The work I put into breastfeeding. It was not all sunshine and rainbows.
There was a roundtable debate on NYTimes yesterday called “Motherhood vs. Feminism.” I was going to leave this alone on my Tumblr, and I wasn’t even going to read all of the articles, but the one titled, “Good Riddance to Feminism!” was so cringe-worthy that I suppose I have more to say. Like, on top of the weighing-in I did on this subject three years ago.
First off, I don’t believe that feminism is or even can be about “choosing your choices.” There are very unfeminist choices we make; for example, I can own up to the fact that changing my last name when I got married was one of them. I fully acknowledge that my choice maintained status quo and it followed a tradition based on the idea of a woman being traded (and treated as an object) to another family, and was therefore an unfeminist decision. So if you can afford to stay at home and devote your time to following Attachment Parenting to the T and you choose to do so, then good for you, but I’m tired of people grandstanding it as a “feminist choice” because it’s not. Simply making a decision about your life does not mean the choice is a feminist one, particularly if your choice (and especially touting it as feminist) makes it harder or contributes to a hostile, shaming environment for other women to choose their choices. Just because Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann are outspoken women with careers in politics, this does not make them feminists by default. Similarly, it’s probably a good idea for women who choose to work to stop thumbing their noses at SAHMs. Some of us don’t have a choice in the matter of working or staying at home — yes, there are actually some moms out there who are underpaid and work awful jobs they hate so that they can keep a roof over their kids’ heads — and you’re making all of us look awful.
That said, I think it’s useless to keep having this debate about whether or not feminism and motherhood are incongruent with each other. Every single woman in the United States today has benefitted, in one way or another, from feminism. It may not have gotten us guaranteed parental leave, it may not have gotten us more family-friendly workplaces YET, but without feminism, that debate on NYTimes.com with all those female voices would not have even gone down. And how can feminism and motherhood not agree with each other when feminism was born out of motherhood?
This and all other debates pitting moms against each other (The Mommy Wars™) only detract from real issues. They are chatting about who has the better ideology, a debate that only certain women of privilege can afford to engage in. Most of us can’t give up our careers and stay home with the kids, most of us can’t continue to breastfeed when we go back to work, most of us can’t homeschool or stimulate our children all day every day, and many of us don’t even want to spend 100% of our time with our babies hanging onto our bodies. At the same token, most of us want to be there for our kids when they need us, most of us want our kids to feel safe and secure, and most of us actually enjoy being moms just as much as we enjoy our many other roles, and we do everything we need to do for our families because we love them. All of this should be a given.
This is not a grown up debate. All parents do the best they can with the tools they have (I’d hope), and to judge a mom for doing what works for her and her family — whether it’s co-sleeping, formula feeding, extended breastfeeding, working outside the home, etc. — is not only UNfeminist, it makes you a shitty person.
How about we fight for an infrastructure so that women don’t have to choose between family or career? Why don’t we talk about longer parental leave instead? Paid parental leave? Affordable child care? Family-friendly work culture that allows us to bring our babies to work? Mandatory pump rooms and equipment for working mothers to continue breastfeeding? Government-subsidized health care so more parents can freelance or work part-time?
If these factors were in place, the debate wouldn’t even exist — more working moms could participate in attachment parenting activities, more AP moms wouldn’t have to give up their careers, more women could be somewhere between working and staying at home and wouldn’t have to make one choice or the other.
I swear I didn’t mean for this to turn into Angry Mom Wednesday, but I also have a new post up on Hyphen this week about breastfeeding in public. Check it out!
