Mothers For Women’s Lib

The story of the “zomg obese child-abusing mum!” has come to my attention from a couple of places. The tabloids have had a field day (see here and here), and we all know that the Mail and the Sun are paragons of intelligent and thoughtful journalism, don’t we! I’ve noticed it in several communities, mostly from the “she’s lazy and ignorant and abusing! her! children!” point of view. Funnily enough, most of these opinions have come from people who have never had children, and even those who have kids haven’t ever been single parents of triplets.

So to give a view from the other side – from someone who’s had a baby, who’s been a single mum; who’s been a single mum and poor, heaven forbid – here’s my take on it. So let’s take the ‘facts’ as they come, shall we? First, let me tell you about all the parts of this article which are utterly irrelevant to the topic at hand.

A little about the mother. Let’s not call her ‘the mother’ actually, she’s already been dismissed and dehumanised enough. Her name is Leanne Salt, and she’s a human being like you or I. Ms Salt weighs 29 or 30 stones, depending on which of the ‘esteemed’ journalists you choose to believe. I wish her weight wasn’t relevant. It shouldn’t be. But of course in this society, fat means “Lazy! Slob! Good-for-nothing!” and that’s the only reason the tabloids have chosen to not only make that one of their main ‘facts’ but to include it in the headlines of both articles. They also point out that she was 40 stone when she gave birth eight months ago. What they fail to deduce from that is that she’s lost ten stones in eight months. Considering these articles were all about how she’s fat and feeds her kids ‘crap’ it seems the papers should have realised she must be doing something ‘right’ to have lost that amount of weight, no?

Aside from her weight, what do we know about her? She’s a single mum to biracial triplets. Oh, how the papers love a story about a lazy white chav single mother and her brown babies. But this in itself brings a point of interest. Where is the babies’ father in all this? Why all the pointing fingers at Ms Salt – why is all the blame for her alleged transgressions being placed on her shoulders, rather than shared with their father? He has equal responsibility for his children, and it is equally his responsibility to make sure they eat well. But of course, then we’d have to accept that Ms Salt doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it is not she who is failing but being failed by many, many aspects of society.

Both papers spend a lot of time telling us what a good-for-nothing, undeserving lazy slut she is. Apparently it cost £200,000 for her babies to be born. So what? How much does it cost for triplets to be born anyway? For that matter, how much does it cost to give someone a heart transplant? The cost of someone’s medical treatment on the NHS is nobody’s business – unless, of course, you are a tabloid journalist who wants to keep on reminding people just how much this lazy slob is costing the good, decent British people. Both articles also feel the need to point out how much she gets in benefits. Again – so what? She’s a single mum raising triplets. £227 a week doesn’t go far. Hell, I was only raising one baby (on around £200 per week) and found I was scraping to make ends meet. Of course, this is another dig by the Sun and the Mail – look how much she’s costing yoooooou! And the final nail in the “useless slag” coffin – she was with the babies’ father “just four weeks” when she fell pregnant. Again, this is another not-so-subtle attempt by the newspapers to paint her as a good-for-nothing slut. It doesn’t add anything to the story, it’s not relevant to the topic at hand, it’s just used to make her ‘different’ and ‘not like us’ and to give the reader a lovely smug holier-than-thou glow.

Additionally to this, both articles (seeing a pattern yet?) state “Miss Salt says she and her babies only get dressed and go out once a week to collect her benefits.” All I can say to that is, so what? When Orion was eight months old he lived in sleepsuits (baby pyjamas) too. They’re practical, it doesn’t matter if they get regurgitated on, it’s easy to get to the nappy for changing, they’re easy to clean and don’t need ironing. Sure as shit when Orion was that age he lived in them too – in fact, I was worse, because I didn’t even dress him in ‘proper clothes’ when we went out. I’d put a warm blanket over him in his pushchair and off we’d go. ‘Proper clothes’ serve no purpose for babies except for adults to go “Awwww innit cute!” and to add a whole load of hassle to laundry time.

Special mention is made of the fact that “Their tiny house is strewn with laundry piles and toys.” Again – so? So is mine, and I only have one kid to deal with. Some of you may know that I have personally been involved with Social Services recently, and I was told outright by one of them that a messy house does not mean there’s anything wrong. Indeed, he said – Social Services would be worried if the house was spotless, with not a single toy to be seen. Toys all over the place means the kids have toys. Not a sign of an abused baby. Even the most dedicated Supermum has a messy house. That’s life with kids.

