childless feminists vs mothers

[darleneconnor]

Has anyone else experienced hostility/ignorance/division between childless feminists and mothers?

I'm getting quite frustrated by the lack of understanding and lack of willingness to attempt to understand the issues and constraints feminist mothers have. Im involved in a couple of feminist orgs and sometimes im quite marginalised because there is no attempt to consider childcare responsibilities.

One org even has a blanket ban on young children on its premises!

Maybe i should start a feminist mothers group.

I'm sorry you've experienced that Darlene.

I haven't, as it happens - all the feminists I've met have been lovely to and about children. But perhaps it helps that my local group is one I helped set up myself and for a while mothers were in the majority.

which org has the blanket ban on mothers?

there is really no excuse for feminists not being willing to make adjustments, I think; you can forgive people for never having thought about it but when challenged they ought to be willing to take it on board.
same with disability - when Riven was on here she posted, IIRC, that her local group met somewhere with no wheelchair access.

sorry, blanket ban on children in the premises, not mothers - that would be even more dreadful!

Not here, Darlene. And I've not really frequented any other feminist sites/forums/groups yet. But I do know that there are feminists (one I know through a friend) who think having children is anti-feminist

My mum worked in womens' studies for many years and this was a constant problem for her in the 80s... I helped archive some of their feminist reading group minutes a while back and I was devastated to see how many times she had to send apologies due to childcare problems (e.g. me)

It was definitely a cause of conflict then and I suspect little has changed in the interim.

She felt that some of her peers thought there were "more important" issues that should be tackled... I feel that childcare is at the root of many of the problems women face now, perhaps even more so than when my mother had us.

Mind you the conflict continues... she basically thinks I "should" be back at work full time, because she was at this stage, conveniently forgetting that she had access to a subsidised nursery at her place of work. How many working mothers have access to that these days?!!?