Matricentric feminism - the need for feminism to recognise the experience of mothers

[EmilyDickinson]

mommuseum.org/aint-i-a-feminist-matricentric-feminism-feminist-mamas-and-why-mothers-need-a-feminist-movementtheory-of-their-own/

There's an interesting article in the Guardian today (I'll link in a minute) that refers to this more detailed article.

Oh! Please do link. I think it's important.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/26/is-motherhood-the-unfinished-work-of-feminism?CMP=share_btn_link

Sorry, I can't get the hang of links. This is The Guardian article and the more detailed explanation above is linked to within it (click on the highlighted bit in the text). (When someone who can do links does it properly!)

There are a lot if sweeping statements on the article - like this one:

While working mothers are being stretched thin and asked to be all things to all people, women without children are quietly covering their maternity leaves or working unpaid overtime, expected to work evenings and weekends because they don’t have kids to go home to after all.

First a lot of women with children cover maternity leave and work evenings and weekends.

I think the more interesting parts of this are about women as carers. They are often caring for children and/or elderly parents/relatives

I remember my mother’s horror when my grandfather suggested he move in and she could care for him. After all she had just retired from work so what else was she to do?

IF you click on "matricentric feminism" in the text of the Guardian article above then it links to the more detailed article on what this is.

There's quite a few interesting points in the article. For example much feminist theory is written by women who aren't mothers and who therefore either don't address the experience of women with children, or see motherhood as just a state of oppression. Also it points out that the pay gap between women with and without children is greater than that between men and women. She seeks to draw a distinction between a gendered view of motherhood which is/can be oppressive and the experience of mothering which can be empowering.

I found the article particularly interesting as I have felt that there are many aspects of between by a mother which are important, valuable and empowering but that, perhaps because it is one of the few things that women can do that men can't, being a mother is seen as low status in our society. I see this particularly in the way that journalists who write about, but don't use, mumsnet write about the forum. To refer to someone as a "mum" often seems to imply that they would not have the same intelligence or drive as someone else.

I certainly agree with you about the sweeping statement above! I have children and have covered maternity leave as my children are older. In fact in my experience it is often women with children helping other women with children.

Your link works absolutely fine from the app - I keep seeing people posting a perfectly good clickable link and then apologising.

I should be doing other stuff now, will have to come back to this.

I don’t particularly care what name it is given.

I’ve been folly eyed at feminist speakers who believe the answer to oppression is to entirely do away with motherhood and put all children in state nurseries from birth. I’ve been rolly eyed at the circular logic of individualist feminist circular logic of what matters is women choosing and everything’s women do is a choice. I’ve been rolly eyed at the feminists talking about flexible working as the way out of oppression who were all puzzled when I pointed out this is makes zero difference to people with low economic status who cannot make demands of employers.

I agree it needs more attention.

One thing that has been absolutely clear to me in every circumstance where I have heard a ‘feminist’ position on the raising of children, is that the children’s rights and experiences have been completely absent from consideration.

Also, that the vast majority of speakers I have seen have been well off.

Personally, and I think this is actually true for all mothers, caring about the child’s experience is how women are trapped by motherhood. Women only get trapped into it because they care about what happens to the child once the father has made his decision. This is how their decisions and life choices end up being restricted by men’s choices.

I would like to see feminism acknowledge that really, that actually beyond the women’s rights where motherhood is concerned, children’s rights and development are important and can’t be simply ignored when we look to improve the rights and experiences of mothers.

Unless we can deal with that then motherhood will remain a trap.

Thanks for linking this; have read the Guardian article and comments but now off to read the more detailed article. Really interesting stuff - thanks again!!

Oh god the typos.... 🤦🏻‍♀️

Oh and I’m not arguing that children need their mother. I’m simply arguing that this stuff involves an intersection of children and adults and given that motherhood basically is ‘accepting the responsibility by default’ in many ways it’s always going to require consideration of what children need AND what women need as well as undoing this ‘women do it by default’ stuff.

I thought I'd achieved equality until I had a tiny, barely noticeable really, infant... It was a shock. Motherhood is when inequality kicks in. However, things can be done. Read recently that in a third of couples the woman is the higher earner. As soon as we could afford it, my DH resigned and became a SAHF. If this becomes mainstream it will gradually tilt beliefs and assumptions.

brought us Sheila Heti’s Motherhood, which explores the will I-won’t I decision all women face at some point

All women?

