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.

Grumpy Yes, I agree generally. I think the problem with shared parental leave is it implies the original leave is split rather than extending the leave. As Offred suggested previously in the thread , maybe the answer lies more in extending the leave. Mother gets first year, father gets the second. I believe after two or three years the evidence for nurseries/preschool adding value to children increases so it would tie in nicely with that.

I have some issues re studies about nursery and value to education. My understanding is that it is not at all proven that the measured educational ‘benefits’ of nursery education are in any way lasting and they are used to prop up a. Standardised testing which requires learning by rote (anathema to critical analysis), b. Prejudice against low income/young mothers and c. The low value status of caring/high value status of waged work.

I do think it is clear that high quality childcare from 3 is probably not harmful though and that high quality childcare from younger may not be either but I am highly sceptical re ‘benefits to the child of nursery’ though at the same time irritated by the idea that is implied by that that all that is important is the mother prioritising the child. IMO it is about balancing needs of children and carers.

I don’t think we need to justify nursery by saying ‘it is so much better for the child’ in short.

OffredI accept that a nursery adding value or not may be controversial and I think it is pretty hard to prove. From a common sense perspective though, I think when children get a certain age you can definitely see how they could benefit from aspects of that setting such as the socialisation etc. I'm not saying that they couldn't get the same from being at home, but a good nursery/preschool could definitely meet these needs too.

And yes agree you don't have to justify the use of nurseries etc, but it is a real consideration for lots of parents.

offred why the slow hand clap and the biscuit ? Have you read the book?

I totally agree.

I also think it is OK for nursery to be about mothers.

I do think some of the benefits to children only exist because of how we have structured the world though. They are not necessarily inherent benefits IMO but benefits that arise as a consequence of other structural issues.

It was applause not a slow hand clap!

Maybe you continue to keep the SPL system but then offer the father 3-6 months fully paid leave in addition, exclusively for his use. That would allow many more variations to be possible. Current uptake of SPL is very low (even 9m / 3m) because the father is then on statutory pay and this is unaffordable for many couples.

Also the fact that your exact role is only protected for 26 weeks mean that it's much easier for employers to side line women who take more than 6 months off (which although it's right for me, is too short for many women) and so you often don't even get your job back, not exactly motivational!

I didn’t do a biscuit, has one appeared?

offred - cheers

yes there is something that looks like a "nice" biscuit under the hands!

Stupid emojis!!! Ha ha ha

I believe that access to affordable, good quality childcare is at the heart of this. Also better financial support for families in general. Many women stay at home or sacrifice their career in other ways because the financial hit of childcare is too much.

I particularly like it when someone says something that I think cuts through the ‘tinkering around the edges’ and gets to the heart of the issue, which is what I saw that post as... basically ‘ok but if we cut through it doing away with the cultural understanding of motherhood and the expectation that it is something for individual women to perform individually is surely it?’

Also paternity leave needs a change, statutory pay is not enough.

The cost of childcare I agree is a massive issue which is making women dependent (and therefore controlled) by patriarchy (husbands/partners/fathers even if absent or the partriarchal state).

That things have financial implications under current form of capitalism is the means through which patriarchy imposes control.

The monetising of childcare only when mothers don’t do it I think is something I think about a LOT!

When fathers don’t do childcare it is not monetised except in rare cases of absent mothers. The vast majority of the time when fathers don’t do childcare mothers do it by default and then become dependent on/constrained by patriarchal systems.

It is the same for the majority of caring work. This is inextricably linked to low pay for waged caring work in a cyclical way.

ALittleAubergine I believe that access to affordable, good quality childcare is at the heart of this..

I both agree and disagree with this statement (very decisive I know). I agree for obvious reasons that you have stated that without good, affordable childcare available then some people (usually women) are forces out of the workforce. I disagree partly because sometimes I think childcare is seen as the golden bullet to keeping two parents in work as opposed to changing working practices to enable a child's parents to spend more time with them. I know nurseries open 12 hours a day, breakfast clubs and after school clubs are all relied heavily on by parents to facilitate two careers, but I do wonder if this is what utopia looks like for both parents and children. My instinct is that it isn't...

Eutopia would be men and women taking an equal hit when children come along.

Controversially, I don't think that having children should have zero impact on your career. I think it should be possible to take time out but it should be treated as any other career break e.g. for travel, study etc. It seems logical to me that this might slow down career progression.

I think the issue is the cultural expectation that it will always be the woman who goes part time, takes a career break, does pick up and drop off, funds childcare. I'd like to see parenting responsibilities shared more equally and no default expectation that it's primarily down to the mother.

I'd also like to see employers being more flexible around working hours but not just for parents, I think it would be beneficial to many people e.g. those with health issues who can't work full-time, those caring for elderly parents etc.

And even writing that I can see that thinking about ‘not doing’ childcare is so politicised culturally along sex based lines that the idea of ‘not doing’ childcare for women is deeply uncomfortable when associated with men ‘not doing’.

And I definitely don't think Eutopia is everyone working full time and putting their children in childcare full time.

Controversially, I don't think that having children should have zero impact on your career. I think it should be possible to take time out but it should be treated as any other career break e.g. for travel, study etc. It seems logical to me that this might slow down career progression.

Agree completely. I think an acknowledgement of this would take a lot of pressure off parents who feel like they should be giving their all to their careers and their families at the same time. We are all human and only have so much time and energy. There is nothing wrong with focusing on different things in different seasons of your life.

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.

But then it becomes “well either you can breastfeed or you can advance in your career, pick one” and that’s also not what we need.

Right now we have a system where ‘work’ clashes with our reproductive biology as women. We are the ones that get pregnant and give birth lactate - not all of us do any/all of those, but we’re still the only ones who do. Tinkering round the edges of that to let us opt out of bits this biology - “well we don’t have to lactate, we can choose formula” - isn’t fixing the underlying problem. We need a system that isn’t hostile to our biology to begin with.