Tag Archives: the double standard

These people have never wanted for childcare

In this piece on procrastination, we are told that our putting projects off because of our belief that later, things will be better! is a delusion of our monkey minds. And while I have experienced this so many times myself, have been living it so many times in recent days (I can blog tonight; I can blog tomorrow; I’ll catch up on homework in a couple days; I’ll send off that piece next week; we’ll clean the house this weekend; we’ll carve the pumpkins when it stops raining) all I could think while reading it was:

Yeah — but next week, I’ll have preschool for the Boychick again.

8 Comments | Posted on 28 October 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Parenting | Tags: Gender, school, the double standard, work

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This is kyriarchy in action: the New York Times on “Mommy bloggers”

Type A Mom and Mom101 have done brilliant jobs explaining why the NYT piece Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand is disgustingly discriminatory — and just another example of a larger mainstream media bias against blogs, and “mommy bloggers” in particular. Without quite naming it, they describe how this is typical misogyny.

But — stop me if you’re surprised — I think it’s deeper than that.

What we have here is a number of highly paid mostly-white women (and mostly-white women hoping to be highly paid) coming up in the world and trying to get a piece of the pie so long hoarded by rich white men (like the owners and editors of the New York Times), and getting pissed about the misogyny used against them when it becomes apparent that they’re succeeding.

Which is completely understandable — there’s every reason and right to be righteously angry, and to mobilize against the mainstream media for their continued marginalization of moms-who-blog. This is certainly not an indictment of the women who have “made it” in blogging, nor those who are trying to get there, who are so rightfully angered by the contempt displayed toward them by the New York Times.

But let’s talk about who’s getting belittled here — and who’s getting ignored entirely.

The “mommy blogger” as described in the NYT is solidly middle class (with debt, perhaps, but also minivans and lattes and money to burn on an “expensive hobby”). She is understood to be straight, by way of being married. She is assumed to be white, by being both middle class and married. (And look at the pictures on the NYT article, and the graphic which originally accompanied the post in large, found at the bottom of Mom101′s post — which is a whole ‘nother blob of misogynistic turditry.)

And to be fair, the women-with-children-who-blog (especially about parenting) who get attention and marketing sponsorships and book deals and offers of swag and all-expenses-paid trips are overwhelmingly white and married and middle class.

But in addition to portraying that group offensively, as vapid and concerned more with appearance than parenting, more with parenting-as-competition than politics and cultural change, this leaves out vast numbers of bloggers who are women with children. It leaves out those of us who are not white. It leaves out those of us who are more concerned with getting food on the table than getting it all organically grown. It leaves out those of us who are not straight, not married, not male partnered, not partnered all all, or partnered with more than one other. And it leaves out those of us who are trying to build a revolution instead of, or along with (as though that were such a sin?), a brand.

It is a problem that the work of successful women — who have learned to play the SEO game, who have stood up and demanded fair pay from major companies and PR firms, who have worked long days and late nights to build a business powerful enough even the likes of Nestle have to pay attention — is dismissed as so much vanity indulgence, that new thing that those silly mommies are doing.

But it is no less of a problem that who is successful, who is getting smeared, is a very specific, privileged sort of woman. Those of us who are in this gig to tell our long-suppressed stories (which don’t show up in the papers, not even in the “Fashion” and “Living” section where newspaper editors deign to give privileged women a nod on occasion), to save our sanity in a society that damages us daily, to join together and oppose the multitude of oppressions we and our children face unceasingly — as well as, as Mom101 pointed out, to share our knowledge in the field of our passion or our profession, to influence politics and government proceedings, to contribute to the human conversation, to do the 100s of other things women-with-children who blog do — why, they don’t even bother smearing us, because we’re not even worthy of acknowledgment.

Whether she is out to make a living, or eschews monitization in favor of revolution, or tries to balance both, the “mommy blogger” who is not white and straight and living that suburban life does not even have the dubious “honor” of being derided by the old guard media — to them, she does not exist at all.

Now that’s a story worth investigating.

19 Comments | Posted on 14 March 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy, Parenting | Tags: Gender, gender roles, misogyny, mother blame, Privilege, Race, racism, Sexuality, the double standard

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The problem with “the problem with men”

This is how feminists get a reputation for being humorless: we fail to laugh at jokes or quips that serve the kyriarchy. Like the one I heard yesterday, from D, an otherwise dear friend, spouse of my sister-in-all-but-genetics-and-law.

He and The Man were outside with the Boychick and his cousin, watching them run through the sprinklers (well, encouraging them to, anyway: the Boychick was standing at the edges saying it was “too cold!”, while his cousin happily ran around getting soaked). D came in, and my sister asked if they had towels out there for them. D’s reply was “Of course not: we’re men, we don’t think that far ahead!”

He didn’t understand why I raised an eyebrow and rolled my eyes, and nor did anyone else in the room.

The Man would have gotten it.

The problem with “the problem with men” type “jokes” is that they serve to support the patriarchy-assigned sexist gender-roles. Although directed at men, and not women, and supposedly OK and “not sexist” by being at the expense of men, and not women, by supporting the limiting and dehumanizing gender roles of the patriarchy, they ultimately hurt women. Not to mention being incredibly insulting to men who have worked hard to get past said limiting stereotypes.

These jokes are especially problematical when about the incompetence of men in the domestic sphere, for by casting men as bumbling idiots in the home, it falls on women to pick up the slack there, keeping us tethered to the domestic sphere, leaving the public sphere, with its associated privilege and power, exclusively the domain of men.

So call me a humorless feminist all you like, but I fail to see why I should laugh at tired old sexist tropes that dehumanize and underestimate the capabilities of my best beloveds, many of whom are male, while ultimately reinforcing my own oppression.