Finally, something a couple of people have picked up on with a “how dare she!” attitude is that “now she wants her own council house.” Oh goodness, how evil of her to desire a better standard of accommodation. How very dare she want a house that she can afford that is big enough for her three growing children. Well why the hell shouldn’t she? She’s a single mum scraping by on benefits trying to raise three babies. Isn’t the whole point of council housing to adequately house those who would otherwise live in inappropriate housing? And considering both articles made a point of describing her house as ‘tiny’ and pointing out how messy it was, is it not pretty clear that she needs a bigger place to raise her children in?

On to the main part of the story – the triplets’ diet. Both tabloids have concentrated on ‘McDonald’s and Smash and junk food!!1!” but if you dig a little deeper, and actually pay attention to what the story says, she doesn’t feed her children much differently to most parents. Here’s their breakdown of a ‘typical’ day’s diet.

5.30am: 8oz bottle of milk
8.00am: 8oz bottle of milk
Breakfast: crumpet with butter
Lunch: scrambled eggs on toast, instant mashed potato with spaghetti hoops, or a jar of baby food
2pm: packet of Wotsits each
Dinner: microwave lasagne or pie
Bedtime: Occasional bottle of milk

Call me a child abuser, but I fail to see what’s wrong with this. People are saying “how hard is it to do XYZ (boil vegetables, cook properly, blah blah)?” You know what? I found it bloody hard enough with one baby. You see – and the childless people who are so quick to pass judgment obviously don’t see – babies are time-consuming. The average baby goes through six to eight nappies a day. She’s got three, so we’re talking somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four nappy changes to be performed daily. The average baby wants attention. Three average babies, we’re talking a lot of attention. Look at the photograph of them. Do they look like unhappy, neglected babies whose Mum never spends time with them?

The diet above doesn’t seem that different to Orion’s. You bet your arse I fed him Smash, because it was quick and easy and cheap. To the people who say “How hard can it be to make proper mashed potatoes?” I can only tell you that you are speaking of that which you do not know. Babies don’t eat on a schedule, they eat when they’re hungry, and when baby is hungry he is hungry NOW. Why do you think there’s such a booming market in jarred and tinned baby foods? Because us real-life Mums who spend time with our kids don’t have the time to be lovingly cooking and pureeing organic vegetables.

(Not to mention that I would rather feed my child Smash than the ‘baby rice’ so eagerly peddled by doctors and health visitors as an ‘ideal first food’. That stuff is nutritionally void. It fills their tummies and gives them no nutrition whatsoever. You might as well be feeding them soggy toilet paper.)

Crumpet with butter? Check. Spaghetti hoops and scrambled eggs? Check. Microwaved lasagne (and god forbid, packet rice and tinned soup and all manner of other open-and-heat meals), check. Come over here and call me lazy and my kid malnourished. Tell me I’m abusing my happy, healthy, well-socialised son. I double dog dare you.

At best, I could call this lazy journalism. In reality, it’s not journalism at all. It’s an exploitative, misogynistic, fat-phobic, classist piece of shite not worthy of lining my rat cage with. And I am so disappointed that the general reaction has been to lampoon a woman who is doing the best with what she’s got, and for the most part, she’s not doing it any worse than the rest of is. People really need to lay off, lest they find their own failings suddenly put to the public in such a biased way, and find themselves being denounced and made out to be stupid, evil and unworthy of living their own lives. Judge not lest ye be judged, people.

This week’s relevant links, in a handy all-in-one-place format. As always, please plug your favourite posts and articles from the past week in the comments.

• Inside Yarl’s Wood: Britain’s Shame Over Child Detainees
  “Children held in the infamous Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre are being denied urgent medical treatment, handled violently and left at risk of serious harm, a damning report by the Children’s Commissioner for England will say tomorrow. Sir Al Aynsley-Green’s investigation paints a shocking picture of neglect and even cruelty towards children trapped within the centre’s razor-wired walls, and finds “substantial evidence that detention is harmful and damaging to children and young people”. Since opening in 2001, the Bedfordshire detention centre has been plagued by hunger strikes, self-harm incidents, a suicide and riots. It was severely damaged by fire during disturbances in 2002. Despite repeated scandals – and the damning findings of this report – planning permission was given last month to double the centre’s capacity from 405 places to nearly 900. Around 2,000 children a year are held in immigration centres – half in Yarl’s Wood, which has been run by a private company, Serco, since 2007. The experience they described is prison in all but name. Politicians, immigration experts and doctors last night called for an end to the detention of children and for urgent measures to ensure other detainees are treated humanely.”

• Stay At Home Mother Not Considered A Professional
  “That we continually devalue the work of women is a function of capitalism and patriarchy. This is a large part of why women globally are the earths poorest citizens. The work that we do is constructed as either natural to our gender or part of our desire to nurture those we love, while no such caretaking roles are readily assigned to me. Consider that when a man is in charge of his children it is often referred to as babysitting thus inferring he is doing work that is beneath him i.e., womens work.”

