Mothers For Women’s Lib

From UNICEF:

This year alone, more than 500,000 women will die during pregnancy or childbirth. That’s one woman missing every minute of every day. We call these women “missing” because their deaths could have been avoided. In fact, 80 per cent of maternal deaths could be averted if women had access to essential maternal health services.

We know where and how these women are dying, and we have the resources to prevent these deaths. Yet, maternal mortality is still one of the most neglected problems internationally.”

Via UN Dispatch and Feministing.

I came across these magnetic words for children at Amazon, aimed at children from 4 and up. They’re like magnetic poetry – a bunch of single words on magnets designed for writing sentences, letters, poems or whatever on your refrigerator or other magnetic surface of choice.

Like with almost everything aimed at children (hello Tesco with your blue and pink English school dictionaries!) they come in a boy’s version and a girl’s version. I am amazed and dumbfounded at the differences between the word sets.

Girls:

clothes, hairband, heart, love, sparkle, perfume, beads, necklace, furry, lipstick, ribbon, handbag, want, glitter, fairies, fluff, candy, flowers, wings, sherbet, bubbles, sweets, pink, make-up, skipping, magic, dancing, ballet, bunnies, rainbow, ladybird, lemonade, stars, sky, shoes, chocolate, doll, party, secret, diary, hair, jewels, princess, queen, tiara, ice-cream, teddy, music, sunshine, birds, butterfly, sugar, angel, diamond, cooking, friends

Boys:

boots, glue, monster, scary, bones, racing, moon, helicopter, aeroplane, tractor, money, lorry, wizard, conkers, frogs, sticks, mud, dirt, spiders, snails, stones, bubbles, sweets, flags, magic, pond, string, grass, rugby, bug, dogs, caterpillar, cobweb, worms, dinosaur, dragon, bike, scooter, forest, treasure, climbing, swinging, skeleton, running, ghost, trees, swimming, lawnmower, treehouse, blue, football, chocolate, car

Reviewer C. Hurley “Zoonie” had it spot on and said everything I wanted to, but more succinctly and with more humour:

I was so pleased when I found this list of primary, targeted words guaranteed to widen every little princess’s vocabulary just enough for her to play with and absorb these crucial messages which will help her form the limits of her intellectual boundaries in years to come.

Thank goodness the set excludes any complicated words like Doctor, or Car, or Career, or heaven forfend: Reading. We don’t want our little ones to get silly ideas in to their heads. The right social conditioning from as early as possible will present the world with compliant, self absorbed, distressed, depressed and anorexic teenagers who are all the more willing to spend, spend, spend on hopeless diet cures, makeup, hidden, guilt ridden chocolate (one of the special words placed here!) and anti-depressants which will really make life worth living.

I particularly like the pink packaging, covered in stars. One might, startlingly, have thought that the words list had basic references to Astronomy in but thank goodness, those fears were allayed straight away as I eyed up the list of words envoking fantasy parties of frills and ruffles, endless Disney Princess re-runs and a future of anorexia driven depression and body hate.

Well done, Indigo worldwide limited, for creating such a wonderful gift, to help shape a bright future for your little one.

Is this what they mean by ‘starting them young’?

My son Austin is three. For Christmas, just out of interest, I bought him a ‘first numbers’ book and a ‘first phonics’ book. I thought he might be interested; I never realised that he’d become obsessed with the books. He spends his time begging to do more (we’ve got through the original books and are on to a second set), and the other day, he wanted to take his maths book to pre-school for ‘showtime’. I let him, of course, because it was his decision, but I felt weirdly guilty about the whole thing.

There’s this fear that people will think you’re a pushy mother; that you are FORCING your child into this evil habit of learning things. Places seem to be full of how you ‘shouldn’t’ teach your child to read because it’ll put them off words for life (um, as an author and obsessive reader who was taught to read… I find it difficult to believe this), and how it’s cruel to push children into things. And yes, if you are absolutely forcing an unwilling child to do something he or she doesn’t want to do, I can see that’s not a good plan. But I think the words of my son the other day say it all.

“I Like Learning” he announced happily, as he ran to get his numbers book and begged me to help him through.

It feels, somehow, that while the government on one hand is pushing ‘numeracy’ and ‘literacy’ levels at ever younger children, there is a social pressure in the other direction. A mother at a local toddler group said proudly “I haven’t taught my daughter to read or write: it’s for school to do that.” Often I feel as if I am ‘betraying’ my son by allowing him to do things he ENJOYS that happen to be what other people consider ‘work’.

