Motherhood - I need some analytical help please

[glasgowwean]

Firstly I?d like to add a disclaimer that I really, really don?t want to start a bunfight and secondly, this is an issue that I?m trying to work my way through and am genuinely struggling with feeling disturbed by some of my own views and the feeling that I?m breaking a taboo in even considering this.

Basically I was having a discussion with some female friends about the concept of motherhood and there was sorrow expressed about a mutual friend who had, for whatever reason, decided to remain childfree. There was also an argument about my use of the term ?childfree? instead of ?childless?. The main thrust of the conversation was that, it was natural to have children (agree) but that unless you have children ? you never really experience what being a woman was all about?

This was then followed up by discussion about how women were the more natural of parents and that of course, it was right that women cared more about their babies then men did and that this was entirely natural and not a social constraint placed on woman by society?s expectations.
It struck a chord with me as I remember as a teenager reading The Female Eunuch and being surprised, a little repulsed, and yet convinced by a chapter in there regarding babies or children.

It was the first time that I had come across the view that women perhaps ?overdid? the whole mother thing and that the premise for this was to give themselves value in a society that otherwise didn?t place any value on them.

I think I see this in everyday life with women feeling that it?s unacceptable not to be wholly consumed with their children, that they are somehow lesser women, lesser humans, if they do not buy into the whole idea that womanhood equals motherhood. It seems that this expectation that every woman should be a ?natural? mother and have mystical instincts puts pressure on women and forces us all to pretend that we enjoy every aspect of it and are can only be fulfilled by having a child. Any other attempts at fulfilment are compensatory in some way and women who express dissatisfaction with motherhood are somehow lesser.

It also seems, in my view, to diminish the role of men and absolve them of responsibility for childrearing to a large extent. Men are treated as incapable, not paternal, and lacking in parental instinct. Which of course, sounds sympathetic to men, but really, is this a way of the patriarchy neatly removing men from the ?minor? issue of childrearing and justifying leaving the burden to fall on women ?

I?m not attacking women for being mothers and finding it a wholly worthy occupation but do we overstate the needs of children and understate the abilities of men to carve out a meaningful niche in society or does the patriarchy do this to diminish women and fool them into thinking it?s the natural order ?

I don?t know where I?m going with this, if anywhere, but would welcome other comments to help me clarify my own thoughts.

Yellow - I didn't say anything about berries or campfires!
What do you think about the theory about differential parental investment in children?

Have just finished reading Stephanie Koontz's book on the history of marriage and it very interestingly showed that the rise of idealisation of motherhood in the C19th was an indirect reaction to the growing debate on the idea of women's place outside the home.

Basically the ideology of equal but separate (women having more empathy and thus better mothers, men being more robust and better suited to the rough and rumble of the outside world) grew as a way to contain feminism by keeping them in the homes but claiming it was because they were better at it.

Sounds like XPs argument that I should do the laundry cos he just turned things grey!

Also it's worth noting that the idealisation of motherhood traditionally only applied to middle class mothers as the majority of working class mothers had no choice. It was an ideal to have wifey at home cos it showed your status in society.

Also it's worth noting that the idealisation of motherhood traditionally only applied to middle class mothers as the majority of working class mothers had no choice. It was an ideal to have wifey at home cos it showed your status in society

Bingo. And it continues today. Anything that makes being a mother more time consuming today confers status exactly for these reasons.

I probably should have said human nature rather than humanity. "Society is wrong not human nature"
"I hate motherhood but through some weird instinct I feel irrationally attached to the idea that motherhood is natural" For me the irrationality springs from the fact that we are socialised to care, even when biology long seeks to dictate. Under a waged economy someone must always work and children whilst important are a hindrance to economic competition for individuals.
Which I know this seems like a complete contradiction. This is tied into the question of, to what degree is women's nature shaped by the social forces of production/reproduction or is nature shaping the social conditions under which all forms of production take place.
I believe that under capitalism we see what Marx called alienation, something that happens in marx's own thinking, in four specific areas, two of which I think can be used to understand our difficult relationship with childrearing and domestic work under advanced capitalism.

Alienation of the worker from himself, as a producer & alienation of the worker from the work ? from the product of his labour
Could in modern marxist thinking include the fact that women perform socially necessary labour in producing the conditions under which capitalism extracts free reproductive and domestic labour to support the surplus value created by the humans women give birth to and nurture, to become the next workforce. Also women are engaged in socially necessary work as consumers. The alienation women feel from what is possibly the most important work of all, comes into being under capitalism because women's work goes hidden and unrecognised as being fundamental to all other social relations and production.

