'Denying my Existence' - a piece by Mary Harrington

[NotHavingIt]

Mary Harrington's world view has very clearly been revolutionised by her having become a mother, hence her interest in, and focus on, the effects of socialised childcare in 'Feminism Against Progress' and here, in this piece, on the postulated effects of maternal deprivation on developing identity.

As ever, speculative and exploratory - but certainly interesting.

https://open.substack.com/pub/reactionaryfeminist/p/denying-my-existence?r=clsg2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

An extract from the linked article

“Psychologists commonly measure the health of attachment through <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/PM2NM/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22675397/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">two dimensions: anxiety and avoidance (the latter meaning a resistance to intimacy). To score lower on each dimension is better: Healthy bonding is neither anxious nor avoidant, hence the phrase secure attachment. In contrast, an insecure bond can involve someone being anxious but not avoidant, avoidant but not anxious, or both. (The terms psychologists use to describe each category are fearful, preoccupied, and dismissing, respectively.)
Unfortunately, insecure attachment <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/PM2NM/www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/04/insecure-attachment-style-intimacy-decline-isolation/673867/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">is becoming more and more common. According to a 2020 analysis in the journal Emerging Adulthood, over the past two decades, successive groups of studied college students have <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/PM2NM/journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2167696820962599" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">shown an increasing likelihood of experiencing one of the insecure “styles,” rising from 61 percent of them during 2002–06 to 71 percent during 2016–19. One particular insecure style—<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/PM2NM/www.researchgate.net/profile/Kyle-Murdock/publication/235953873_Predictors_of_Romantic_Relationship_Formations_Attachment_Style_Prior_Relationships_and_Dating_Goals/links/5b90183c299bf114b7f86872/Predictors-of-Romantic-Relationship-Formations-Attachment-Style-Prior-Relationships-and-Dating-Goals.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">avoidance—is associated with a greater preference for singlehood. That tells us that the underlying problem is chiefly one of greater <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/PM2NM/www.researchgate.net/profile/Kyle-Murdock/publication/235953873_Predictors_of_Romantic_Relationship_Formations_Attachment_Style_Prior_Relationships_and_Dating_Goals/links/5b90183c299bf114b7f86872/Predictors-of-Romantic-Relationship-Formations-Attachment-Style-Prior-Relationships-and-Dating-Goals.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">avoidance.”

Actually rates of children's cancer have been increasing steadily for decades so that is one measure by which things actually may have been better in the 70s. Cause? Unknown. But there it is.

Apologies! No idea what happened with my attempt at a copy and paste of a couple of paragraphs from that article!

That is sad and intriguing @aloris .

I think that child and adult mental health are significantly worse too at the population level.

If it were readable the extract from the article explains that increasing numbers of people have an insecure attachment style.

Mary Harrington is literally trying to coerce women to stay home with their babies/children by telling us that without our 24/7, twenty years of constant maternal regard, mirror of self, scaffolding of love hocus pocus, our children will grow up with no sense of identity and might even (gasp!) think they are transgender! (The horror)

Is that the real value of women? To make sure children grow up to be cisgender? While men get every other responsibility, all the money, and all the power on the planet?

Being a top surgeon is an “ego stroker”? What did I just read?

I don’t think any solution that prioritises women as a class being subservient to an idealised version of child rearing is good or healthy for anyone. Far more important for men to step up in the domestic sphere than entrenching the inequalities in the workplace imo.

Completely agree, Stealth Banana. I can't believe it's 2023 and we're back to talented,, capable women being sneered at for selfishly stroking their egos by (gasp) working. Don't they know the only truly feminine pride is on their husbands' and sons' worldly achievements?

But I don't think anyone is suggesting that women should not work or have jobs or occupations outside of the home; but wouldn't it be good if they need only work part-time when the children were small, or even later - if that is what what would work better for them and their situation?

The pendulum always swings back and forth.

The drive to eliminate all sex based differences, or the attempt to, has not necessarily been an unadulterated good for women, either. In fact I think the attempt to deny sex based differences is partly what has led to the growth 'gender identity' theory. The problem with that, though, is that sex based differnvces are real and are especially important for women and girls -as we are now discovering.

Men "stepping up" sounds great in theory and there ar indeed some of us fortunate to have male partners who have done this in ways they have been able - whilst also permitting us to take time out to be with younger children and even to pursue or train for new future career paths.

But even with the most willing husband/partner in the world the maternal urge is just that - and is often a stronger, fiercer creature than the male equivalent.
There are sex based differences, this is clear. Equality does not have to mean we are all the same, with the same needs; at its truest it recognises differences and then seeks to accommodate them.

She's not trying to tell anybody to do anything.