• Feminism and Peter Pan
  “Peter ultimately lures young Wendy Darling to Never Land with a plea that he and the Lost Boys lack a mother. ‘Mother’, in this case, is defined as one who “darns socks”, does the “spring cleaning”, “tells stories” and pines for ‘Father’ Peter. By the end of the play, Peter rejects the self-imposed role of fatherhood, making it clear to Wendy that he has tired of their extended game of House. “What are your exact feelings for me?” Wendy asks. His answer: “Those of a devoted son.” This pivotal moment of rejection, in which neither Wendy nor Peter are able to articulate their romantic feelings, symbolizes Wendy’s ascension into her own maturity: she and her brothers leave Never Land. Off-stage, Wendy “grows up” by marrying and giving birth to Jane, a daughter who will, like her mother, follow Peter to Never Land for his spring cleaning.”

• Pet Peeves: An Open Letter to “Pregnant” Dads
  “This is not to say that we’re not super-grateful for your love and support and indulgence and foot-rubs during our pregnancies. We love you too. But we think it’s odd that you are acting like our reproductive systems are suddenly part of your own anatomy. We don’t recall you ever saying “we’re having our period” or “we have to get a pelvic exam.” Just because your zygotes created 50% of the child inside the uterus doesn’t make it your uterus too. So knock it off with the “we’re pregnant.” You are not. Please replace the offending phrase with something more accurate, for example: “We’re having a baby” or “My wife’s pregnant and we’re delighted” or, if you want to be all 1950s, “We’re expecting.” K? Thx.”

• It’s All in the Marketing
  “The problem is that no real study of this theory has ever been done. A study of the Dunstan System was planned with Brown University, but later cancelled for consumer tests with mothers and smaller group observations. The WhyCry site says their gadget has been “clinically tested” and “tried out in nursery schools with completely satisfactory results.” This doesn’t exactly instill a lot of confidence, especially considering their results may not agree with my own interpretation of what my child needs. If you sense your baby is hungry and the communication system tells you tired, who do you believe? I haven’t tried either product, so I have no empirical evidence to offer. There may be parents out there who have had success with this method. But, since I can’t find any real science behind it, I remain skeptical that these communication theories work with all babies. My advice to new parents: save your money from products like these. You’ll need that cash for diapers.”

• Hobbled
  “It isn’t the first time I’ve notices that shoes marketed to girls often have no tread on the sole, but with winter boots it seems even more marked. I don’t think there’s much more I need to say about it than that. If little girls try to run or climb, they clearly deserve to fall and be taught a lesson.”

• We Are Not Bad Moms
  “These are lies. These are misogynistic lies, put forth by the patriarchy. And we swallow them whole, and we spit them back out, at each other, at ourselves.Don’t do the patriarchy’s work for it. Reject the lies. If you let your toddler watch TV, even if you don’t like that s/he watches, that’s OK. If you don’t feel guilty letting your toddler watch TV, that’s OK too. (If you try to argue with me that there’s nothing wrong on a large scale with infant TV watching, I’ll argue back, but no way am I going to tell you what to do in your own life.) You are not a bad mom. You do not have to call yourself a bad mom when you admit it, as though it were some kind of protective amulet (mothers are hardly the only ones who do this: it’s just shades of “yes massa” “I’m just a silly blonde” “you know how we Jews are”); you may get a pat on the back from the patriarchy, but all it does is perpetuate the hate. And you are still being oppressed.”

I always say there’s nothing about my past that I’d change. I am very aware that had I done things differently, even by not making the mistakes I made, I may not have had my beautiful son, and I may not have met my partner.

However, there is one thing. One thing which probably seems trivially unimportant to most people, but which makes me feel horrible to the pit of my stomach every time I think about it.

I wish I had given my son my surname.

At the time, I didn’t know any better. I just thought it was how things were done. As time goes on it makes me feel physically sick. When mothers are the ones who carry babies for nine months and then endure hours of physical labour, not to mention most of the time being the ones who do the vast majority of work regarding caring for those babies and the children they become, why do men get all the credit, by having the societal right to stamp them with their names? It’s like none of the work we do – pregnancy, childbirth, rearing – none of that means a thing because as soon as a baby is born it becomes the father’s, his property, indelibly marked with his surname.

I wish I had known then what I know now. I wish I had stood up to his father (my ex), insisted that as we were not married and I was the one who had given birth (and thus the one with the final legal say in such matters) that my son would have my surname. I feel erased. I feel like nothing I did, the horrible experience I had of pregnancy, the twelve hours of excruciating labour, the three and a half years I have been my son’s primary carer, none of it means a damn because he is his dad’s son.

