Reddit reviews The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women

Part IV

Are mothers' issues really invisible?

Mothers' issues lack visibility in mainstream society as a feminist question, and within feminism... almost completely.

1. In society at large: The framing of mothers' issues in mainstream media is usually as "motherhood VERSUS feminism." Consider that in April 2012, NYT hosted a debate between prominent moms using exactly such a title. The media constantly pits feminism and motherhood as two opposing choices, mutually exclusive. That feminists are all about conquering the male domain, and "real women" know that's hurts women, because women are meant to be mothers. (See how insiduous that is!) That feminism promised women the whole world but failed to deliver because women want to be mothers and not icky manly feminists. That mothers must hate feminism and feminists must hate mothers, and the two groups' goals are wildly disparate. This mistake leads to a lot of antifeminism in mainstream society: if feminism is seen to be at odds with mothers, and most women are mothers, doesn't that mean feminism isn't really a movement for women at all? It also hurts mothers terribly, because as long as feminism is out of their reach and not in their corner, they are stuck within the patriarchy with no toold to fight it.
   
   
2. And feminists have fallen for that lie. Mainstream feminism seems a little blind to mothers' issues. Since mothers are so systematically denied voice and power everywhere, the ranks of feminists are filled with NONmothers even though the most women themselves are mothers - similar to how the ranks of feminism are filled with white, cis, middle-class, able-bodied women. This contributes to the invisibility of mother's issues in feminism. So for instance, the fact that the wage gap is mostly a motherhood penalty goes unrecognized; feminists keep talking about it as if it's just a "gender gap" (which it is not, for most part) - this hurts feminists because it's so easily refuted, and nothing gets fixed. "Reproductive choice" is reduced in feminist discourse to "the choice to not have children" only because the people setting the feminist agenda tend to be nonmothers - when really, should we not be examining to an equal or greater extent the other side of the abortion/contraception coin, the choice to BECOME a mother, and what happens to mothers in our society? Mainstream feminism also is home to a lot of old-guard second-wavers who, despite being seriously kickass in general, tend to speak about feminist motherhood in rather negative terms, essentially warning women not to get into, or 'too far' into, mothering because then you're hurting yourself and hurting feminism. Such hostility from feminists to motherhood is not new. The fact is that from the time Betty Freidan described The Problem With No Name, all domestic work and motherhood in patricular has become low-status work in feminist circles, as it has always been in the patriarchal world.
   
   So when it comes to mothers, our choices are too often between "individual women's rights but let's ignore mothers because they hurt feminism/they are too complicated/they invited oppression by choice/they're not really oppressed" and "all women must be mothers to put them in their place, and all mothers must be embodiments of angelic nurturing self-sacrificing womanhood". BOTH these positions buy into patriarchy and strengthen it.
   
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   Where Mothers' Issues Stand Today
   
   The mother-centered feminist movement is growing, but slowly. Blogs like Blue Milk, activist groups like MomsRising, and even some traditional media outlets are starting to get the ball rolling in the right direction for once (remember that article in The Atlantic about "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" and the many thoughtful responses to it? That was AWESOME).
   
   
   What feminism can/should do for moms:
   
   

• paid maternity AND paternity leave (it's important to get dads to shoulder their fair share of unpaid motherwork, also important not to give employers any reason to discriminate against women/mothers)
  
  
• socialized daycare (if we can pay taxes to fund armies, we can pay taxes to fund childcare, freeing up mothers to participate in paid work without worrying about childcare costs)
  
  
• recognition for caregiving work: retirement account supplementation and maybe even a stipend for all unpaid caregivers
  
  
• parent-centered approach to child-rearing: fighting for the right of parents to BE parents as well as gain respect from it - this will mean fighting capitalist structures in addition to patriarchal structures
  
  
  
  
  My plea is basically, MOAR PLEASE. Let's keep the momentum going. In particular, let's focus more attention on mothers' issues on the big online feminist sites which have become the loudest voices for feminism in our generation.
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  THE END
  
  
  Links to all parts of this essay:
  
  
• Introduction & Dealing with Objections
  
  
• Part II: Capitalist Oppression Faced by Mothers (& continued in Part IIb)
  
  
• Part III: Education Discrimination, Limited Access to Public Spaces, Disempowerment Within the Home, and Vilification of Mothers in Maintream Culture
  
  
• Part IV: Are Mothers Issues Really Invisible? and Where Mothers' Issues Stand Today
  
  
  

heres some quotes from leading feminists

>"The nuclear family must be destroyed... Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process." -- Linda Gordon

"Being a housewife is an illegitimate profession... The choice to serve and be protected and plan towards being a family-maker is a choice that shouldn't be. The heart of radical feminism is to change that." -- Vivian Gornick, feminist author, University of Illinois

"We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." -- Robin Morgan

"Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice." -- Andrea Dworkin

“In a patriarchal society, all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent.” — Catherine MacKinnon

"All sexual intercourse even consensual between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman." -- Catherine MacKinnon

"It is clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking this marriage. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of that institution." -- Sheila Cronin

"In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them" (Dr. Mary Jo Bane, feminist and assistant professor of education at Wellesley College, and associate director of the school's Center for Research on Woman).

"The end of the institution of marriage is a necessary condition for the liberation of women. Therefore it is important for us to encourage women to leave their husbands and not to live individually with men.... All of history must be re-written in terms of oppression of women. (from "The Declaration of Feminism," November, 1971).


An example of an entire book the the issue

Sarrah Le Marquand: It should be illegal to be a stay-at-home mum
Article talking about the juggle between motherhood and working saying its unequal. IMO very flawed arguments about "equality" in the family dynamic.

Joy byrant choosing her career over motherhood, which is all good

The vitriol and tone of this one is off putting

The good works and movement of feminism are dying. Choice? what year is this. A woman can go into any career shes interested in if she works hard (everyone needs to work hard to excel). many options of contraception, and an alarming rate of abortions increasing as well. what is not a choice nowadays? A woman wants to work? Do it, excel, improve the world. but there has to be a realization woman have an amazing magical superpower that brings new life into the world, and should be treasured. Theres even a separation within the groups now, just look at the prolife women being kicked out of the women march. This is not all women, but its growing and turning into something else.

This is nothing new and has been growing for years.