25 Wednesday Aug 2010
Posted in linkspam
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Via my friend Diana comes this great graphic commentary by indexed
Venn diagram showing overlapping circles labelled “children” (left), “seen and not heard” (middle), and “women” (right).
The overlaps read: childen + seen and not heard = behaved, and women + seen and not heard = objectified.
The title of the post at Indexed read don’t let anyone shut you up.
19 Thursday Aug 2010
Posted in linkspam
This week, I bring you blue milk, an Australian-based blog on things feminist and things parent+child related. As the blog tagline puts it: “thinking + motherhood = feminist.” We are also offered the following image of the blog author.
I discovered blue milk a few weeks ago, thanks to my friend and fellow blogger Molly @ first the egg. Why read it? Because it challenges the notion that involved parenting = “perfect” parenting, and that involved parenting (read: involved mothering) is somehow antithetical to feminist consciousness. Some examples.
From On the backs of other women.
I initially thought this little post was going to be about community. About how much I have come to cherish the school community particularly, that we are now a part of, and how some mothers at my daughter’s preschool have been saving my arse lately, over and over again, and for pretty much nothing in return. But the big fat gender factor tells me that this post isn’t actually about ‘community’.
Discounting the teachers at the Montessori preschool and the kids’ father, it takes the efforts of five other people caring for our two children to allow me to be at work three days a week. Pick-ups and drop-offs and naps and cuddles and dinners and baths. Only one of those five are paid for it, and all of them are women.
From Guest Post: Being a feminist and raising ‘a lad’ (from her “10 questions about feminist motherhood” series). Answers from Matari.
1. How would you describe your feminism in one sentence? When did you become a feminist? Was it before or after you became a mother?
I became a feminist at the age of 11 when I was abused by my stepfather. I learnt to call myself a feminist when I realised that as a woman, my abuse was nothing unusual and, in fact, represented the lack of power that women have in our society.2. What has surprised you most about motherhood?
How attached I was to my son as soon as he was born – I almost expected to be able to fit him into my schedule and carry on as before. But no, that was not the case AT ALL – I instantly became responsible for a little life that, if was injured in any way, would affect me for the rest of my life.3. How has your feminism changed over time? What is the impact of motherhood on your feminism?
My feminism became more entrenched, as – with every other event in my life,- I recognised that as a mother I would (again) be a marginalised woman, exacerbated by being a single parent.
From Why attachment parenting NEEDS feminism.
This is probably the right time to admit that not only am I an attachment parenting type – our children are co-sleepers, including the older one who is now five years old; I breastfeed the toddler; and we have more slings than vehicles in our house – but for the record, I am also a mother who works part of each week outside the home. I have been separating from our toddler since before he was a year old. And to be perfectly honest, Wootan’s advice doesn’t really rattle me. I have done my share of soul-searching over the last five years about being a working mother and I feel confident that our decisions have been good ones, and what’s more, that the children are ok too. But I know Wootan’s position will distress many other women in my position; I know a few years ago it would have thrown me for a loop. And while I am sure Wootan is a very caring doctor, anyone who makes a statement like that, about how women should live their lives, deserves a little scrutiny.
And for those of you who aren’t so interested in the politics of parenting, but possibly interested in the politics of parenthood (and non-parenthood) in our society, from The politics of nappy buckets.
But how insulting is the prioritising of working families to people without children? Don’t they consider themselves part of family too? Aren’t they contributing to the community? Don’t they have the right to some priority in policy planning and fiscal generosities? The term ‘working families’ creates an unnecessary division, an us and a them. It undermines the goodwill people without children might otherwise feel towards people with children. Sure, raising children contributes to a ‘social benefit’ that all of society enjoys, and its costly for the individuals raising those children, but telling everyone you’re prioritising ‘working families’ must surely niggle away at the cohesiveness of parents and non-parents. It also makes women feel like their only value is in childbearing. Although, ‘deliberately barren’ is such a ludicrous term, such an unfortunately revealing comment on the right-wing agenda that however hurtful it is to women it is also kind of soothing to see Heffernan and those like him exposed so badly.
Enjoy! And see you next week for another installment of in love with new blogs.
12 Thursday Aug 2010
Posted in think pieces
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This post is inspired by a really interesting post/comment thread at The Pursuit of Harpyness about children in public spaces (once again!) and how our behavior toward them and their parents relates to social norms and expectations.
First, some background to the point/observation I want to make.
One of the commenters wrote, about what was so frustrating about children in public spaces for them,
To give a concrete example, one norm that I find children violate way more than adults has to do with personal space. I really, really don’t like being touched by strangers. Brushing past someone and so on is fine but someone coming up to me and deliberately touching me without my permission is completely not okay with me and generally speaking that syncs with cultural norms so I don’t have to enforce it too much — with *adults*. Children touch people all the time and if I’m in a public space and someone else’s kid starts climbing on me or messing with my things, that’s not okay and it’s ultimately the fault of the parent or caretaker. I don’t feel I should have to explain to a child why they shouldn’t be pulling on my hair. That’s not my job. They need to stop and if their parent won’t stop them, I will, and that’s that.
To which I responded
I do think it’s important to think about how to explain to children that it’s important to ask before touching. Americans are generally schooled to be touch-averse (and above and beyond cultural norms there are people who are personally touch-averse for a variety of reasons) and for children living in American society, it’s important for them to learn that this is a social norm.
Followed by spark, who observed that
I understand that society has evolved so that it’s inappropriate to tell a stranger’s child to stop pulling your hair (baraqiel’s example), but it shouldn’t be. It takes a village etc.