He knows he has a middle name and a surname, and he knows what they are. He knows that Daddy has the same name as him, and that I do not. You try telling me that isn’t having an affect on him psychologically, that he isn’t feeling more connected to his father because they have the same name. I double dog dare you.

I’m there with him all day, yes, and I do 99% of his ‘raising’ but he doesn’t understand that. As far as he’s concerned that’s my job, it’s what I’m here for. His name is something he can draw a clear and tangible connection from. Names have meaning. Especially in Western society, shared names mean family.

If I could change it, I’d do it in a bloody heartbeat. He is my son, I carried him and birthed him and fed him from my own breast, and I have been caring for him full-time since the day he was born, and it makes sense that he should have my name. Unfortunately it’s not something that can be done without my ex’s permission and well, don’t make me laugh. My ex wouldn’t let me consider it even when we were together, when our son was born. There is no way on this earth that he’d give up his ‘ownership’ of our son by allowing a name change (or even the compromise of the addition of my name), because it’s just another thing he holds over me.

My son is my world. I’ve dedicated my life to raising him since the beginning and I’m doing a damn good job of it, and it utterly tears me apart that we don’t even share that simple connection of a family name.

Edit, 4th July 2010. Hello everyone dropping by from CF Hardcore, which I understand was created when the usual LiveJournal Childfree community just wasn’t hardcore enough in its hating of children (“crotch droppings” I understand is a phrase some of you like to use for children, people like you used to be). I understand one of your own members was so upset about the hatred of children within your community that they donated a toy to a children’s charity for every hateful thing you said about children, back in 2005. Must have been a lot of toys! Just to clarify matters for you, as you seem not to want to read the post in its entirety before you comment. No one wants you to have children when you clearly don’t want to. We just want our children, and all children, to be respected fully as people. Thanks.

Sorry, no children allowed.

How often have you seen a sign like this? No children allowed. I’ve written before that not only does this discriminate against children (obviously) but also has a knock on effect in discriminating against the carers of children, who by and large are female.

It’s interesting to me as a feminist that many of the reasons given in support of child free spaces are very similar to the reasons given for excluding women from male spaces which, even until very, very recently, were totally legal.

Men spend all day with women; they need somewhere they can go and relax away from women at the end of the day

A lot of the language used in these places isn’t suitable for a woman anyway

Why would a woman want to come into these places in the first place? It would be very boring for them!

Listen, I don’t like women. In fact I chose not to marry or partner with a woman. So why do I have to have women shoved in my face?

These kind of places are dangerous for women. Plus we’d have to install another toilet and we just can’t afford that!

And so on. The more militant child free would tell you “but there IS a difference! It is acceptable to discriminate against children in this way because, unlike women and men, who people only thought were different, children actually are different than adults and do display some annoying characteristics that I want to get away from!”

It’s this reasoning that is used to justify all discrimination against children. Children are different than adults.

Over time this has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination against children. From sending children out to wet nurses (and no, these aren’t the milk producing angels you might have in your mind; wet nurses were very poor women who often had far more children than they could ever produce milk for; the children were often not nursed at all but were fed pap and gruel and swaddled and put on pegs for hours on end) which was often a death sentence, to justifying the regular beating of children (which tradition still continues today in that it’s perfectly legal here in the UK to smack a child).

The history of child rearing is one massive train wreck and although we have improving, here in the UK, there are still many throwbacks to the days when children were almost another species, not quite human.

I’ve mentioned the smacking, which is a major thing. Also, we still see it as acceptable to shut children out of many public places. We still see it as acceptable to force a baby to cry unattended for up to hours at a time so we can get some sleep. We still see it as acceptable – even, a good thing – that children who attend school must stay there at all times and be accountable for. If they are not interested in a subject they must still learn it. It’s good for them. If they would prefer, for example, to get a job, that option is not open to them. If their learning style is different from the mainstream – it’s tough. It is acceptable to talk down to them; their attempts at learning are often mocked and derided; shouting at them, tutting at their normal behaviour, glaring at their parents, saying “no” to all their requests without actually considering whether or not their reasonable…

This is all acceptable.

Now, before I carry on, I do want to make something clear. Often, I’ve heard discrimination against children couched in the following terms:

“You wouldn’t say that about a black person”

For a start, I’m a white woman, so even if that was the case, it wouldn’t be my place to say it. But secondly (and Renee says it so well here) this kind of sentence assumes that there is No More Racism. Which plainly is a nonesense. So in order to explain how children experience discrimination, we have to do it without further marginalising other groups that experience oppression in their daily lives.

