Victoria Smith (glosswitch) on mothers & family abolition

[ArabellaScott]

Excellent article.

'For all family abolitionists like to pretend that families are centres of isolation, there is nothing they hate more than the communities women form via their identities as mothers. Just look at Mumsnet.'

thecritic.co.uk/Dont-mess-with-mums/

That last paragraph is hilarious and devastating - she neatly shows how Sophie Lewis destroys her own argument. Brilliant.

So good.

Really brilliant piece of writing. Deserves an outing on the bigger traffic boards, not just here on the naughty step.

Thanks for the link to a great article.

Ultimately I think family abolition appeals to those on the left who are anti-feminist, pro-porn and pro-commercial surrogacy because mothers are such an enormous inconvenience to them. They pretend we are mindless hausfraus, chained to the Aga, when we are — alongside radical feminists and lesbians — one of the greatest threats to the “progressive” arm of the current backlash against women and children’s rights.

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "mummy issues".

Hm. I could cite several prominent anti porn/leftwing radfems who have expressed anti family, anti mother views. Given this last week of shite, though, I'll refrain.

That was a good read. Loved this:
"We are a massive obstacle to anyone proposing to “liberalise” childhood and put the bodies of children up for public ownership because we’re not afraid to declare this dodgy as hell."

Dodgy is a word I use increasingly as I look at the nature of so many individuals and groups holding forth about the need to remove safeguarding and alienate vulnerable children from their parents.

I work in child protection. I've noticed an increase in men wanting to take sole care of their very young children. These can be abusive men (it's the nature of the job that then vast majority of men you meet are abuse) who use the idea male/ female equality to push aside mother's.
Sometimes it's entirely appropriate but alot of the time it is men using the process to harass mother's.
We need to reclaim the importance of being women, of carrying a child in our bellies for nine months.

That's worrying, princessleah. The mother/baby (or mother/child) dyad is the strongest bond humans have.

I can't find any way to phrase a comment that won't get me deleted.

For some reason I'm thinking gosh this is reminiscent of a lot of the kind of communes that ended in social services involvement. And wondering why to people who wander in the wonderland of all this advanced philosophical wankery that children are 'things' with no feeling or inner life or needs, whose existence is for the benefit of the adults who are so very busy with themselves and their life choices and their self expression.

This all increasingly seems the premise of the not really very well.

People who think this style of parenting is a good idea are not putting the child in the centre of the decision.
It's all about the experience of parenting for the adults.
Whilst it's beneficial for children to have a network of loving supportive adult, not having a bonded primary carer isn't so good.
If shared care was so desirable and organic etc, step parenting would be a piece of cake.

the whole 'pregnancy can be a very interesting experience without necessarily any need to commit to parenting the product of your lovely theme park personal fulfilment ride' bit is equally sociopathic.

lefties do spend a lot of time thinking about how people ‘ought’ to behave don’t they?

are we ever going to get to a place where women routinely give birth with no expectation of caring for their child? Nah

and thank goodness

what a bleak world that would be (particularly for children)

It does seem that those who create these theories have likely not experienced pregnancy, birth and motherhood.

Or they'd understand better.

Oh yeah

i try not to go on about it because I know there are women here who haven’t borne children, both through choice and through infertility

but for me, right now, my relationship with my children is the most intense and important thing in my life

as they grow up and away that will necessarily change. But I will always have had this period, and it has transformed my life and my way of thinking

Excellent piece, as usual, from Victoria.

She's right to point out that we've barely moved away from children being institutionalised due to being born to poor or unwed mothers.

It feels as if women and children's rights are always being kicked back and forth between right and left wing men.

Struggled to read the article but it could be cause I skim read, I'm hungry and my mind is on the massive predicted electricity bill my business is about to get. I will have to get a ☕ and try again!

But I will agree with the premise don't mess with mothers. For me personally the thing that has opened my eyes to feminism, the patriarchy it was having children.

When it comes to them I am a force to be reckoned with and like others they have changed my life.

I'm never sure why society doesn't pay more respect and attention to parents and the family unit it's in the whole of society's interest for these to function well.

Agree.

I am a mother.

That's me you heard roaring.

I always think about this when we get discussions of the problem of motherhood and someone suggests the answer are groups of mothers banding together to raise kids communally.

Even in those cases, most of the time it doesn't turn out to be a long term stable solution.

Kibbutzes tried something similar too, and the kids grew up unwilling to do the same with their own children.

It's hard to understand, for me, how it is people can think it would be so easy to reconstruct a relationship that has been central since well before we were human beings. As if it has no solid biological and psychological basis built in.

As with the police and prison abolitionists, it's all based on people behaving ideally and has no solution to the problem of people who are selfish or violent or cruel. Yes, child abuse mainly occurs within families, but simultaneously family is the thing that protects most children from child abuse. The potential for the sexual and financial exploitation of children in a family-free society is staggering.

There are already huge ethical issues around surrogacy, selective IVF, selective abortion and adoption: can you imagine the ramifications if parenthood was something individuals could opt in and out of with no consequences (for the parent)? Children would become something you shop for. Why stay part of the motherhood group of a surly 10 year old with terrible behavioural problems if you could walk away and become one of the mothers of a fresh, adorable, perfect baby?

Totally.

It’s nonsensical if you apply it to the real world.

Newborns are really fucking full on, so being bonded to them through love/mammalian biology and/or legal or professional obligation is really the only thing that stops us leaving them under a bush (or eating them like mama cats).

Imagine if you were a team of 8, with none of the love and none of the obligation. It would only take a fortnight of relentless colic before you all found something better to do than wipe sick out of your hair.

plus imagine the personality disorders kids-on-a-care-rota would grow up to have? Even in the best organised, well resourced circumstances the lack of a primary caregiver can fuck a person up. It’s why they don’t do boarding schools for infants.

Two single mums with similar aged children in a reciprocal baby sitting agreement (with their own separate households) is about as close to child-share utopia as real-life is likely to get.

And that’s fine, because like Bernard said my relationship with my children is the most intense and important thing in my life and I wouldn’t want to replace that with a team time-share.

One of the beautiful things about motherhood is how the (mammalian?) urge to nurture and protect kicks in for other people’s kids too, especially as your own get older and need you less and you now have mother-experience to share.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1190759/Mighty-mothers-superhuman-strength-lift-1-400kg-car-run-schoolboy.html

If the mother-squad of 8 were all already mothers it might work out, but that rather defeats the point of the team 🤣