More feminism and parenting
Not meaning to slam Beth or anything, but she said it here so I’m quoting it:
I do not believe that mothers should be primarily concerned about what makes them happiest. I also do not believe that throwing young children - babies as young as 8 weeks old - into daycare is raising them in an atmosphere of “love and respect”.If staying home to take care of her child is going to cause a woman to resent her child, I believe she needs to strongly think about not having children.
Of course mothers should be concerned about their happiness. Unhappy mothers make unhappy children. I just don’t think that the happiness of the mother should come at the expense of the children. Children were never meant to be raised in institutions.
Part of me doesn’t want to touch this because it’s so ludicrous but then I thought it kinda sounded like fun to jump into it so what the hell. It’s a good way to avoid work anyway.
Here’s what I realized six years ago after a friendship dissolved in part because she was working, I was not and we both were way defensive about our choices: There are lots of ways to raise happy children.
Seriously.
I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before but it may have been pre-MT and thus not in my archives so I’m going to go ahead and blog it again.
Melvin Konner, an anthropologist, did this great big project with PBS about childhood across cultures. There’s a companion book to the series titled, appropriately, Childhood. (Look how cheap it is — go ahead and pick it up!) In it he compares two groups that closely correlate with the most extreme contingent of the mommy wars represented on internet bulletin boards. The first are the !Kung people, who are basically the role models for attachment parents everywhere. Want to know how to sling a baby? Look at the !Kungs. Want to defend your decision to nurse your preschooler? Check out the !Kungs. What about co-sleeping? Again, the !Kung people will come through for you. The second group Konner examines are the children living in an Israeli kibbutz, who are raised in age-segregated groups and see their parents only in the mornings and in the evenings. You know what he found? The !Kung people were good at raising future !Kung people. The people in the kibbutz were good at raising future kibbutz members. If you valued kibbutz values, you likely wouldn’t see much to the !Kung way of doing things and vice versa. However, examined within the parameters of their own values and social mores, each group did pretty well at creating happy, healthy members for its own group.
Values are neutral. Even the studies that find differences between daycare kids and at-home kids do little more than try to qualify neutrals. Daycare kids seem to be more aggressive. Aggressive? Assertive? Strong? Pushy? Who knows, really. We just know there’s a difference. Daycare kids also seem to manage language skills earlier. Is that a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Depends on who’s asking and who’s answering.
Listen, I’m not crazy about daycare for infants & toddlers. I think most daycare bites but this isn’t your average mommy’s fault. I think we need to talk about the abysmal state of daycare in this country because children are going to be in it whether or not anyone (including Beth) likes it. Since we all care about children, let’s create better care. And since we all care about people, let’s create better options.
Speaking of studies (remember when we were?) while the studies about childcare don’t make universal, sweeping statements about the way daycare impacts kids (although we do know that better daycare is always a Damn Good Thing), the studies about children raised by depressed mothers are much more compelling. Depressed mothers make for really screwed up kids.
–Depression in mothers has long-term impact on infants
–Sad Mom, Sad Baby
–Preschool Outcomes for Children of Depressed Mothers
And that’s just a small sampling. Contrary to Beth’s belief, I think a mother is obligated to be concerned for her own happiness and if she gets her jollies going to work, then so be it. (Let me add here that I’m not getting into the whole issue of women who have to work because I’m specifically defending those women who choose to work.)
When we start throwing stones at each other — especially really heavy, sharp, pointy stones like “I believe she needs to strongly think about not having children” — we’re not really helping matters. In fact, we’re hurting then by creating just a little more hatred and anger and defensiveness in the world. Not exactly a great way to create opportunity for change.
This is so obvious and I know all of you feminists agree with me anyway but it was a nice way to plug the Konner book, which really is worth getting if you’re into that sort of thing. Also I didn’t like to leave Beth’s comments sitting there like that on my blog since they kind of wildly go against my whole carefully constrcted blog atmosphere and all.
Thanks. You did that really well.
I worry about the daughters of women with opinions like Beth’s. How are they to understand themselves as worthy of happiness if their primary role model does nothing but serve the happiness of others?
Heck, the boys too, I guess. What will they expect of the women in their lives (if they do indeed grow up to have wives as Beth assumes and not boyfriends or husbands).
I will certainly check out the book which looks very cool indeed.
So well said. It’s seems to me that the original writer has dug such a very narrow scope of what motherhood and being woman is all about. Just as vast as the differences between children are, so are women’s approaches to mothering & raising their children. You can’t simplify the effort and judge one woman’s approach as being better than another. Would you ever do this to a child - judge them as being better than a peer, simply becasue there mother stayed home or worked — I think not. Every situation is different!!!
Ok, nuff said on my part. Thanks for posting this.