So why am I using the comparison with women, as above? Well, I am a woman, and although there is still a hell of a lot of discrimination against women (some groups much more than others) I feel that it is something that society is at least aware of. I feel that we’re gradually working towards an awareness of sexism and misogyny and how if affects our daily lives, even if we’re still not completely sure what to do to combat it.

I also feel that it is my place to make this particular comparison. I am not downplaying the discrimination that I, as a woman, face; rather I’m using it, as it exists, to show you how the ways that children are treated are in fact discriminatory.

So, with that cleared up, what is the justification for the anti-child bias?

It appears to be, as I mentioned earlier, that they are different. But also, there is a part of it which is this: “I was a child and I experienced this, therefore it is not discrimination, otherwise that would mean I’d have to accept that I was discriminated against, and that might make me angry.”

Children are different. But they are also not one big homogeneous group. It is a continuum from baby to young adulthood. Essentially, all children are adults in learning. Strangely enough though, all adults are – to some extent- adults in learning, too; we never stop learning, it is just that the rate of it slows down as we get older. We develop more in the period birth-one year than we do in the period 30-35, for example. All people are people in learning, just different stages of knowledge accumulation. It really isn’t “them and us”. They are us. Some people may require more care and attention, especially early on in their lives, but they are people still, and should be treated with no less respect than others our own age.

Which brings me to the title of this post.

I’ll be honest. I don’t like the phrase “child free” one jot. But I understand wh it was coined; a swift “fuck you” to the legions of people who insisted that the only way to be fulfilled was to have a child or children, and those without, the “childless” were slightly pathetic and incomplete in some way.

“Childless” implies that the state of having children is one which is the norm, and to not have children is a kind of “loss”. However, “child free” does the exact opposite; implies children are some kind of a dreadful burden and in doing so discriminates against them.

And here’s the thing; you’ll never truly be child free. Because children are everywhere. As they should be. As people in learning, they have as much right to exist as anyone else. But it’s not just that. There’s an old truism that you should be kind to the people you meet on the way up, because you’ll see them again on the way back down. Or the oft-quoted phrase, “be nice to kids; they’ll be wiping your arse in the nursing home one day.” Cliches, maybe, but there is a lot of truth in them.

You’ll never truly be child free because learner people are all our responsibilities. I’m sorry, but they are. Because nursing home staff or not, the children of today are the adults of tomorrow. If you shut them out, you are training them up to shut others out.

Children will treat the world how they are treated. What you model towards them, they will model towards the world. This is not just parents; parents and guardians have a huge influence, but the world at large also dictates to our children how they behave in future. If they grow up in a world where it is perfectly reasonable to hit a person in learning, to shut them out, to ignore their cries, to talk down to them, to shout at them, to force them into institutions where they just do not want to be…

… then this is the kind of world they will create for you, once they get in charge.

Just a few today. In our house this week we have been mostly cleaning and decluttering, so I haven’t been reading many articles online. Feel free to add your own recommendations for relevant stories, articles, posts and threads in the comments.

• Murder vs Murder

  James Harrison murdered his five children “because his wife was leaving him”. That excuse is given in the headline. He killed them but it was her fault…..There is however no excuse given for Jael Mullings murder of her two children. Authorities were called to her home shortly before the murders because she was seen screaming and mumbling in the street but didn’t have the good sense to take the children somewhere safe at that time. No mention is made of the children’s father who had left the mentally ill mother in sole charge of his two children. Doesn’t anyone think as a 21-year-old woman, being left to look after two small boys might actually be the cause of mental health problems? Or do men have a right to leave women in the lurch that women don’t have?”

• Full Time Mothers

  “Campaigning for real choice for families.”

• Chinese Hunger for Sons Fuels Boys’ Abductions

  “If you have only girls, you don’t feel right inside,” said Ms. Zhen, who has one child, an 11-year-old son. “You feel your status is lower than everyone else.”"A girl is just not as good as a son,” said Mr. Su, 38, who has a 14-year-old daughter but whose biological son died at 3 months. “It doesn’t matter how much money you have. If you don’t have a son, you are not as good as other people who have one.”

Were you asked about domestic violence, when you were pregnant?

I wasn’t.

My doctor didn’t ask me, when I had told her the news. At the booking clinic, it was never mentioned, not even when I was alone with the midwife. A pregnancy support worker offered all sorts of help, but domestic violence support wasn’t there. When I went to the hospital for both my scans, it was never approached by anybody. I changed midwife, after moving home, and as great as the new one is, she has yet to ask me about domestic violence. It’s not been raised in my antenatal or relaxation class, and my midwife didn’t ask me the other day when she visited me at home. In fact, I am almost 37 weeks pregnant now, and nobody has asked me the big question.