While working mothers are being stretched thin and asked to be all things to all people, women without children are quietly covering their maternity leaves or working unpaid overtime, expected to work evenings and weekends because they don’t have kids to go home to after all

Bit of a sweeping statement. My experience of having to deal with maternity (and paternity ) cover is everyone has to pick it up. There is a wonderfully naive belief that maternity and paternity leave can be covered by temporary hires. My department is currently planning for very likely maternity leave by a small over staffing.

What Offred said, regardless of typos!

I still can't get over the early days of austerity, when warnings about the disproportionate impact on working class mothers were met with not all women are breeders remarks by supposedly left-leaning media feminists.

Yes,Offred!

For me the pressure of motherhood has been particularly about balancing my child’s emotional and developmental needs. The world of work is not set up to cater for the needs of young children without one parent sacrificing career. This is particularly so for parents who have no family close by who can help with some childcare. Everything falls to us.

As soon as we could afford it, my DH resigned and became a SAHF.

My DH spent 4/5 years as a SAHD - albeit working some part-time hours - because a) I earned slightly more than him in our full-time positions and b) perhaps more importantly, he was able to earn considerably more than I could doing some very short part-time hours.

And no matter what your arrangement society will assume that it is the mother who is responsible for the child’s development... like when I got told to do a parenting course and teach my ex husband what I learned after he was caught being EA to my DD and when he dropped the twins off last week and my DTD was ill but the teacher told her ‘tell your mum not to send you in if you are sick’ and how even though we have written the days the kids are in each place on the contact file they have, more than once called my phone on H’s day and left a number of angry messages re why am I not picking up but never bothered to call him (I was seeing clients in my volunteer job and had specifically written I would be uncontactable on that day every week).

We shouldn’t be assumed to be resoponsible but feminism definitely needs to acknowledge that that is the reality.

And it’s so pervasive and attitude. Night shift mum I mentioned on the class analysis thread, well she earns more than her husband who is a self employed plasterer... It’s his job that is considered ‘the main job’.

Both my sister and I have spent long periods as full time working mothers with a partner being a sahd. It is not an experience I would like to repeat. What happened in my case was that I would get home to utter chaos which I would have to deal with, along with all washing etc and sole responsibility for all infants from getting in to going out while he had a rest. It was more like having a baby sitter than a sahd. In my sisters case the sahd thing has carried on not just into secondary school, but even now the kids are adults. I know some women don't ever work after having kids but, as well as being full time mothers, they make a career out of homemaking for their working husband and older children. What I'm saying is that there is a particular breed of male chauvinist pig that will use the sahd role to basically live the life of Riley. There is one job these types love to do, and that is pick up the kids from school. All the other mothers then think the sahd is so wonderful.

From the original lecture:

"motherhood is seen as a patriarchal institution that causes women’s oppression, and thus the feminist ‘solution’ to such is avoiding motherhood both in theory and practice. Relatedly, because feminists are uncomfortable with anything that suggests gender essentialism –i.e. men are naturally this way; women naturally this way– motherhood becomes highly problematic, as motherhood, more than anything else, is what marks our essential gender difference; only biological females can biologically become mothers. And because gender difference is seen as structuring and maintaining male dominance, many feminists seek to downplay and disavow anything that marked this difference; the main one being of course motherhood. Thus for many feminists, to talk of motherhood, to acknowledge women’s specific gendered subjectivity as mothers, to develop a mother-centred feminism, is to play into patriarchy; acknowledge and affirm that is which is seen as marking and maintaining gender difference and hence the oppression of women."

This is a good analysis of the negative gut reaction of most feminists to the subject of motherhood/maternity, I think.

I also totally agree with your points about the rights of the child being ignored in the larger discussion of women's right, Offred.

Anyone who is interested in this area should be aware of Andrea O’Reilly, who set up ARM (now defunct) MIRCI, their journal (JRM) and the Demeter Press. I’ve been to a couple of her keynotes at UK conferences in the past, and always order books from Demeter Press. As well as an academic research group in this niche area, and a regular journal, they do a lot of work outside the academic arena supporting women in their local community.
As far as specifically mothering goes, they are the only academic feminist niche that I have found so far. I’d love to hear of others.
motherhoodinitiative.org

Their website is terrible, but their work is great.