To which I responded
I completely agree with you that it should be acceptable for any person to tell another person (in this case a child) “please stop touching me, it’s making me uncomfortable.” We teach children that they have a right to decline touch that makes them feel uncomfortable and I think it’s perfectly okay for an adult to speak up for themselves in exactly the same way. I see that as showing the child that they (the child) also has permission to determine who touches them and how.
This exchange got me thinking about parents and children — and about women and children especially. About how women are socialized in so many ways to feel that they don’t have the right to bodily autonomy in interpersonal relationships. Especially interpersonal relationships that involve sexual intimacy (rape culture anyone?) and in relationships that involve children. Their own children or anyone else’s. Women — and I realize I’m generalizing here, but the point I’m making is about cultural norms — often feel like the don’t have a right to say no: no to getting pregnant, no to staying pregnant, no to giving birth, no to parenting, no to care-taking. Over and over and over again in our society, women especially are told that these roles are their biological and social destiny.
Consider the example that the commenter, baraqiel, gives: a child coming up to you and somehow invading what you feel is your personal space. And the fact that, somehow, baraqiel feels unable (or at least likely to be socially sanctioned) to tell the child “hey, please don’t touch me.”
We, as a society, try hard (at least in theory!) to teach children that it’s important for them to reject “bad touch,” that they have a right to bodily autonomy and that they can assert that right in public spaces. Negotiating touch is an important skill for all of us to learn, since it’s not an issue that goes away when you become an adult. Young people are far from the only offenders when it comes to different levels of desire for and toleration of interpersonal touch. A society-wide conversation should and could be happening around what it means to physically interact with others, to give and receive informed consent for touch in a variety of everyday situations.
Yet despite this robust discourse (within feminist circles at least) about the importance of consent when it comes to touch, it seems that adults feel powerless to say “no” to children in public spaces. Or defensive and resentful when they are in a position of having to say no. Even when the thing to which they are saying “no” is something which, if done by another adult, they would quite readily say “no” to (i.e. another adult touching their hair uninvited, for example). So the question is: why? Why does it feel so impossible to make a request that a child stop doing something that is freaking you out, invading your space, making you feel uncomfortable in your skin? Why does it seem like the only possible responses are complete inaction or extreme action (i.e. removal of the child from the area completely)?
The more I think about this, the more I see it as an unfortunate, radical extension of the privitization/segregation of children/childhood. The idea that the only “appropriate” adults to interact with a young person in any direct, meaningful way, is the parent or a designated parent-substitute (i.e. teacher, childcare provider). In a pinch. Although even they are often suspect. Children are, in the “normal” course of things, supposed to reside in private, segregated spaces such as homes and schools — not out in the world of every day society. Children, thus, are treated as an Other who because of their segregation need interpretation and mediation — instead of just being in the world, they must be monitored, translated for, guarded, controlled. They have been removed from the human community and set apart — and their introduction into human society is an event, rather than the normal course of business.
As a child not in school during school hours (I did not attend any institution of education until college) I experienced first-hand how upsetting it was to adults that children might move about the world more freely, yet responsibly. You got noticed. And because you were noticed, you were under heightened scrutiny; an oddity.
And because you’re anomalous, you’re treated as an unknown, as Other. Something to be both highly protected/revered and highly suspected/contained. Never just: yourself.
And thus, adults, interacting with these Others somehow feel disempowered: unable to say “no” and also unwilling to say “yes.” (Because who wants to say “yes” when you feel like you’re being coerced, when “yes” is the only option?)
It seems to me like we need a new approach to understanding children in society, a new approach to interacting with these growing, learning beings that fully acknowledges not only their personhood but also our own: that does not require that we interact with them only as two-dimensional caregivers (selflessly giving of ourselves with no ability to set personal boundaries) or keep our distance.
Which really just brings me back to the radical idea that, rather than treating children as a separate species, we treat them as indiividuals who — like many adults! — have specific emotional, physical, or mental needs, but who belong to the human community and can be asked to respect the boundaries of others.
Remember: When you tell a child “that doesn’t feel good to me, please stop” you’re showing them that part of being human is having the ability to set boundaries, to protect yourself. And by expecting them to respect that request teaches them that this is a request you can make that other people have the ability to listen to and respond to that request without the world falling apart. To know that this is an exchange you can have with strangers on the bus, or a grown up at the grocery store (someone who can be polite, yet firm about their needs) is going to help grown them into persons who will, in turn, be able to respect such requests in the future, and make similar requests for themselves.
Giving them the knowledge that they have that agency — the agency to respond to the needs of others with care, and to have their needs met with equal respect — is a powerful feminist act.
06 Friday Aug 2010
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In response to my last post about the children-as-people thing, my awesome friend Laura Cutter sent me this thoughtful email, which I repost with her permission. I think it’s super-important to underscore the fact that arguing that children (and by extension, their caregivers) are marginalized in our society doesn’t mean that people (read: women) who are not parents (by accident or choice) don’t face enormous social censure.
No one’s interests are served, I’d argue, by turning this into a case of oppression olympics, trying to parse out whose pain is more exquisite than the next person’s. Instead, we need to place the blame where it belongs: fucked up cultural norms that demand one single best way for women and young people to be in the world and be in relationship with one another. The human species is just too awesomely diverse for us to waste our time on that sort of one-size-fits-all crap.
Without further editorializing, here’s Laura.
