More thoughts on the mommy wars

A thought I didn’t quite articulate but alluded to in my last post:

There is a moderately sizable movement that purports to be “anti mommy wars”, of which Dawn’s post (and especially the comment thread, last I checked) is a very good example. This side takes the position that since the mommy wars are supposed to be WOHM v SAHM, breast v bottle, cosleep v cry it out, then they can sidestep the misogyny by saying none of it matters, just do whatever works for you.

It is not a position without merit. Certainly it is admirable in that it is attempting to get away from the us v them impotent infighting of the traditional mommy wars. It’s very post-modern in its relativism, and all the more appealing therefore to a certain type of privileged intellectual (in which group I usually include myself; certainly relativism is my default stance on many topics).

The problem is, in trying to avoid the mommy wars by “rising above”, it fails, and indeed perpetuates just another variation of it. When I read a comment thread like that, what I hear is “aren’t we all so much better than those small little women who have Positions on those issues and try to advocate for them”. It ends up being another case of the “nonjudg(e)mental” sounding at least as judgmental and superior as those they’re complaining about.

Again, this isn’t to pick on this article as an example, nor even to shame that idea’s adherents as a whole; that would be both hypocritical and counterproductive. Instead, I’m hoping to point out how, once again, the patriarchy has managed to frame the conversation in such a way as to always advantage and privilege and perpetuate itself, by making sure some women somewhere in the conversation are getting hated on and put down; and worst of all, it’s making us do it to ourselves, by people who are trying to do better.

So, taking a position in the mommy wars, playing in to the us v them, “if you’re not doing it like me you’re doing it wrong and you’re a bad mom and shame on you” = hating on women and supporting the patriarchy.

And, not taking sides, saying “it’s all the same, none of it matters in the long run, it’s all about individual choice, shame on you for caring what anyone else does” = hating on women and supporting the patriarchy.

So what’s left? It would appear to be a double bind, and certainly societal forces are going to use all their resources of shame and misrepresentation to try to stuff us in to one of those boxes, no matter how hard we try to escape them, but I do believe there is an alternate path, that can have a righteous moral position and avoid misogynistic mother shaming. And surprise surprise: it starts with blaming the patriarchy.

It starts with accepting and understanding the idea that women are people, with full moral agency and ability to make choices that are right for them; and that the we live in a patriarchy that severely and overtly and subtly oppresses women and constrains what options and resources we have available.

It starts with saying that if we are pro-choice, we damn well ought to be working to make sure that women have REAL choice, and the ability to choose, not just to fantasize about what we might do under other, better circumstances.

It starts with recognizing that the language of choice is privileged to start with, that the idea of bickering over whether staying home or having a career is laughable to a woman without class privilege, white privilege, hetero privilege, cisgender privilege, able privilege, neurotypical privilege, age privilege, who may be fighting just to keep her children fed, keep them uninjured, keep them unhated, keep them alive, or just keep them when society would declare her “unfit”.

It starts with saying that the system is fucked, and that under the system we are fucked, and that patriarchy is our enemy, and women — all women, women like us and women dissimilar, women who agree with us and women we vehemently disagree with — are the ones we are fighting for, not fighting with, even if on some small skirmish they are on “the other side”.

It starts with saying that while not all mothers are good mothers, most are, and that being a good mother has NOTHING to do with some stupid checklist, and everything to do with loving one’s children and doing one’s good enough to be good enough (not even necessarily one’s best to be good enough), and that one’s worth as a mother is not measurable by how one’s child “turns out”, and furthermore one’s worth as a woman is not dependent on one’s worth as a mother.

In short, it starts with recognizing and rejecting every lie the patriarchy tries to feed us about mothers and motherhood.

Got all that? Ok. Given that — but try not to take it as a given, for I know I for one am prone to slipping up and forgetting parts or all on a regular basis — we can direct our attacks at the systemic ways the patriarchy influences and constrains choices, and promotes choices that promote its own ends: how a culture of detachment which promotes a pathological level of “independence” encourages aggression and devalues women and their work; how birth practices and the birth culture shames and vilifies women’s bodies, protects institutionalized violence against women, and removes women’s confidence and trust in our own power; how the belittlization of breastfeeding and especially the attacks on nursing in public shames and vilifies women’s bodies, and promotes a false dichotomy between a woman’s freedom and her child’s health.

I could go on, but that’s sufficient to exemplify how a conversation could and must be framed to attack systems and institutions that devalue — dehumanize — women, without attacking women or their choices at all.

In such a conversation, we must remember that it is not — cannot — be the goal to have all women choose the “right” action, even as we recognize and believe that as the systems are rectified the proportions will shift. There will always be disagreement and variation and that must be not only accepted but celebrated. We must also remember that as we champion our causes, we must take issue with the ideology, never take issue with individuals. We can debate how various practices affect women’s status, and value parenting practices for how they avoid or conform to patriarchal goals, without valuing individual women for how they “measure up” to some imposed ideal.

There will always be those who take offense, who take criticism of ideology as personal attack; there will be times when we slip up under the weight of patriarchal pressures and violate the above starting points; there will be those who simply deny or reject some or all of those precepts entirely; but as much as we are able within the patriarchal, misogynistic societies we live in, this can point our way toward avoiding the so-called “mommy wars” while still fighting for feminist paths in parenting.

And the patriarchy is gonna hate it.