Q for feminists: was your mother a Feminist? or not at all?

[amberleaf]

Hello, ive lurked on this board but never posted so please be gentle with me

I was raised by a feminist mum during the 70s/80s so i had a lot of feminist ideals drummed into me [i hope the term 'drummed' doesnt sound negative, i cant think of another way to describe it, I dont see how i was raised as a negative thing]

I feel that this did influence me a lot particularly in my attitudes towards relationships and marriage [ive never married and still wouldnt want to] also my self image.

Im not sure that i would call myself Feminist now? I definitely grew up thinking and feeling that as a woman i was discriminated against but also empowered enough that i wouldnt be hindered by sexism and would always challenge it.

Some of what i was taught by my mother on reflection seemed like 'man hating' and generalisations and i have questioned it lots over the years, particularly when i gave birth to the first of my 3 sons.

Im still interested in feminist perspectives and reading this board has been interesting, particularly in the current issues as the media/internet etc has IMO opened up new avenues for the deliverance and influence of sexism.

So im interested to hear from feminists who were raised in a feminist household, have you 'stuck' with it?

I think i have gone through phases of rejecting/maybe questioning some of what i was taught by my mother, possibly due to normal rebellion against parental influence im not sure?

Ok im aware that im now rambling a bit! Im just not sure on how i feel about it all.

Thanks for reading and i look forward to engaging with anyone interested in the topic of 'being raised by a feminist and how it has influenced you'

Amberleaf.

I would go as far to say my mother is anti-feminism. She disagrees with nearly everything I stand for. However this had made me more determined to be a feminist.

On the other hand I have a DD and she comes to protests and marches with me, we read feminist books aim at children together and I like to think I'm teaching her about confidence and aiming high (at the moment she wants to be a surgeon, I'm sure this wil change though ). To be honest I'd be gutted if she wasn't a feminist when she grows up.

Yes. My mum was an original late 60s/70s 'women's libber'. She went on all the demos and was very active in the pro-choice movement in the 60s.

She hasn't been politically active since the mid 80s - she is now very active in the Labour party/Fabian society, rather than the women's movement - but she is still a very vocal feminist. She is the main (only?) person I can discuss these things with in any detail in RL .

My Mum is the opposite of feminist. She bounces from one disastrous relationship to the next as she can't be without a man, insists on competing for male attention with every other woman in the room and used to usher me and my sister into parties with an injunction to 'sparkle'.

When my Mum visits, she usually brings me articles on hair and make up, has bought razors for me and has asked me how I expect to 'keep' my DP if I won't shave my legs or wear make up. She is baffled when I reply that I wouldn't want him if the only reason he was with me was the lack of hair on my body. She has made 'bucket' jokes as I had my DDs vaginally. She has been on a diet since she was 19 and put me on a diet at 12. She nags me about not using anti-aging creams.

She was horrified when she found out that DP had caught both our DDs as 'how could he ever want sex again after seeing that?!?'

She has been very instrumental in me becoming a feminist, no way do I want to be passing on all of that to the DDs!

My mother was in the band of late 60s/early 70s feminists. My father was much more traditional - we had an expat life, moving around the world, and wherever we were (including a small town in Zambia) my mother worked (she was a teacher), somewhat to my father's annoyance. Financial independence was something she felt very strongly about. She died when I was a teenager.

And me - well I worked through 3 DCs and then threw in the towel with DC4, and am now mostly a SAHM - bits and bobs of PT work sometimes. I don't think my mother would have judged me for it, but where she influenced me was the residual guilt I have now; I don't have that financial independence she strived for, and part of me feels I'm letting the side down.

