Upset by Mumsnet - please cheer me up!

[MargaretCavendish]

So, I started having a look at Mumsnet a month or so ago. My husband and I are thinking of trying for our first child in the next few months, and I was Googling some conception advice (alright, alright, I was actually trying to find out whether I really needed to give up drinking while we tried) and Mumsnet came up. I have become a bit addicted, particularly to AIBU. I know, I know.

Anyway, while I have been enjoying reading it (I've always loved problem pages, etc.) it's also been making me feel really depressed and even panicky about post-baby life. So many partners who see everything to do with babies as not their job, so many women giving up work so that they can dust four fucking times a day, so many women whose lives and worlds seem to have got so, so small. I tell myself it won't be like that for me, that my husband (who is far from perfect, but who is a proud feminist who has never seen us as anything but equals) isn't like that. We're planning to do shared parental leave, so I'd only be at home for five-ish months, and then we're hoping he could drop down to part-time longer term. I earn quite a bit more so it makes financial sense for us; I guess there's also some ideology there too for me. BUT I'm still scared that having a baby might turn me into 'wifey', I guess. So, please tell me that I'm being silly, that you can be a feminist mum (and a feminist dad) and that equal parenting isn't just a pipe dream!

I think mumsnet gives a skewed version of life really. There are so many useless men/dads discussed on here, (I can think of numerous posts about horrible husbands just from the weekend), but people obviously aren't going on the Internet for advice about how wonderful their partner is.

Shared parental leave is the future, we did it together which I wish more people realised was possible, so I was never left 'holding the baby' on my own.

But even so, many many people have lovely, happy and equal marriages and partnerships. My marriage is fantastic and my husband is s wonderful man, I still do my hobbies and socialise almost as much as before I had DS, I just have to be more organised about it. There are loads on people like me, but most of the don't need to go on the Internet and talk about it.

Yeah that line about the 'old chestnut' surprised me too and says more about the type of people you mix with than anything else. I've heard it many times even from people with reasonable jobs. Childcare, commuting costs, etc mean that as a family they'd be down financially if the mother continued to work.

I'm getting the distinct feeling I'm not supposed to be on this thread because I'm not an academic . As if these issues only affect a tiny percentage of mothers!

It's all a bit odd.

I love being a wife amongst other things, surely you shouldn't have got married if you didn't want to be a wife and also enjoy being a sahm, but dusting even once a day doesn't come into my lifestyle choice.
It sounds as though it's ok for your husband to do the lion's share but you seem above looking after a child.
I'd think again love and your OP is very goady, btw.

Cute it will cheer you up to know that I don't live in a city but in a semi rural commuter town (far far from the Home Counties)

A sample of the men I know who are SADH's are as follows: an investment banker; an architect; a policeman; two academics and a project manager.

Things are changing if you look for it, just not fast enough.

Yep, you may need to drop the judginess if you are going to have a child and make friends with other parents, OP!

By 'people who dust four times a fucking day' I think you are referring to SAHM. It may come as a shock to find out that people are SAHM for all sorts of reasons. Some two couples with two careers can't actually make it work without not seeing their children at all (and I am guessing that if you are having a baby, you will want to see it sometimes, and may even want to try and give it the best start you can).

Women who enjoy control (someone mentioned this upthread) are often prone to post-natal depression and anxiety. I think that is why some previously successful women put their all into maintaining their environment too, as well as other, more positive reasons.

If your careers allow it, of course you can be equal parents.

I think almond makes some really good points, too. Actually, I really rate her posts on this thread.

I always say this but ... I'm rolling it out again. MorningPaper started a brilliant thread on Mumsnet years ago about women getting shafted (paid) work-wise once children arrived. It must have been in Chat, and one of the Lost Crimes of Mumsnet is that it wasn't immediately realised to be the Classic it was. It's gone.

It was truly one of the most eye-opening, consciousness-raising things I have ever read.

I think almondpudding is spot on with this:

"I think you're trying to project a notion of motherhood that terrifies you and then distance yourself from that thing. In the process you're ending up being rather sexist about other mothers to bolster your own sense of identity and making yourself unhappy."

I think that this is quite common and not helpful, sadly.

It may not happen to you. I hope it doesn't. But it is something that happens to a lot of women. Caused by economics.

Like bibbity and almond I really, really don't see things improving in the future. I foresee a future of women (and it will be primarily women, I suspect) working bloody hard outside the home, inside the home, and in incredibly straitened, insecure circumstances. A secure, well-paid, satisfying career, for both parents, is going to be a fantasy for most parents.

Sorry, been away for a while - checking the thread in breaks from marking student exam scripts (a task I hate and which makes all my 'how could I ever give up my amazing fufilling job' stuff feel a little ironic!). Again, thank you (apart from the person who told me I shouldn't have got married - I'm not particularly grateful to you, 'love'). Again (for the third time!), I'm sorry that I made the comment about dusting, which seems to have really derailed much of the thread. The SAHM issue is actually a bit irrelevant here - I do not want to be one, and I can't be one if I did. We can't afford for me not to work.