I mean, I’m not experiencing domestic violence. But they don’t know that if they don’t ask me, do they?

30% of domestic violence either starts or escalates during pregnancy. Yes, you read that right.

Here’s another one for you. One in five midwives knows one of their expectant mothers is experiencing domestic violence. In fact, one in five midwives sees at least one woman a week, who she suspects is experiencing domestic violence.

Domestic violence increases the risk of miscarriage, infection, premature birth, low birth weight, foetal injury and foetal death.

When you read domestic violence, don’t just think about the physical aspect of it. That’s just one part of it. You have to include emotional, mental, sexual and financial abuse as well, all of which a woman could be experiencing, if in a violent relationship. You don’t have to be experiencing all of it, to be affect ted by domestic violence. How about if this pregnancy is unwanted? You were raped and forced to conceive, and this pregnancy is just another way the perpetrator has demonstrated power over you? What if you wanted this baby, but every time the partner hits you, the bump becomes the target?

And when you go to the midwife, you may have a few minutes alone, there’s your chance to tell, but you are too scared. Or you don’t know what to say. Or if she will care. Or will he find out? Be so much easier if she asked wouldn’t it? As a routine question, of course, considering how domestic violence could affect your health and your baby. Be so much easier to answer a question, than to start that sentence.

But I wasn’t asked. Made me wonder how many other women aren’t asked. How many of those women are experiencing domestic violence? I know I’m not, but I would have like to be asked. Because mine could be a life that could be lost. Remember, two women are killed a week by a current or ex partner.

Just because I’m not displaying the stereotypical black eye, does not mean I am not getting raped at home, or forced to do sexual acts I don’t want to do. Just because I turn up to all my appointments, does not mean I’m not being timed, and if I’m too long I will get it. Whatever ‘it’ might be. Just because I’m pregnant, don’t assume I’m happy with it and wasn’t forced to conceive. I should be asked, as every woman should be asked, if I am experiencing domestic violence. I could be in that 30% and my child could be at risk.

You know what I did, when I went to my second hospital appointment? I went into the toilets and stuck helpline stickers on the back of the doors. I had some leaflets with me, which I left in the waiting area. I figured that if it wasn’t safe for a woman to pick up a leaflet, when she goes to the toilet (for that inevitable urine sample) she can have safe access to a helpline number. A free helpline number. A woman affected by domestic violence may see that number and call it. She may never call it. She may mesmerise it, and call it in 6 months. She may give it to a friend or family member, who might call it. Point is it’s there. Much better than it not being there at all.

Knowing that 30% of domestic violence starts or increases during pregnancy, and I haven’t been asked about domestic violence once, is frightening. This could be the one opportunity where someone could help. I may not know of Women’s Aid, or Refuge, or that the perpetrator’s behaviour towards me is anything other than ‘normal’. My life and my child’s life could be at risk. It isn’t, but my midwife doesn’t know that if she doesn’t ask, does she?

Further information on domestic violence: www.womensaid.org.uk www.refuge.org.uk

I wrote this for my main blog and then figured it would fit in pretty well here, so here it is for your dissection.

I’ve read a lot in the radical feminist blogosphere about how radical feminist women ought to refuse to care for male children (funny how this doesn’t apply to say, Biting Beaver or Heart, both of whom have male children who as far as I am aware, raised/are raising their boys into adulthood and in Heart’s case at least, haven’t disowned them).

Regular readers will know I have a son, who is three and a half years old. I made a choice to continue with my pregnancy, using a choice that feminism gave me. If I hadn’t wanted a child, I could have easily chosen abortion, as I live in the UK and it is (still, so far) legal here. I didn’t choose that, I chose to have a child. The funny thing about conception is there’s no telling what you’re going to get. Without being told by one’s sonographer, it’s pot luck as to whether you get a male or female child. Here in Portsmouth it’s against the rules for them to tell you the sex of your foetus; you have to wait until it’s born. And I don’t know about you, but the women I know don’t have switches in their uteri to decide to only carry female foetuses.

So having made the choice to continue with my pregnancy, and having spent nine months carrying my baby, he was born and pronounced to be Orion (rather than Amidala, isn’t he lucky he wasn’t born female with that name picked out!). What would the anti-boychild feminists have had me do? “No thanks, I wanted a girl one, you can take this one away.” Quite aside from the fact that there are already too many babies and children unwanted in the adoption system as it is, I chose to have this child. I do not believe that raising a boychild in itself is an antifeminist act and I’ll tell you why.

