Motherhood and equality, what does Eutopia look like?

[Bumpitybumper]

I accept that I'm incredibly slow to the party, but a few threads and specific posts that I've read have really highlighted to me that motherhood lies at the heart of feminism. Whilst I wouldn't say the battle has been completely won for women prechildren, statistics around earnings and education do look promising, however it seems all of this drops off a cliff once kids arrive. I think this is related to lots of factors, some of which are within women's control (eg choosing to be a SAHM) and some not (eg not being able to afford the childcare required to work).

In this context I have been pondering what equality looks like in a post children world. Personally I think it would involve society viewing an individual's career as a lifespan with expected peaks and troughs. It is madness that the peak decades for building your career are also the decades when women are fertile. I think there should be a greater acceptance that when someone has kids it is natural and normal to want to spend time with them and this probably will not be compatible with working long hours and doing lots of travel for work. This should all be a standard expectation of men and women with young families so things like flexible working should be encouraged and time spent at home should be viewed as a pause on a career, not a termination of a career. The big pay off for such an approach would be that as kids grow and parents are able to refocus on their careers, nobody would be too heavily penalised for gaps in CVs or a few years on the career slow track. This would make it much easier for women and men to close any gaps that may have opened up. It also doesn't ignore the reality that parents with young kids simply do not have the flexibility and time that childfree employees have to devote to their career without effectively never seeing their children which is unacceptable to many.

Is my view of equality post children Eutopia in line with what others think? I can see a shed load of challenges to making mine work, but it doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility.

@Bowlofbabelfish I feel exactly the same. I've had to constantly ram down my employer's throat that my husband will be taking SPL. I'm going on maternity leave in 3 months time (and will probably only take 5/6 months off) but the change in attitude from my bosses since I told them has been palpable. I was on track for a big promotion (& actually someone who was competing with me for it has now left so it should very obviously be given to me) but now I'm seen as irrelevant ("oh but you won't be here...") despite the fact they know I'm not taking much time off. All impossible to prove of course. But I've never felt sexism at work until now. And I make 3x what my DH earns. The external expectations are so limiting.

I had a stellar performance review on he Monday, told I’d get promoted, told them I was pregnant on the Wednesday and had my reporting lines removed by the Friday. They then spent the next months trying to make me leave.

So, so frustrating. It’s hard work isn’t it? At least you’ve got the support at home - that is a huge deal.

That's awful! And blatant discrimination! How are things now you are back? You said you're working flexibly despite resistance. I suppose they didn't give you your reporting lines back? How long were you off for?

In my industry at the moment there is a LOT of scrutiny on gender pay gap and diversity so I'm hoping that will make them think twice. I'm hoping to just hold on to the status quo at least (taking

Agree with so much that has been written.

Consistent themes of flexibility, men stepping up more in regards to parenting and not condemning all women who have had children because it's a choice. The latter really irritates me when there is analysis of the pay gap and the argument that it's all down to women's choices gets trotted out. Nice way to sweep it all under the carpet and remove any impetus to change

I think the bit that resonates with me the most is the need for society to acknowledge children exist and along with that a whole bunch of parents with the associated responsibilities. I don't like the idea of putting babies just exiting the so called fourth trimester into childcare and if I'm completely honest I think that an emphasis on a completely equal split of parental leave is in danger of seeking to erase the differences that exists between men and women's experience of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding. Some women will bounce back from it all and be ready to get back to work whilst others may be suffering long term effects both physically and mentally (PND etc). I think those women deserve more time to recover and process what's happened and having to return back to work too early to give their partner a turn makes me feel uneasy.

When we were trying to decide what to do when my last mat leave ended we discussed us both going to PT (4 days each). Then we realised that would just mean both of us were on the slow track.

And since I went back part time, I’ve been passed over for many opportunities, roles and projects which ‘require someone there 5 days’ which to my mind proves us right.

Companies really don’t like part timers. Until that changes, I can’t see many men voluntarily stepping up to also be screwed over.

grumpy I managed to come back and get shifted sideways. The way it was done was appalling and a real stab in the back.
I debated whether to fight it, it was illegal and I might have won a case but what then? You never know what kind of blacklisting Gowan on so I reviewed and decided to make the best I could out of it.
After a LOT of hard work it’s actually been to my benefit because I’m out from under a particularly awful boss and now under one who a lot of people seem to find difficult but I actually seem to do Ok with. It’s also a different division with more upward potential progression. I’ve managed to negotiate hours that are flexible which works both ways - they get me late night or early if they need to and I get to leave early for pickups other days. It took a LOT of fighting to get and thankfully HR were on board.
I’m lucky in that I’m a scientist with quite an niche set of skills doing a difficult job that’s in demand so I’m not too easy to replace (I hope I’m also good at my job and had built up a lot of ‘karma capital’ as well.)

