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So, I've been thinking. (Shocking, I know).
I was in the bath and randomly got to thinking about Full Quiver Families and the idea that women are supposed to be wives and mothers at home.
Er.
And that's it, apparently.
And this is where my thoughts led me.
See...
If we (for a given value of 'we') are going to recon women's worth by their capacity for (and success at -- for a given definition of 'success', too) motherhood, why would we not be reconing men's worth on the same scale?
Why are we not reconing men's worth based on their capacity for, and success at, fatherhood?
Which led me to:
Well, how are we defining 'capacity for fatherhood'? What kind of language are we using and what sort of images are conjured up by that language?
'Cause, see... Okay, example: A good father provides for his children. Right? I think probably everyone can agree on that one.
But what are the images attached to that statement?
They're different from the images that show up in the statement "a good father takes care of his children" -- or are they?
What comes to mind when you hear/see the phrase
"A good father takes care of his children"
vs
"A good mother takes care of her children"?
Discuss! :-D
See, for me, there's a difference between 'provides for' and 'takes care of'.
To provide for someone is, to my mind, basically an economical role. You make sure there's a roof overhead, food in the fridge, clothes in the cupboard, hot water in the taps, and so on. (Music lessons. Tuition fees. Yada, yada).
It's making sure that stuff is there.
It doesn't necessarily translate into making sure that you are there.
Whereas 'to take care of' someone is... much more hands-on.
Taking care of someone is... using your vacation days to look after your kid when s/he's sick, rather than - or in adition to - using your paycheque to cover the prescription costs (for example). It's collecting and cooking the food in the fridge, washing the clothes, ferrying the kids to the music lessons and going to the concerts where you sith through two dozen kids scratching out 'twinkle twinkle' on the violin (and doing bloody, bloody fundraising for the damned school trips), and so on. It involves spending time more than spending money.
I believe that the designation 'good father' does not imply changing diapers or doing laundry or coming up with a twenty-minutes-to-make dinner that the kids will actually eat despite having just come in the door yourself.
To wit: Last Summer, one of my FEM1100 students did her term-paper essay on house work. Her data (which I totally don't have with me, so I'm going from memory here). Basically, what her data was telling her was that, even in households where the actual house-work is split about 50/50 time-wise, the type of house work was different.
For example, in the case of 'taking care of the kids', typically the guy's share of that work involved a higher ammount of 'taking the kids to the park' and 'reading bedtime stories' and a lower ammount of 'changing the diapers' and 'cleaning up after the children'.
Note to Actual Parents: Yes, I know, your personal experiences may or may not match up to this particular set of data. Feel free to comment on whether or not this is the case. :-)
Anyway, my point on this little ramble is this.
(A) We judge parenting ability/proficiency/whatever by a different standard for men vs for women.
The other point of the above-ramble is this:
Why are women expected to be either mothers or not-mothers ("Selfish! Bad not-mothers!" - a sentiment which, I suspect, anyone who's childless by choice will have encountered to some degree or other)?
Whereas men are expected to be, well, everything else.
Like: Guys get flack for being deadbeat dads. Yes. And, frankly, they should. Deadbeatness is lousy and nasty, no matter who's doing it.
But: Guys *also* get flack if they *do* take a big heap of time-based interest in their kids' lives. They get flack from the gals who say "you're doing it wrong", "how on earth can he think he knows what he's doing?" and such like. And they get flack from the guys because (for some totally inexplicable reason - for fucks sakes) apparently being a provider of time and interest and care as well as money/stuff, and being the protector and teacher of your own kids and, oh, taking responsibility for one's own virility all, somehow, make one less manly. Quoth I: "What. The Fuck."
Anyway. I will take this opportunity to say: Stupid Mysogynist Society.
Why do I say this having just spent a good paragraph on how guys are getting screwed out of their chance at actual father-hood (as opposed to, say, sire-hood or, like, sperm-and-money-donor-hood, for example)?
See, this all ties into the idea that 'Traditional Women's Work' is totally not valued by our society. (See: The Cost of Motherhood and/or Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth for examples).
I guarantee you that I've ranted about this before. Probably within the context of FEM1100 papers that coninually spoke of women's work - as taught through playing with dolls - as being 'passive'.
Anyway. Because we, as a society, say that cooking, cleaning, and the billion tasks associated with child care, are 'inferior', 'unproductive', 'not real Work', or what-have-you; because we say that they are value-less, no-one is encouraged to *want* to do them -- except for, say, the full-quiver women who are explicitly (rather than implicitly -- see below) taught, and explicitly believe, that they are inferior to men, and that is how the world is supposed to work.
Boys are explicitely discouraged (more often by their fathers than their mothers) from playing with 'girl toys' like dolls and kitchen sets.