You know what? I am not taking my son’s childhood away from him by playing number and word games at his bequest. I am not dooming him to a life of friendlessness by using complicated words and phrases such as “those two things are mutually incompatible, Austin – you can not simultaneously be bouncy and floppy.” Actually, children do like learning. And there is really nothing wrong in that.

Actually managing to get these posted on a Sunday for once, how organised am I? A small selection of the feminist parenting-related goodness I’ve been reading this week.

• The Invisible Mother – “The mother/breeder binary is readily obvious in most parenting magazines. The stories are often written by white women of the privileged class, while the lived experiences of women of color are absent from the pages. Despite the courage and strength of will that is necessary to raise a child, when you exist as a marginalized body your stories are not deemed compelling, or marketable. Women of color are meant to serve as “mothers helpers,” not exist as actual mothers.”
• Mothers For Justice – “Our serious concerns regarding our children’s welfare is not being addressed. Courts are putting our children in extremely dangerous situations daily, we will not tolerate this abuse any longer. Please join us in our fight for justice.

  Think we have a fair and just system? Think again…”

• I’m sick of discreet! – “Think of things you’re told to do discreetly. Normally things that are a bit “naughty”, not really allowed. You’d meet an extra-marital lover “discreetly”. You’d slip a few extra bits and bobs from the supermarket into your pocket “discreetly”. Oh, and… that’s right, you’re supposed to breastfeed in public “discreetly”.However, we live in the real world. The reason breastfeeding mothers often want to be “discreet” is not often out of some sense of “modesty” but because they want to protect themselves and their children from nasty comments, the embarrassment of being asked to move and what (I think it was) Morgan calls that very British protest, the tut and head shake (I’ve had more than my fair share of those).

  I understand that need. I’ve felt it myself. The older my son gets, the more I feel it, as normal-term nursing is still misunderstood and stigmatised, sometimes even to the point of it being labelled “child abuse”.”

• The Rights of Pregnant Women: Not a Matter of Equality – “The spokesperson who thinks pregnant women’s inequality isn’t inequality finds it completely unacceptable that emplyer break existing laws. Laws which she finds to be perfectly clear. Yes well, the law may be clear, but so are the laws against murder, rape, theft, assault, etc etc and that never eradicated those crimes now did it? Someone who’s of a mind to do something immoral won’t give a shit about what anyone else thinks about his/her actions, what they (might) worry about is the potential consequences their actions might have. And as long as the consequences are so inconsequential that there’s better business in committing the crime and taking the punishment than there is doing the right thing in the first place, then that type of crime will continually be committed. Laws don’t deter people, CONSEQUENCES do.”
• Snip-ereedoodah – “It’s not natural,” he balks.

  To which I get furious. It is not natural for a woman to be on the pill for 10 years. It is not “natural” to slice open my abdomen and pull out a nearly 8 lb human. Let’s not even get into the STITCHES on my vajuj.

  But it’s his body. I am pro-choice and therefore have to respect his right to make the decisions about his body. I wanted to get pregnant and have two kids, so I assumed the pains and complications that came with that decision.

  The other day, he went to the doctor and actually asked about the snip. It’s been almost exactly a year since he first went in to discuss the snip and “forgot to ask.” Now, I could probably count on my fingers AND toes the times we’ve had sex over that year — which he argues is more than most parents with kids the ages of ours. But frankly, it’s not enough for me. I’m still youngish, I’m in my prime and unlike a lot of the moms I know, I actually WANT to “do it.”

• As Real As It Gets – “My little boy was so deeply upset, he wanted to nurse, for comfort and love. Had I been able to nurse him, just for a few moment, he’d have recovered on his own, and gone off to play under his own steam. He would have taken control of his own distress.

  Unable to allow him this heinous act, in a Nursery of other children, I had to refuse, and load on distress, rather than provide him comfort.Because my body, and what I do with it as a mother, is socially controlled. As a woman, my mothering, and my body, is controlled by the gaze of others. I didn’t even feel I could ask to withdraw to a private space, as I didn’t want the entire “she’s a freak” thing to enter into my, and my son’s, relationship at his wonderful Nursery. I was too afraid. Too scared.