I don’t kid myself that I’m irreplaceable, and I couldn’t have done this even five years earlier. In that sense I’m glad I had my kid (and upcoming one) later.

It really shouldn’t be this hard, should it? Dh has had zero issues negotiating his hours, (flexible but long, he often works very late) and is regularly praised for being an amazing hands on dad.

I suppose in my utopia there would be recognition that if you treat people like adults and give them flexibility they will repay you with good work. That retaining staff with a decade or two of experience is a good thing.

I don't like the idea of putting babies just exiting the so called fourth trimester into childcare....Some women will bounce back from it all and be ready to get back to work whilst others may be suffering long term effects both physically and mentally (PND etc)

Yes, I do agree, but, I found that being able to do some normal things rather than being stuck in a baby bubble really helped me. I don't mean being forced to do anything, but, that first walk around the block when DS1 was a couple of weeks old and I left him with his dad, and by 3 months, wanting to start nosing back into my job a bit (I'm a freelance programmer, so I could). I know it's unusual, but I actually took meetings from clients whilst breastfeeding (this works until they're mobile/vocal!), and it was fine, all the people I work with regularly now are parents and have similar demands on their time/restrictions on availability, and the difference is striking compared to when I was in a traditional role, with men who delegated all their childcare to their wives.

I was fulfilling my ultimate expression of womanhood by taking my children to school

I entirely agree re the points made about contraception.

I see hormonal contraception for women as a tool which is more oppressive than liberating and have often said it is for the benefit of men as a class not women because of all these arguments and I have been laughed at and derided primarily by feminists TBH!

I totally believe it is a flaw in the class analysis positioning (wrongly) positioning children as the enemy of women and more broadly caring work (no matter who performs it) as low status and debasing.

This I see as internalised misogyny when coming from feminists.

The problem as I see it is the status attributed to caring/bearing by patriarchy. The solution is higher status both socially and economically for what is, if you step outside the patriarchal narrative to consider it, the most fundamentally important work for humanity as a whole.

This is in fact why it is smeared by patriarchy. Because it will always be more important than most things...

Where we are now it is more generally the things (caring, innovation, advancement of understanding through science, creativity etc etc) which are being restrained under patriarchal capitalism.

Bumpity, regarding the women needing more time depending, I still see that as medical needs of the mother and similar to any illness or depression. In fact, treating it as that and the parental leave for the baby (which I propose to be equally the fathers responsibility from day 1) means the Mum can recover and repair without also single handedly managing and minding a newborn. This is true freedom and equality.

As for breastfeeding meaning the Mum HAS to take the baby, well that’s irrelevant for the many formula feeders and is maybe a decision to be made in conjunction with who takes leave first. A decision made by both parents without the assumption that it’s the Mum and separate to the mums leave she’ll take for body (and maybe mind) recovery.

Companies really don’t like part timers.

They probably don't like maternity leave, shared parental leave, sickness benefits, annual leave etc either.

As another poster said, legislation needs to force social change.
Without that change, men will continue to shrug their shoulders and say 'well what can you do? I would have gone down to 4 days a week but you know you just can't in my kind of job'.

Meanwhile thousands of women (including in a range of well paid professional jobs) somehow manage to work part-time (and often as a consequence shoulder the lions share of child rearing and housework, whilst now earning less than their partner).

The real question is how do you make men value childcare as much as they value that next promotion/pay rise/shiny new job?
It's impossible to have utopia without that.

Caring work is so unsatisfying in part because of the stigma and low status which has been attributed to it by patriarchy and is reinforced by culture and the structure of the economy. IMO.

Without that change, men will continue to shrug their shoulders and say 'well what can you do? I would have gone down to 4 days a week but you know you just can't in my kind of job'.

Fuck me yes. A sore spot in my relationship is when I was looking to move out of freelancing and back into a normal job, had got a few excellent offers, and had chosen one, and asked DP to use his big company's flexi-time policy to start at 10am so he could do drop offs.

Bear in mind also, that by then the traffic would have been better, so he'd also have had a shorter commute. And, that if he was tired, he'd not leave until 8:30 some days anyway, so he was definitely going to be late to work when it suited him

Not possible apparently, a flat 'no' - the flexi-time policy was just for show, and senior management wasn't expected to actually use it.

The only reason this wasn't a huge problem was that a month later I landed a huge freelance project that paid even better, and meant I could make my own hours (and I found an excellent childminder)

There is no real need for bearing/caring to be structurally unsatisfying or isolating. But it is. This is one of the reasons men don’t want to do it.