I really appreciate your post from today – I find it heartbreaking when various groups (who are themselves often marginalized) insist on further marginalization. In my more pessimistic moments, I wonder if our biological minds, which from very early evolution needed to separate, delineate, and categorize everything from people to plants in order to survive, are somehow on overdrive – pushing us apart. That being said. One of the things that really struck me about your post and the links you added was this:
Our generation is one that is rapidly moving towards a time where some of us are choosing to have children. That is right now, the present. But what everyone seems to be forgetting is that many of our ideas and experiences were not formed in this cultural moment. Just as some of us remember feeling marginalized as children, others of us remember being told constantly that we would and should expect to have a child/children. I remember feeling livid as my protestation that I never wanted children were brushed aside by adults who were certain that they understood me better than I did. I am very aware that my own community and intellectual life is quite rarified – it is for many of us. But the underlying assumption to many of these arguments seems to be that it is so acceptable not to have children that the women who now choose to have them are the new marginalized poster child (red is the new black?). Many of us still must validate, on a daily basis, our choice not to have children. We experience invasive, insulting, manipulative, and inappropriate responses from people who, in other circumstances, would never pass judgment on another person’s choice. This is my point: both choices are radical. Both choices carry tremendous cultural significance and personal meaning. In my world, it is still radical to choose not to become a parent, and I carry with me all the baggage of years spent being told that my choice was wrong. But I understand and respect that for many other women, the decision to choose parenting means other sacrifices, for which they, in turn, are judged.
* * *
I feel like it happens this way (as my friend Marie-Laure says, “tell me a story”): I have kids and you don’t. In you, I see all of the people who told me that having children was a waste of my talent, a second choice, a vote for the patriarchy. I also see all of the freedom and choices that you have in your life and think it’s a little unfair and that your life must be easier than mine. In me, you see everyone who told you that you were born to have children, that it is natural and beautiful, that you would never be complete without them, that you will change your mind. I also see all of the social acceptance and special treatment that you have in your life and think it’s a little unfair and that your life must be easier than mine. But of course, that’s not who you are and that’s not who I am, but when we (especially women), have these debates, we bring into them all of this damage and judgment and project on each other with our own insecurities. I do think this parent/not parent issue really is a false dichotomy and everybody knows that progress is never made when everyone is just in fighting.
04 Wednesday Aug 2010
Posted in think pieces
I don’t know why, but for some reason this latest round of judgmental exclusivity over children in public spaces has really gotten to me. It’s not like I haven’t seen it happen before and it’s not like I thought I’d never see it again. I’ve been a kid. I have kids as friends. I have parents as friends. Even though I will likely never have a child myself, I have lived and moved long enough in the world of families-that-include-young-people that my radar is up, reflexively, for the hate that inevitably showers down when those people do something our fucked up family-hating/family-idealizing (you thought these were separate camps in the childfree vs. parenting war? psyche!) feels is out of line.
What’s so painful to me is that I feel like this is so fucking simple — and should be even simpler for people familiar with feminist theories about how these dichotomies work. You can’t win. You choose not (or cannot be) a parent — particularly a mother? You’re vilified. You have kids — with a greater or lesser degree of deliberation? Suddenly a whole new world of discrimination comes crashing down upon you. Both sides of the coin interact with all other forms of prejudice and discrimination like physical and mental health issues, classism, sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.
We’re being played people. The system is fucked and the people who are existing in it can’t win if they play by the rules. And it’s intensely painful to me to see people I love and respect trash each other from both sides instead of working together to dismantle the expectations that surround them. About what it means to be a child. About what it means to be a parent. About what it means to be a family and have a fulfilling life (hint: you don’t have to be a parent to be a healthy, connected grown-up).
This is all by way of a blithering introduction to a few blog posts written in response to the latest in hating (sparked by a post by Mai’a on Feministe which I thought was purposefully combative but no less insightful for it). Most of these came via my friend Molly who happened to mention the blog Blue Milk (thinking+motherhood=feminist) in a post earlier today which sent me link hopping.
Violet @ Beekeeper & Schwartz | Oh dear.
When I was four, my mom’s friend’s husband was talking about how he didn’t like kids on airplanes and you fucking tool, I’m right here. I still hate that guy. And now, whenever I fly with Little Miss Beekeeper, my heart is in my throat for hours at a time even though she’s really well-behaved (and too small not to be, I’d add) even though no one has ever been anything worse than indifferent to her presence.
This, I have to say, makes my chest all tight. Because a part of me dies inside at the thought of four-year-old Violet hearing that asshole and internalizing that hatred of herself, so that now as a grown woman and as a parent she fears that all of the other passengers on the airplane are telegraphing hate toward her and her daughter. If that’s not toxic shit, I don’t know what is.
scatx @ Speaker’s Corner | Feminism/Feministe’s Problem with Mothers?
What is bothering me about this discussion is that for the first time, I saw firsthand on an issue that directly includes me and my life choices the way that feminists can be exclusive. And that was a disappointment for me. That was a HUGE disappointment.
Because part of what draws me to feminism is that most feminist activists are working to make the world more open, more inclusive, not less. So, if you think that I am trying to say that you need to have children, or like children, or whatever, I’m not.
What I am saying is that we live in a society and part of the social contract is that we put up with each other in public spaces, even if that means dealing with children, or poor people, or minorities, or men, or whomever gets under your skin. That’s my point. It’s about a society that includes everyone.
scatx puts her finger, here, on part of what’s so painful to me about these knock-down, drag-out fights over ageism. I came to feminism as someone already acutely aware of ageism (having been a young person who was routinely in spaces not designated especially/solely for children) and I came to feminism in part because of the way this experience exposed me to prejudice and marginalization. I involve myself in feminist politics because I believe in the power of feminist ideas and feminist activism to make the world a better place for all people. And I hate it when shit like this forces me to remember how easy it is for marginalized people to turn around and replicate the bullying and exclusionary behavior they so often have to deal with on the flipside. It’s like having your lover suddenly say something transphobic, or your best friend crack a racist joke.
I get why it happens, but that doesn’t make it easy to acknowledge.
bfp @ flip flopping joy! | last thoughts on motherhood stuff at feministe.
