Is the Child Free movement anti-feminist?

[GothAnneGeddes]

Not sure how to word this, but while I absolutely agree that there is nothing wrong with not wanting children, this whole idea of a movement (with a lot of men in it) that seems to despise mothers and children with a visceral repulsion and also encourage women to remove their reproductive organs is very unsettling.

What do you think?

"People will undergo considerable personal cost to have children because they want to (or maybe less consciously their body wants to"

No Himlaya, women will undergo considerable personal cost. Men's earning power actually rises as a result of having children, as they are seen as more responsible, "adult" members of society, while women's earning power goes down.

"any time you are engaged in looking after your children you are not at work creating value for other people"

Would argue very strongly with that. Bringing up your children to be useful members of society, is creating huge value for other people. You've swallowed the line that child-rearing is useless time spent. It's not, it's socially necessary and if we stopped looking after our children and let them run wild, what effect do you think that would ahve upon society? How can you possibly believe that looking after children doesn't create value?

As for the taking the village to raise the child - of course they do it so that their children can join in with the labour of the village. Exactly the same as us. It happens to be different labour, that's all.

I think your points are good, Himalaya. Plus, I feel I have to keep stressing that I agree parenting is undervalued (or not-valued) and that caring in general deserves a higher status. It pisses me off as much it does everyone else that a footballer can earn the salary of 1,000 nurses.

If I keep on putting arguments against salaried parenting, I risk getting into pettifogging arguments and exposing personal reasons (which, although they apply in general, will lead to misconstruction). So I'm going back to the less-patriarchal business structure.

In Germany it is usual for large employers to offer a year's sabbatical for every X years worked. The qualifying period is commonly 5 years - so, for every six years with an employer, you only work five. The employers don't pay the cost of this: it's covered by a sort of employee fund, similar to the way contributory pensions were funded here. Thus, employers do actually support the fund but it's factored down to nothing on their books - I assume they get tax relief; maybe some German accounting whizzkid will be along to fill in the details. Employees set up and run the sabbatical schemes: they're voluntary and depend on a sufficient membership to work out financially.

Basically, it's a structured means of saving up to have every sixth year off work. Because it's structured and supported, nobody loses their jobs and everything is adequately planned. I would like to see schemes like this implemented over here. It doesn't favour parents, but it does allow flexibility to lead a more fulfilling life, in whatever way fits your particular Maslow.

Another, often-proposed, idea is 24-hour business. Personally I think it's crazy not to be open for business 24/7. We're all in a world market these days - if a business only has local customers, the likelihood is that those customers do business across timezones. A 24-hour working day means three 8-hour shifts. That's three times the number of jobs and two opportunities for a worker to fit their job around the rest of their life. Add flexitime into the mix, and the opportunities to create a life that works for your family become infinite. Some workers may choose shorter hours for less pay, others may choose more and so on.

Wrt workers who choose longer hours, I don't really understand why workplace childcare never took off. I know the big company I worked for put it to a vote - they proposed a levy on all employees' salaries, which was rejected, then a larger levy on parents' salaries only. That was also rejected. I wonder if a more concerted campaign, with government backing, would get such schemes moving again? If the tax breaks for employers providing the service have been withdrawn, they should be re-introduced and, perhaps, made bigger.

Part of me thinks that various child-friendly initiatives have fallen at the first jump due to ingrained attitudes amongst the fat blokes who have the veto. I can see attitudes changing very fast among younger people, though, and am tempted to think they could be got off the ground with consistent government backing. The problem also lies in the devaluing of parenthood, which is the topic of this thread. I do think that's changing - and could, again, be moved along faster with both government and commercial support. It's only - what, one year? - since we adopted paternal leave. As soon as the idea takes hold - and doesn't compromise one's career - the better the picture will become. I hope.

Been lurking on here...great post garlicbutter - lots of stuff I ddin't know about and food for thought

Herbeggs

You seem to be discounting the expense of raising children - more rent for a bigger house, transport, clothing, food, holidays etc... plus if the other parent is a SAHP their cost of living: all that comes out of the working parents wages so when you have children whether you go out to work or are a SAHP it reduces your disposable income - I.e. It costs you.

Of course raising children creates value, as dittany said for the child, and also for society when they grow up. I am not arguing against that. I agree.

But the point I was making is it doesn't create value for your employer (and their customers, clients etc...) and so they have a limited appetite to pay you for taking time off work.

Yes if we refused to have children the government would have to put in some incentives for us to do that (as they have in Italy) but that's not a problem in the UK. So I'm not convinced that taxes from potentially poorer people should go to potentially richer people simply on the basis that one isn't a parent and one is.

I agree that "the only work of value is paid work outside the home", Dittany, and feel it's a mistake. As I've said, I feel that is changing - and could be moved along a lot faster with some focused government thinking.

The paid work matters, though. A society can only afford to consider the better things in life - the caring, the societal mood, personal fulfilment and rounded education - when its members are already safe, healthy, fed and sheltered. Maslow again: we're disputing what lies at the top of the triangle. This is a luxury and one that's only been afforded to the masses by capitalism.

I've written plenty about how I dislike our current shape of capitalism, and also why I think the model's in its death throes. It is a highly flexible model so, one hopes, the agonised examination that's going on across the world just now will yield a fairer, more fulfilling version for time to come.

it's no good slagging it off without looking at alternative structures, though. Without capitalism the food distribution doesn't work, the sanitation breaks down and local imbalances cause widespread illness & misery. Yes, the current (dying) model is sexist. Yes, it's exploitative of the poorest. Yes, it's as imperfect as all get-out. But it works better than not-capitalism for a greater proportion of people.