One of the problems with a patriarchy is that we are all born into it. Children (and most adults!) don’t even realise they’re in it, and by the time that realisation is made by the few who do so, it’s often too late to undo all the ingrained thoughts, feelings and actions that have been imprinted since birth. Most parents don’t realise the damage that can be done by gender stereotyping, and go along with it because it’s just so normal to them.

Surely then, the best person to raise a boychild is someone who as a feminist recognises patriarchy and its stereotypes and constructs, and can actively work against it to try to raise the men of tomorrow to be unlike the men of today? I’m not saying they’ll be perfect. It might take a few generations to get it right. But we’re not going to destroy the patriarchy overnight either, that too will take decades or even centuries. The two – destroying patriarchy and raising boys into men who recognise and are active in destroying patriarchy – seem, to me, to go together like… well, two things that go together really well.

None of us is perfect. My son will have all sorts of influences on him, going against the feminist upbringing and education he is receiving at home. But I’m not the only one doing this, there are thousands of feminists raising boys, and this next generation will, with any luck, have a hell of a lot more boys-raised-by-feminists than the current one. And then the next generation will have even more, and even more. I’m not saying it’s women’s job to educate men/boys; of course it isn’t. But those of us who, having been given male children by the luck of the draw, decide to do the best we can to minimise patriarchal impact on our own boys should not be vilified.

I love my son. I had a choice and I chose him, and like many mothers I choose to do the best I bloody well can to raise him into a happy, healthy adult. I also choose to do the best I bloody well can to raise him against, rather than according to, the patriarchal stereotypes of the way that boys must be. Right now he’s too young to know that his penis means he’s meant to dress/play/act/behave in a certain way, and I have no intention of telling him any time soon.

Of course there are, and will be increasingly in the future, forces working against me to push him into a gender mould (my ex, his father, being one of them). Like I said, we won’t get it perfect the first time round. But we might change things just a little bit, and then we can pass the banner onto the next generation for them to carry on moving in the right direction.

Raising boys is very much a feminist issue. Boy children are always going to exist; better to raise them into decent human beings than to pass them on for the patriarchy to do as it will. I am utterly fed up of feminists who tell me it’s all about treating women as adults, turning around and telling me what I should and should not be doing according to their narrow view of what is and isn’t good for women. I think raising men who are aware of their privilege is good for women, because who knows – we might just end up with a neutral, equal society one day.

The Sunday Reading List posted on an actual Sunday? Say it isn’t so!

• Don’t Lick The Ferrets: End The R Word Day
  “When I hear the word “retard”, it hurts. You may or may not be talking about my daughter. You may or may not be talking about someone like her. You may be using it in a flippant way, thinking it causes no harm. Well, you’re wrong. This word hurts. It stings. It makes parents cringe. It makes individuals with disabilities feel as if all they have worked for in being treated equally has been taken away and landed them right back where they were… retarded. Take away the pain and sting of this word by eliminating its use. You can make a difference. Don’t use the word. Encourage others to not use the word. Tell people how offensive it is when you hear it. Tell them it hurts. Tell them it demeans. Tell them it needs to end. You can do it. I can do it. We can all do it together. And we will!”

• Sacrificing choice
  “Yes, it’s every mother’s choice to breastfeed or not. But let’s not pretend it’s a neutral choice, or that it’s a choice made in a vacuum. Let’s not deny evidence and silence individual stories in order to fit in with a currently orthodox feminist notion, any more than we silence feminist voices to fit in with the patriarchy. Let’s also be clear that demonising any broad sweep of opnion, be that breastfeeding advocacy or formula-feeding advocacy, is a stupid move. I’ve never said formula feeding mothers are “selfish” or that I “pity” them, despite both those words being used in comments to my article.”

• Guest post: One stay-at-home-mother’s feminism
  “Guest post: Demelza is 31 years old, married, has a university education, three young children and identifies as a stay-at-home mother. Here is her response to my 10 questions about your feminist motherhood. Demelza’s response asks some interesting questions about how socioeconomic class impacts on people’s perceptions of her choice to be a stay-at-home-mother.”

• Dimples Kids Spa, making your 6-year-old sexy as fuck.
  “If you live in Brooklyn Heights and just can’t figure out how to waste your money quickly enough, toss your kid into your Orbit Baby Infant Carrying System (MSRP $900), stop off for a $8 non-alcoholic beverage, and then drop her ass off for a spa day (drop your son off at the park where he can exercise and develop social skills). At Dimples, your daughter can “indulge” in hair, nail, and facial services, and they even do parties! Their services include manicures, pedicures, chocolate facials, and flat-ironing. Because nothing looks less sexy on a kid than wavy hair! All of this bullshit about “self-indulgence” and “empowerment” and “me time” is fucking absurd. I mean, sure, it’s a good idea, if you have to waste several hours a week on your appearance, to make the wasting of those hours as pleasant as possible, but women wouldn’t do any of that shit if we weren’t told that we are blowing it as human beings if we don’t look like gold-dusted, semi-moist cartoons.”

