Feminism and Motherhood????

[littlegizmo]

Firstly, I've never posted on a forum like this, let alone one about feminism so please don't jump on me :) but...
I've always considered myself to be a feminist however since having children and actively deciding to work part time (yes I am fully aware of the fact that I am very lucky to have this as an option), I wonder am I being hypocritical??
I could have progressed my career but the hours would have been ridiculous, my husbands are too. My options would have been neither of us seeing our children or my husband scaling back his career. Ultimately the thought of anyone else (even my husband) being the primary carer for my children appealed far less than the thought of scaling back my career.
So as the feminist move seems to be taking up speed (thank god), I find myself more and more restling with how I can have this view and be a feminist. Is this not wanting to have my cake ....?

Plenty of feminists are sahms or work pt.

A lot of feminism is about recognising how our so called 'choices' eg about work, are actually dictated by patriarchal ideas about gender that feminists are fighting against.

Agree, we've been told for so long that what we do as mothers is of such little value that we're scared to recognise it as work. Well, welcome to mumsnet, here we're all working in the home and we're bloody good at it. Of course there's the frequent SAHM v WM thread but that's the point I'm making about how we're undervalued as mothers. Embrace the choice you made, heartbeats over spreadsheets.

I do all sorts of things that would have some question my feminist credentials - I wear make up, shave my legs, wear high heels. Hell, I even took my husband's name after marriage.

However, I am a feminist. I would not accept anyone telling me I'm not. The world needs more women who identify as feminist, and I doubt there are many 'perfect' feminists out there. It is virtually impossible to be, when operating, as an autonomous individual, within the confines of the patriarchy.

Feminism is about choice, and although I have made choices which are undoubtedly unfeminist - even anti-feminist - I am still a feminist. I have, and do, wrestle with my choices. I question myself, and ask myself why I am doing certain things, and often I am not particularly happy with the answers I come up with.

But I don't think it's a case of handing back your feminist badge, and donning your pinny instead, if you realise you have 'failed' on a certain count. You still get to be a feminist.

Apologies for the number of time I have used the word 'feminist', or variation of, in this post.

ASAS I like that: heartbeats over spreadsheets. I'm in a similar position OP. Feminism to me is about having a choice instead of being told what I should do.

Heartbeats over spreadsheets is lovely, but it does read as if WOHMs are therefore prioritizing it the other way around.

I am a sahm too. I gave up work because my health was hindering my career and not my kids. Best thing I did, now I can't see myself going back to a full on city job. My ex colleagues keep asking if I've got a new job yet.

There's feminism and there's working yourself into an early grave. I'm going to explain this to my children, work damn hard and save your money before you have children so you can enjoy them when they are young.

As one wise old colleague told me when I was worrying about leaving on my last day, "no one gets to the pearly gates and wishes they spent more time in the office."

OP, being a SAHM, a WOHM or a bit of both is not incompatible with feminism.

I'm a SAHM and a feminist.

It's not unfeminist to pick one choice from a limited set of options, when none of the options include what you'd really like to do in an ideal world.

What would be deeply unfeminist is to pretend that those limitations are inherent, natural, and not imposed on us all by a crappy patriarchal setup. It would be incompatible with feminism to assume that women's choices within that framework reflected anything other than that you gotta pick an option, and that picking one option for you is not a critique of other women who pick different options.

Feminism is simply about recognising that the options don't have to be artificially limited in the way that they are currently. It could be better than this. It should be better than this. There is no good reason why you and your husband should not be able to have this cake now, and a different cake later.

I'm going to stop now before I dig myself in too far with the cake metaphor...

"It's not unfeminist to pick one choice from a limited set of options, when none of the options include what you'd really like to do in an ideal world."

Poor wording. It would also be entirely feminist if one of the options was exactly what you wanted to do, but you acknowledged that there's no good reasons that the options that would exactly suit other people have been arbitrarily removed.

