Parenting a boy is a feminist minefield!

[MadameBoolala]

I am a feminist.

I have one child, a 4 year old boy, and mainly post in conception as we have been ttc number 2 for 2 years without success now. However I am venturing onto these boards as I feel negatively judged today by someone, and my parenting is being called into question.

I won't have time to post again until I come back from work tonight- but I'm wondering aloud today if it's easier to be a feminist and a parent of a girl...

Furthermore, 4 in 5 couples in which both partners are able to work rely on family and friends for much cheaper, usually free, childcare - usually the grandparents. This is a feature that is rapidly going to diminish in our society as retirement ages rise and people are more geographically mobile in the pursuit of work.

This means more and more couples will have to rely on professional childcare, which is prohibitively expensive for many and will effectively price women out of the workforce because no matter how egalitarian a couple may be, most will always choose to have the higher paid partner in work, rather than take a financial hit in the name of sexual equality. For many the choice will never exist since the option of having both partners cut back work and share childcare between them will mean going under financially.

Xenia, I work full time and don't have a husband or partner. I don't want one either and I certainly have no intention of keeping a man happy so he buys me things.

And I'd love to hand over more child-caring duties in order to really climb the career ladder. I really would.

The reason I can't? LACK OF AVAILABLE, AFFORDABLE, SUITABLY FLEXIBLE CHILDCARE. I can make it work with a position that is beneath my capabilities and qualification level, but anything more demanding than that, involving increased hours at short notice and travel is out of the question, which kind of removes most things.

Sorry for shouting, but please stop blaming women for being unable to effect change in a male-dominated society.

finding it hard to relate to the keeping a man happy so he'll buy me things nonsense as i'm a single parent, like many women in this country. i also don't know ANYONE who lives like that.

incidentally just how many cleaners do you think could start a national cleaning business? could all of the millions of cleaners do that? then who would work for them? you seem totally out of touch with reality and i think it's because when you say 'women' you possibly mean middle class women. because after all someone still has to earn £6 an hour doing your cleaning and childcare and looking after your parents in care homes. it's how our economy works. if you didn't have anyone doing the menial work you so happily sneer then you wouldn't be able to do your high paid job.

not every person in this country can earn 50k plus - you do get that right?

I don't know anyone like that either SAF.

Anyway - veered right off topic here didn't we?

Coming back on topic I'd say that parenting a male child with good feminist principles can be done equally well by a SAHM or a WOHM. Both have philosophies that are of value. The former shows the importance of interpersonal skills, nurturing, practical care - things that may not have a definable economic value but which could cripple society if withdrawn. The latter can emphasise the importance of a strong worth ethic and a contribution to household and national economy. They need not be mutually exclusive nor set up as superior/inferior to each other. IMO there is a symbiotic relationship between the two.

In my feminist utopia, we would lose the idea that the couple-centric model is the only way to run a domestic economy. I think communities or just larger extended families in which people poole their economic and skill resources would work far better and result in more people working to their strengths.

What a depressing view you have of human relationships Xenia.

I don't see any logic in your world. As swallowedaFly says, if all cleaners set up a cleaning business who is actually going to do the cleaning for the wage that makes it a viable concern? What is the point of lots of surgeons if they can't do their job because there are no nurses? Why is it beyond your comprehension that some people would much prefer to be a nurse than a surgeon? I wouldn't want a job in the medical profession, but if I was forced into it I would want the caring side and would probably opt for a nurse in the community, district nurse, Macmillan nurse, midwife, health visitor etc. Why is that wrong? Why must I opt to be a surgeon-after all it is no more than a human plumber! It must be very boring to keep taking people's gall bladders out.

I saw in the news the other week that they were producing too many lawyers in US and some students were suing because there was no hope of work. What is the point of producing hoards of lawyers if they can't go out for a meal, have their rubbish emptied, get their car fixed, get served in a shop, find child care,find a plumber etc etc because there is no one to do it.

Luckily we are not all the same. I love working part time and I'm not bothered about a career ladder. I work to live and I certainly don't live to work. If people want to that is fine. I accept I don't get buckets of money for it, but as long as I have enough I don't have a problem with it.

I also think that I am a good role model for DCs (of either sex) that you should go for a career that you find interesting and satisfying and not be totally motivated by money and paying for school fees that you don't need. Fine if you want to earn pots- and you see school fees as a necessity-but it isn't superior.

I never suggested I worked only to pay school fees though. I bought an island and also I can buy cleaning help and other stuff I wouldn't write about on here.

It's much better for boys to see that their fathers clean at home and mothers can earn a fortune otherwise they grow up wanting a housewife of their own and we never get through that cycle and the cabinet will never be 50% or more female.

Don't let the cleaners be defeatist. We are a competitive species. Let any cleaner think they could rise to run that national cleaning business. Far too many women have far to low aspirations. Of course most will not run that national business but some can.

I agree that I'd like to see the cabinet being at least 50% female. Bringing up one's boys to see gender equality as normal is one way of ensuring that. But there are more ways to skin a cat than the way you have chosen to do things Xenia.