My mum was slightly feminist, when she remembered, she would always point out daft stuff my nan would say as an example of what not to do ("it doesn't hurt to make yourself look weak to get the boys to help you" or "you need to wear a bit of make up or the men won't notice you") but on the whole she wasn't that involved. She did try to encourage me to be whoever I wanted and I didn't have to rely on men, but I feel most of my attitude was self taught, mainly through this website

My mother was a feminist but thinks we all "have it easy" now compared to her day and thinks I should feel lucky to work/have kids and do all the cleaning, household management, child centred stuff as in her day she was seen as weird for wanting to work. She was also of the be like the men style, ignore the children feminist and now as an adult I sometimes woinder why she actually bothered to have us. I am still a feminist though but I believe in different things IYSWIM

i think she must be. the second sex and the female eunuch are on the bookshelves. she has certainly noticed and been angry about inequality, especially during her professional training in the late seventies.

I notice though that things were pretty unequal at home. despite working almost full time she did everything or at least made sure everything was done iyswim. dad would do anything if asked but the planning and responsibility was left to her - and then to me if she was out, as the next available female (i only have brothers). mum would get cross about it from time to time and I regret not having been more vocal about it myself. I ended up doing lots to avoid mum getting upset, perpetuating the problem really

while I love my family dearly this does make me so angry, especially when I go to theirs for christmas and it's always the women clearing up while the men disappear

Thanks for the replys everyone.

she was an '80s as-good-as-a-man work-late-ignore-children feminist, so that kind-of sent me off in the other (don't work, overinvest in motherhood) direction for a while. I can definitely relate to some of that PrinceHumperdink particularly the 'contrarian' bit.

Maybeitsbecause Yes my mum too is definitely less active now and since the early/mid 90s i think.

She def not as radical as she was which has also made me question what she taught me.

thefinerthingsinlife Thats nice that you're getting your daughter involved, I dont have any daughters i have 3 sons but i feel i have to pass on stuff to them too, i have found it conflicting in some ways based on what i was taught as i said previously i feel some of what my mum taught me was anti man and i dont want to tell my sons they are crap! i have got annoyed at stuff like the 'boys are stupid...throw rocks at them' merchandise in shops.

Ive bought 'gender specific' [supposedly for girls] toys and costumes for my sons as and when they've expressed an interest ie kitchens, dolls, toy pushchairs etc and i try to avoid gender stereotypes in my parenting.

The 'all men are potential rapists' thing has provoked a lot of thought since having a son, I hope i have taught my sons enough about respect for humans in general but this has come into my mind more as my eldest goes through puberty and the issue of potential sexual relationships and mutual consent arises.

Im glad that my upbringing encouraged me to challenge prejudice of all forms but i suppose i struggle a little with what i percieve as my mums turnaround over the years on some of her principles. [she ended up remarrying a man who although nice is somewhat 'old fashioned' in his ideals]

My brother said something to me a little while ago when we were discussing the breakdown of my relationship with my DSs father, he said that our mums stance that men are 'bad/cheaters/opressive' and must be resisted led me to expect that from men and that it affected my choices in who i had a relationship with and what my subsequent expectations were. I know i have issues with trusting men and also with my expectations of them so maybe he has a point?

Sorry if this is all a bit garbled! Its good to be able to discuss this stuff with people not personally involved, ive never discussed how i feel with my mum firstly because im not too sure exactly how i feel and because i dont want to seem as though im telling her she did it wrong!

Thanks for reading!

Wow more replies, will be back when ive read through.

Interesting question.

My mum has feminist sympathies and raised my DSis and I to do what we wanted to do and not expect a man to "look after" us. (Kind of ironic that we're both SAHMs at the moment, although it hasn't always been that way).
She suggested I read The Women's Room when I was a teenager, she always worked and brought up our brother to help around the house/clear up after meals etc. as much as the rest of us.

I wouldn't say we were particularly indoctrinated with feminism, but she hasn't been a bad role model in many respects (wrt feminism) and I think she was more aware than most about certain aspects of gender stereotyping and has always been a bit of a rebel, so never liked to be pigeon-holed in any way. This has also been passed down to us, I think.

Interesting replies, i can identify with lots of points.

I do have a lot of respect for my mum, she had a difficult homelife and left home and married while still a teenager to escape it.

She then left that marriage due to DV issues and was a single parent when it wasnt the done thing [late 60s] and was self sufficient [worked several jobs] , she then met and married my father, it was when that marriage broke down that she became a feminist, i was about 7/8.