Right now at feministe, people are backtracking. Saying that maybe mai’a isn’t such a bad mother, now that I’ve read more of her posts. But somehow they are coming up with ideas for commenting policies that revolve around “guest bloggers should not assume we know their lives” or “guest bloggers should be more aware of who they are writing for.”
And it’s kind of astonishing to me that the very simple solution of asking questions for context may be a responsibility that commenters can handle quite easily is not really being discussed.
While I believe that a blogger (the same goes for any writer) is responsible for her own work, I am also disturbed by the notion that it is the writer’s responsibility not to offend, rather than the commenters responsibility to be courteous to a guest who has been invited into their space — for the express purpose of introducing new voices into the conversation. It reminds me of the kerfluffle about whether gay actors could play straight roles, and about whether trans folks are responsible for how they are read.
People who step outside of the norm are routinely more scrutinized and held to stricter standards for communicating their views than are people who more or less fit within the mainstream. Someone who expresses a minority viewpoint is more often condemned for their “tone” or for using nonstandard language, for not being and effective ambassador for their point of view. While I’m a long-time advocate of not being obscure for obscurity’s sake, so that you can then feel smug an elitist about being smarter than all the plebeians who fail to understand you (yes, dude in my undergrad creative writing class, I’m thinking of you!) I am also suspicious of people who refuse to engage the minute an idea or the language used to express it goes outside their comfort zone. Particularly if those people then proceed to make fun of the person they’ve refused to listen to for not using BBC English or whatever the benchmark of normality and authority is.
And finally, because Molly brought it up in a comment on my last post about this, let me be clear: I don’t think this is primarily a feminist problem. Like hating on women who are overweight (or women who fit the cultural beauty norms), hating on children/parents (or hating on people who choose not to parent) are wider societal prejudices that, as feminists, I think we should seriously unpack before carrying unthinking into our lives as activists. There are plenty of awesome feminist parents, feminist not-parents, and feminist children out there in the world — and a huge part of modern feminist movement(s) have been about making the world a less hostile place for people who can’t or won’t fulfill the expectations of the ideal, self-sufficient adult. So this isn’t (in my opinion) about feminism, per se being hostile to families or children (or people who don’t parent). It’s about unthinkingly regurgitating the hostility that seeps through out skin as we move through a toxic culture without stopping to think if that’s really the orientation we want to have toward other human beings in the world.
Image: Statue of crying woman @ Flickr.com
03 Tuesday Aug 2010
Posted in think pieces
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Last week, while looking for something completely different, Hanna stumbled upon this post on corporeal punishment in schools from Teaching Tolerance: A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. I realize the post was published in May so that the link is a bit stale, but the comment thread was just too good a MSTing opportunity to pass up. The original post is a call to stop the practice of paddling in schools, which is still legal in twenty states. “Physical punishment is banned in federal prisons and medical facilities. It’s long past time to extend the same protection to our children,” writes the SPLC blogger. All well and good.
It’s the comments that really take the cake in that a number of them refuse to see the problem with being physically violent toward children as a “corrective” measure. Here are a few choice selections
By the fourth comment in, we’ve already resorted to the classic “it worked for me so obviously that’s what’s best for everybody” argument:
When I was young we got paddled in school. I was smart enough to know right and wrong and never once got paddled. My mother taught me better. With that being said, the “emotional” problems I got were only that I needed to behave or I would get paddled. My school did not do it right infront of the class they would take them out into the hallway and do it, but everyone knew what was going on and feared it happening to them. I believe this should still be legal in ALL schools. I can guarantee that children would behave better and, in turn, learn more.
In case a behaviorist argument isn’t swaying the crowd, someone else chimes in to suggest that children are incapable of rational discussion, moral reasoning, or compassion. Oh, and have we mentioned that hitting kids doesn’t do them any harm?
Have you ever tried to reason with a child? They don’t understand the way an adult does. I’ve spanked my seven year old son about 4 times in his life and he’s doing just fine.
But maybe not all children respond the same to physical punishment — perhaps it works better on black children than on white children.
In some cultures little Sally may receive a paddling and her whole life is ruined to where Davonte receives a paddling and it corrects his behavior. What is normal for some may be abnormal to others.
Not everyone is okay with the normalization of violence, as this comment shows
When we physically punish our community’s children, we teach them that it’s okay to hit when we’re angry. It’s okay for a man to hit his wife, okay for a child to hit a peer, okay to kick a dog–okay to use violence instead of dialogue to solve our problems.
To which someone responds with a theory straight out of Dobson.
Ah, but that is why a very disciplined adult is required for paddling to be effective. There is a universe of difference between a visibly angry and aggressive adult taking an object and striking a student with it and a very calm and controlled adult reasonably informing the student that they have done such and such a wrong and that the punishment is a few moments of pain (and I emphasize, it must be a FEW MOMENTS; lingering pain and soreness teaches a child that a reasonable adult inflicts suffering as a form of discipline and that is NOT the proper message) and a slight dose of shame because while the punishment must not be physically very painful, being bent over and spanked like a little child causes shame and shame, used properly and constructively, induces a desire in the child to avoid being shamed and thus, avoid the activity which caused them to be spanked and shamed. This is how a mature well-meaning adult physically disciplines a child for the child’s betterment.
This idea of a dispassionate adult rendering judgment on a child brings us right back to the defining narrative of Evangelical Christianity, with its dispassionate God who causes us intense pain and threatens us with abandonment in the name of our eternal salvation.