She's a thinker; a philosopher. She's posing questions and making observations; she's exploring ideas, and in doing so is pushing buttons that trigger quite strong responses in people.

The thing is though that mothers and small children always have been dependent on someone, the father of the children, the mother’s parents, wider extended family, community, the parish, the state. Independence is an illusion which dissipates for most of us the moment we are holding our babies.

To your argument about freedom to divorce I accept what you have seen but I say in my circles I know couples with children who cannot afford to do that, they are dependent on two incomes. A woman would have to have a very high income in order to be able to support herself and her children because housing costs are now so high.

I know women who even though they worked were forced out of jobs they loved into lower paid, less secure work doing fewer hours or unsociable hours after separation because of the logistics of being a mother with an ex looking for an opportunity to make life difficult made it impossible to continue, school runs, school holidays, child illness etc

Paid work is not liberating for many, maybe the majority of women who find ourselves on minimum wage, maybe zero hours contracts, variable shift patterns etc

If you want to be home with your children it is not having to do paid work outside the home which feels like liberation.

“The drive to eliminate all sex based differences, or the attempt to, has not necessarily been an unadulterated good for women, either. In fact I think the attempt to deny sex based differences is partly what has led to the growth 'gender identity' theory. The problem with that, though, is that sex based differnvces are real and are especially important for women and girls -as we are now discovering.”

This ☝️

I think this is a pretty big, sweeping generalisation that you’ve made in service of women being pushed into bearing the burden of child rearing whether they want to or not. It’s totally unclear to me what this maternal urge is (outside of some hormonally driven stuff in the first year or two) as opposed to women being conditioned to believe they need to bear the brunt of bringing up children.

But how is the answer to the problem you identify in para 3 to push all women back into the home? Rather than, for example, to get shit men to stop being shit (and there are so many ways society allows them to be so)? It reeks of “it’s inconvenient for men so women need to step off”. I don’t want to live in a world where women are not top surgeons (the reason we have such appalling bias in medical diagnostics is due to the lack of them), execs or even hedge fund managers (who after all are generating the returns that will support the pensions of older women). Do you?

the whole thing just reeks of tradwife misogyny to me.

A good point Persephone about our essential inter-dependence; in fact this is one of the core themes in Mary Harrington's writings. none of us is truly independent; and especially when we have children we have to depend on others for support ( fathers/parents/childcare/state benefits)

We increasingly look to the State to meet all of our needs - but this comes with its downsides too - and is one of the issues that Harrington discusses whe she talks about the psychological effect of a generation of children being brought up in institutonalised settings, with rules and regulations; health and safety, less personalised care; more risk averse; less exploratory.

The issue of a generation of university students feeling they require safe spaces - where they can take shelter from ideas, or where they can be shielded from intellectual challenge or upsetting thoughts......the university campus becomes the safeguarding mother whho is supposed to cater to your needs and protect you from harm.

Nobody is trying to force anyone back anywhere. We are exploring ideas; comparing notes; reflecting on lived experiences.

With the passage of time we change, we come to recognise more core values; hopefully we learn to live with an acceptance of certain realities and limitations, and in doing so we become more emotionally stable and resilient.

Misogyny is also about not recognising, or valuing, the more female roles; denigrating them; putting them down. Misogyny is also about pretending that women are just like men -with all of the same drives, desires and needs.

Most women have children. Having children changes your life - and this is not necessarily the awful, bad, negative experience that some people portray - whereby women are victims of their biology and the roles that tend to stem from that. Having children and a family can also be one of the most rewarding aspects of life - more important than many things at the end of the day.

That is not to nsay tat everyone has to have children and a family; or organise their family life in the same way

Most women have children. Having children changes your life - and this is not necessarily the awful, bad, negative experience that some people portray - whereby women are victims of their biology and the roles that tend to stem from that. Having children and a family can also be one of the most rewarding aspects of life - more important than many things at the end of the day.

curious as to why this statement doesn’t apply equally to men?

I don’t want to push all women back into the home, I don’t think that is what Mary Harrington is arguing either.

I do think we need more honest conversations about this topic though. I think that we were sold a lie that we could have fulfilling careers, be independent and be happy in our roles as mothers with happy children. I suspect the reality is not like this for most mothers. I would like to add that motherhood should be, in my opinion, a choice and not an obligation.

“curious as to why this statement doesn’t apply equally to men?”

Biological sex differences which we have tried thus far unsuccessfully to suppress and pretend don’t exist.

But what ARE these biological sex differences that make such an impact? Genuinely. Even all the research on post partum hormones shows that when a man becomes the primary carer of a baby they experience similar changes.