I think she really pushed hard on me the notion of being self sufficient or more to the point not relying on a man not just financially but in general.

I think what im trying to figure out is how much of what my mum impressed upon me was down to actual feminist ideologies or just caution from her own experiences? or is there actually a difference?

We had 'fat is a feminist issue' 'the womans room' ' the female eunuch' and i think it was a magazine called 'spare rib' amongst loads of others , we went to meetings and film showings about greenham common activists and i was proud to give my newish roller skates to a group that helped miners families one december so that their children got christmas presents.

She certainly taught me to think about what is presented to us as 'how it should be' and challenge it if i disagreed which im grateful for.

Striking miners families.

I did have a long reply which disappeared! So here is the short version:

If asked to describe herself I don't think that the word feminist would be in there but she is:

She recognises sexism and inequality and pointed this out to me e.g. the fact that women needed a male signatory to get a bank account (well within my lifetime!). And has always been outspoken in challenging men and sexist behaviour.
She never uses derogatory or sexist terms to describe women.
She absolutely hates violence, especially against women and children (she worked for the NSPCC and Samaritans).
She has always recognised the amount of blame women get within relationships/raising children and regularly challenges this.
She divorced my father because she wasn't happy, moved out of the family home and set up her own home (I was 16 at the time so just split my time between them).
She had a career, but also stayed at home until I was 5.
Always recognised how competitive/ambitious I was and that my brother wasn't.
Always supported me and my brother in whatever we wanted to do.

I've learnt a lot from her (more than I realised) and although she wouldn't identify with radical feminism (the politics for some reason really puts her off) I would say she was a liberal feminist.

I love my mum, but I have no illusions about her feminist credentials. She was raised to "be nice to get love" and had nannying and secretarial jobs after she left school at 16, while she was waiting to marry someone, keep his house, and raise his babies. She's amazing with kids - I remember her being a fun SAHM and she's wonderful with her grandchildren. I wish she'd had the chance to be a teacher, or a childminder, or ... well, anything which gave her talents scope. As it is, she now runs her own successful business (a B&B) and repeatedly remarks that she never thought she'd be someone who'd have done that. She was also amazed when she agreed to be interviewed by local kids for their primary school project and the first question was "What is your occupation?" She said "Why I grew up no one asked women what they did. All the women were housewives."

She was sent to a school which was basically a finishing school, she was invited to give up maths and do more cello (!) as she was better at it and which girls needed maths, anyway? I asked her once how many girls from her school went to University. She looked pretty thoughtful and said, 'no, not one. But no one was kept from going, I don't think....' Having had a conversation with an Aunt who told me, as a teenager, that I was a 'bluestocking who will never get a husband' I suspect that actually, these girls were pretty actively dissuaded all their lives from going to further education.

She thinks women who don't use "Mrs" and take their husbands name are insulting their husband's families and she thinks that women who sleep with men before they marry them will be 'used goods' and 'why buy the cow when the milk is free?'... I asked her why a woman would want to buy a pig for the sake of one sausage, and to her credit she laughed and laughed and laughed and told me I was terrible and modern.

She's lovely. But she's not remotely capable of critical thinking. She thinks things are what they are because they are, and why rock the boat? She thinks I'm mean to my DH cos he changes half (or slightly more than half) of the shitty nappies and does housework. I point out that he has opposable thumbs and a spine, why the hell should I pick up after him? And she shakes her head and laughs and says how glad she is that we're happy.

My Dad doesn't do anything like his fair share of housework, and I know that she wishes he would, but won't do anything about it as it's "too late." They've been happily married for 35 years - still laugh together, still enjoy each other. But I doubt if, after 3 kids, he's changed more than 100 nappies in his life.

The good stuff: Mum's a real tomboy/countrywoman who raised us to be outdoorsy, horse-riding, tree-climbing girls who weren't "ninnies" and didn't "Whine" and she supported our educational choices and pushed us to go to Uni. I had an entirely un-pink childhood, and was supported in my choices. By the time my mother was making noises about how my Doc Martens were "so unladylike" I was 14 and had read The Female Eunuch and had no problem telling her about my body/my choice, etc. And if she rolled her eyes, she never enforced high heels!