Offred yy

I am very very uncomfortable when the solution to inequality is suggested to be long nursery hours for children/infants. I have also seen the suggestion thst BF is bad for women because it makes it harder to go back to work etc

The most amazing feminist i have ever met IRL was an independent MW

We need to value the things that women do more.

Absolutely both Offred and Waddle. When I had my first child I was keen to breastfeed as much as possible (and was fortunate that after some early difficulties this was both possible and practicable). But I had to go back to work when the baby was six months old. Working at home for any part of the week was not deemed possible (although my job was largely computer/paper based) nor could I do anything other than a standard office (or longer) day. I did however do fewer actual days per week, albeit with a longish commute.

It became increasingly difficult to sustain breastfeeding and I did feel quite resentful about this. I remember thinking that if I could just take the baby to work with me I could manage. Maybe I was naive but it does seem that most workplaces are set up in such a way that we should pretend that children don't exist. When I suggested a day working from home the reason it was impossible was that it would be unprofessional if the person on the other end of the call heard a baby crying.

I think things are a little better now but work and children are still seen as very separate spheres. There's a "bring your daughter to work" day at my DH's workplace and laudable as the intention is it does rather say that you must not let your child come anywhere near your workplace on the other 364 days of the year.

And because gender difference is seen as structuring and maintaining male dominance, many feminists seek to downplay and disavow anything that marked this difference; the main one being of course motherhood.

Only if downplay and disavow anything that marked this difference is understood to mean talk about it and write about it year after year while working to change laws, traditions, and regulations, that penalize women with children.
I never quite know what to think about writers who take Feminism to task for not doing what Feminists have indeed been doing right along in order to lecture us about how we are doing Feminism wrong.

YY, there is a graded separation between biology and culture re motherhood that I think is just never dealt with properly because it is often treated as a black and white issue.

We have some measures in place re actual pregnancy and the post natal period but biological issues re bearing children don’t just end when mat leave finishes;

• mothers may not all be BF, for example, but if a baby is being BF (with tiny exceptions) it IS the mother who does it, because biology.

• the physiological demands of pregnancy and actually giving birth impact on a mother’s health, sometimes for many many years after. It involves recovery time which may be relatively short or very long but there is always a recovery period and having been pregnant can increase the risks of poor health for a lifetime in some cases. Fortunately maternal mortality is not the issue it once was. It is always the mother impacted by this. Fathers may struggle with adjustment but this is different.

These things are rarely considered except by people who want to justify paying women less in waged work.

Then there is the cultural expectation that it must be, or should be a mother’s role to meet the child’s developmental need for consistent and responsive care during the first three years, this has no real inherent basis in biology since it simply requires that a person consistently respond to the child’s needs and this could be anyone theoretically. Biology may impact on this part, particularly if the baby is BF because feeding is need that needs to be responded to and so there is logic there that the best person for that job (if it must be one parent) may be the BF mother. If the baby is FF there is no significant justification for the mother being the best person for the job (taking out how the economy is structured). It is also true that there is no reason why both parents shouldn’t be involved in building an attachment bond during this period no matter how a baby is fed.

That is where some feminists get the idea that all babies should be FF and in nursery but I think mandating FF is actually an example of ignoring the best interests of children as a group re feeding (that’s not a criticism of individuals who FF rather a criticism re mandating FF) and socialisation, as surely a child would benefit from bonding with both parents rather than just one or neither? Also, no matter what childcare is always going to have turnover of staff (also what is the point? If it is to benefit the mothers re economic inequality then we should assume the same economic inequalities will mean the nursery workers will be paid peanuts and it will be the same tired old thing of some women having careers and other women facilitating it).

Then there is age 3-5 where the child has formed an attachment bond but is not yet in school and is quite dependent still. Stability matters here so if you’ve been trapped into being ‘the one’ already this is likely to continue and there is also a child development logic to it continuing. I think this is a good age for children to be in childcare providing it is not long hours and is high quality. I don’t believe this should be about improving educational standards though as there is no evidence the improvement is maintained in the long run and I feel it is just a prop for the treadmill of standardised testing later on. Children should be learning naturally through play at this age.

Then from school age there is absolutely zero justification IMO for mothers to be considered to be anything different to fathers.

Then at puberty a child often needs support and reassurance re sex and biological changes and the parent that shares the child’s sex may be more important for these things.