Liberal feminists would argue that individual women should pick their way through this minefield by employing a nanny and returning to work, which further devalues all forms of domestic work with the implication that domestic work is of low value economically. All employer's seek to extract surplus value, in the case of the middle class women employing a cleaner, she will invariably earn more than the cleaner. Women of higher socio/economic class lead the way to the exploitation of working class women in two ways. Whilst middle class women can and do work for reasonable pay, working class women have been locked into a cycle of exploitation whereby they must do both public/private work. They must undertake low value, low skilled, poorly remunerated work to survive because men's wages have been devalued (partly by middle class returnees!) but she must also undertake unremunerated work within the home, something her middle class sister has both created and exploits to her own individual advantage. The working class women is in a double bind.

If we socialise all forms of domestic labour by outsourcing to enable women to return to the public sphere of waged labour we undermine our connection to nature (assuming such a thing exists) and undermine the value of childrearing/domestic labour even further. It also highlights the very different forms of oppression women from different classes experience.

If we take capitalism out of the equation and try this again! if we socialise all forms of labour including domestic labour we fully acknowledge the work of women in caring. If this work was deemed to be of equal value to that of all other forms of work in creating commodities etc, then I think we would see two things emerge. Women could theoretically continue to care, if that is indeed nature, or men would be more inclined to undertake domestic labour because of the value attached to it but also because we wouldn't see the power relations caused by the public/private split.

What I find interesting is many SAHM seek out other mothers socially to pass the day and find support. This very much accords with the idea that childrearing should be socialised, shared and visible, supported and valued. Without the distinction between waged an unwaged labour, child rearing for the first few years could be as biology probably intended a mother's task. I agree though with Himalaya that children now have an extended childhood because of the amount of learning and socialisation that is necessary to form a fully competent waged worker. It is no accident that capitalism created the need for the very first form of state welfare.......the school. Before capitalism (although imperfect) we saw men undertake far more childrearing in training young men and boys to undertake work skills and learning a trade. This extended "mothering" isn't desirable but neither is paid childcare and schooling away from the family that only serves the needs of the capitalist class.

when biology long seeks to dictate

Should re-read before posting! should read, long ceases to dictate.

I'm currently reading Shattered by Rebecca Asher which has some interesting ideas on this. Sorry if already linked, going back to read whole thread properly now.

People who don't "believe" in differential parental investment do not understand evolutionary theory. But, as has been said by myself and others, just because it's "natural" doesn't make it morally "right" or even neccessarily desirable. Ditto when thinking about plenty of other child-rearing issues: it's natural to bf but is it wrong to ff, for example. Hell, picking your nose is natural but not desirable in our society.

I agree, what is natural isn't always desirable? however how do we reach a consensus on what is desirable? What is for one isn't for another. I didn't BF, we FF our children, technology is a marvellous thing and anything that gives women more choice is a step in the right direction. Shulamith firestone in her book the dialectic of sex advocated the use of cybernetics to carry out human reproduction and state support for child-rearing; enabling women to escape their biologically determined positions in society. Maybe this is the way forward?????? simply doesn't take into account what is best for the child though, or does it? As we move forward maybe it does fit with what is needed for humanity to renew itself and would answer the question of natural resources, over population and environmental degradation. Although to be honest I can't quite see the idea catching on, except with the uber wealthy powerful 1% who literally see the rest us as an obstacle. I think it also depends on whether you think nature is something to overcome or something to embrace whilst also supporting women to have greater equality.

Very interesting thread.

I very much struggled with the idea that motherhood wasn't 'natural' to me. I wasn't enjoying being a SAHM yet did not mention this to anyone for fear of moral outrage.

Also pondered on the idea that I didn't have PND but rather a wholly reasonable reaction to the enormous change to my social (and economic) status.

Found Torn in Two a very useful book on this subject which challenges society's view that motherhood is always a joyous experience.

The book legitimitises the view that many women dislike motherhood and helps them find a way to come to terms with it, rather than experience guilt about their feelings.

Hi Mini, have been meaning to reply to this for aaages.

I think the Marxist analysis is interesting but always to me (no expert) seems very 'of its time'.

I mean Marx, like most men of his generation seemed to have largely ignored women's work at home - the economic input of raising and educating children etc... so this doesn't seem to play a big part in his theories.

Secondly he didn't anticipate quite how far technology would go, the internet etc.. (quite reasonably, how could he..?) - but it means that his assumptions about the relationship between land, capital and labour I don't think ring true anymore, as mechanisation has done away with much that involved human muscle power, and automation seems to be doing away with much that involves human brain power (e.g. grocers used to have to know all about food, now days supermarket till workers can be trained in 30 minutes, and swipe-it-yourself tills are doing away with that job). Marx described the stage of alienation from work when people went from doing artisan work to production lines, but he didn't anticipate what happens when humans are just not needed for most work anymore.