Thanks all. I supposed this latest push in the media so often focuses on how, if Feminism pushes forward, we can all have big powerful careers (like men). To me that translates to long hours and never seeing my children which I worry about. As some of you have said, I think for feminism to thrive, we need greater acknowledgement of the importance to society of raising children (be that by mums or dads). Not just how many women are in senior positions (that doesn't equal success for all of us & to be frank I think its yet another male measure of the world)....

Really sorry what I said came over as flaming WOHM, it wasn't supposed to and I did allude to how I dislike those threads. It was a reference to how we (society) should value ALL work. I'm a bit of every type of mum, I feel for me, working provides financial security. But I don't work full time because my time at home provides emotional security. Good for me, not for you. The real feminist issue is where some woman have no access to either choices.

PS do you want to hear another one? Riots not diets :)

That's the problem - seeing big powerful careers as requiring long hours.

DP and I have always had pretty equal earnings. I took time out and freelanced for the past 5 years while our two were little, and it's done me no harm at all. Admittedly there was some hard times in there working evenings and weekends, and there's also been some luck with the freelance jobs I've got and the technologies I've chosen, but I recently went looking for jobs and had some awesome offers, all still at roughly my DP's salary, despite his rises over the past few years. In the end I've actually stayed freelancing though (albeit now with a relatively fulltime position for someone) - it means that I can still drop the kids at school, and pick them up a couple of days too, and I have a lovely nanny who takes up the slack for the other 3 days a week.

I had a good career, I took a break for the kids, and I still have a big, powerful career (C-level at my new company - previously I'd been Head of), and I'm holding down that big powerful career combined with childcare because I'm at a high enough level that I can say that I'm primarily working from home, that I'll make my hours myself as long as the works done - ie. I've made it a family friendly job.

The idea that a big powerful career is compatible with family is often rubbish. It's a culture thing, that unless you're dedicating every hour you have to your job (ie. you have someone else to look after the kids) then you're not doing your job properly. It's something I hate, and something that I don't tolerate now that I've got the power to do otherwise (and won't expect from my employees either)

Completely off topic, but this is not the first time I've seen this "don't jump on me" insult to feminists. Yet no acknowledgement that we actually don't jump on anyone as a rule. Frankly, that's the most anti feminist thing of all.

This blog is run by a friend of mine. You might find it interesting.

ASAS, you didn't! I felt bad commenting because it is a lovely sentiment, but being honest, I read that, and immediately felt guilty. My own insecurities, nobody else to blame. :)

Apocalypse - agreed. But then again, I do think people wrestle with these sorts of things, and it's less of a 'blame the feminists' situation, and more of a 'help me get my own head around this' situation.

" I think for feminism to thrive, we need greater acknowledgement of the importance to society of raising children (be that by mums or dads)." I think you are right OP, that is the key to it. Things do seem to be improving, where I work at least. There are a few men doing flexible hours to cover childcare. When we have a 3pm finish it doesn't seem to be just the women dashing off to get the DC from school. There is a long way still to go though.

I think women wanting to spend more time with their children, whether that means going part time or becoming a SAHM is totally understandable. Children are a massive part of your life, making changes to your life to accommodate that is a reasonable decision to make. I also understand and think it is reasonable when women return to work full time too. As ChunkyPickle says a powerful career is hard or impossible to maintain with caring responsibilities or women need the money or simply need/want to work.

What I don't think is reasonable is how few men make these choices or are expected to make these choices. Why are men not rearranging their lives around their children?

"Ultimately the thought of anyone else (even my husband) being the primary carer for my children appealed far less than the thought of scaling back my career." This is a dilemma for a lot of women and interesting to explore. Where do you think those feelings are coming from littlegizmo? Do you think your husband has similar feelings and if not, why not? Those questions aren't meant to be attacking you btw! Just exploring things like the bond you have with your child. I remember on a thread years ago one poster suggested it may be because it is one area where women have the 'power' and so we don't really want to give it up. And I don't mean that in a control freak way but in a way that this is one area where women really can influence society (whether that is recognised or not). I also think it is important to recognise the mother-child bond.