Girls, while explicitely encouraged to play with the dolls and the kitchen sets, are also encouraged (by Responsable Mothers who don't want to box their daughters into Gender-Assigned Social Roles) to play with 'boy toys' like trucks and dinosaurs and what-not.
I think that what this teaches us - and by us, I mean little girls, here - is one heck of a mixed lesson. I mean, at the same time that we're being encouraged to learn feminine social-roles, we're also being taught that the roles we're expected to follow are undesireable, unvalued, thankless, and to be avoided by anyone who has the chance. (See 'implicitly', above).
I mean, think on this:
- I get dismissed by a big wodge of my fellow feminists for 'letting down the team' if I choose to be "just"[1] a stay-at-home mom.
- I get penalized heavily by The Workplace if I happen to want to have a money-making career after my kids are old enough to be in school full-time (See The Cost of Motherhood as a really good example of this one)
- I get slammed by pretty much everybody if I dare to be a woman who actively avoids motherhood
- And I also get slammed by pretty much everybody if I choose to be both a mother and a career-woman because I'm somehow damaging my children by *not* being "just" a stay-at-home mom.
Um. What?? Excuse me?
Can I not do *anything* right?
Basically, we're screwed no matter what path we take.
Which is what leads me to say, quite freely: Oh, look. We live in a mysogynist society. (Big fucking shock, I know).
The illustrius and brilliant Ami_B has pointed out that it's not just the guys bashing the gals, either. Rather, the gals bash each other just as much.
To quote Inga Muscio:
Chinese women might harbor negative stereotypes about Filipina women, who may not think nice things about Jewish women, who might grow up thinking ill of Moslem women, who may think lesbians are the scourge of the earth, who might think women married to Promise Keepers are the incarnation of evil, who may think teenagers who get abortions should be sentenced to hard labor at juvey. And on and on.[2]
In the same way, proponents of different 'styles' of mothering will bash each other horribly, and the childless-by-choice folks bash the moms-by-choice, and vice versa, and the career-moms bash the stay-at-home-moms, and vice versa, and, and, and.
And it's stupid.
It's really, really stupid.
<*shakes head*>
Anyway.
There's another yammering rant queuing up for my tongue/fingers right now about porn vs erotica vs free-speech, or some approximation thereof, so I think I'll just stop here for now and get my breath back. :-)
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
[1]"Just" my fucking ass. Ask anyone who's done it.
[2] Muscio, Inga. 1998. CUNT: a declaration of independence. Seattle: Seal Press. P. 146.
I was in the bath and randomly got to thinking about Full Quiver Families and the idea that women are supposed to be wives and mothers at home.
Er.
And that's it, apparently.
And this is where my thoughts led me.
See...
If we (for a given value of 'we') are going to recon women's worth by their capacity for (and success at -- for a given definition of 'success', too) motherhood, why would we not be reconing men's worth on the same scale?
Why are we not reconing men's worth based on their capacity for, and success at, fatherhood?
Which led me to:
Well, how are we defining 'capacity for fatherhood'? What kind of language are we using and what sort of images are conjured up by that language?
'Cause, see... Okay, example: A good father provides for his children. Right? I think probably everyone can agree on that one.
But what are the images attached to that statement?
They're different from the images that show up in the statement "a good father takes care of his children" -- or are they?
What comes to mind when you hear/see the phrase
"A good father takes care of his children"
vs
"A good mother takes care of her children"?
Discuss! :-D
See, for me, there's a difference between 'provides for' and 'takes care of'.
To provide for someone is, to my mind, basically an economical role. You make sure there's a roof overhead, food in the fridge, clothes in the cupboard, hot water in the taps, and so on. (Music lessons. Tuition fees. Yada, yada).
It's making sure that stuff is there.
It doesn't necessarily translate into making sure that you are there.
Whereas 'to take care of' someone is... much more hands-on.
Taking care of someone is... using your vacation days to look after your kid when s/he's sick, rather than - or in adition to - using your paycheque to cover the prescription costs (for example). It's collecting and cooking the food in the fridge, washing the clothes, ferrying the kids to the music lessons and going to the concerts where you sith through two dozen kids scratching out 'twinkle twinkle' on the violin (and doing bloody, bloody fundraising for the damned school trips), and so on. It involves spending time more than spending money.
I believe that the designation 'good father' does not imply changing diapers or doing laundry or coming up with a twenty-minutes-to-make dinner that the kids will actually eat despite having just come in the door yourself.
To wit: Last Summer, one of my FEM1100 students did her term-paper essay on house work. Her data (which I totally don't have with me, so I'm going from memory here). Basically, what her data was telling her was that, even in households where the actual house-work is split about 50/50 time-wise, the type of house work was different.
For example, in the case of 'taking care of the kids', typically the guy's share of that work involved a higher ammount of 'taking the kids to the park' and 'reading bedtime stories' and a lower ammount of 'changing the diapers' and 'cleaning up after the children'.