Causing human beings shame does not make them better people. Instead, it destroys their sense of themselves and cripples their ability to make meaningful, responsive connections to others. Punitive measures rarely give anyone (child or adult) greater understanding as to why what they have done has caused harm; instead, punishment teaches them to do better next time … and not get caught! As another anti-paddling commenter observes
I think the first thing we need to think about is how kids learn. What are they learing from being spanked or paddled by an adult? That hitting another person is okay? Many pro-spankers feel that pain associated with a behavior will teach a child to not do that behavior again. While that might be true for infants and toddlers, it is not the case for older children. In addition to that, for the pain/behavior association to work, the spanking must be done immediately so that the association is made. I’m thinking this isn’t the case in these schools.
The next thing to think about is what this does for the teacher- do pro-spankers feel that it gives them some sort of power over the kids? It is my opinion that if spanking/paddling a child is the only way you can get respect from children or feel powerful, you might have to work on your teaching skills.
Not that all of the anti-paddlers get full marks for discussion either, considering how quickly the specter of pedophilia come up in relation to spanking
People with SPANKING FETISHES work in occupations that give them access to children like hospitals, schools, boy scouts, etc. and over 2,500 teachers were punished in a 5 year period since 2000 for inappropriate sexual relations with our nation’s school children, and women teachers are sexually preying on children at an increasingly alarming rate, which is why PHYSICAL/CORPORAL PUNISHMENT OF CHILDREN IN SCHOOLS MUST BE ABOLISHED IMMEDIATELY!
While I’d assume at least some of the people who get off on physically assaulting children get off sexually as well as just enjoying the power rush, I also think it’s pretty damn simplistic to assume that all physical contact = sex!
Sadly, the “debate” over whether or not physical violence against children is every okay is nothing new. Americans have been arguing over the place of physical punishment in school since at least the 1840s, when corporeal punishment came under fire from reformers who protested its use against sailors, prisoners, slaves and children. While in America, at least, the slavery issue became a moot point several decades later (although race, as evidenced above, has hardly vanished from the discussion), I’d venture to suggest that violence is still endemic in all of these spaces. And I, like the reformers, raise questions about its appropriateness in any of them.
Image: A Scary Vintage Postcard @ Flickr.com
28 Wednesday Jul 2010
Posted in think pieces
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It seems I can’t help myself.
maia @ Feministe wrote a post yesterday about the freedom people in American culture feel to act on their prejudices against young people.
there is this weird thing in western culture, especially n american culture, where people/adults seem to believe that they have a right to discriminate against children.
recently, i was hanging out at a bar, when a friend called and invited me to come hang out for a few drinks and chill time as the sun came up. cool. then, i heard a bit of whispers in the background and the question posed to me: is aza with you?
ummm…what? why? does that matter? …im not a feminist ( yeah, i said it…shrug). but i dont understand people who claim to be feminist on one hand, and on the other hand think that children should be designated to certain public and private spaces, not mixing in ‘normal’ public areas, such as restaurants, stores, airplanes, etc. cause in us culture, when you create little reservations for children, you are really creating little reservations for mothers. it is the mother who will be sent away to take care of the child. and how is that supporting all women and girls?
The post, as has become predictable in these situations, attracted the good, the bad, and the ugly as far as commenting goes, weighing in with a comment thread that (as of this writing) clocks in at just under 550 separate posts. As Brandann Hill-Mann @ Women’s Rights Blog points out,
There is a conversation that needs to happen, where we discuss how children are part of our society, how they have a right to exist, to take up space. How we are here to protect them and teach them to exist in the adult world because they don’t yet understand how to navigate our world alone. But we can’t really have that conversation, because every time we do, someone has to assert that children just should not be in certain places because children infringe on their rights, ignoring the rights children should have, but don’t.
To demonstrate this, take a look at the wonderful post written by maia at Feministe about how to support parents in public spaces, and the 400+ (at the time of this writing) comments in it that have burst forth with numerous remarks about how children are unholy terrors in restaurants and ruining things for everyone else.
I’ve written about these issues on this blog repeatedly and at first I thought I would just pass this one by — I tried to ignore the comment threads and forget all the crap people were yelling at each other about children (notice how children themselves rarely get to participate in conversations about what would improve their lives or the lives of those around them??). But riding home on the T this afternoon I couldn’t get the hate out of my head, so I’m going to blog a few observations. Maybe that’ll help.
1) The specter of the “entitled” parent needs serious unpacking. I’ll admit right upfront that I’ve used this specter myself. “Oh no,” I’ll reassure someone, “Of course I’m not talking about those parents when I’m talking about children’s rights. I’m talking about the considerate ones. The ones who never get in your way and whose children are always quiet and polite. The ones who never inconvenience us.” The thing is, just like feminism is for bitches, children’s rights are for kids. All kids. Not just for kids whom we think are “acceptable” (as defined by us). As a feminist, I see how people who don’t follow the expected rules for their class of person are considered to be acting “entitled.” Women who expect to be taken seriously — or just take up the same amount of space on a bus. Black men who refuse to back down about something and get handcuffed. A trans woman who requests bathroom privileges and is labeled a troublemaker. “Entitled” behavior is often in the eyes of the beholder — and people who assert their basic human rights in the face of discrimination are often judged by others as acting entitled.
I’m not saying people don’t behave like assholes — we all do, sooner or later. I’m just saying that to fall back on the “entitled yuppie mothers” stereotype to defend your distaste for families in public places is too easy. “Entitlement” needs to be problematized, dissected, looked at with a critical gaze. Next time you think someone is acting out of a sense of “entitlement” think about why, exactly, their behavior seems out of line. My bet is that at least seven times out of ten it’s going to be behavior you’d tolerate (or at least not let color your feelings about a whole class of people) if it was done by someone whom you weren’t pre-disposed to suspect of ruining your day.