In answer to a previous question: yes, I've spoken to my husband (I'll probably also show him this thread tonight) and he's been completely supportive and reassuring about us splitting things, etc. I haven't told him as clearly about the identity thing as that's something I've only realised (or which only crystallised in my mind) in the course of this thread, so that is something for us to talk a bit more about, I think.

One of the things to remember about mothers is that, once upon a time, they were just women. Like you. Even your mother.

People are very, very weird about mothers. I think it must be based in some sort of deep fear that there can be no individual 'me' if 'mother' is accepted as real and individual.

I think it underlies, and deforms, a lot of otherwise quite sensible political reflection on 'mothers'.

Your qoute could have been me: "I absolutely was not the sort of little girl who dreamed of marriage and babies and I think that even though I want those things very much, I still find them hard ideas to sit alongside my ideas of 'me'."

It's normal to question yourself. And just bcause you weren't planning a wedding from a year ago ing age doesn't mean you are any less of wife. You may find it harder to adjust to a child (I did) but you will get through it and be ok and learn to embrace your new role.

Having a child doesn't automatically mean you become obsessed with the washing and housework. I've set up my own business since becoming a mother. Honestly.

Sorry Cute, I seem to have been confusing in my post.

I am very well aware of the reasons why women are lower earners a lot of the time. I am also one of those boring fuckers that constantly tries to correct people on other groups who suggest that childcare costs come from the woman's wage.

What I was trying to say was that for a very large number of couples one of them simply cannot viably return to work for financial reasons, and that, for various reasons women tend to earn less than their partners, it is usually the woman that stays at home. This can lead to a vicious cycle where, because she has stayed at home with children, what marketable skills a woman had are now of little use so she has EVEN less earning power.

If any women who are SAHPs and feminists are interested, there are two really good maternal feminist groups on facebook I could point you to. Being a SAHM =/= not feminist.

CatfromJapan thank you for your posts, which are really thoughtful. I think that both you and Almond are right that I'm projecting an unhelpful idea of motherhood. I think I knew that, which is why I wanted other people to give me some alternative 'models', but what I hadn't realised - but which I think you're quite right about - is that there is some internalised misogyny in my idea of 'mother'. That's a really useful and thought-provoking insight. I think you're right that there is so much cultural baggage around motherhood. I suppose it's because it's so tied up with our own childhood. My own mother worked and was an amazing mother, but I also know she felt guilty a lot. I know her guilt was misplaced (we didn't actually care that our birthday cakes were shop-bought!) but I think I do fear that being me - much happier working (she didn't 'need' to financially), but guilt-ridden. These things leave such a deep impression on you. There have been a couple of slightly pointed ('I raised my own children' 'maybe you'll actually want to give them the best start in life') posts on this thread, and they've made me angry not for future me but for past mum, even though both her child-rearing and her working days are behind her!

Actually, I think I've now worked out what it slightly worrying about you OP. You're considering everyone on Mumsnet to be a glutinous mass of "mummy". Mummy is threatening, engulfing, terrifying - and needs to be separated from at all costs if you are to be an individual. "Mummy" is also vague, undefined, a kind of weather, a benign background against which you live out your Bildungsroman, an amiable source of comfort.

We're not, you know: we're individuals; some feminst; some not; some pretty unwilling to hand out comfort; some happy to.

Above all, I suspect we like to think of our words and thoughts as having value - being knowledge - rather than some sort of glutinous 'comfort'.

Sorry... to add.... therefore the idea that people simply cannot afford to go back to work isn't "an old chestnut" but a lived reality for vast swathes of the population.

thecat do you think it could be the child in all of us, still wanting to feel like the most important thing to our own mothers? So it's important to all of us that the stereotype "mothers put their children first" is true? Just thinking aloud. I do often wonder if part of the reason why sexism is so ingrained is because everyone has a mother and so facing up to sexism means facing up to how badly someone you live has been treated. It's probably less painful to pretend that's not happened.
This probably makes no sense. I'm going to think about it some more.

Yeah that line about the 'old chestnut' surprised me too and says more about the type of people you mix with than anything else. I've heard it many times even from people with reasonable jobs. Childcare, commuting costs, etc mean that as a family they'd be down financially if the mother continued to work.

Look, obviously there are families who are operating with tiny contingencies, and where the costs of childcare and commuting literally means no food on the table if both parents work. I'm not talking about those families. However, in many cases where I've come across the 'I couldn't afford to go back to work' line on Mn, this hasn't been the case, and the idea that childcare costs 'naturally' come out of the woman's salary seems to mean that it naturalises women's mass departure from the workplace after having children, making it seem inevitable, and - crucially - making it a less culturally normal option for families who can to absorb the negative costs of childcare etc for a period of years until the children are older and childcare costs decrease in order for the woman to continue a working life outside of the home.