I'm sceptical of the whole shared parental leave thing. Women have fought long and hard to get the maternity leave we have now and now we are asked to share that with men. One of the only areas which women's biology is recognised and accommodated for and now men can encroach on that. I am all for men having parental leave, but why does it have to be at the expense of women's leave?

Sorry that's a bit rambling and probably slightly off topic!

Feminism isn't a religion. It doesn't prescribe a way of life. The idea that it does really really really annoys me.

Feminists criticise make up because only women are expected to wear it and because the fact that it exists centres around the idea that women are decorative objects that must look a certain way (young, potentially good mating partners) for men. It absolutely does not matter at all if a woman chooses to wear makeup. That is not "anti-feminist" because feminism doesn't say "women shouldn't wear makeup." Feminism says "many women feel obligated to wear makeup because society tells them that their values centres around their looks." It's up to individual women entirely whether they want to wear it or not. What feminism is interested in is why makeup exists at all in the first place, why only women (generally) wear it and why many women can't leave the house without it. It's about understanding makeup itself as a thing, rather than finger-wagging at women who choose to wear it.

Similarly with the SAHM/WOHM thing - feminists first fought for women to have the right to be WOHMs, with equal pay to men, and were very successful at that (although there is still a way to go). Feminists (or none that I know anyway) DO NOT believe that you have to work outside the home in order to "qualify" somehow to be a feminist. The whole idea is to give women a choice. Thus feminists have fought for greater recognition for SAHMs, for greater rights for SAHMs, for greater access to flexible working, for more family-friendly work practices, for shared parental leave, for all of the things that nowadays mean that when you have a child it's less of an either/or choice - you can stay at home with children, all of the time or some of the time and still have a career if that's what you want.

The aim of feminism isn't to put further restrictions on women or to tell them they have to do certain things in order to be "better" or "more feminist." Feminism looks at society to understand the structures, the laws, the expectations, etc that place restrictions on women and try to break those down so that women have as much freedom to choose their own path in life as possible. What that path is, is entirely up to the individual woman (law permitting!) and feminists, decent feminists anyway, have absolutely no interest in picking apart individual women's lives to see what "counts" as feminist or not.

Hot damn, Cailin, can we just sticky that on FWR somewhere?

Apocalypse - agreed. But then again, I do think people wrestle with these sorts of things, and it's less of a 'blame the feminists' situation, and more of a 'help me get my own head around this' situation.

It just irritates me every time I see what is basically "hey feminists, give me some help to figure out what I think here, but don't try to kill me, you rabid, raddled old lunatics, I'm just asking..." I suppose I can't understand why, if you've taken on board that attitude to us, why ask us anything? It's not this OP in particular, but I've lost count of the number of threads that start from the premis that we're all aggressive.

Good post Cailin

The trouble is that is isn't a level playing field. So fine, work pt, be a sahm, work FT, do what you like but recognise that you really won't have as many choices as you might think unless you're financially independent. And for most women that means working FTOTH

You could also question why we have this work/ life dichotomy at all. As someone said in the pub a while ago, most people end up having children at some point. It is ridiculous to pretend that they don't, that we don't need a new generation, and that they and their needs should be pushed off into a corner as irrelevant to modern life. It was done in the past because men were supposed to do the important work and women were there to pick up the pieces. Nowadays we don't accept that: men and women have equal responsibility for the children; children and family life are as essential as the need to support them financially; and there is no one else to pick up the pieces. Our economic life needs to be brought into a better balance.

As glitter said, it doesn't need to be like this. It should be better. Everything about our current socioeconomic situation could start getting better tomorrow with a little cooperation from our so-called representative democratic governments.

Definitely Barbarella, although as Flapdoodle said, an aim of feminism has been to change the say we work so the care of children isn't seen as some sort of annoying hobby that women insist on doing but as something essential that must be an integral part of working life.