  The next time someone tells me that ‘discretion’ in breastfeeding isn’t a feminist issue, or that they have the right to determine how, where, and when, I offer my breast to my child, I’m likely to punch them in the face.”b

• Are Women To Blame For The Loss Of “Kitchen Economics?” – “Yet Holcombe’s major flaw here is this: there is not ONE mention of a man in this article at all. She scolds young women for their choices, and lashes out at how some mothers choose to feed their children: “There is a swath of young women who have time to get a manicure and go out partying, but still genuinely believe they’re too busy to cook. At the other end of the scale, there are women who should know better, but who dish up a nonstop diet of poor-quality ready meals to their children because it seems like the easy option.”

  There is no mention of a father knowing better, or a man spending money on frivolous things instead of a decent roast or some such, no mention of families or couples making these decisions: it is, in Holcombe’s mind, the fault of women that “kitchen economics” are fading away, lost to a world of busy families and young hussies who dare to get their nails done instead of buying butternut squash at the Farmer’s Market.”

• When feminists catch fleas – “Hating children is in itself grotesque (because it is bigotry).. it is also invariably a thinly veiled hatred of their mothers. Don’t believe me? Time how long it takes the next conversation you overhear about ”children behaving badly”, ”over-population”, “social welfare” or “the cost of raising children” to turn its nasty little mouth to mother blaming. Hating mothers is of course really just about hating women, particularly poor women.

  Feminists should know better than to buy into this crap, but misogyny is a very powerful thing with seductive packaging.”

• Why I hate “I hate children…” – “One of the things that really hit me at the time was how openly these commenters were expressing their hatred of children- one commenter called children “crotch droppings,” for gods sakes (but later apologized and admitted it was wrong). It wasn’t just the animosity, though, it was the lack of outrage that followed it. Can any of us imagine someone posting “I hate women. How is it disrespectful that I don’t find bitches awesome?” and there being less than serious outrage over it? Replace “women” with any number of other groups, and I think that the result is the same. Children, though, are generally seen as a group that it’s okay to hate, in some ways.”
• Breastfeeding: radical, feminist and good for you – “The second time a male hand touched my breast, I was 30 and the hand belonged to my newborn son. It was curled into a semi-fist as he tried with confused urgency to work out what hunger meant, and how it might be resolved. I gently persuaded him to open his mouth, take a mouthful of breast and suckle. That hunger was the first question he asked, and I was able to answer it in a way that gave him both food and a reassurance that my body was home to the baby as well as the foetus.”

I’ve been worried lately by something a few of my friends have been saying.

“I’d probably never vote Tory… but” it starts.

Can you guess what it is they’re talking about?

If I tell you these friends of mine are parents that look after their children full time, that might give you a clue.

Yes, that’s right. The think tank that brought you the frighteningly anti-Muslim briefing, and the would-be-laughable-if-they-weren’t-serious anti-scouser briefing also brought us the radical suggestion that mothers should be paid for looking after their children.

And what I want to know is, why has this idea, which, if it wasn’t for the language of “mothers” rather than “parents”  sounds incredibly feminist (“Equal Pay for Equal Work” – and we so often say “but stay at home parents are working!), been co-opted by scary neo-con right winged think tanks?

Of course, the right winged press seized upon the idea, as “paying women to stay at home”. Which sounds terrifying, admittedly. But if you actually dig down into the policy, it is about giving mothers (I do wonder where fathers would register in this, of course) control over how they source their childcare. So a mother would receive a grant towards childcare which she could use for daycare, or alternatively, give to a relative, say a grandparent, who looked after her child or children, or keep herself and take the option of avoiding work outside of the home.

And the thing is, it does sound like a good idea. An idea which could do wit some tweaking, of course, to make it more friendly towards stay at home fathers, but a good idea, and a feminist idea at that. So I can’t help thinking, why isn’t it coming out of feminist mouths?

A recent survey of 3,000 UK women (done by Babycentre) found that over half of working (paid work) Mums would prefer to stay at home. Now you can make the case that this is because they have been socially conditioned to be nurturing. You can say that stay-at-home-mothers are colluding with the patriarchy (yes, I have heard that one). That they should want to go out to paid work and isn’t it disappointing that they don’t?

But I personally believe that although every choice we make (or want to make) can never be completely viewed without the lens of feminism, women are not complete idiots. If so many mothers are saying, actually, we’d rather stay at home with our children, but we can’t, isn’t that a feminist issue?

