?

in a total cop out clause, i only co-slept for 6 weeks, didn't shag with ds in room (we were next door) but i think that is because i was trying to do something (co-sleeping) that works in cultures that put community first, whereas i've been raised in a culture that puts the individual first.

having said all of that, i don't think that children being exposed to a grunt and a groan of pleasure from their parents is in any way damaging, just like i don't think that children seeing their mothers give birth to their sibs with all that that accompanies would be damaging in any way either. i just don't know if i will do it!

Sophable, if you're saying that women are their own worst enemy and the biggest critics of other women, then I agree with you there.

But... while I agree that being a mother is wondrous and fantastic I don't understand why I can't get almost as much pleasure from my own achievements, intellectual or otherwise, which have nothing to do with my children, without some other women calling me selfish or careless of my children.

There are very few women in this world who are bad mothers. There are a lot more men who are bad fathers. And there is 100 times more men who would love to be better fathers if only society would let them.

This is why the mythologising of the power of the mother is, ultimately I believe, damaging to a certain extent because it makes those women who don't feel totally fulfilled, feel abnormal in some way and reinforces the belief that only a mother is good enough. Fathers are pigeonholed as much as mothers and, I think, often feel inhibited from playing the role in their childrens' lives that they would like to.

I think we have also conflated the idea of 'motherhood' with 'womanhood'. Where do women who choose not to be mothers, and women who would like to be mothers but have for whatever reason not had children, fit?

I like some of being a mother, and I am glad I have children, but I am really not sure that my reproductive capacity makes me one of the most powerful beings on the planet. Historically, a penis always seems to have been more use that way.

no no no you misundertand me wordsmith. what i find abhorrent is that society obstinately gets in the way of women being both mothers and hugely creative and fulfilled beings and that those things go together.

so whilst in the past that creativity might have been planting a really good harvest (with your chid on your back or being looked after in a creche run by your sisters/mother/aunts etc) today you should absolutely be able to be a hotshot lawyer by working from home or there should be fabulous creches in-house everywhere...it's a total disgrace that there aren't and exposes the deep seated discomfort society has with just how much women can do...you know the old multi tasking chestnut don't you.

ok, i'm going to totally stick my neck out. i reallly think that the natural order is a matriarchy (the only one i know of is tahiti and some polynesian cultures in ancient times, not i stress now). women should run the show, own the property, be mums, do the do and men should do what they absolutely totally adore: shag their women and work to provide them with lovely things!

pmsl

of course women that don't enact motherhood still have that essential creative power tho MI. and in terms of what i'm thinking, they were the kind of high preistess types...venerated and revered and v powerful....

forgive my alcohol fuelled rantings!

I also think that cultural norms about sleeping are as much to do with economic circumstances and whether there is room for people to sleep separately as much as concept of community.

agree sophable, matriarchy is the natural order, and it scares the crap out of men, hence centuries of oppressive ideologies...

I am very uncomfortable with deciding anything is the 'natural order', though - leads one into some very dodgy assumptions IMO.

i would take that phrase with a pinch of salt motherinferior.