'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

@NotHavingIt
She is doing more than reflecting on her personal experiences. There is no “I” in her essay when she says:

”…my hunch is that these profoundly un-scaffolded selves in campus politics - selves who furiously reject the idea that the world is not co-extensive with their defensively buttressed self-definition - are a long-term consequences of widespread early maternal deprivation. That is, of infants for whom there was no one consistent face looking back, at a stage where that reflection was of fundamental importance to the formation of an integrated psyche.”

”…I suspect that if research were conducted into the early infant experience of those fragile, un-scaffolded selves now demanding an institution politics of recognition you would find attenuated, interrupted or absent maternal relationships (for example via very early daycare) strongly represented.”

“In other words, that somewhere near the root of the gender-self-identification movement is a profound lack of early maternal regard. And that this spurs angry demands for what are in effect recognition reparations - just delivered by law, policy and institutions rather than mothers. And, thus, that the politics of recognition, and of “debating trans people’s existence”, is in part a long-term consequence of erasing the psychic work mothers do and pretending we can have a social fabric without it.”

Its quite clear that she has diagnosed a societal problem as caused by bad mothers daring to work and use childcare, and yes while she isn’t directly saying that the solution for this problem is for women to stay home and raise babies the subtext is that if this is the cause, then to fix the problem we would need to eliminate the cause - working mothers.

I'm not sure how old you are, but having a P/T or Saturday job from the age of 12 was a great and empowering thing - it enabled you to earn some money which you could spend on what you liked ( which you are in favour of, no?). It gave me skills and confidence. I've worked in markets; shops; babysitting; in a bed and breakfast ( which I did before school each morning), all sorts......

One of the issues which Harrington talks about is a generation of young people who seem to need whole layers of extra scaffolding in order to feel safe or to function. See the 'safe space' culture in universities. Young people are looking to instutional structures for parenting and protection - even in their twenties and beyond.

There has developed a lack of resilience and an inability to resolve issues inside of oneself - everything is projected onto oppressors and onto others, and one is positioned as a victim. Requiring safeguarding measures and trigger warnings.

By the way, late teens and twenties is naturally the most fertile time for a woman...and this seems to be reflected by males finding women of these sorts of age the most attractive ( no matter their age). Obviously this is a mis-match with the contemporray women's desire for education, travel, professional development......though more so for the middle classes and more privileged women. working class men and women still tend to get married nad have children far earlier.

Mary Harrington talks about the trend for more privileged and elite women to rely on poorer women to do the childcare/housework jobs; even as far as paying poor women to be surrogates.

and I come back to this point again and again - even if women were not paid for their labour in the past, it is simply not true that the time was spent engaged in face to face time with kids. All the research points to exactly the opposite - today’s parents are far more engaged with their young children than in history - even working parents (mothers) who use childcare.

Exactly right.

I am in my 40s. No I don’t think it’s a good thing that 12 year olds are working, no. And it’s actually mostly illegal now so I don’t think I’m alone in that view.

it’s true that educated women have kids later. Because it’s actually the sensible thing to do - develop some skills and capabilities before you have kids so if your marriage breaks down (as almost 50% of marriages do) you’re not completely screwed. @NotHavingIt it sounds like you have had a successful and fascinating life despite some real setbacks but it’s really not the norm - the prospects for most 19 year old mothers are not great.

This topic clearly pushes buttons and makes people very angry - but it isn't intended to be a threat - even though it clearly is making people feel threatened. There is no right and wrong - there are just different viewpoints and experiences, and observations and reflections following on from that.

When one writes a book it is sometimes meant to act as a polemic - something to initiate debate.

I don’t feel threatened by it. I just think it’s a shit argument not supported by any actual cogent reasoning or evidence. So not much of a polemic really.

Well, I disagree! Having jobs and earning money at a young age can be very formative, and it is a shame , I think, that our culture has become overly focused on health and safety and excessive rules and regulations. It stifles enterprise, resilience, individual responsibility, and suffocates the taking of risk.

There have been many books over recent years talking about this sort of over protective, helicopter parenting culture. There was another excellent book 'The Coddling of the American Mind' a few years ago which looked at how this culture took hold on american university campuses around the 2010's and how it has impacted on campus politics.