2) Where do we get off judging the parenting decisions of others? A few weeks ago, Jessica Valenti blogged about how as a pregnant woman she is suddenly subjected to a much more intense level of scrutiny and intervention than as a non-pregnant person. This scrunity follows parents (especially mothers) into parenthood. Parents and non-parents alike in our culture feel free to offer their own expert opinions on every aspect of parents’ interactions with their children and the way that parents and children interact with the wider world. While, obviously, everyone is entitled to think what they want in their own head (I’ve totally been there — I get as pissed at what I think of as “bad” parenting as the next person), but I’m continually amazed at how presumptuous folks are about airing that critique in public forums. Two things alarm me about this
a) What makes you think you, personally, are in a position to act as judge? I’ll admit upfront that I’m particularly sensitive to the policing of other peoples’ parenting because I come from a family in which my parents made some pretty non-conventional parenting decisions — decisions that, according to a great many people, were seen as borderline abusive. When I was a child, kids were taken away from parents who tried to home-educate them, particularly if those parents were not simply replicating school-at-home lessons. All through my childhood, I experienced the suspicion and policing of adults who did not trust me, my siblings, or my parents, simply because we didn’t follow the conventional rules. When my mother tried to act as a liaison to facilitate our interaction with suspicious adults, she was branded a trouble-maker, a controlling mother. Things were written in our medical records, warning future medical staff to watch out for my mom.
This is all to say, I’ve known first-hand how the judging process works. It makes the judgers feel powerful and the judged feel small. And it has nothing to do with the actual well-being of actual children, since most judgments are made by people who have firm convictions about what is “right” and “wrong” when it comes to raising children — all children — with little or no flexibility of thought when it comes to individual families and individual children.
Next time you see a parenting decision you disagree with, I’d encourage you to imagine at least for a moment (even if you later reject the notion) that this decision was the right decision for this parent with this child.
Which leads me to the second half of this “judge not lest ye be judged” observation: the trump card of the judgers. The “what about the children who are being mistreated!” argument. See, I think a lot of the time this is
b) Self-interest disguised as concern for children. Judging parents in public spaces does not help truly vulnerable children. When parents sense they are being critiqued by others around them, they’re likely — especially if they are already abusing their children — to take the shame they feel out on their children. So by shaming the parent you’re making it worse. Do not intervene in situations where you feel a child is actually being maltreated unless you have the ability to follow up and ensure that that child is actually going to be protected going into the future. I’m assuming most feminists (who are well-versed in issues of domestic violence) understand this principle. Which is why I also sense that a lot of the concern expressed about children (“but what about the bad parents! should they get away with it?”) is actually, again, about our own subjective irritation at people who are different than us.
While I sympathize — who doesn’t feel irritable on occasion? — it’s just not the fucking responsibility of all people at all times to cater to our own individual desires for how the world should be regulated.
3) Feminism is for children as well as for bitches. It was, in part, my experience being policed as a child that facilitated my openness to feminist activism and feminist theory, especially the notion that oppression is intersectional and systemic. That the only way to true change is radical change — change that dismantles the system predicated on power that is power-over (the kyriarchy) and replaces it with with power-with. Power-with being the sort of power that recognizes the authority of experience and skill without creating a world divided between the haves and the have-nots. As Hanna so often reminds me, to depose one privileged group and replace it with another, to critique one set of cultural norms that advantage group A and advocate replacing them with a set of cultural values that advantage group B or C does not change the basic pattern: we’re still stuck in a world with winners and losers. With people who are scrabbling desperately to acquire and hold onto resources and acknowledgement that is (so the kyriarchy tells us) in limited supply. I’m not buying it. I’m not buying that there’s not enough love and care and resources in the world to take care of all people, no matter how broken, no matter how small. But in order to make sure that everyone’s needs are being met, we need to quit playing the winner-loser game. We need to quit turning around once we’ve established our right to exist and shove the next person waiting in line. Instead, as self-proclaimed feminists we should be welcoming them in.
Which is why it’s so hard for me to defend certain parts of the feminist movement (like, say the feminists who claim that ageist prejudice against children doesn’t exist … echoing the those who laugh off feminist concerns about sexism as so second wave already!) Sadie Stein @ Jezebel mocks maia’s post and suggests, in a parting shot, that “ageism” only counts if its legal discrimination, not just social prejudice. If you replaced “ageism” with “sexism” do you honestly think that many feminists would agree with her? Yet her scoffing resistance to understanding children as a vulnerable, disenfranchised group in our society is all too common in the feminist blogosphere.
My advice on how to change all this? (Since I know you’re dying to have unsolicited advice from your friendly future-feminist librarian …)
4) Don’t demand perfection, but do challenge yourself to think twice. We all make snap judgments based on our prejudices and stereotypes about types of people. We all feel intense reactionary hate at the person who takes the last seat on the subway when we want to rest our aching feet, or the parent whose child is fretful and screaming in the checkout line on that afternoon when a migraine is building behind your right eye. I’m not a fan of self-judging, self-guilting, self-blaming, and relentless self-policing. Punishing yourself for being human isn’t going to make the world a better place to live in; it’s just going to make you unhappy, your loved ones miserable, and probably not make those parents and young people you’ve been critiquing a helluva lot happier (unless they’re the nasty sort of people who get off on revenge — in which case perhaps I should exempt them from my ‘all humans deserve respect mantra’?!)
Instead of punishing yourself, acknowledge the feeling. Acknowledge the thought. Let it know it’s been recognized and heard, and that it represents some portion of your self that is trying to care for you in the best way it knows how — however flawed that attempt might be. Accept the feeling into yourself, but don’t let it consume you.
And then move on. Let the feeling go.