The biggest feminist eye-opener on Mn for me has been less the abusive/unequal relationship dynamics that seem normalised than the complete economic powerlessness of some longterm SAHMs, especially unmarried ones whose relationships break down long after their professional skills and experience are out of date.

I love being a wife amongst other things, surely you shouldn't have got married if you didn't want to be a wife

Do tell us about what being a wife consists of, Newlife. Is it like being a husband?

Honestly, Margaret, a poster up-thread has said it all. You may need to be quite firm to ensure you get what you want when children arrive. It may well put stress on your marriage/relationship. Neither of you are individuals acting in a vacuum; both of you operated within (and have internalised) wider socio-political-cultural structures. Sometimes the fight will take place inside your home and inside your head. Sometimes it will be awful.

You may be one of the lucky ones who doesn;t have to have that fight. Statistically, that is unlikely. It IS worth fighting for, however.

There are lots of books out there. Adrienne Rich is a classic. Helen Simpson writes fiction with an insight and an edge. Those are two really easy places to start.

Don't get scared; get prepared.

Great post cute I 100 percent agree. Also I don't like the short termist view of the financial. Women often say they would only earn e.g £100 after childcare. Yes but that's only for a short time. A woman is in a much better place for her future working life if she stays working with children, because skills stay current, and she might get promoted. These positives should be factored in. I think lots f women dont think that they might have to go into a different (probably less skilled) career if they have a lengthy career break while children are young.
Weighing up 5 years of £100 per months vs 20 years of higher earnings once kids are older gives you a totally different financial profile than just looking at it in the short term.

Fela's Yes. I think that is a definite part of the dynamic. I think there is a genuine terror embedded in the notion that "mothers" might not be something other, something, more, something in excess of "mothers". It plays out in really complicated ways but I think there is a coiling fear about the idea that you may not have been "enough" for your mother, or that she may have harboured feelings of not-love towards you.

I wonder if it also carries through into the feelings women themselves have about SAHM/WOHM, not just in how society treats mothers.

That's a massive simplification. I suspect there are also complicated things going on with love and hate towards the mother.

AND it risks a. massive simplification b. personalising a political and economic reality.

That said, the whole welter of feelings about motherhood is just so bizarre that it definitely exceeds logic. It's weird stuff.

Does anyone remember the poor poet who came onto Mumsnet a while back asking us to write poems with the title "Other mothers"? That was carnage!!

I find it interesting that you are going to take 5 months off work but your H isn't going to do the same . He's just " hoping to drop down to part time " at some vague unspecified date in the future .

And even though there are already part time employees in his job, you think his work might not " allow it ". Why would that be ? Are they not in the Uk and governed by employment law ?

You are already making excuses for him and the baby's not even born .

Do come back here in a couple of years and tell us how your H is doing 50% or more of all the grunt work of parenting and housework , to show us how you have not turned into of the " wifeys " you look down upon . And that you have both taken an equal hit on your salaries, pension , promotion prospects and leisure time .

Fela I think you have made a really good point about how hard it is to face up to recognising personal/domestic instances of injustice too. I think the pain involved in political awareness is greatly under-rated/undiscussed. My tuppence-worth is that we are desperate to void political analyses of the personal, the emotional, the particular; we are extremely keen to make our political discourses on the dry, high ground of the abstract and the universal - even now, after many years of that strategy having come under conceptual pressure. But i think one reason we do it is because there is real pain involved in political identity.

And thousands of families will have less disposable income if they are paying for a lot of childcare (say more than two pre-schoolers, or twins) and if one of the partners does not earn a huge wage then the family as a whole cannot afford to take the hit! It isn't about childcare costs being deducted from the woman's salary, it is about them being deducted from a modest joint income. It is REALLY not rocket science

I feel genuine sadness that we are still having this discussion in the C21.

Please feel free to laugh at me everyone but when I was younger, I really hoped things would be different.

Margaret, believe me when I say that I hope things ARE different for you. I hope they are: not just for your sake but for my daughter's.

How long are we going to be having this discussion for? It's already been far, far too long.

bibbity - and don't forget the care for the elderly at the other end.

Honestly, sometimes I feel actual, proper despair.

Kr1stina you've misunderstood quite badly! The plan is I'd take 5 months (which is how long I'd get full pay for) and then he'd take the rest of the parental leave, to make up the 39 weeks. So we'd have roughly the same time on parental leave.

And the school wouldn't have to agree to him going part-time, that's just a fact. You're entitled to request flexible working, you're not entitled to get it. I think he would get and he would certainly be pushing for it, I was just pointing out that it wasn't 100% certain.