Note to Actual Parents: Yes, I know, your personal experiences may or may not match up to this particular set of data. Feel free to comment on whether or not this is the case. :-)
Anyway, my point on this little ramble is this.
(A) We judge parenting ability/proficiency/whatever by a different standard for men vs for women.
The other point of the above-ramble is this:
Why are women expected to be either mothers or not-mothers ("Selfish! Bad not-mothers!" - a sentiment which, I suspect, anyone who's childless by choice will have encountered to some degree or other)?
Whereas men are expected to be, well, everything else.
Like: Guys get flack for being deadbeat dads. Yes. And, frankly, they should. Deadbeatness is lousy and nasty, no matter who's doing it.
But: Guys *also* get flack if they *do* take a big heap of time-based interest in their kids' lives. They get flack from the gals who say "you're doing it wrong", "how on earth can he think he knows what he's doing?" and such like. And they get flack from the guys because (for some totally inexplicable reason - for fucks sakes) apparently being a provider of time and interest and care as well as money/stuff, and being the protector and teacher of your own kids and, oh, taking responsibility for one's own virility all, somehow, make one less manly. Quoth I: "What. The Fuck."
Anyway. I will take this opportunity to say: Stupid Mysogynist Society.
Why do I say this having just spent a good paragraph on how guys are getting screwed out of their chance at actual father-hood (as opposed to, say, sire-hood or, like, sperm-and-money-donor-hood, for example)?
See, this all ties into the idea that 'Traditional Women's Work' is totally not valued by our society. (See: The Cost of Motherhood and/or Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth for examples).
I guarantee you that I've ranted about this before. Probably within the context of FEM1100 papers that coninually spoke of women's work - as taught through playing with dolls - as being 'passive'.
Anyway. Because we, as a society, say that cooking, cleaning, and the billion tasks associated with child care, are 'inferior', 'unproductive', 'not real Work', or what-have-you; because we say that they are value-less, no-one is encouraged to *want* to do them -- except for, say, the full-quiver women who are explicitly (rather than implicitly -- see below) taught, and explicitly believe, that they are inferior to men, and that is how the world is supposed to work.
Boys are explicitely discouraged (more often by their fathers than their mothers) from playing with 'girl toys' like dolls and kitchen sets.
Girls, while explicitely encouraged to play with the dolls and the kitchen sets, are also encouraged (by Responsable Mothers who don't want to box their daughters into Gender-Assigned Social Roles) to play with 'boy toys' like trucks and dinosaurs and what-not.
I think that what this teaches us - and by us, I mean little girls, here - is one heck of a mixed lesson. I mean, at the same time that we're being encouraged to learn feminine social-roles, we're also being taught that the roles we're expected to follow are undesireable, unvalued, thankless, and to be avoided by anyone who has the chance. (See 'implicitly', above).
I mean, think on this:
- I get dismissed by a big wodge of my fellow feminists for 'letting down the team' if I choose to be "just"[1] a stay-at-home mom.
- I get penalized heavily by The Workplace if I happen to want to have a money-making career after my kids are old enough to be in school full-time (See The Cost of Motherhood as a really good example of this one)
- I get slammed by pretty much everybody if I dare to be a woman who actively avoids motherhood
- And I also get slammed by pretty much everybody if I choose to be both a mother and a career-woman because I'm somehow damaging my children by *not* being "just" a stay-at-home mom.
Um. What?? Excuse me?
Can I not do *anything* right?
Basically, we're screwed no matter what path we take.
Which is what leads me to say, quite freely: Oh, look. We live in a mysogynist society. (Big fucking shock, I know).
The illustrius and brilliant Ami_B has pointed out that it's not just the guys bashing the gals, either. Rather, the gals bash each other just as much.
To quote Inga Muscio:
Chinese women might harbor negative stereotypes about Filipina women, who may not think nice things about Jewish women, who might grow up thinking ill of Moslem women, who may think lesbians are the scourge of the earth, who might think women married to Promise Keepers are the incarnation of evil, who may think teenagers who get abortions should be sentenced to hard labor at juvey. And on and on.[2]
In the same way, proponents of different 'styles' of mothering will bash each other horribly, and the childless-by-choice folks bash the moms-by-choice, and vice versa, and the career-moms bash the stay-at-home-moms, and vice versa, and, and, and.
And it's stupid.
It's really, really stupid.
<*shakes head*>
Anyway.
There's another yammering rant queuing up for my tongue/fingers right now about porn vs erotica vs free-speech, or some approximation thereof, so I think I'll just stop here for now and get my breath back. :-)
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
[1]"Just" my fucking ass. Ask anyone who's done it.
[2] Muscio, Inga. 1998. CUNT: a declaration of independence. Seattle: Seal Press. P. 146.
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