Where do I start?

[Petal40]

I posted on the chat bit asking if it was possible to be a stay at home mum and a feminist....got directed over here...had a look around ,but where do I start.can anyone recommend any good radfem books? Articles? Websites? Thanks in advance

If you're on Facebook, I can recommend a couple of maternal feminism pages.

It is a MASSIVE red herring to say that feminism is about choice for the reasons Buffy and others have stated.

I think one of the reasons that SAHPing became viewed as "not feminism" was because many first and second wave feminists fought to be allowed to work, to continue education and have that education recognised officially. They fought for properly regulated childcare, maternity rights, workers rights and remuneration and they did this in a much more overtly patriarchal society. The only option open to most women was to have children and stop working, or have no children and be allowed to continue to work. Even for working class women, the majority of whom went into service of one kind or another or, if they were lucky, shop work had to stop, often on their marriage. The military and Civil Service discharged women who became pregnant until relatively recently. Social mobility for women who had children was severely curtailed, and so feminists fought to change these things, but I don't believe they fought to change them so that everyone was forced to work when their skills and inclination lay elsewhere. The 'woman who has it all' meme seems misogynist as hell to me, because what it really means is that the woman DOES it all.

There are obvious cons to being a SAHP. Your CV suffers, however, as Lurcio has pointed out, this is easily surmountable with a change in business ethos. When your CV suffers, you are at your partner's mercy financially should anything go wrong. The fact that married women are better looked after by the law when relationships break down is merely another hangover from our paternalistic past, and is something that maternal feminists are looking at.

Feminism is for and about women, and because women are the sex class that becomes pregnant and has babies, then it also has to be about children.

I am a feminist. There are those who might suggest I am a fairly scary one I do try and make life decisions with the welfare of myself and other women in mind. I have made some decisions that make other feminists' toes curl. It's not a cult, it's a political movement.

I've seen you posting Petal, and nodded along to a lot of what you've said. It would be lovely to see you post here more often.

There seems to be an idea floating around some parts of feminism and society that what feminism has done is fought for women not to be SAHMs and to work instead.

What feminism has actually done is fought for the rights of women. Many women did have limited rights at work and many continue to do so, and feminism does fight for those rights. But it has also fought for the rights for all women to be able to be SAHP. We have a recent history of removing children from women and of forcing mothers to work in work houses, mental institutions, laundries and of removing their children and sending them to Australia, or into forced adoption, or into an institution. And we did those things because the mother was young, disabled. unmarried, a victim of DV, a lesbian or frequently poor.

The right to tax credits and housing have allowed many women to be SAHMs for a period of their lives when in the past this would have been impossible. And we still make contemptuous benefits TV shows about some of them.

So I don't think feminism is, or ever was, mostly about the workplace. It's about women's rights.

I also don't think there will ever be a society where fathers collectively do as much childcare as mothers collectively, because very many women do not want to raise children with a man at all, and very many men are happy to get women pregnant and be solely a biological father not a social one.

I've just read everyone's comments..many thanks all....I need to re read when kids are in bed ,so it sinks in.....so far my thoughts are...choices.well if we want a child with a partner,we have no choice to not give birth or be pregnant ,it's nature..so we have to take time of work for that,then to breast feed.dad can't do that..more time of work....that in itself leaves us vulnerable ,economically..so to be equal to men who don't HAVE to take time of work to give birth ,that needs addressing with better maternity benefits especially for single mums....tampax should be free,especially 100% for homeless women...but men don't have the expense of periods,so to make that equal they should be free...FGM....OMG WTAF....and increasing ......and in England...how the hell..sooo feminism isn't all about me and my lot..I'm bloody lucky to have a house ,running water ,access to doctors ,what about women at risk of an arranged marriage ( assuming they don't want one)... Women forced in to prostitution ...it's legal in Germany ...WTAF....men making millions hiring out rooms where women have to be abused by 3 men just to pay for the rent of the room,before then earning money by being abused by other men...but hey that's ok they are being paid.......is that all we are to men??? Sex on legs and a pair of hands to wash up.....I've bought the book housework....

