Comments on: More thoughts on the mommy wars

By: You might kill your baby! « Elizabeth’s Little Blog

You might kill your baby! « Elizabeth’s Little Blog — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:04:45 +0000

[...] point is that I wish people would stop making parenting some sort of DRAMA competition (good moms vs. bad moms) and high risk danger-fest. This is not good for parents. Not good for kids. I happen to like many [...]

By: Arwyn

Arwyn — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 03:40:06 +0000

Dawn: I love that article on lactivism. I think we’re saying pretty much the same things in this post and that article.

On re-reading your post and the comments, there was only a little bit of the attitude I was speaking against here (and primarily in some of the comments); but it is so common and pervasive that they triggered a long-brewing rant.

I do think talking about “damning someone when they need shoring up” IS talking about the mommy wars, the sniping and attacking of each other that we too often do.

What I missed from your post (though not that article!) and from the comments WAS the “big picture”: not the bigger picture in that particular woman’s life (that she endangered her child due to lack of sleep, which obviously indicated something needed to be done), but the bigger picture in which women don’t have support, are being expected to parent basically alone (and three under five?? by oneself??), with no social recognition or rewards, constantly being attacked and told what they’re doing wrong, and so on, that leaves a woman facing the choice of abandoning her child to cry to sleep or abandoning her child in a supermarket. I don’t think it’s enough to say, basically, that she needed to be told it was OK to CIO (it may have been the best of a very bad set of options available to her at the time), without an examination of the problems with the circumstances that brought her to that decision.

I don’t know if you saw the first post on this topic, but I really don’t think what we’re saying is that far off from each other. There was just a tone, primarily in some of the comments and reflecting an attitude that I encounter far too often, that I was responding to.

By: dawn

dawn — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:39:04 +0000

The point of my blog post was about the SMALLNESS of our focus (the self-centeredness of our focus) and how we would tighten that focus on one particular’s mother one particular choice without seeing the whole of her life. If we really want to effect change, we have to target the larger forces at work. The energy we spent in that group tsk-tsking other people (how many meetings did we sit and listen to someone complain about her sister-in-law who wouldn’t breastfeed??? Too many!) would have been better spent on getting big picture.

I wrote this years and years ago but I still stand by it:
http://www.thenewhomemaker.com/connections/lactivism.html

BTW, I haven’t re-read the comments but the post wasn’t about mommywars at all. It was about damning someone when they need shoring up.

By: TMae

TMae — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:56:00 +0000

“Rather than railing against breastfeeding or those who try to support and promote it, the CAB author should be railing against the patriarchy and the ways it makes breastfeeding hard and isolating. “

That’s it. Exactly.

By: Arwyn

Arwyn — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:54:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking about writing a response to that (except then I’d be obligated to read the whole thing, instead of the snippets I’ve gotten off blogs which have pissed me off enough), along the lines of pointing out that she seems to be operating under just the “individual choice” paradigm I argue against here. Because the thing is, I think we CAN have a conversation about which way is “superior” (the ways in which widespread formula use is harmful to women, to babies, and supports the patriarchal meme that women’s damaged bodies are better replaced by man’s superior technology); BUT, the conversation as framed (formula use in a patriarchal misogynistic society v breastfeeding in a patriarchal misogynistic society) misses the point. The conversation we should be having isn’t about individual women’s choices, but the ways in which a patriarchal, misogynistic society constrains our choices and makes all our available options suck. Rather than railing against breastfeeding or those who try to support and promote it, the CAB author should be railing against the patriarchy and the ways it makes breastfeeding hard and isolating.

But anyway… I’m looking forward to reading that post once you get it up. Be sure to let me know when you do.

By: TMae

TMae — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:53:00 +0000

Oh…you say it so well. I’m working on a blog in the same vein for my inaugural blog post (now that I have the idea I’m going to spend days refining the argument) which is a response to “The Case Against Breastfeeding” article that showed up in the March edition of the Atlantic, and has popped up in various other places in the past few weeks.

In short – the oft-ignored truth is that our society is anti-woman, and anti-family and proves itself to be such again and again with the “debate” about breast feeding.

Dammit, can we stop talking about which way is superior and start talking about how women and families should be socially and economically supported in their choice? Because right now, as you said, as long as we’re pointing the finger at each other, THAT discussion, the REAL debate, ain’t gonna happen.