This over-nannying has not resulted in more resileint mental health outcomes, though, quite the contrary, in fact. We are witnessing ever more mental fragility.

Yes, I was educated, informed, politically conscious and experimental. And somewhat foolhardy and willing to take leaps of faith.

It certainly seems to have triggered a determined and intense response, though.

Yes, @PurpleBugz I have a lot of time for Mary Harrington's critique of neo-liberal economic models, but I worry that it's too easy to adopt her views in support of a very conservative view of women, children, work and families.

I think this is why the women's lib movement of the 1970s (I was a teenage activist in it) focused on equality rights. I can still remember when women had to give up work on becoming pregnant, and I was a young teenager when women received equal pay for te same work as men.

We never got to looking at the whole STRUCTURE of work and society - that our system is organised around male bodies, and the male life-cycle. Women's bodies, and the female life-cycle have to be erased or squeezed onto the male structure.

For example, the point at which most "people" make big strides in their careers (if that's what they're doing) is in mid-twenties to early thirties. But this is also prime time for women to have their children.

So really, the "people" who are enabled by this pattern are actually men.

Yes, one can question the primacy of paid work in this model, but I've read too much historic literature (it's my professional field!) from past times when women were not permitted to work, or worked for very low wages (which went straight to their husbands) and I've read these outpourings of women wanting meaningful paid work. We all need meaningful appreciated work!

But we have to try to squeeze our bodies & what our bodies can do into a man-shaped society.

I'm not sure you actually read what I wrote, I think I was quite clear that women in agricultural work brought their kids with them.

You are also really imposing some modern perspectives. In the period we are talking about, the earnings went to the family. There was not the kind of individualistic lens we put on married couples or families, as if they are each separate economic units. The economic unit was firstly the family, and then above that it was structured differently than the modern economy.

It's very interesting to see this kind of approach to capitalism from what is supposed to be a feminist perspective. I'm used to being told that feminism has to be left wing. Though in recent times being pro-free trade and movement of labour seems to be seen as right wing, so I suppose we are living in a kind of flipped world.

What you've said here is that you won't consider the effects of maternal separation on babies and children, because of the implications for mothers.

Can you not see why that approach is bound to be toxic?

The economic unit was and still is the family, or household. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is who is paid for work and who has control over household income.

Any outside earnings did not go to “the family” but to the head of the household- eldest man. All money was legally his to spend as he wished. Morally, it was supposed to be for the good of his family, but reality didn’t always live up to the ideal.

Much outside work, women accompanied the paid male labourers but unlike them they were unpaid. On agriculture specifically male labourers were paid to scythe the harvest, but their women who gathered the sheaves, and set the stocks were unpaid. They only got gleaners rights- the right to stick a few grains in their apron after a full 16hr days work was done. Yes they took breastfed babies with them, but one of their number or an older adolescent would commonly be in charge of the infants as well as carrying and serving food to the men and women working the harvest.

Fisheries. The men went to sea and caught the fish. The women would repair nets whilst they were gone, and after they were back spend just as much extra time gutting, cleaning, and preserving the fish. The men then sold the fish, and so were paid for all their work and that of their women.

Potteries/kilns. Men were hired and paid on a per pot thrown basis. They would bring their women and elder children to work and the women and children would work as unpaid assistants thereby increasing the number of pots he could produce and therefore his pay. Women would cut and weigh the clay for each item, take finished pots and set them carefully where they would dry. Children would dip or handpaint on glazing. Children would also run for tools, sponges, fetch water for the wheel. He was the worker, if he didn’t go to work because he was dead, sick, drunk, injured they couldn’t show up and do their jobs for pay, because they work was considered worthless.

At this time, men could hire out their wives and daughters as domestic servants and any earnings would be paid to him, not the women doing the work.

Women only got what money their men gave them to spend. Women only had influence over their men’s spending decisions.

Again, this is the reality of the vast majority of women. Yes there were a few privileged women- widows of the merchant class or upper class heiresses that could earn money and own property. But most women were peasantry/working class, and life was not easy.

I’m not really applying a modern lens to history, I am questioning what seems to be a bit of rose tinting of the past. It wasn’t happy independently wealthy families a la a Jane Austen novel or Little Women film or regency romance whinging about the utter boredom and status obsession that comes from being not rich enough to be minted but rich enough to not have to work & live hand to mouth. Those books reflect the ‘squeezed gentry’- still an upper tier of society.

