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.

I think the whole concept of ‘career progression’ is changing TBH.

Even now the vast majority of waged workers do not have ‘a career’ (in the sense of training in a discipline, working in said discipline and climbing the ladder bit by bit) and for my children, I expect anyway, the primary issue will be about the ability to translate skills across more diverse areas of waged work and for training to be across a lifetime rather than at the start of ‘a career’.

I think this gives us an opportunity to consider things like; ‘is financial recompense related to seniority the best way?’ ‘Is waged work the main contribution a human can make to society?’ ‘What is the purpose of waged work?’ ‘What is important about waged work?’ Etc etc

‘How is attaining the means to survive and progress going to be affected by technology?’

I also worry that making trade-offs with the system that work to help well-paid women succeed in corporate jobs just displaces the problem.

If we can only succeed by outsourcing the tasks that used to fall to us - childcare, housework - then we’re relying on a large group of people to be the nannies and the nursery workers and the cleaners. And guess who’s doing that? Not the men.

This aspect of patriarchal control; waged work to attain the means to survive and thrive and selective monetisation based on cultural values IS going to die and it will either need to be artificially propped up OR thrown out.

Patriarchy is obviously invested in propping it up IMO.

Yy 53rd

In the Daughters of Egalia (satire where sex roles are reversed), the menwim (who have all childcare responsibilities) have to take the babies across town to the wom's workplace for every feed. In this world because women are the ones that create life, they are they only ones that can truly add value (create stuff and ideas). The masculists in this society talk a lot about how their liberation is constrained by their biological role as fathers, read it if you haven't already it does make you think

I agree (that FT childcare from 2weeks old etc isn't the solution) but at least those workers get paid! Offred is spot on.. deeply uncomfortable that childcare is monetised only when "women don't do it"...

Think employers could get used to more people having career breaks if many more men and childfree people did it too. Of course having kids has an impact but I'd like it not to be assumed that I'll want to step back please.

Yes the problem with outsourcing all of the domestic and caring work is that you need to earn enough to pay someone else to do it all for you. People on an average wage realistically will struggle to finance outsourcing without offering those you are outsourcing work to a very low wage. When you think that most of us would rank our kids as the most important people in our lives, it is counterintuitive for us to be paying a pittance to those caring for them. Realistically, other than those who have found a real vocation childcare, you are going to be attracting a lot of people into these kinds of roles that don't have a vast array of better paid options. Is this what we want for our children?

That as "default" expectation doesn't help women or equality.

I mean the expectation that I'll need/want to step back from my career for a bit. Not helping.

I think you can see how important child rearing is in the ACE study tbh.

There have been a number of patriarchal narratives attached to what the findings mean, but to me the main thing it highlights is that how we care for and raise children is of fundamental importance to humanity; to progress, to health, to wellbeing, to functioning, to the economy etc etc

This imbalance of expectations is already SO skewed towards women. If there has to be a career hit, it should be smaller by being shared between 2 parents.

Yes, I agree with you there grumpy. When I announcd I was pregnant I got asked approximately a million times if I would be returning to work part-time. Guess how many times DH got asked that...

Because children are a ‘women’s thing’ the only time child rearing becomes visible is when a women is perceived to be ‘doing it wrong’ and lots (but not all) of these value judgements are being made on fairly arbitrary standards regarding what ‘doing it right’ looks like. Some of them are actually in direct opposition with each other and so we are now in the position where patriarchal thinking has now shifted to pushing women into ‘having it all’ which in reality means women doing it all but men being in control of it all and men directly benefitting from women doing it all.

On the most basic level this is the massive number of fathers who believe; ‘ok if you want to work you need to earn enough to pay the childcare AND you’d better not let the housework slip’

And who then say ‘family court is sexist because it won’t give me my child 50/50 at the exact times that personally suit me’

Haven't RTFT, I am a new mum in my late 30s, having been childless by circumstance, and single through most of 20s.

For me equality for women and men at work would include the option of flexible working for all regardless of kids, whilst I know the law has changed to move towards this, I don't believe it is the reality in many work places.

I went part time a couple of years before having DD, for a range of reasons, but due to the inflexibility of my employers, my only way to do this was by going on a zero hours contract, with all the risks and lack of rights that comes with that.

I did it because I didn't want to spend the next half of my life feeling exhausted, torn in too many directions, and with all sorts of things on hold waiting for me to retire (adventures, getting a dog, creating an amazing garden etc.). 6 weeks after I quit my permanent positon my DF was diagnosed with a Brain Tumour, aged 68 (retirement age for my age bracket) less than a year later he was dead, this totally validated my decision, not that I needed validation. I am more than happy to live a less materialistic lifestyle, in a smaller house, with a shitter car!

The crazy thing was the reaction of my colleagues... you'd have thought I'd come out to them as a Flat Earther!! Most simply can't get there head around anyone without children going part time, others have been very inquisitive, as if what I have done is a totally new concept to them, and it is been like a game of 20 questions . I think prior to this I was seen by colleagues as being a reasonable high flyer with a good prospect for career progression, and therefore higher pay (which does seem to be at the forefront of a large proportion of my colleagues minds), which maybe meant it was even more of a surprise to some of them.

Surely equality in the work place, would mean women and men being able to choose there own career progression and work life balance, without judgement from others regardless of children.

Giving your child over to an abuser - social care says you are doing it wrong, not giving your child over to an abuser - the court says you are doing it wrong.

Going to work - society says you are doing it wrong, not going to work - society says you are doing it wrong.

It is virtually impossible for women to achieve any kind of status in a myriad of ways. That is the point.

I'd also say that DH and I have always shared the same belief and plan, that long term we will both go part time with roughly equal hours, I earn more than DH per hour, but he is not proud (is that the right word...I want to put he is not an arsehole) about that, for us it is about a fair contribution of time and energy, so that we can both share the lifestyle we want together.... He is yet to approach his employer about part time hours, we will see how that goes, several of his female colleagues are part time, but DH is the only Male there aside from the company director.... we will see if DH is able to achieve equality in his workplace.

Eryri - I’m not saying this will happen to you but I believe a lot of women have had discussions with and made agreements with the fathers of their children that, when push comes to shove, the fathers do not honour.

Women suffer the consequences of this and often then children suffer too from the resentment it breeds.

My mother was one such woman who had secured agreement that their entirely equal status in the world of work (both GPs) would continue and that the child rearing would be shared.

What actually happened is that my dad went back full time, obsessively progressed his career, moved to working away in policy for the civil service and my mum became default full time carer for 12 years with other knock on effects.

Paradoxically despite all that (and having been required to achieve higher grades to get into medical school because she is female) she used to tell me all the time that sexism doesn’t exist anymore.

And I’m not necessarily blaming individual men for the entirety of that. Men who are generally of good character do still exist within patriarchal structures and their actions are affected by them.

What I’m saying is, sadly, women just cannot rely on male partners to follow through on those agreements but are in the unfortunate position of having to because men are the gatekeepers.

Offred this was not a decision made based around having children, it was discussed before we were even married let alone pregnant, not everything in life is about kids.

I really don't think the problem will be convincing DH to go through with his plan to work less hours, convincing his employer to let him will be the challenge.

Men have to choose between integrity in relationships with women (and children) and integrity towards the values of partriarchy. There are consequences for them there even though they are not as fundamental as the consequences are for women.