Motherhood

[neepsntatties]

Hello, I don't usually start posts as I am pretty new to all this, in fact it's only since I started using this forum that I have identified as a feminist - I still have a lot to learn!

Anyway I have been reading around online about motherhood to help me try and make sense of my own experiences and feelings around being a mother. I have ordered Adrienne Rich's book Of Woman Born but it is going to take ages to come so I wanted to see what people thought here while I wait as I have no patience.

From what I am reading it seems that she says Motherhood is a patriarchal institution that is harmful and oppressive to women because it gives them all of the responsibility but no power to go with it as well as assuming that only mothers should do all the caring work and creating an impossible ideal image of a mother, while mothering on the other hand can be a source of power and resistance for women.

I am interested to find out how people think the institution motherhood can be resisted or reframed. All I can think of is the way that I bring my children up - challenging gender stereotypes and refusing to buy into all the commercial crap that people try to sell you (I admit to falling for a lot of this with my first baby, anything with the word Mum on it seemed necessary all of a sudden!) Apart from that I can't think what this resistance would look like or is it just about feeling free to mother in the way that you feel is right for you and ignoring the endless guilt that seems to go hand in hand once you have children? Hope this isn't all to muddled but I would love to hear what other people think.

People in general are not keen on the 'it takes a village........' You only have to read MN to know that they want total control over the DCs environment, even when not there!

YY to Callin's point about having to get used to living without external recognition / praise! I think that has been a very difficult change for me - having always been a high achiever.

Mind you, DS1 did come and inspect my work in the garden the other day and say "Well done Mummy!" before giving me a round of applause

I think I have found motherhood waaaay more isolating than I expected especially because unused to enjoy spending a lot of time on my own. I now realise that I expected "time with baby" to be approximately the same as that. Ha!

My DH and I parent in a fairly feminist way, he is self-employed and I work part time, we both spend a lot of time with our children and although housework etc has not quite reached an equal split (partly due to him travelling away a lot) we are getting there. I think one of the things I find hard to cope with, though, is that his life seems (to me) to have changed so little since we had children, whereas mine has changed beyond all recognition. The most visible manifestation of this would be that he has managed to sustain almost all of his friendships - I have lost a lot of friends since becoming pregnant. I also find it excruciating whilst on maternity leave to deal with the glazed expression when you tell people what you are up to at the moment...

I have found having my second child so much easier than my first and I think this is because this time round I have put myself first much more. When I was having a terribly wobbly hormonal time as breastfeeding was failing I slept in the spare room for example. I was worried that if I didn't sleep I would tip over the edge into a depression. A few nights sleep gave me the resources I needed to get through that bad patch.

I really do think that had I "put DS first" in that context he would have suffered as a direct result - a depressed catatonic mother is not a good thing for anyone. But first time round I think I would have baulked at that - even though all that it entailed was leaving DS in the charge of his very loving, competent father for a few hours! It has been hard to shake that premise that the mother has to do everything. But as the mother of 2 sons I feel it's now especially important to let go of that and allow DH to fully take on the caring / emotional aspects of parenting. I want my boys to grow up feeling that loving, nurturing behaviour is not gendered.

It is sometimes hard though as I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to parenting. But I think that too stems from the fact that is me who is judged on these things, not DH! So I'm trying to relax a little bit more and not care too much about what others think.

Perhaps one way of resisting then is by somehow creating a sense of community among mothers. I am not sure how you do this though. Recently I had the opportunity to participate in a theatre performance about mothers. They were looking for chorus of mothers to perform. I would love to have done it but I had no child care. It seemed a bit ridiculous that I couldn't even do a project that was for mothers. Maybe it is just me but I often feel that others in society seem to think that child care is easy when for me at least it is one of my biggest challenges.

Grumpla good point about putting yourself first. I remember that this felt impossible with my first baby. Mothers need to know that self care is an ok thing to do and probably makes you a better mother as you're more able to cope.

I find toddler groups a good source of a sense of community. I know they're not everyone's cup of tea but there are some very good ones near me and I really enjoy them. I haven't been going long enough yet to have built any solid friendships but I now know quite a lot of people that I will chat to in the street and that I know I could call on if I was really stuck.

I agree about toddler groups - I've found them to be invaluable in finding new friends in a new area and the other parents I've met through them have been brilliant.

Hi neeps: sorry to hijack but seeing your name reminded me: I don't know if you checked back on your thread about women composers, but I came to it quite late and sent you a link. Very good OP above: I've been an 'instinctive' feminist since I was a child (i.e. knew I thought things were unfair, but didn't know about the concept of feminism, hadn't heard of the word) and am still nowhere near as articulate about it as this.

I think the problem with motherhood, or having children these days, is that it is mostly view as a "woman's role". I think society's perceptions of raising children have to change. Both men and women should raise their own children or spend hours with them in equal amounts, especially in the early stages of their lives.

Society puts too much pressure on women because of that and forgets that men are as much responsible for the social and mental well being of children. But our economic system doesn't allow for a lot of choice in many cases, and men are pushed into very long hours at work and women are pushed into the house with the children.

We need to reevaluate our society, our economic system, capitalism, our values etc in order to create a more balanced view of motherhood.

Grumpla: I found what you said about women's friendship after children very interesting.

Female friendship is profoundly affected by motherhood in so many ways. It's so hard to keep the friendship going when your friends don't have kids and you do, or the other way round. Or even old friends who had children a lot later than you did.

Being a mother has a major impact on your working life, your social life and no doubt, your personal life. Whereas for men, the impact of having children is not so hard and they seem to be less judged or isolated by the fact that they've become parents.

Thanks lio I will take a look!

I find it really hard when people say that there is no public reward to being a mother. There is and it is called how your children turn out. If they are happy , well balanced and successful in life that will at least in part be down to the fact that a woman (mostly it is still women) sacrificed a big part of her life to do it. To say "I am just lucky with my children" does actually degrade being a mother to being a food factory, cleaning lady and launderette.

Being a mother has nothing to do with the patriarchy and I agree with what exotic fruits says completely. DH and I are equal partners when it comes to making decisions about the children. In terms of motherhood being something that should be resisted - why? We give birth to our children; we feed them and I can't understand how any women would not want to be a mother.

My experience of being a mother is so positive. I love it - I find my children fascinating and being a mother is the best job I have ever had.

The idea is that there is a difference between motherhood and mothering with motherhood being the unrealistic ideal that is constructed by the patriarchy and mothering being what women do when they are left to get on with it.

It's great your experience was so positive, mine was not and I am trying to make sense of it.