I think what makes a difference is much more socialised than biological (with the obvious exceptions of pregnancy & giving birth, along with breastfeeding).

you may say that you don’t want to push women back into the home but if (a) women are apparently so biologically better equipped to stay home and (b) children are apparently hideously disadvantaged by being cared for by other than a primary parent, that’s the impact of what you’re arguing for. And it’s disingenuous to argue otherwise.

Men don't get pregnant ( well, not yet...but they're trying); men don't give birth, men don't breastfeed.....there are hormonal and accompanying psychological changes connectd to all of the above. This is true in most species.

Of course having children changes life for men too, certainly if they stick around and are involved. But even after divorce, it is mostly women who seek full time, or certainly most of the time, child custody.

It is their mothers that men dying in war, or through accident have often been heard to call out for. It was " Mum" that my son would shout out in the night when having a night terror ( even though he is equally as close to his father) 'Mother' is a primal experience. "Father' is a different type of primal experience.

It’s totally unclear to me what this maternal urge is (outside of some hormonally driven stuff in the first year or two) as opposed to women being conditioned to believe they need to bear the brunt of bringing up children.

Well it's totally clear to me what it is. And I speak as someone who had assumed I would resume full time work without a backward glance, and who had a hands-on partner (who says fatherhood changed his life).

For what it's worth, I'm not a huge fan of Mary Harrington and find her writing almost as obtuse as Judith Butler's at times. I also think we need to be very, very careful not to idealise the past. But I have to say, I'm still enormously grateful to have spent my childhood in the 60s and early 70s (for reasons outlined by previous posters so I won't repeat them) and I think it's important to talk about that and reflect on it, however uncomfortable that might be.

But @Floisme isnt that the point? That we cannot extrapolate our individual experiences into some kind of “women are like X” generalisation? It’s a huge leap from “I felt like this” to “all women feel like this as a result of biological differences”.

I honestly think a good primary caregiver is what a child needs.so in that I agree with Harrington. But that is all I agree with. I can see her leaning towards women at home raising kids and I reject that as the only solution.

Maybe 2-3 primary caregivers is enough. The point is a child needs secure attachment.

Places like a nursery with high staff turnover and multiple staff working with the children is not meeting the child's attachment needs. I've worked in a nursery and I quit after 2 weeks I always say they are battery farms for kids.

I argue this doesn't mean mothers have to stay home. a) a father could care for and form a strong bond with the child. Equal pay for women so the default isn't mum has to stay home due to finances. and more uptake of shared parental leave is needed.

b) a nanny or childminder or grandparent/aunt etc would meet this need of not a parent so long as it's not swapping and changing caregiver all the time.

Childcare is very low paid. High responsibility, hard work and high skilled if you are good at your job. When I started in childcare there was loads of free training provided by the LA now there is bare minimum and no support.

I've also briefly been on job seekers allowance years ago and know a few people who have needed this support. The work coaches push caring and childcare when looking for work. Not that there is anything wrong with people on job seekers that's not what I'm saying but when you are being pressured to take a job you may not want (say you are qualified in another field of work but can't find work) you are not going to be fully committed to being excellent at your job for minimum wage. This then adds to high staff turnover in childcare.

There is also no real career progression in childcare. I love what I do and can't leave the work but I know I could 'do better' I could earn more and get a job that comes with more respect but I choose not to. Not many people with degrees would choose a lifetime on minimum wage.

So we need better pay for childcare. Better support. And as a society we need to value it for the important job it is for these kid's futures.

Obviously also the child needs quality parenting on top of quality childcare. So that means better support for mental health and PND etc.

Children with SEN need better support at school. This would benefit both the SEN kiddos and give teachers more time to give to the quiet self conscious well behaved kiddos. Support for the siblings of SEND kiddos should not be overlooked either as a home with a high needs child impacts everyone in it.

And something needs to be done about bullying in schools. And the obsession with appearance. And the pressure sexually on girls.

Tackle the porn problem.

Possibly there is something in the influence of social media. Although I would argue quality parenting would mean limiting/stopping the amount of time spent in these harmful online spaces that are so prevalent now.

And here concludes my personal opinion on how society can produce happy functioning adults from the children we produce without sentencing women back to the home

Thanks for sneering. My point isn't that it's bad for women to be surgeons or CEOs but that as a goal for women as a group, that is not the top priority compared to the need to support women's ability to keep a hand in the workforce. If another woman is a CEO, that does not clearly benefit me! Actually my experience with women bosses was that they were just as selfish as men bosses and not at all concerned with the welfare of other women in the workplace.

In fact I think the attempt to deny sex based differences is partly what has led to the growth 'gender identity' theory.

Groan, so now it’s feminism’s fault that transgender people exist! This thread has turned into a how many ways can we blame women for daring to leave the nursery for the state of the world today thread.