Or, if you’re feeling so inclined, consider where it’s coming from, and why you feel so desperately like your own sanity is in the hands of all these other people in the world who, like you, might just be having a rough day.
The best way to dismantle the kyriarcy is by recognizing and taking pleasure in the uniqueness of all beings, one being at a time. Including yourself.
So go forth. Care for yourself. And think twice before judging those around you. Perhaps particularly those who are further out on the margins that you yourself are. Perhaps, if you stopped pushing them away quite so hard, you’d discover that you actually had a lot more in common than you thought at first glance.
Peace, and good night.
14 Wednesday Jul 2010
Posted in think pieces
Tags
Gwynne Watkins @ Salon offers her analysis of a recent “exposé” by Jennifer Senior in the New York magazine on the unrealistic expectations of modern parenting.
“I Love My Children. I Hate My Life.” That’s the cover line on this week’s New York magazine, superimposed on a photo of a beautiful mother and infant in a sun-drenched landscape. Presumably, the mother is loving her child and hating her life. Presumably, we all are.
The whole post is worth reading, since it calls out the bullshit that is our contemporary culture’s obsession with parenting that turns human beings into infinitely perfectible projects — yet refuses to accept Senior’s conclusion, which is that if that “perfect” family life is a lie, all we have left to live on is the fumes of nostalgia.
One particular passage of Watkin’s post, however, sort of hit me in the head like a low-hanging tree-branch. So I’m hijacking it for this blog post so I can ask, once again, why the fuck “children are people too” such a difficult concept for people to grasp.
Like really.
Here’s the passage. Read and digest.
If you’re having a baby for reasons of self-gratification, of course you’re going to be miserable. Becoming a parent is less about enriching your life than it is about up-ending it entirely to make room for another human being. And that’s what Senior’s article is missing: the fact that children are people, and having a child is about forging a relationship. Take this quote from a sociologist Senior interviewed about why parents are so disgruntled: “Middle-class parents spend much more time talking to children, answering questions with questions, and treating each child’s thought as a special contribution. And this is very tiring work.” Funny, that doesn’t sound like work; that sounds like having a conversation. The true reward of parenting isn’t looking back with nostalgia, as Senior concludes; it’s getting to watch a baby turn into a fully realized person. It’s hearing the thoughts and opinions of somebody who didn’t exist until you brought them into the world. It’s a humbling, daunting, awesome experience — and it’s hard enough without the added pressure of making every moment enriching and significant.
So here’s the thing. What I find so disturbing about this passage is the way basic human interactions, when placed in the context of parent-child relationships, are suddenly framed in Senior’s article as an onerous obligation, and joyless demand. And this is seen as so normal, so common-sensical in our culture, that a sociologist seems to think there’s something problematic about asking one person in a committed relationship (parent) to treat the other person in that committed relationship (child) as if their thoughts were worth giving a damn about.
Really?
Really??
Take a minute to switch out “spouse” with “child” in the above passage:
Middle-class couples spend much more time talking to each other, answering questions with questions, and treating each other’s thoughts as a special contributions. And this is very tiring work.
“I love my spouse. I hate my marriage”? If the thought of spending time with your partner, talking together and treating each others’ thoughts with respect felt like tiring, joyless work — drudgery only relieved by the fond memories you had of your courtship or a fleeting weekend getaway — then possibly it’s time to seek out some couples counseling and/or ask yourselves whether this is really a relationship worth being in.
And while you obviously can’t walk out on a dependent child with the same impunity as you can an adult spouse, I’d suggest that it’s not too much of a stretch to stop thinking of children as hobbies or vocations and, you know, remember that you enter into a relationship with them. And that — as with all human relationships — the intrinsic reward of relatedness is the pleasure of getting to know another human being intimately. Learning to see the world through their eyes. Watching them grow and change over time. The pleasure of having conversations together, some of which last a moment and some of which will go on for years. Sharing experiences like the reading of a book, the watching of a movie, attending a concert or art show, cooking dinner and sharing the meal.
“Becoming a parent is less about enriching your life than it is about up-ending it entirely to make room for another human being,” Watkins writes, in her response to Senior. While I agree with her on the basic point that becoming a parent because you expect a child to fulfill your expectations is problematic, I would make a slightly different, possibly more radical argument: rather than juxtaposing “enriching your life” with “up-ending it” to make room for another, I’d suggest that such an up-ending is intrinsically rewarding, even if in none of the ways you initially anticipate. And that is the beauty of the chaotic unpredictability of humanity. If that sort of uncertainty is not your cup of tea, then maybe you should think again about whether you want to have kids. Or whether you want to be in a committed relationship of any kind.
‘Cause that’s kinda the point of being in a relationship.
As someone who has grown from being a dependent child to an adult in relationship with parents who treated her as a human being, I can attest first hand that (as with spousal relationships) recognizing each others’ humanity doesn’t make the experience of living together a panacea. It doesn’t mean we’ve never failed each other, struggled to communicate, lost our tempers, or felt (temporarily, sometimes for months or years at a time) at an impasse. What it does mean is that we aren’t reduced to our socially-assigned roles, and the expectations of behavior that come with those roles. It does mean we have more flexibility to adapt our relationships as the people within them grow and change — because those relationships were formed in the first place specifically to suit our own individual selves. In other words, shifting from the straight-jacket of “perfect madness” parenting to a model of ordinary human relatedness doesn’t solve all of life’s problems.
But it absolutely does open up a realm of possibility that is not possible when one person in the equation is reduced to a project rather than a person. A series of tasks and responsibilities rather than an organic being whose presence you are given the chance to experience.