I think what is difficult is that your thinking on this seems to be so didactic - that the only person who is getting it right is you. As I work part time and my husband full - (although I am actually the highest earner) - you'd think we are getting it wrong I think, and my son is doomed to a life of misogyny, and I may as well just give up now!

Xenia - genuine question for you:

In your ideal-world scenario, with both parents working, the vast majority of domestic tasks, including childcare, would be outsourced. How then, do you bring up a male child to think that these things are anything other than outsourced?

How do you square that with your other assertion that you'd like to see more men being the primary carer and doing their share of the housework, etc.

Surely if you diminish these things as drudgework that no one wants to do, all you do is make it even less likely that men will want to participate in these aspects of daily life.

Meanwhile, who do you think will be doing the outsourced cleaning and caring? Women. And so nothing changes.

Yours is not a feminist model; it's a capitalist one in which income matters more than gender, that's all. Personally I think it throws away a lot of value.

who do you buy those cleaning services off of xenia?

who do you 'buy' your childcare from?

who will work cleaning if all the cleaners own cleaning businesses? and how many cleaning businesses without cleaners do you think our economy could sustain?

are you suggesting that we should just go for a complete reversal of men doing all the domestic and low paid work whilst women earn the big bucks? or are you just like so many men before you just happy to get your chance to exploit women who are poorer than you whilst sneering at what losers they are?

fantastic post btw exoticfruits - love your view of the role of surgeons

The term mummy's boy is definitely a feminist issue. All children belong to their mothers imo for the first few years. It's because they are made of our flesh and we have breasts to feed them. After a few years they do start to separate, and then of course mothers should let them. Age 4 is fine to be a mummy's boy. Age 40 or even 14 not so good! But it's a patriarchal attitude to think the separation should happen early or be forced.

Thank you exoticfruits why does feminism have to be about being a capitalist, or being ambitious? Why can't it be about valuing what women have always done, things like caring for their children, nursing the sick and the elderly, cooking, cleaning. Of course all women don't want to do these things and thankfully these days they don't have to. But many do, and the world would be much worse without them. Why can't we value home makers whatever their gender? I was raised by feminists and was therefore very surprised that leaving my career to bring up ds1 and keep house has made me happier than anything I'd ever done before.

I do have every admiration for surgeons- I was very grateful to have a good one when I needed one! However I don't see why it is something I need to aspire to. A lot of it must be routine -with the odd interesting case.

I also don't want to buy an island Xenia, I would much rather visit someone else's island, as a one off. I don't like going to the same place on holiday. I'm not keen on having a cleaner-I am a rather private person.

I don't want to give my DCs the impression that care of DCs isn't important and that I actually employ someone I secretly despise for not being more ambitious than being a nanny, or a nursery nurse. I want them to understand that there is nothing wrong with working with children, it is just as interesting to some people as moving money around the money market, reading legal briefs or giving someone a replacement hip. Given that choice, give me a nanny's job any day!
We are all different.
If a DC is creative and wants to be a hair-dresser, a landscape gardener, an actor or a potter we should support them-not tell them that it is wrong-and that any intelligent person should be aiming for the top of some profession that gives status.
Our country doesn't need over 50% at university-it wants more apprenticeships, more engineers etc. They also need the people who are actually going to do the work!
Given your advice Xenia everyone would be striving for the traditional, high status jobs and the country would come to a grinding halt! (and there can't be many islands that come up for sale!)

My DSs have always seen DH doing the ironing, sewing on a button etc etc and I am quite capable of putting up a shelf, putting oil in the car etc etc.
You can stay at home without being a drudge while the men treat it like a hotel!!

same here exotic infact dp probably does more cooking than i do when he is at home, he cooks, cleans, hoovers, does the laundry, deals with the kids etc, just as much as me when he isnt at work.

i dont understand this idea that if you a sahm you must be a drudge who does everything, its not the case in my house!

perhaps every cleaner could buy an island and set up her own cleaning business on it! of course there will be no cleaners to clean and no one elses house to clean but one's own but hey the status is all there right?

How will we ever get good quality care for the elderly if it is a job for losers with the assumption that if they had anything about them they would be doing something else or opening their own care home?

I was a teacher. I chose it because I liked working with DCs. I have never had even the slightest desire to be a Head of a school or even a deputy-managing doesn't hold any appeal-it is the DCs who give it the buzz and excitement. Why is this wrong?

It isn't wrong. However Xenia has set the cat among the pigeons and not returned.

Tha's really interesting Mrssweet, are the feminists that raised you disappointed in your life choices?

going up the ladder at anything never appealed to me. i always wanted to go wider rather than narrower and going up just narrows and narrows. for me that would be dull and the antithesis of progress and growth.

I am quite happy working part time. I don't see how I could be there for the DCs, help my elderly mother, do 2 voluntary jobs in the community, cook from scratch, belong to 2 book groups, do research, have hobbies and look after my garden if I were climbing some career ladder.
Of course it would then give me the money to throw at it all, but it would cut out all the things that I really enjoy-for the sake of impressing someone else.

I think that it makes me a far more lively person than someone on a treadmill of work. I do not spend my day alone doing housework! I am not a drudge!