is feminism acutally, er, anti-feminism?

[loopyloops]

I would like to consider myself a potential feminist, but have a real issue with the whole thing. A century ago I wouldn't have been pressurised to go out to work and have children, would I? OK, in the lower classes probably you would have to, but in a comfortable middle class family, would I be expected to for ideological reasons?

I love being at home with DD but it is absolutely knackering, and if having more is on the cards I simply cannot bear the thought of going back to work. Do I have to? Is it really anti-feminist to wish this wasn't the assumption?

Yes, but once past the immediate newborn, bf stage, aren't mothers just more important to the young because we make ourselves more important and dads less important. Nature vs nurture?

And extrapolate it out, doesn't it also say that women who adopt are somehow less powerfully bonded if we think the bond is caused by carrying, giving birth to and feeding a baby.

Bugger, really interesting chat, and I have to go home and do some bonding with DD!

Agree with sakura - it isn't about choices. It's about opportunities - and having them in the same way as men do. It also means permitting men to do the parenting thing if that is their bag - with society making them feel like they are somehow a bit off kilter.

I think that having had that physical role affects our parenting.

I don't think denying that early role is helpful. In this case equality is not about being the same, it can't be.

Fathers (or other non-birth-giving parent) are perfectly capable of being as loving and caring and useful a parent as the mother.

But it's not the same, and that's not necessarily a negative, just how it is.

swallowed - nope. That huge biological link does fade. I love my 13yr old and like his company. I am proud of him as well quite often - but I am proud and fond of the person he has become due to our upbringing of him. The fact he grew in my womb is largely irrelevant now. Same with both my 11yr old and 7 yr old. The further childbirth recedes, the more that aching biological urge to 'mother' rather than 'parent' fades.

Orm, I guess that's natural isn't it, they get more independent, the dependent connection of childbirth, bf, and all the other fragility of infancy fades.

It's still quite overwhelming for me, even with a 2.4 year old. Perhaps we can only speak for the stage we find ourselves at?

SAF, my I remember my Mum saying that sometimes, no matter how big we were.

Ah well the wonderment fades a little too When you get the answering back and the teeange strops.

"Why do so many people feel that women are the ones who 'have the children'" ( - my post)

"The pain of childbirth drove it home to me."

Ok, maybe I'll feel more entitled once I've gone through that pain. At the moment I see it as incidental: we both want children, this unfortunately involves me (as the one who happens, somewhat arbitrarily, to be able) going through some pain. If I were able to take it upon myself in DP's stead, I can imagine myself maybe feeling proud, but as is, assigning meaning to it would make as much sense to me as being proud that a rock fell on me the other day, but didn't fall on DP. That could be just me though.

"I think it's a dangerous and rocky slope for women if we pretend that men also carry a baby, go through labour and breastfeed," - I'm not sure if this is in response to my post, but I'm not pretending DP carries, births or breastfeeds.

"and therefore have as much of a stake in the child as the mother." - I suggest DP has equal stake. Not because of pretending DP is also carrying though.

"They don't." - I think sometimes they do, and sometimes they have more stake.

"But never forget that we live under patriarchy, and once you go down the line of thinking that mothers just ain't that important" - whoa, I didn't say 'just ain't that important.' I said of equal importance. ...actually ok, so that's less than 'more'. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

"to their kids and vice versa, then you're fighting on behalf of men." - well, yes. And of women who don't want to be told that they're more important, more connected, or more worthy than the poor sods who aren't born with wombs.

Actually maybe I should clarify the 'assigning meaning to it' part. I do think my ability to carry and birth the child is meaningful, and I do consider it a priviledge.

...hmm. The more I think about it, the more I think there's a couple of ways I manage to see this, simultaneously.

Pregnancy and birth as a negative (a view I hold) = I put up with the negative. However that's not my fault or DP's, so I don't get to make claims using it as credit.

Pregnancy and birth as positive (a view I also hold) = I get to go through a positive experience that DP never can. If anything, saying 'I get this biological boon, so now I lay more claim to the cuddly results of it' also seems rather unfair.

So what I actually meant in the post above the post above, is 'assigning [the meaining that I earned the children more than DP did] to it'.

I'll stop the train of posts now. Sorry!

Nice explanation of Sakura, Larry.

My point was that patriarchy is invisible to everyone who isn't a feminist. Under patriarchy fathers have rights that mothers don't have (see the Britney Spears example where she lost custody to him even though they had roughly the same lifestyle: it wasn't held against him in the way it was held against her.)

So the value of mothering is diminished. Nowadays we even have women saying their role in creating life just ain't that much of a biggie. In other words, they've adopted the patriarchal view that bearing life is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. This is patriarchy-capitalism in action.

What women and men forget is that if a woman does XYZ it's just regarded as natural, expected of her, and if she can't do it (for example if she abandons her children) she's seen by society as a monster. A father, on the other hand, is never seen as a monster for doing exactly the same things as the mother. Once you realise this, you begin to see it everywhere. The bar is much much higher for mothers. But it's invisible.

So you have to put it all in the context of the fact we live under patriarchy.

Fathers have an important role, hugely important role (if they stick around) but fathers do seem to be more concerned about their "rights" than about their "responsibilities" and a court will happily grant rights to fathers while demonizing mothers. There was a father recently who got let off without a fine for stuffing a baby wipe up his 3 month-old son's anus and leaving it there overnight while the baby writhed in pain. It nearly killed the child but doctors operated on him for 8 hours and managed to remove it from his bowel. He is still recovering. The judge thought the father had made a "silly" mistake (as opposed to sadistic and sexual abuse). If it had been the mother she would have been tarnished as an incompetent monster and probably sent to jail.

So patriarchy chops and changes when it suits them. When dads do something horrendous like that patriarchy runs out the old "well men don't know what they're doing" chestnut, and if a mother does something like not get the kids to school on time she gets threatened by social services.
So to say that society treats mothers and fathers equally is naive.

THeBossofMe,
I think men on the whole can be socialized into being better men than they are right now. MAsculinity is socialization, for the most part.
But...
Males and females are different and liberal feminists do themselves a disservice by pretending that's not true.
Talking about a post-revolutionary utopia is fantastic, but you ignoring the truth about the way society regards mothers (often with contempt) does women a disservice because it means patriarchy's double standard when it comes to mothers and fathers (like the baby wipe man) are ignored.

WHen 80% of judges are women, society will accept that what that man did was not the silly mistake of a bungling father, but a sadistic crime enacted upon a helpless newborn.

Heh "Sakura takes a hard line: news at eleven".

Ahem, anyway. I completely agree with that last post.

(the second last post. stop cross posting)

All responsibility and no rights is what single mothers get.

I don't think you go on about single mums at all. I think the POV of singler mothers is underrepresented on MN. Most of my feminist viewpoints come from a place where I believe society has fucked up by forcing women to become economically dependant or interdependant on their children's father.
2 women in the UK are murdered every week and I hazard a guess that it's so high because of enforced economic interdependancy with the murderer (along with other factors)