Current policy in the UK is very much geared to getting mothers back into work as soon as possible after their maternity leave finishes. You only get jobseekers’ allowance if you’re actually actively seeking work. Adverts on the buses into my nearest city Liverpool tell me “you might find childcare is cheaper than you think!” and give me the telephone number of jobcentre plus so I can find out just how to get my hands on this cheaper childcare. It seems to me as though the government genuinely believes the only thing that is stopping mothers returning to paid work is lack of cheap childcare.

And I think that many of the second-wavers thought the same thing. One of the demands of the Women’s Liberation movement was for free 24 hour nurseries, under community control. And of course, we’ve never got anything even close to that. But what we do have is a system that will support us to some extent  financially should we decide to put our children into official, state childcare (nurseries or OFSTED registered childminders).

But was the demand for free nurseries inspired more by Betty Friedan, or by Ruby Duncan (who tellingly doesn’t even have a Wiki entry)? Did poor women, who already combined work and childcare (often by taking children to work in dangerous conditions, or by leaving children with a relative until eventually the oldest child was able to look after the younger ones, or even leaving their children in ultra-cheap local nurseries with a whiff of laudanum about them) get asked if this was what they wanted? Sometimes I wonder. But current government policy seems to be based on the idea of “all women would do paid work if only childcare was free or very cheap”.

In fact, many women do get free or cheap childcare offered to them, usually in the form of relatives (often grandparents). And yet, I know of more than a few who have still refused this free childcare in favour of staying at home with their child or children full time.

The trouble is, as soon as we start talking about “incentives” for either not going to paid work, or going to paid work, we’re saying one is superior to the other. And at the moment, the government is saying that going out to paid work is the “right” choice. And no matter how much those parents – usually mothers – who stay at home rightly claim “but I am working!” – they will not be believed. The government doesn’t believe them; why would – for example – a husband believe “but I do work!” when his wife isn’t paid for the work she does.

But of course, as soon as we start talking about incentives for staying at home, we end up with the other problem. “Latch-key kids and their evil selfish mothers” and so on and so forth. Social problems are all the fault of mothers wanting to go out to paid work, of course. Women should be kept at home at all costs. And I think this is where policy exchange, sadly, are coming from.

And yet, the idea of a grant towards childcare – however that childcare is sourced – is in my opinion an excellent one! It tells us that those looking after children are indeed doing a job. But it also doesn’t favour SAHPs over WOHPs either. It may even encourage more men into SAH parenting.

And isn’t equal pay for equal work a feminist idea? I want to see this idea reclaimed by feminists and not shied away from out of fear of returning to some kind of middle-class 1950′s suburban nightmare. At least, until we have truly flexible working available to all, this idea of paying parents for their work, might just be a good one.

Orion went out with his dad today, as he does most Saturdays. Apparently during their day out they went to get a new car seat. When they opened the box, they found it was pink. They’d ordered a silver one, so went back to exchange it. No problem with that, right?

Except this evening, Orion has been striding around declaring that pink is “rubbish-dubbish” and it’s “a girl’s colour” and that they “gave daddy the wrong one, they gave him a girl’s car seat” and on and on and flippin’ ON about how horrible pink is and how it’s only for girls.

I cannot even begin to express my rage.

Three and a half years of carefully trying to raise an intelligent, non-sexist young man, and one afternoon with his father undoes so much of my hard work.

I have spent the evening pointing out that George (a cuddly toy of his, from the 80′s show Rainbow) is a boy and he is pink, so pink can’t possibly only be a girl’s colour. And how Orion has his pink skull-and-crossbones pyjamas and he’s a boy, so it must be a boy’s colour too.

GodDAMN it. It’s just a colour! Why is it so important to his father to turn him against a damn colour? Is he doing it deliberately to annoy me? Is he perhaps insecure in his own masculinity, and so forced to turn my son against an innocent colour of the light spectrum to make himself feel better?

Orion is three and a half. He doesn’t even know yet that his biological sex is supposed to determine his behaviour and attire and every damn thing about his personality. I’d rather raise him to do the things he wants to, rather than the things that are prescribed to him by sexist societal conditioning.

I’m going to do my best to undo the damage and approach his father about this in a non-confrontational and polite manner. But at the moment, I’m bloody seething.