Twenty years ago, or maybe it's closer
to fifteen, in any case, once upon what feels like a lifetime ago, an
ex-boyfriend and I had an argument about whether a woman should stay
home after having children. He argued that women should stay home,
because it was better for the children; a mother could give children
an emotional security that no one else could. I argued that it was
sexist to say a woman “should” do anything, and that women should
not be the ones to give up their career or work outside the home just
because they happen to be the ones having children. A father or other
trusted care giver could just as easily provide the love, care and
emotional security children required.
In hindsight, the fight was stupid,
simply because it was theoretical. We were still in college. We were
too young to even be talking about the prospect of having children.
Even when we were out of college, the topic of living together never
came up. I never expected a proposal. Now I know enough to know it
doesn't make sense to talk about scenarios that aren't real or on the
soon-to-be-horizon. As they say, it's like worrying about problems
that you don't even have yet.
But at the time, I was young and
oversensitive, I took his views as a personal attack, as if he was
saying, what I wanted for myself individually was less important than
my potential child needs, as if he was suggesting that women (me) not
just take off a few years or the first year of each child's life off
from their careers, but give them up permanently, and to fail to do
this, made them a bad mother. Whether he was actually saying this or
not, I made the point that women who have something – like a career
– that nurtures them, make better and far more nurturing mothers,
in addition to demonstrating to their children of both genders that
they can pursue and fulfill the careers of their dreams.
At the time, I thought anyone saying
that women SHOULD stay home was sexist, and that anyone who suggested
that a baby's needs were more important than a mother's was
especially sexist, because such a view devalued women, their
potential, their skills, and their lives. I thought for a mother to
be a good respectable mother, she had to put herself first. That if
she took care of herself, and enjoyed her life, it would only benefit
her children, whereas an exhausted woman who gave everything, never
got anything for herself, would only end up resenting her children
and feeling like she was constantly being taken advantaged of. For
the record, I do think some degree of this is true. And yes, I
realize, in all fairness to my ex-boyfriend, he wasn't saying women
are a dishrag who should be completely used up by their children.
At least I hope not. (Actually, what I
hear from his mother, whom I am still friends with, is that he is a
very loving, committed, hands on, and patient parent.)
I think I was all of nineteen when we
had this fight. I don't know for sure, and I'm unwilling to go
through old journals (because there are a lot – this ranting habit
of mine is hardly new) to find the exact date. But it was the early
90s. I had read Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth and Carol Gilligan's Ina Different Voice. My copy of Susan Faludi's Backlash was dogeared,
with a spine that was so cracked, I had to tape it back together. I
subscribed to Ms. Magazine. Gloria Steinem and Hillary Rodham Clinton
had told me I could have it all and that I was entitled to it. Poor
ex-boyfriend, given all the reading I had been doing, it was just an
argument waiting for an opportunity to assert itself.
When I became a mother a good decade
and half later, I thought of this fight often. I found myself
wondering what my 19 year old feminist self would say about my
mothering self. When I was 19, I had wanted to teach college English.
I wanted tenure. I wanted to write books that won the Pulitzer. By
the time I got pregnant, I had taught college English, but I no
longer wanted tenure. In fact, I walked off campus the last time
before my husband's job took us to LA, and realized with a
startlingly clarity that I never wanted to teach again. While I had
written books, they hadn't won the Pulitzer because they hadn't been
published (yet...). My husband and I moved to LA, and I sat my pregnant-bellied self in my new found spot at Ground Zero of My Life.
And when I gave birth to my son (Yes,
naturally. My fear of needles is bigger than my fear of pain.) I,
like many parents before me, melted. While I had some anxiety about
mothering, simply because my own mother didn't seem to enjoy it much,
it disappeared the second he was born. I was startled to discover a
few weeks, and then a few months later, that I had never felt
happier. Given that my son literally nursed every twenty minutes,
it's entirely likely, I was just high on oxytocin, with fresh new
hormones releasing every single time he latched. Nevertheless, he was
an easy and happy baby, as long as he nursed. Which means, I was one
of “those” women that Elisabeth Badinter writes about in The
Conflict and that the latest issue of Time magazine points to, with its cover asking, "Are You Mom Enough?"
In my new motherhood, I was surprised how often I found
myself questioning what my younger feminist self would say about my
mothering self, and wondering if she felt like she had failed as a
feminist, and if I could still even call myself one. I talked to
myself a lot about this point. I even joked at mom's group and with
other mothers that honestly, I have failed at everything and most of my ideal career choices in my life, breastfeeding is just the weird thing that came easily to me.