The bad stuff: My brother wasn't made to do housework like we were, there was some gender favouritism. (he does a lot in his family now - which my Mum can't cope with at all). She thinks I should be a SAHM, or, rather, makes carefully coded references to why she thinks me working is a bad plan. And doesn't see that it's sexist, since "babies need their mums more than their dads" etc. This upsets DH, who would love more time to spend with DS...

So No, my mum wasn't a feminist and yes, that definitely made me one (not my Dsis, though) - but she was a great Mum, and I'm hoping to take the good, lose the bad (and probably inject a whole load of my own style of bad!)

Yes, my mum was definitely a feminist, but in a practical, rather than book-reading sort of way. She always talked to me about the position of women, inequalities at work/womens vs men's pay rates and that sort of thing.

She was also active in her union when she was younger, and struggled a lot with the endemic attitude amongst many of the male union leaders that women 'worked for pin money' and that it wasn't as important to support them.

My dad is more of a feminist than my mum and had a greater influence on me in that direction.

My mum is a very strong, independent woman but she thinks that feminism is an issue for oppressed women overseas somewhere rather than in the UK in 2011. She has always been successful, financially independent and respected by the men in her life and doesn't consider that her personal case may have been the exception rather than the rule for her generation...

My mother doesn't understand the need for feminism at all, she is bemused by it. Despite going to university in the 60s and then again to a trendy lefty social science course in the 70s, and despite having always been a working mother.

My sister and I have been feminists from a young age. She thinks we're odd. We think she's repressed. She lives to please my father, who treats her like a skivvy. Hence our feminism, a reaction against this.

No, I don't think my mum is a feminist, although I think she'd be really empowered to read some feminist stuff. I don't often know what to send her though because I'm worried it might trigger bad memories for her. She's had a pretty shit time at the hands of various men, and yet she clings to this idea you can "fix" people if you love them enough and that all actions have a reason and she forgives absolutely everyone, though she has successfully cut people out of her life, and she's getting better at spotting bullshit earlier on. She still forgives them though.. I don't know that I could ever understand that.

She also has some pretty traditional ideas about men being useless at housework even though she managed to produce me, being female and somehow completely lacking the housework gene. And men needing sex and women not really liking it and men needing to go into their "caves" (actually pretty much all of the Mars and Venus book). And she was really upset the other day when I let my sister get the last bus home after babysitting for me because she'd have had to walk home on her own after dark (despite the fact I used to do the same when I was 3 years younger, and drunk!)

However, she did raise my sister and me single-handedly which I think was good, made me realise I could do it on my own if I ever needed to and I am. If we ever get into a conversation about feminist things she's always interested and seems to agree mostly with what I'm saying so I suppose that might have been where my initial interest came from. But ultimately I think I've identified with feminism more since I got older and started to develop my own views on things.

Yes, my mother is a feminist, but she never spoke about feminism directly. Somehow she managed to bring me up knowing that there was a history of unfairness, and also pointing me towards interesting women past and present as an act of counterbalancing the fact that men's achievements are constantly spoken about. I only realised a few years ago that she sought out books for me that had good female protagonists, in fact I think I only saw that it just couldn't have been an accident after reading a thread on here about which books to leave lying around for your daughter.

She is unquestionably the boss in her relationship with my dad, although she still bears the burden of housework etc being her responsibility unless someone takes some of it on themselves. Having said that the way my parents live is quite old-fashioned in that there is as much "outdoor work" (done 95% by my dad) as "indoor work" (mainly done by my mum) to be done, so although they have a fairly traditional divide they both work hard.

She has definitely helped to make me into a feminist, but perhaps it helped that she let me work so many things out for myself - she just put the ideas my way for me to think about. I don't think she's ever been involved in any activism but she is very happy about the things that I do - I think she thinks that it's my "turn" to do something about sexism really.

OP - do you think your dad may have had some impact on your attitude towards men, as well as your mum?