I know Buffy, how weird is that!

Take care of yourself Petal40

You have listed a lot of issues. I remember finding my thoughts overwhelming when I first became a feminist. Keep coming here, if it helps you. As someone said upthread, it is a political movement, not a cult.

Sounds like the slogan for FWR: "It's a political movement, not a cult."

It is scary....I totally agree. Once you've seen it you can't under it either which makes it worse.

Hi Petal40

I've also become a follower on here since I posted a similar topic some weeks back ( think you may have dropped in on that)? All the responses were so helpful, so good luck.

I've been SAHM to 3 DC for 13 years and was also experiencing a bit of a confidence crises once the youngest started school and I finally got some headspace to see through the fog of young kids and all they entail. I'm no expert on feminist theory, I'm afraid, but I think all you can do is some soul-searching about what really motivates you in life.

If you need a career whether corporate, creative, vocational or whatever then by all means go for it, but if your gut instinct tells you that you would be inherently stressed trying to juggle family life with something else, then that's fine too. If you don't want to miss a day with your DC growing up, that's ok. The way I see it, I'm lucky to have a choice - so many women don't. Go with your instinct and hopefully things will all fall into place.

What about your DH - is he ok to be in the role of financial provider. Is he supportive?behat are his expectations and what motivates him? If he truly respects you for what you do and vice versa, it makes everything so much easier.

Some people wouldn't see it as feminist but I found Naomi Stadlen's "What Mothers Do" really inspiring.

being feminist imo is about how you perceive your role in life if you are happy if you are assertive enough about your choices if those choices benefit you and your family if you care about other women on a grander scale that is what I consider feminist

Uh, no. No, you don't have to be happy or assertive, and your choices do not have to benefit you and your family for you to be a feminist.

Feminism is political. It is not about your individual happiness. You can be very unhappy and totally broken and have made bad choices and still be a feminist.

Caring about women is the only part of what you wrote that is really needed for being a feminist.

I'm a single woman and have no money and no career and my life in general is pretty shit. I made some pretty bad choices.
I still consider myself a feminist. Because I care about women and want to abolish patriarchy.

Thanks everyone for yr replies...I'm actually just going to re read them all again.so it sinks in...I've had a really busy ,but sad week ,helping a friend get her husband to leave.it was hard and draining and a lot of paperwork...but I've got some time for myself now to re read my replies.

All your replies were thought provoking in one way or another...it's making me think about what it is to be a woman in different areas of the world....the mum washing the new born baby in a puddle in a France refuge camp...that made a cold hand clutch my heart..it was in the paper a while back...when I compare myself to other women around the world I have nothing to complain about....I do feel I can be a feminist and be aSAHM...i think it was best for my children I am/ was SAHM...but probably better for me to of worked ..if that makes sense....I will keep checking back on here to see if anyone else posts.thanks all

Palmer's observations about how first and second wave feminists had to focus so much energy on getting the right to work at all is very true. I'm an old second waver, and as just one example, I can remember when it was common in my US state for school teachers to be required to go on leave or quit altogether when a pregnancy began to "show." One of the unspoken reasons for this was that it was thought unseemly for a woman to essentially demonstrate that she had had sex. (And of course we are talking about married women here; an unmarried woman would have been summarily dismissed.) So feminists worked in this arena to win the rights of pregnant women to have the choice to continue in their jobs.

But it has never been a tenet of second wave feminism (or any other wave actually) that a woman has to work outside the home to be a feminist. Valuing what women do to run a home, to raise children, and to support her partner is a really important aspect of my feminism and always has been.

So keep exploring and keep posting.

Senecafalls,yes that is exactly where my feelings of guilt come from.knowing how women fought to stay at work while pregnant...and keep the job after.....life got in the way of fighting the fight..