Which is (surprise, surprise!) more or less the argument that feminists have made for decades about the idealization of heterosexual, monogamous marriage. When you reduce two human beings to their roles of “husband” and “wife,” and punish individuals from deviating from impossible normative standards (or make it exhausting, endless struggle for them to do so), it’s a recipe for disaster. The exact same observation can be made about “parent” and “child.”
Senior’s essay on parenting is the perfect opportunity for the feminist “click” moment, parenting style. It could offer us a chance to assess the way our culture’s idealization of family life dehumanizes children and parents, setting them up in relationships warped by power dynamics that make true intimacy all but unattainable.
Instead, Senior’s “solution,” to the extent that the article posits one, appears to be a band-aid fix that feminists will be very familiar with: the Flanaganian solution of “settling.” Senior’s article seems to suggest that the only options are
a) Playing to win. Pretending to find pleasure in the “perfect madness” of trying to conform to our culture’s ideal of the good parent (in reality, the good mother), thereby driving yourself and everyone around you crazy, but at deriving pleasure from the knowledge that you’re out-parenting all other parents or
b) Calling bullshit and giving up. Re-framing parenting as grim work, rather than a joyful vocation, undertaken out of duty and made bearable by the hope of delayed gratification of nostalgia after the raw experience has long passed. Just give up, Senior’s article ultimately seems to suggest; expecting to experience enduring happiness (gasp!) in your relationships with your children is just unrealistic. Shame on you!
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that this is a false dichotomy, and that the way out of this lose-lose situation is, well, feminism for children. See, both of these “options” still posit that parenting = job rather than parenting = relationship. You can enjoy a job for intrinsic and/or extrinsic rewards (conducting oral history interviews!), or you can dislike a job but feel it’s worthwhile (canvassing before an election), or you can dislike a job but recognize it’s necessary (like doing dishes), but at the end of the day it’s still a job of work.
Why would you choose either of these options when instead you could have interesting relationships with these people who’ve walked (often invited by you!) into your life? Isn’t that one of the most awesome thing about being alive in the world — the chance to get to know and caring about the lives of others?
I say, just quit. Quit your job and go find a relationship. With that person who you’re interested in being intimate with as they grow and discover the full strength of their humanity. Who knew this would be such a radical suggestion?
13 Tuesday Jul 2010
Posted in linkspam
From Amanda Marcotte @ RhReality Check comes a wonderful interview with Amber Kinser, author of a new book, Motherhood and Feminism (Seal Press, 2010). The following passage, while focused specifically on mothers in the workplace, speaks to a lot of the issues I was blogging about in my recent post on feeling guilty for wanting a balanced life (starts at roughly minute 19:00).
There is an assumption in the workplace that if you’re a mother your primary loyalty is always going to be your family even during the workday and that that’s a problem. The assumption is, for men, your primary loyalty is always going to be at the workplace and that that’s not a problem. And if you’re single and you’re … childfree and female then we don’t have to worry that you’ll be called away, you know, to go pick up a child who’s sick from school or go take care of a disciplinary matter or go the Halloween parade at school.
So part of the problem [of discrimination against mothers in the workforce] is this mythical — and I talk about this in the book a good bit — this mythical split between public and private. The workforce still operates on the assumption that home life is separate from work life. It never has been, it isn’t now, and it never will be. And so part of the problem is the problematizing of people who are invested in their families. So that if someone has to go to the piano recital during the school day or someone has to go take care of a sick child this goes up against workplace policy and norms. And so what we do is penalize — largely the women, because they’re the ones who end up doing it — who do that. That’s where that motherhood penalty comes in — instead of shifting workplace norms so that they can accommodate the fact that public life and private life are not, you know, they’re just not distinguishable. Men are better positioned to be able to pretend like they’re separate than women are and so they benefit in the workplace.
The full interview can be heard as part of Amanda’s latest RhRealityCheck podcast, Pro-Choice, Feminist Support for Motherhood.
Kinser is emphasizing the parenting angle here, because that was the thrust of the conversation she and Amanda Marcotte were having. But I would extend her observations not only toward men who are attempting to parent more actively but also to individuals who are not parenting. Being invested in family life, or private life, is a choice all of us can make, regardless of whether we are parenting. Caring for, or enjoying time with, a partner or a parent, extended family members or close friends, are equally important and a necessary part of life. They should not be something we need to sideline or make invisible in order to be valuable workers, but of course in an economic system that is built to value only efficiency and workplace productivity, those values are difficult to “sell” as a benefit to one’s employer.
06 Tuesday Jul 2010
Posted in book reviews
I recently picked up Terry Eagleton’s book On Evil (New Haven: Yale U.P., 2010). I might at some point write a fuller “booknote” about the volume, and a related Eagleton book, Holy Terror (2005), which I am also reading. However, in light of some of my recent posts on children as people, I thought some of my readers might enjoy the following passage from the first chapter of On Evil.
We are ready to believe all kinds of sinister things about children, since they seem like a half-alien race in our midst. Since they do not work, it is not clear what they are for. They do not have sex, although perhaps they are keeping quiet about this too. They have the uncanniness of things which resemble us in some ways but not in others. It is not hard to fantasize that they are collectively conspiring against us, in the manner of John Wyndham’s fable The Midwich Cuckoos. Because children are not fully part of the social game, they can be seen as innocent; but for just the same reason they can be regarded as the spawn of Satan (2).
Setting aside the question of whether or not what he’s describing vis a vis actual children holds true — and whether, if it does hold true, to what extent such a situation is culturally created or “natural” — I think it’s fascinating to consider how strong our cultural perception of its reality is: children are read uas “other,” whether in the Romantics innocent ur-human sense or in the sense of Golding’s barely-repressed savage, “uncivilized” amoral bestiality.
the feminist librarian 