Amen. This is one of my hot buttons (which makes me, you know, just like every other mother out there…we’re an opinionated bunch, aren’t we?) One of the things that always gets me about this strident, you-can’t-put-yourself-first point of view is that the people espousing it are not looking beyond their own nose. This might be all well and good for you, but what about that little girl you’re giving up everything for? What is she supposed to do when she grows up? Is she, too, just supposed to give up all hyer dreams and aspirations for her children? Because, of course, if she doesn’t, if she dares put them in daycare or warehouse them in a public school, she’s a Bad Mother. Is it only childless women who can strive for goals that aren’t compatible with extended breastfeeding and homeschooling? (Both of which I heartily believe in, by the way, but not at the expense of the other options out there.)
I wrote about this once in my own blog and maybe actually made a little sense. I can’t figure out how to not have it be a ridiculously long link, though, so if you’re interested, just check out my November 14, 2003 post…
In any case, Dawn, that’s a great post. I am with you 100%…
TC
As the daughter of a stay-at-home-cookie-baking-mother who basically “lived for her children” and not much else, I have been hesitant to even THINK about having children of my own, seeing how she suffered as we (attempted) to grow up and break free from the nest. I envied my friends whose parents were divorced–they had the freedom to make choices for themselves–their moms were at work.
For me to be able to break away from the (s)mothering home atmosphere it took (nearly) violent measures…I would imagine that kids whose mothers HAVE a life make a much easier and graceful transition to adulthood.
I agree that true feminism means freedom to make choices, be it as a SAHM or full-time career gal. THAT SAID, I think women who believe that their children can’t live without their constant care are kidding themselves…
Even the !Kung women raised their kids within an open community, not in the intense one-on-one isolation that American culture (esp. suburban culture) seems to foster.
Good argument, though.
Exactly. That is exactly how I feel. What is right for me and my family may not be for yours but that doesn’t make me right and you wrong, it just makes us different. I was a daycare kid myself and I think I came out just fine. I am pregnant with my first child and will be going back to work. My husband, however, will most likely be a stay at home dad because that is what we have chosen to do. I make more money than him but we wanted a parent at home with our baby. Do I think I was raised wrong because I was in daycare? No. I just want to do things differently. Sorry for the rambling - I am just glad to see something other than a tirade against one side or the other. Thanks!
One of my friends has what I think is the best of both worlds–she works at home 2 days a week and in an office the other 3 days. Her 4-year-old son is at home when she is. And while she doesn’t find her daycare provider to be perfect, she has great, honest communication with them, something that is essential for anyone who uses daycare. I’d love to think I could have that 60/40 or 50/50 option some day, but have my doubts. My husband has his own not-overly-successful business and I don’t forsee my ever having the option of being a SAHM, not because we’re trying to “keep up” moneywise, but because we could not get by without my income. That doesn’t make me despair of my future children’s futures. I’m sure that what we do when they ARE at home with us is what they’ll take through their lives.
Just wanted to throw in my ‘You’re a rock star” vote.
You guys realize you’re totally condemning the extreme SAHM point of view, right? I don’t know this Beth person, so please understand I have no idea what her situation is. But it’s possible that she’s seem some strangely bizarre examples of women who have kids and don’t seem to have any desire to interact with them. I knew a woman who had a baby and went back to work (10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week) when the baby was 5 days old. Five. I didn’t understand what made her have a baby in the first place, or why she didn’t place the baby for adoption instead of paying for all that childcare for a child she wouldn’t know.
Maybe you other feminists (because I certainly am one, too) are now gnashing your teeth about how I’m judging another woman. But you know what? This is a really extreme, bizarre case that doesn’t represent the majority of women who go back to work. In the same way your examples of a woman giving up everything for her children doesn’t represent the majority of women who SAHM. I don’t know what Beth meant, but I agree that a mother shouldn’t just ask herself “What makes me happy?” without taking into consideration her child’s needs, too. That doesn’t mean that the mother doesn’t think about herself at all, it just means that she doesn’t think *only* about herself. So maybe they decide to completely step out of the paid work force for a period of time, or maybe they go down to part-time or telecommuting hours, or maybe go to “part-time” at a law firm (50 hours a week instead of 80). I don’t see how that’s not a realistic, admirable choice. I mean, if we prioritize the mother’s happiness alone over a balanced consideration of “mother’s needs + child’s needs = harmony” then we’d all just drive off to Vegas to become showgirls instead of watching any more Elmo’s World while scraping red playdough off the couch.
FWIW, I had a mom who stayed at home with us, but definitely did the things that fed her soul. So maybe I never got the message that you could only make the child happy *or* the mother happy. I’m assuming I’ll be able to send my own kids the message that we can all be happy together if everyone compromises a little.
Sad but true: I think stay-at-home moms are looked at as some kind of slacker. It’s unfortunate because I truly believe that having a parent at home with their children provides that child with security and comfort, but I also think they can feel secure simply by the parents making them a priority when they are with them. I think it is sad that the media, or the womans movement altered the view of those mothers who choose to stay at home and sacrafice for their family, but it can definatley be turned around. It’s all about what works for that specific family.