• Big fish, small fish, small pond, big ocean: a Seussian experience of feminism
  “In “real” life, and in some of the online places I frequent, I am about the most radical feminist I know, and one of the few who has even heard the words “intersectionality” or “white privilege” or “cisgender” (much less cissexism). I find myself needing to dispel feminist myths, to spend all my time explaining the most basic vocabulary and concepts. I am a big fish in a small pond. But in the feminist blogosphere, I am so new, so ignorant still in so many ways, and I spend most of my time just reading and reading and studying and following links and getting challenged, because there is so much I do not yet know about what it means to identify feminist, to exist with so much privilege (white, class, cisgender, able-bodied, etc), to live under kyriarchy. There are still so many myths, and misunderstandings, and consequences of unrecognized privilege within my own mind that I am discovering and attempting to ferret out. I am a very tiny fish in an enormous, diverse, amazing ocean.”

• Lady Madonna
  “Imagine this, you’ve just given birth (as Friends once memorably put it, like squeezing a roast through your nostril). You probably want to lie around sleeping, maybe watching a little light daytime TV. But what does the Grauniad want you to do. Why to make like the French and ’seduce your husband’. I have only one question. When was the Grauniad seized by the CiF lot? It’s massively worse than the Male, because it puts all this misogynist heteronormative crap, (including Pamela Stephenson Connolly’s rantings) under the heading ’sexual health’. Therefore doing the usual ‘well you know dear, we’re just trying to help you be a a proper woman’ . Enjoying a ‘healthy’ sex life. Healthy my arse. This is ‘manz pleasing 101′ dressed up as liberation. Plus ca change, as the French would say.”

• The HPV vaccine for boys?
  “The Washington Post reports that Merck, the company that makes Gardasil, has asked the FDA to approve the HPV vaccine for boys and young men. “When a vaccine designed to protect girls against a sexually transmitted virus arrived three years ago, the debate centered on one question: Would the shots make young girls more likely to have sex? Now the vaccine’s maker is trying to get approval to sell the vaccine for boys, and the debate is focusing on something else entirely: Is it worth the money, and is it safe and effective enough?” *Shocking* that the concern for young men isn’t about promiscuity.”

• Breaking the Silence: On Living Pro-Lifers’ Choice for Women
  “Adoption fucked up my head far worse than abortion. I’ve googled over the years about the psychological aftereffects of giving up a baby, and what little I found is astonishing. Depression and suicide rates ridiculously high, comparable to PTSD – and beyond a shadow of a doubt, there is no way you can cook any post-abortion trauma study to come anywhere near post-adoption trauma levels. Strange how peer-reviewed studies on this are damn near non-existent; strange how nobody mentions any of this when it’s not just your mind on the line, but also that of your kid or kids (more on that later). Strange how this is never on the radar when these stupid obstructionist anti-abortion rules are proposed by retrofuckwits.”

• Feminism abroad this Mother’s Day
  “This is what Mother’s Day means for us in the UK: a card, some flowers, to celebrate one special relationship. Look at the day through a feminist – and international – perspective, however, and it’s a very different picture. Maternal morality rates continue to beggar belief across the world. In 2004 a World Bank study pointed out that deaths in pregnancy and childbirth were 3.84 times more numerous than deaths caused by HIV and AIDS in poor countries. In Ethiopia – where Maternity Worldwide’s largest project is based – the lifetime risk of maternal mortality is one in seven.”

• Baby Toupees: “I’m Not A Boy!”
  “In the end, the fanatical shoehorning of perfectly fine baby girls into particular facades of femininity? That wins.”

• I’ll pay a girl to have sex with my Down’s Syndrome son
  There are just so many things wrong with this I don’t even know where to begin.

• Coloring Inside the Lines
  “Kids need to learn the rules before they start breaking them in the name of artistic choice. Drawing outside the lines is not done out of any sort of intended act of subversion. There’s a culture of unquestioning praise that is happening among parents lately. Anything our children produce should be encouraged and brightly received with enthusiasm, even when we don’t like it. I think this sends the wrong message to kids, that they deserve compliments no matter how they perform. This mind set will not only stifle their creativity, but it will also repress their possible talent. I’m not saying that they should be condemned or reprimanded for something as simple as lazy scribbling, but I am saying that it shouldn’t be hung on the fridge.”