It's just my bad luck that I can no longer make a living as a wet
nurse. (And if I had known that this would be the one thing I was
good at, maybe I should have pursued it earlier?). In the end though,
I would end the conversation with myself by concluding that what I
had been arguing for all along was that women have choices, and that
those choices be equally valued and respected.
Consequently, what has come to be these
ridiculous debates or battles or in more polite words, conversations,
about Attachment Parenting and if it devalues women, has continued to
hit nerve after nerve of mine. Badinter is hardly the first. Ayelet Waldmen makes a few jabs in Bad Mother. Judith Warner in Perfect Madness; Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety argues against the pressure
to breastfeed for at least a year and the “boundary breakdown” of
attachment parenting, and Lisa Bloom in Think takes a two paragraph
time out from arguing against the dumbing down of American women to
argue against co-sleeping, because she thinks sleeping next to one's
child causes one to lose sleep.
No, actually. When you co-sleep, you
roll over, nurse and go back to sleep (if you've woken up). When your
baby is in a crib down the hall, you wake up, walk down the hall, sit
in a rocking chair and nurse, then after your baby is back asleep,
you walk back down the hall, go back to sleep, only to repeat the
entire process two hours later. Because your sleep is so physically
disrupted, you can't help but be exhausted.
See? Nerve. I try to rise above these
weird assumptions about attachment parenting, and I keep taking the
bait.
And all these books make valid points
and are worth reading (while the Badinter reads quickly, you could
probably still save the time and find a nice summary. It's not like
it hasn't been written about ad nauseam.) Still, I can't help it. I
want to shout at these women, “You know what devalues a woman and
mother? FATIGUE!”
I understand - having thought similar
thoughts as a 19 year old feminist – the concerns of these women
and the people who feel compelled to turn attachment parenting into
some weird thing it's not. It's easy to fear falling so head first
into mothering that you risk losing yourself. It's happened to many
an innocent woman before.
But I have to question the women who
continue to point to certain choices women are making as mothers and asserting that those choices are causing them to be devalued as individuals. I have to question the notion of not keeping our children at arm's length makes us less feminist or equal. Because I don't actually think the issue is attachment parenting or
any other form of parenting. Most parents of my current parenting
generation are fairly clear that like many parents before us, there
will be things we do as parents that work, and that there are things
we do that don't work as well. All of us are making the best choices
we can with what we have, and the choices we're making line up with
our values, who we know ourselves to be, and who we know our children
to be. We're all interested in doing what works for us, our children
and our nightly sleep. There are more parenting resources than ever
before in history. It's not like we're not doing our homework.
Rather, I think the issue is that
motherhood isn't valued the way we'd like to think it is. It's easy
to resent anyone who recommends breastfeeding at least a year because
employers aren't set up to support mothers who breastfeed a year with
paid maternal leave. Of course working women who resort to bottles
and formula feel pressured to breastfeed: their doctors are
recommending they do something they can't easily do. With work days
getting longer, not shorter, it isn't exactly fun to stick your
breasts into a machine inspired by efficiently milking commercial
dairy cows while you think of your baby that you haven't seen in 10
hours. And not that breastfeeding mothers are off the pressure hook
either, with breastfeeding rates at 30% after three months and 13%, I
can't say I agree with Badinter that the “Tyranny of Breastfeeding”
has accomplished its goal. Rather, a woman breastfeeding her child
the recommended length, more often than not, is asked when she'll
quit, why she hasn't quit, isn't it weird, and if not, when will it
be? The tyranny of breastfeeding has hardly normalized what
pediatricians around the world recommend for all children.
I do appreciate the conversations women
are starting, because it's clear dissatisfaction is afoot. But
instead of taking our dissatisfaction out on each other and various
parenting choices, which are nobody else's business anyway, why not
instead work towards something that will make parenting better for
everyone? Because let's be honest, the current work culture doesn't
make it easy for parents of either gender to be good parents, whether
it's an utter lack of paid sick days and family and medical leave or
a work environment that demands employees work at least 12 hours at a
time, and look down on them if they don't.
I am tired of women being women's
harshest critics. It's hardly new. Mary Wollstonecraft's A
Vindication of the Rights of Women was published in 1792. Her
sharpest critics were women. The reasoning behind it is rather
simple. As my midwife told me in my first pregnancy, I would never
have to even utter a word about my parenting (or life) choices, because the sheer fact that I was doing it differently than someone else
would have that someone else feel judged or threatened or like I
thought they or their way wasn't good enough, when in reality, it has
nothing to do with them at all. Surely, in addition to all the rights
we've earned since 1792, we've also gained enough security in our
selves and our choices that we can not take each other's approaches so
personally?
Badinter and Time magazine seem to think not. I disagree.
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