As individuals our individual personality traits and differences in interest (men or women) may mean that we will always find caring/bearing unsatisfying but this is different to how stigmatised, isolating and abnormal the conditions of motherhood have become IMO.

Offred I totally believe it is a flaw in the class analysis positioning (wrongly) positioning children as the enemy of women and more broadly caring work (no matter who performs it) as low status and debasing.
Totally agree with this and the rest of your post..

Hide I can see the logic in that approach, but it sits uncomfortably with me. I understand in America maternity leave is classified as a type of sick leave. I am struggling to articulate why I find this awkward. Maybe it's because it seems women are saddled with all the associated burdens of being the only ones that can be pregnant, give birth and breastfeed, but then women are also being asked to give up what some would see as a privilege of time with their babies and share it with a man who has no such burdens. I absolutely think that any woman who wants to share leave should be encouraged to do so but I don't like the thought of women being pressured to do so when they've been through such a life altering experience that just isn't the same for a man.

I'd think there should be much more part time work for everyone. Why accept that x amount of people have to be out of work, while other people work themselves into the ground?

That'd probably involve some sort of universal income as well. And some building of more social housing.

Jobs, which are only one aspect of work, are changing. We are at or almost at the tipping point.

There will no longer be such thing as a ‘career’ as it has been typically understood. There will no longer be set hours which are ‘working hours’ for jobs.

It is vital that planning takes account of this and that analysis of how people contribute to society and how people survive in society expands from a waged work model.

Women absolutely must not continue to be the victims of this situation as the evaporation of waged work as a means to provide the basics needed for survival and contribution continues.

"The real question is how do you make men value childcare as much as they value that next promotion/pay rise/shiny new job? "

I don't think you can while women simply continue to do it for them (not blaming women for this as it's not a free choice unfortunately but a vicious cycle).

You need structural incentives from government and for corporations to care more about losing female talent... which apparently they do now but it sounds like it's mostly lip service.

You also need more women to question why men should get a free pass and stop accepting that short term financial consequences mean they should take the entire career hit (obviously not possible for everyone). Men should be challenged on this point more often. Child raising isn't just a mother's responsibility as it's necessary for the whole of society.

Having said that - it's very hard to keep your self esteem and desire for your job / ambition alive while everyone is telling you that your priorities will "naturally" change and your employer is already writing you off before you've even started maternity leave...

Without that change, men will continue to shrug their shoulders and say 'well what can you do? I would have gone down to 4 days a week but you know you just can't in my kind of job'.

In our case, we both work in industries/positions where you are likely to be re-organised or downsized at any point. So in our case, we valued the security of one of us not being on the easily-dispensable track more than we valued DH doing the childcare on a Monday. It wasn’t about status or pay rise, it was about keeping roof over family’s head. (A pressure he feels much more keenly than I do, because Man.)

It was absolutely nothing to do with him shrugging shoulders and letting me pick up the slack.

The current panic about unemployment and zero hours and low wages etc is again, IMO, a flawed analysis which automatically assumes that waged work is a. The only means of survival/contribution/stimulation etc and b. Losing waged work of various kinds is in itself a problem for humanity.

The problem is not so much the loss of waged work or technology replacing jobs but the failure to move away from the waged work model or change or understanding of contribution to society as technology replaces jobs.

This is again patriarchy as much as capitalism, if not more IMO, as waged work is a major tool of the oppression of women.

*our change our understanding 🤦🏻‍♀️

Brilliant thread. Placemarking so I can read later. Thanks OP. I’m so in agreement with you.

The utopia In women on the edge of time has no nuclear families and no real sense of motherhood

" I absolutely think that any woman who wants to share leave should be encouraged to do so but I don't like the thought of women being pressured to do so when they've been through such a life altering experience that just isn't the same for a man."

But why does a man's leave have to be at the expense of the woman's? In Sweden they have a few months which are use it or lose it for the dad. This could be added on to the end of standard maternity leave, if you still think 9 months is too short for women. Men have to be "forced" to participate, otherwise (generally) they just won't.

I actually think the wide spread expectation that most women will take 12 months off (while men do not) is damaging to our prospects at work and perpetuates employer bias against women. I'd like to see a lot more variety in what couples do. And many more men taking time out.
I was questioned on baby plans as soon as I turned 30 and got married. Would that be happening if there was a broader variety of leave patterns between men and women?

Men (as a class) do not want to ask or comprehensively consider the question ‘why is waged work important?’

It is a question that women as a class ask and answer all the time as part of their existence.

The utopia In women on the edge of time has no nuclear families and no real sense of motherhood

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