Monthly Archives: May 2009

(and yes, it was largely thanks to liberal use of the “Mark all read” button)

…I have some links I want to share. I’m only sorry I didn’t share them sooner.

First (well, most recently, because I’m working backward in my Reader Starred folder), PhD in Parenting wrote Feminism, fathers, and valuing parenting:

We need to push for a society that values family and parenthood. One that recognizes that role that parents play in raising the next generation. One that recognizes that fathers, like mothers, may need to strike a balance between their career and their family life. One where women don’t feel that they have to be an equally uninvolved parent in order to reach their goals, but where they can ask their partner to step up too.

So much agreement. (My only complaint is the heterocentrism of the post: I don’t see any acknowledgment that families come in more than one mom + one dad.)

Next up, Mikhela at Fly My Pretty proves that great insight can come from mundane “mommy blogging”, in day 2 of her “exercise in recording a week in my mothering life”:

It struck me how I had been negatively interpreting Pearl’s behaviour of trying to engage me in what she was doing in everything we do (she constantly wants to be picked up, she doesn’t sit and play by herself in the loungeroom, she has to watch me having a shower) – thinking that she still needs to develop her confidence. I wasn’t trying to hurry her, but I had been thinking, ‘Oh, Louis is really more emotionally developed and centred at this age.’ It was really good to have another way of labelling it. I think my tendency to do this – assume interdependency is a sign of being less emotionally developed – is a product of our social expectation that babies have to become ‘independent’. This then, I think, goes back to male development being the yardstick by which human development is measured…

I would take it further, and say the tendency is a product of our social expectation that we’re all supposed to be(come) fully (pathologically) independent. And in a society that forces dependence on parents, generally mothers, who spend their time raising their children, I find that a deeply misogynistic expectation. Everything in my life tells me that interdependence is the normal, healthy state of the human animal, of every gender and age.

This may be old news to you, because it came out about a month ago now, but one-of-those-women wrote the best response to the horrific The Case Against Breastfeeding article, titled The Case Against Reasoning, and it is so long and so good, I’m not sure I can pick a favorite summing paragraph. But I must point out how I simply adore the way she manages to reframe the conversation from “breast is best” to “formula is worse” without once denigrating or insulting formula users (well, Rosin the TCAB author, but not for using formula). I want all lactivists to be like her (but, y’know, still like themselves!).

(Ok, one snippet:

I think it’s more useful to look at why this article is being propagated so powerfully. What is happening socially: why it is being so well received. [...]

.

Well, to begin with, there is the ‘pressure’ that no one in the article, or in the subsequent discussions has touched upon… the commercial interests in making sure that breastfeeding is slagged off at all opportunities.

See? Love it.)

Last, Spilt Milk talks about her step-mom in A mother’s work is… done?

Anyhow, we got to talking a little about mothers and J said to me ‘I don’t feel like a mother anymore. I’m just not a mother anymore. I’m finished with that.’ What she meant was that now that her two biological daughters and I are all grown women, she doesn’t feel the same tugs on the proverbial apron strings and nor does she miss them. She said, simply, ‘I don’t do nurturer anymore.’

What fascinates me about this, and I haven’t quite managed to articulate my thoughts on it, is the idea that this is why we can’t have our entire identities wrapped up in our mothering: because someday, our children will move on, and we will be done with mothering, or at least its active stage. And that’s both normal and good. There’s something refreshingly feminist, and ultimately pro-mother, in that idea to me.

ETA Missed one! It wasn’t starred, but I mailed it to myself: Shapely Prose had a quick hit up on The nocebo effect:

Fat people are unceasingly told that the size of their bodies will kill them — if not personally by their doctors, families, and acquaintances, then collectively by the media or by strangers. [...] Think about it. Being convinced you’re sick can kill. Being convinced you’re well can cure. If indeed fat folks are iller, can we really be surprised?

There’s already excellent evidence that it is not fat but the damage of repeated weight loss and weight gain that causes the heart damage stereotypical of obesity; there’s also evidence, as discussed in the comments of the thread, that the stress fat people routinely live with chronically (by living in a persecuted body in a fat-phobic society) causes damage to our health; and there’s almost no evidence that the average person — of any size! — can substantially and permanently change their weight: so why, exactly, do we continue to think that shaming people into dieting is “good for them”? Do you really need to ask who I blame? (Hint: it starts with ky, and rhymes with patriarchy.)

So, anything you think I might have missed in my massive Reader skimming and “Mark all read”-clicking spree? Post a link — or several — in the comments please!