phdinparenting - Blog - No, Don't Govern Motherhood

Motherhood is trending. In the blogosphere, in books, magazines, and the news, debates about how to parent are ubiquitous and growing hotter. Much of the debate has been around how parents (read: mothers) can do the best to provide for their children.

That is the opening passage from a paper called Governing Motherhood -- Who Pays and Who Profits that Phyllis Rippeyoung wrote for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).As someone who frequently writes about the implications of government policy (or lack thereof) on parents and families, I was thrilled when this article jumped out in my CCPA subscription and when it was forwarded to me by several readers (you all know me so well).

After that opening passage, Rippeyoung goes on to name some of the very public pressures that are put on mothers to parent a specific way, ranging from Mayim Bialik's book Beyond the Sling to Time's "Are You Mom Enough?" feature to the Dr. Sears empire (and of course we can't forget Badinter's critque of it all). Moms are being pressured into "intensive motherhood", but is that fair? Rippeyoung writes:

While the Sears profit off their expert empire, the ability to parent "best" is becoming more costly, both to the women who practice it and to those who cannot. Not only is this problematic for individual women, but this also reinforces the relationship between "good" mothering and socioeconomic status, while providing a justification for neoliberal policies that minimize state supports for working families. If policy makers truly want to improve child health, more needs to be done to structurally support not only mothers, but all members of society.

Rippeyoung talks about government interventions that are designed to teach mothers how to be better parents, without creating an environment that is conducive to carrying out the things they are recommending.? As I wrote in my post called Step Aside, Mommy Wars: Let's Talk Policy, I wrote:

If women and families were supported in the choices that they make, perhaps this whole mommy war would fizzle out into something not much more controversial than playground discussions about whether to puree your baby's food or not.

There is too much pressure for us to mother in a certain way and not enough support for us to do so. Rippeyoung mentions numerous policy issues that have to be addressed, such as fair wages, full paid leaves to care for newborns and ill family members, affordable housing, access to clean water and food security (yes, even in Canada), accessible and affordable child care, high quality preventative health care, and more.

Yes, and more.

Rippeyoung briefly mentions thriving communities. I think that is a critical piece of the puzzle. It takes a village to raise a child. We need neighbours, friends and community groups that help each other. More cooperative housing and cooperative day cares would also help.

But it is even more than that.

I want to go back to that very first passage of Rippeyoung's paper, the one where she said "Much of the debate has been around how parents (read: mothers) can do the best to provide for their children." Why the mother? WHY ALWAYS THE MOTHER? I've asked this before and I'll keep asking it over and over again.

Yes, some people may go on about biological imperatives and how it is just easier for the mom to stay home so that she can breastfeed the baby. But should the conversation end there? Because a mother breastfeeds, does that mean she is forever destined to be the primary parent and to carry the full load of responsibility (and blame) on her shoulders? I don't think so.

In Suzanne Barston's (you may know her as Fearless Formula Feeder) book, Bottled Up (which I'm quite enjoying incidentally and will write about in another post), there was a passage that bothered me. Barston was telling the story of a woman who breastfed and pumped at work and who felt that the idea of breastfeeding not creating an unfair division of labour was "a load of crap". She went on to point out that it was "unfair and obtuse to imply that one could both breastfeed exclusively for a year and still have total equality - at least in terms of division of labor - in a marriage."

Unfair and obtuse. Ouch.

That sounds like a denial of the plausibility of what we experienced in our home and what many other families I know have experienced. It is denying my reality, my story, my experience and assuming her reality, her story and her experience applies to all (that, incidentally, has also always been my problem with Hanna Rosin).? It also sounds like giving up on the idea of formula-free equally-shared parenting and that isn't something I am willing to do (especially since I know it can and does work for many families).

I think we need fathers who are more involved (many are, but on the whole the bulk of the parenting work and pressure still falls to moms). I think we need workplaces that recognize and accept the need for fathers, not just mothers, to take time off to be with their children and to care for their children. I think we need government policies that prioritize fathering (e.g. specific paternity leave). I think we need societies that don't treat men like they are incapable caregivers or irrelevant parents.

Let's ask for better policies, but not just to let mothers off the hook for "intensive motherhood". Let's stop pressuring mothers and insisting on child-free public spaces. Let's instead ask for policies that allow society to take collective and shared responsibility for raising the next generation in a way that embraces them, respects them and celebrates them.

What do you think? How can we take the pressure off of mothers without leaving children behind?

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As an aside, as a lover of (oft misunderstood) analogies, I loved this excerpt from Rippeyoung's paper:

Although I would never argue that all women should breastfeed, as feminist social critic and breastfeeding advocate Bernice Hausmann (2003) points out, all women have a right to do so. To deny this right would be akin to denying people the right to use the bathroom or sneeze or do the other kinds of things human bodies do. Just as we are not born knowing how to use the bathroom or a tissue, women are not born knowing how to breastfeed. Breastfeeding can be challenging and women need support to make it work.

**Please don't chastise Rippeyoung, Hausmann or me for comparing breastmilk to urine and boogers. If you think that is what we are doing, you do not understand what an analogy is. For what it's worth, my child who took 15 weeks to learn how to breastfeed was also difficult to toilet train and still can't blow his nose properly. Does anyone know of a good nose blowing consultant?**

Source: http://www.phdinparenting.com/blog/2013/2/4/no-dont-govern-motherhood.html

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