There never will be an unstructured human society: we're a pack animal, in simple terms, and will always seek structures and leaders. Not-capitalism (feudalism & communism spring to mind) lead to greater deptivation for most, so I'm all for working capitalism's flexibility in favour of a more ethical & equal evolution. I'm not quite sure which parts of this you disagree with, though I know you do.

Thoughts?

Wow, this went a bit bonkers didn't it?

Anyone care to summarise if anyone said anything about "Child-Free" in the last week or so?

(have been without internet)

Currently I suppose I am "child free by choice", technically. I may choose to change that status in the future.

Wow, SGM!
Why didn't I just write a one-liner and stop there?

GB, you can't disconnect what is at the top of the triangle from what is at the bottom. They are interconnected. A lot of things at the bottom only get accomplished because needs at the top have been met and allow people to see out specific infrastructures in society as a consequence - this then meets the basic needs of the next generation. Many people will also choose a specific way of meeting a basic need rather than another way because it allows them to meet higher needs at the same time. This is particularly the case with food distribution - one of the issues you mentioned. Most food producers would rather work their own land for less money than someone else's land for more, because it meets higher needs to work their own land. You cannot separate choices people make about basic needs from choices people make about higher needs.

I also dispute that it is a lack of capitalism that causes food structures to break down. You only have to look at an international food map to see that all of the countries where there is chronic food insecurity (despite no actual shortage of food) are capitalist nations. There are serious issues to do with civil rights in non-capitalist countries, but I see no evidence that the infrastructure is any worse than it would be with capitalism.

As for the issue of it being contemporary capitalism that is the issue? When was it working well? During the British Empire? The Slave Trade? The Highland Clearances? The Irish Potato Famine?

SGM, you speaketh wisely, but what does this say about the Child Free Movement?

Can we start a movement for "Children if you choose, or not if you'd rather not" campaigning for everyone to shut the fuck up and let people make their own minds up about whether they want children and how many and when? :o

If you go off the beaten track in China - which you can only do by getting lost, and I only know about thanks to my intrepidly travelling friends - you'll find many single-crop regions. The distribution mechanisms don't work, so the local people eat nothing but the single crop. As a result, they are fed but suffer from long-term malnutrition. That's just one example of Things Not Many People Realise and I've totally failed to stick to topic or a single line! Knocking this off now, though.

You're not wrong, Milly, but your view's a bit tunneled ... imo, of course, what else?

That's the trouble with snappy titles. Realistic titles just don't scan nicely.

Feminism doesn't want to promote women and subjugate men and produce what ever the opposite of the patriarchy is (at least not to my understanding).

The Child Free movement probably doesn't want to gather followers and make everyone be child free.

Brewerys are lovely, not vile at all! (assuming typo)

Yes, the extreme anti-whatever it is that we are not position seems to have been taken up more extremely (or more visibly/loudly) in the Child Free movement, but I still think that it's a perfectly legitimate movement in essence, and that its name is no worse than the word feminism.

GB
Um, not really sure how looking at the international problem of localised food insecurity due to inadequate food distribution networks within nation states is more tunnelled than your friend's backpacking experiences in China.

When people subsist on a single crop, it is usually a consequence of being part of a wider food distribution network, as it is hard to sustainably manage one crop in the long term. There is rarely a specific political solution that will cure all food production and management issues, or even one issue in different ecological areas. The solution has to be based on the spatial and temporal context. Sometimes the best solution is a capitalist one, and sometimes it is one of a range of other solutions. (Of interest to feminists, a woman recently won the nobel prize for Economics for pointing this out - albeit in a somewhat more complex way than I have done here. Women winning the nobel prize for Economics doesn't happen very often).

As for TA's slogan, I think 'my body, my choice' is the traditional one.

I don't disagree. I'm trying to put a range of interlinked concepts into a real-world frame, without reams of academic references and/or polemic. There's always more than one way :)

I'm just referring back to the question in the title, trying to re-rail the discussion maybe. :)

Question: Is the Child Free movement anti-feminist?

My answer: I say no, but some of the people within it certainly are, and those people seem to be very good at making themslves noticed.

An analogy: Is the feminist movement anti-men? No, but some people within it are (although a much smaller minority, perhaps because it is a more evolved, established, mature movement).

GB, I don't see what point you are making. I don't see how your concepts are interlinked or what your real world frame is. I also haven't made reams of academic references. I haven't mentioned anything that you can't read in a newspaper aimed at a general audience.

To bring it back on to feminism, I think one of the issues with getting people to deal with the problems of food and the environment is that there is a psychological issue with getting people to deal with insurmountable problems. When faced with something that seems very difficult to deal with, people find non-solutions because they don't want to face the problem. One of the non-solutions is to become more confrontational to out-groups.

I wonder if that can be applied to feminism. The reason many people feel troubled by feminism might be that they don't want the problems pointed out to them, because the problems are really big. It is easier to try and point out a group of women that the person isn't a member of (single mothers, women with no children, women who don't work, women who do, poor women) and make them the out-group, and hold them responsible.

TA, I think that the childfree movement on the internet is anti-feminist, but women without children that I actually know off the internet are almost always feminists, see their decision as feminist, and still take responsibility for children even though they have none of their own. Certainly many of the people who have had a positive impact on my children's lives have no children of their own.

DH did have a female boss who had a genuine phobia of small children, and we removed the children from the room if she was in the house. But I think that was a very specific issue and nothing to do with the childfree movement!