Thirdly, although I think the class system is very much still in play, the division into bourgeois capitalists, rentiers and workers also doesn't really describe the world we live in now, where there is a big underclass of people with no work, where many people live to 80+ and where a large proportion workers are also capitalists in that they own pensions, or are self-employed and many have made more out of the rise in value of their house than they have through their own labour (.....which is all a problem in itself, but doesn't split people into neat groups on a traditional marxist basis).

Not sure where all this leaves us in relation to mothering, but I don't think in practical terms we can remove the distinction between waged and unwaged labour (how?) or 'deem that domestic work is of equal value to that of all other forms of work in creating commodities' (again how - and where would you start given that all other forms of work do not have equal value?). I also wouldn't dismiss 'schooling away from the family' as a bad thing!

Some feminist analysis seems to start from the position that humanity took a wrong turn sometime around the beginning of agriculture. The Marxist analysis seems to take the position that it took a wrong turn around the time of the industrial revolution.

Both these viewpoints seem to me to end up pushing us back into a romantic view of equality based on low-technology, back to the land, craft work, mutualism etc... whereas I think that technology and commerce have made people (including women's) lives much better, and it is the fact that we do not have to carry water, chop firewood, raise 10 children and do everything by hand etc... that has enabled us to have the time and wealth to engage in education, and campaigning chinwagging on the internet etc... and pushing for change. Which is a good thing.

As whatmeworry said: Anything that makes being a mother more time consuming today confers status on the men who can afford to have a wifey. And I think that includes some of the anti-capitalist jam-making lentil weaving stuff just as much as the high maintenance waxing/tanning/toning stuff.

The question now, is what next in an age when all kinds of mass employment is in danger of becoming a thing of the past in a way that Marx could not have anticipated.

Good post, Himalaya.

I always struggle with the idea of removing the distinction between waged and unwaged labour, because they seem to me fundamentally different things: waged labour is about adding value/creating economic surplus, surely, whereas unwaged labour is about looking after one's own domestic environment and dependents.

Of course this is a modern bourgeois way of looking at it, because in ancient times clans would have lived together and worked together on tasks like farming/hunting/child-reading. No wages, so no distinction between waged and unwaged labour, but also no one whose sole occupation was looking after their own small family unit and its environment.

Actually I have no idea where I'm going here, I'm just trying to think it out

I struggle with the idea of removing the distinction too, Some socialists launched a pay for wife work campaign in the 80s I think. Problem is with that idea, is that it could more deeply entrench the division between public and private and women's work/mens work.

I think it was Vernica Beechy who suggested that Marxists would have to find a new way of using Marxist theory to understand the specificity of women?s oppression. I fundamentally disagree because Marx gave us the tools and engles gave us much to go on with his writings.

Marx didn?t give much time over to the specificity women?s oppression but he developed a method of studying society and human development, historical materialism, which is a methodological inquiry that can be applied at any time. It proposes that all social relations develop from our need to produce the means of subsistence. Over time the method of providing the necessities of life have changed, as has our means and ownership of production, the commodities and the means of exchange. It is these forces that shape all social relations

Marx suggested that there were three areas that shape human history, the means to satisfy needs, the production of new needs (think of the media!) and family (although it becomes clear, what he actually meant was need to reproduce life) ?The production of life, both one?s own labour and of fresh labour in procreation , now appears to be a double relation, on the one hand natural but on the other as a social relation?

"But Marxism is both materialist and dialectical. It is based upon an understanding of history which sees human beings as both 1) products of the natural world and 2) able to interact with their natural surroundings, in the process changing themselves and the world around them" Smith

Marxist feminist would propose that the social relations between men and women are shaped by economics, the wrong turn occurred around the time that we settled the land and men domesticated animals Engles uses historical materialism to understand the social relations that have existed and changed over time, in shaping family life, reproduction and women?s subjugation in his book ?The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State? which perhaps is the best place to start! It is perhaps the easiest way to understand the dialectic between man and his social environment, the way that we develop to meet needs, to create new needs. Have you ever wondered why women buy cosmetics, why men have taken control of reproduction through deferred motherhood and late IVF, why men watch porn and women get paid to make it ?
Capitalism is built on the back of two things! Women?s free labour be production or reproduction.

This is a really interesting read and explains much better than my ramblings :) written by Sharon Smith
www.isreview.org/issues/02/engles_family.shtml

In terms of capitalism, Marx fully understood the contradictions that are inherent in capitalism and predicted that workers would indeed become superfluous over time.

?But the perfecting of machinery is making human labor superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845? marx

There has been a huge resurgence of Marxian analysis and economics, especially in the states. Marx critique of capital and his understanding of the flaws, is brilliant and if anything, it is only now that it is coming to mean something concrete. Marx proposed that capitalism was just a stop point, like all other periods of our evolution. The underclass is the working class, and eventually through class consciousness we will realize what is needed to end our oppression.

Anyway I shall stop rambling, I'm off to drink wine and sleep, Himalaya, it's exhausting having to think so hard, thanks!