@AP5Diva "At this time, men could hire out their wives and daughters as domestic servants and any earnings would be paid to him, not the women doing the work. "

Damn - posted too soon. What source are you using for that claim? And what period are you talking about? It doesn't marry up with my reading.

But what are the effects of separation on babies? There is zippo evidence as far as I can tell - just a series of assertions mostly based on false representations of the way things used to be coupled with vague claims about primal maternal instincts. In fact the data that we do have says the opposite in that modern mothers spend more time actively engaged with their children than their forebears, despite also working. (That’s a separate issue that needs to be discussed for different reasons!)

Yes it’s an important topic that a load of bollocks is talked about regularly - the article in question here being a classic case in point.

Someone upthread compared MH’s writing to Just-So stories and I thought that the comparison was a very apt one. She doesn’t like the trans bollocks (I don’t either) - okay, fine. She clearly doesn’t like mothers working outside the home or using daycare. So she writes an article explaining that B leads to A, without presenting any actual proper evidence that I can see.

Last time I saw her on Twitter, she was banging on about how the wicked industrialist revolution caused rising infant and child mortality by forcing women out to work. I posted some very basic historical sources showing that infant and child mortality fell significantly during the industrial revolution in the countries where it was taking place (this is uncontroversially true and not really a subject of debate - it’s the biggest reason why populations rose so much during this period). She ignored me.

Big on waffle and poetic myth-weaving, low on historical, scientific or cross-cultural research.

Your point of view, of course.

I mentioned a book earlier which deals, in some ways, with some of the issues that Mary Harrington discusses - with excessive helicopter caregiving; over bureaucratic and institutionally administered 'safe spaces' and so on.

Here are a few points from that book ( The Coddling of the American Mind: How good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure)

1).Grant offers the following four rules for productive disagreement.
Frame it as a debate, rather than a conflict. Argue as if you’re right, but listen as if you’re wrong (and be willing to change your mind). Make the most respectful interpretation of the other person’s perspective. Acknowledge where you agree with your critics and what you’ve learned from them.”

2).A culture that allows the concept of “safety” to creep so far that it equates emotional discomfort with physical danger is a culture that encourages people to systematically protect one another from the very experiences embedded in daily life that they need in order to become strong and healthy.”

3).teaching kids that failures, insults, and painful experiences will do lasting damage is harmful in and of itself. Human beings need physical and mental challenges and stressors or we deteriorate.”

4).There’s an old saying: “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.”

I think Harrington's main point about institutionalised child care, with all of the rules and health and safety regulations, fixed schedules etc is that it sets up a certain kind of expectation about parenting/care-giving and how we feel safe in the world.

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Why-Love-Matters-by-Sue-Gerhardt/9780415870535

This is a good book for those looking for reading material on this topic.

This one too for some in depth science

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Neuroscience-of-Human-Relationships-by-Louis-J-Cozolino/9780393707823

Your brain on pseudoscience: the rise of popular neurobollocks (newstatesman.com)

I'll pass, thanks.

One thing about this whole situation is that it is so completely bonkers, that it's very tempting/easy to lay ones pre-existing concerns over the top. So:
-The devaluing of mother/child relationships and early years childcare
-neo Marxist infiltration of institutions
-neo liberalism
-hyper capitalism and the cult of the individual
-the eroding of the individual
-social media
-too much accountability/pressure on young people
-too little accountability or responsibility for young people
-the existence of rigid gender roles
-the erosion of rigid gender roles

Some of those listed may well be a factor, maybe they all are. Some of them might be a concern even if they aren't a factor in this. But giving in to the temptation to take an idea and run with it without real evidence just slips us further into this post-truthy morass.

Also- people have provided examples that a lot of attendants at gender clinics have a background of early years trauma (eg the loss of a parent). But you can't extrapolate from that that absolute loss of a mother=very big impact, to partial absence of mother (daycare) =proportionately bad impact. It may be a direct line. It might not. Like attachment parenting theory was partly based on the severe effects of extreme neglect (Romanian orphanage's)
I do think the mother child bond is important and should be supported much more by the way. But that's an argument that can stand alone.