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.

There are good hormonal reasons for women communicating in a specific way with their baby. Hormonal interaction between family (group) members is a fascinating topic.

Most children learn to speak but their vocabulary and syntax (which are necessarily correlated - you can’t learn words without grammar and vice versa) vary wildly. This is largely dependent on input (though ability has a role too).

I think that is perhaps stating things a little strongly!

Human parenting is not hormone dependent!

Yes, the stuff on hormones is interesting though.

And yes, we know regarding vocab, syntax and input.

What we are interested in is the claim that language development is highly dependent on maternal input.

Not socialisation into child rearing, not the reality that child rearing is almost exclusively a female role etc etc but that it is highly dependent on input from the parent with the female sex for reasons of biology.

I think it’s a fairly obvious point that if one group of people are raised from birth preparing for a role as a parent and another are raised from birth preparing for a role as provider then the ones raised to parent will have a head start on parenting.

Like crunchy says this doesn’t always happen with women who have had abusive and neglectful childhoods themselves and this results in them sometimes not having the necessary skills...

Human mating is hormone dependent (which is why you shouldn’t take hormonal contraception - it interferes with good choices). Human parenting is hormone dependent (which is why birth should be as uninterventionist as possible).

I don’t think the science supports either of those claims!

Hormones have a role in both of those human behaviours... neither of those behaviours are hormone dependent.

That’s a kinda nature:nurture argument. It’s impossibke to seperate these things. You have to rely on the evidence available and that evidence is gained largely from societies where mothers are the maincarers.

Is it not more likely that, generally speaking, women are taught how to talk to babies and children and that men, who are taught that it isn’t their job, actually don’t have the skills but can learn them.

Completely anecdotal to me and DH but that's what I was thinking. DH is a quiet person in that "blokeish" way - if you talk to him, he's happy to have a conversation but if you don't, he's happy to sit in companionable silence. And he kinda transposed that to babies. Once he realised that his (conversational) input would benefit their language development and that it is a parental obligation to be an instigator not a passive responder, he went for it. But if I hadn't pointed it out, I think he would have been a long time coming to the realisation by himself.

I can't be the only outlier whose hormones did them no good whatsoever either as a baby or in selecting a partner nor even as a mum. I think you are overemphasizing the nature and disregarding the importance of nurture.

(I'm thinking that women are socialised to be more verbal.)

I've never understood the "feminist" choice of paying someone poverty wages to look after young children to go and earn poverty wages.

Nor have I.

Equally I've never understood the 'shared' parents who do everything 'equally'. Bollocks as well. And we know it.

I should have refreshed! Tinycitrus said what I think too.

Women are, the world over and in all languages, on average more verbal than men. Biology.

Falling in love is 100% a hormonal event.

Hormones have a role in sexual attraction. That is very different from choosing someone to partner with long term. That heady hormonal attraction wears off, and then it is about real being in love and sexual attraction. Which is why so many relationships who don't have kids to keep them together, fail at this stage.
And there are plenty of mums with adopted kids who love them completely.

are women genuinely more verbal though - im often curious as this is a well know fact and there seems to be evidence of it but TV and radio is full of men talking, parliaments full of men talking, men seem to have endless work meetings just talking away, yet on mat leave I could be quite isolated and have no one to talk to at all

Women are all over the world subject to sexism. Socialisation.

Do you see how simplistic that is?

Of course the actual reality is highly likely to be that all human beings and all human behaviours are the result of a complicated relationship between biology and the environment.

We are not really at a point where we can start teasing out these complex inter-relationships.

Just as men view a group made up of 30% women to be mostly women so do they view women talking far less than men do as women talking most of the time.
Zombie lies never die because men never stop telling them to one another.

There is nothing in science that supports the claim that failing in love is 100% hormonal.

These kinds of views often come from misrepresentations of science in media and books promoting an agenda.

A quick google tells us there are studies and articles going back to 2007 debunking the women are more verbal myth.

I don't know if this is out of date but at a time when I was studying such things I learnt that:

Small babies can hear higher pitched voices (female voices) better

Mothers can recognise their own newborn's cry and wake for that cry and not other babies cry very shortly after the birth of the baby.

Anecdotally my husband would sleep contentedly through babies crying in the night (and that was not waking rather than ignoring) whilst I would always wake. I did feel that I was more attuned to our small children although how much of that was evolutionary biology, how much the fact that I was around them and caring for them more and how much personality, I don't know.

That's because women are socialised to speak with higher voices. Men can easily speak to their babies using a higher voice. They choose not too.

Men ignore their newborn cry or if they are awoken by it expect that both parents equally take care of it, as in it was me last night, now it's your turn.

I speak with a low voice. Speak up I'm often told. As in, speak higher