It’s not that I don’t have a sense of humor, it’s that I’d much rather laugh at the patriarchy rather than with it, and that requires thinking for yourself instead of regurgitating the partriarchy’s old standbys.

You can do it. I believe in you.

20 Comments | Posted on 5 July 2009 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy, Parenting | Tags: domesticity, fathering, feminists don't laugh, Gender, gender roles, male privilege, men, patriarchy, Privilege, the double standard

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We are not bad moms

(Inspired by an off-hand comment from a friend of mine, but applicable to pretty much every mom I’ve ever met. Very, very few of the dads, though. And no, that is not a coincidence.)

Allowing, or even encouraging, your toddler to watch TV does not make you a bad mom (or mum).

Using disposable diapers/nappies, whether regularly or occasionally, does not make you a bad mom.

Pushing your child around in a stroller does not make you a bad mom.

Using bribes or coercion or even lying to your child does not make you a bad mom.

Sending your child to daycare or public school, whether so you can work or just because you need the break — all together now! — does not make you a bad mom.

I am a TV-free advocate. I am an Elimination Communication (with cloth diaper back up) enthusiast. I adore and enjoy teaching babywearing, and prove daily that a stroller is not an essential baby-accessory (we don’t own one at all). I firmly believe in unconditional parenting (and unconditionality), and strive for consensual living. I believe in attachment theory (about the same way I believe in the theory of gravity), and advocate for attachment parenting, and think the public school system, in the US at least, is fundamentally flawed.

But parenting — life — is not a checklist. It is not a competition. And you are not a bad mom.

This is not to say that anything goes, or that having ideals and standards and beliefs and goals is wrong, or mistaken, or pointless. Far from it; I am, as the above list shows, a fan of ideals and standards and beliefs and goals. This is not to say there are not right and wrong choices in parenting (feeding your kids is right, beating them is wrong); it is not to say there are not things better and worse for kids (exclusive breastfeeding for the first half-year is better, yelling at them for developmentally appropriate behavior is worse). Rather, it is to plea with all those reading to recognize that even making a “bad” choice does not make you a bad mom. Even if we agree that a particular choice or action is less than ideal (today I have yelled at my child, threatened him, bribed him, ignored his cries, and generally made some less than stellar parenting choices), making that choice, or doing that action, or failing to meet that standard, does not make you a bad mom.

The whole world is filled with people who are eager to tell us what a bad job we are doing, that we are ruining our children, that we as women are inferior, that we are incompetent, that we are hated, that we can never be good enough, that mothers are worthless, that we are worthless mothers, that mother love is instinctual, that mothers must be perfect, that if we achieve perfection it is no big deal, that if we fall from perfection we are broken, that we are bad moms.

These are lies. These are misogynistic lies, put forth by the patriarchy. And we swallow them whole, and we spit them back out, at each other, at ourselves.

Don’t do the patriarchy’s work for it. Reject the lies. If you let your toddler watch TV, even if you don’t like that s/he watches, that’s OK. If you don’t feel guilty letting your toddler watch TV, that’s OK too. (If you try to argue with me that there’s nothing wrong on a large scale with infant TV watching, I’ll argue back, but no way am I going to tell you what to do in your own life.) You are not a bad mom. You do not have to call yourself a bad mom when you admit it, as though it were some kind of protective amulet (mothers are hardly the only ones who do this: it’s just shades of “yes massa” “I’m just a silly blonde” “you know how we Jews are”); you may get a pat on the back from the patriarchy, but all it does is perpetuate the hate. And you are still being oppressed.

What we do is not who we are. What we do in the early years of parenting our children really is not who we are. Our choices matter, yes; activism and advocacy matter; and there really are bad moms out there.

But really? We don’t need to prefix or suffix our “failures” with self-flaggelation. If parking your kid in front of the TV so you can get a break (or cook dinner, or take a shower, or just because they enjoy it) is the worst you do on a regular basis, I can say with all confidence you are not a bad mom.

Thumb your nose at the patriarchy: next time the words “bad mom” start to fall from your lips, change it to bad-ass mom. Because you are.

32 Comments | Posted on 13 April 2009 by Arwyn | Category: Parenting | Tags: attachment parenting, falling short, misogyny, patriarchy, self-deprecation, the double standard, TV-free

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Say WHAT now?!

In the car, The Man had NPR on to entertain the Boychick whilst waiting for me to bring the pizza (drool) out. We drive off, too busy munching and avoiding downtown traffic to turn off the radio. There’s some interview going on about a “lunch lady” (yes, the reporter actually called her a “lunch lady”, which should have been my first clue) who took the job just to have something to do while her kids were at work, ended up staying to pay the bills, still here 15 years later, etc, yadda yadda. And then, says the announcer, it’s time for the part of her job where she calls up the moms that haven’t paid their children’s lunch bills*.

The moms.

The fucking MOMS.

Excuse me? Excuse fucking me? Is this “lunch lady” living in the district of exclusively single mother (or two mother) households? Do not a one of their students have a father or two hanging around? (Being raised by grandparents or other relatives, perhaps?) No? So what the fuck is with calling the MOMS?

Oh I’m sorry, I seem to have temporarily forgotten that dads’ responsibility ends at ejaculation. Wait, no, we need them to pay the bills. Oh this was a bill? Oh right, we just need them to earn the money, but it’s up to the mothers to actually make sure the chil’ens are actually fed, because we can’t can’t expect dads to keep track of little things like the survival of their kids.

Did you perchance notice my ire on this topic? Why, you ask? It’s one word. Just one word. What’s the big deal?

It’s one word that carries with it the world of burden that sexist assumptions about parenting brings. It’s one word that says sure there may or may not be men in the picture, but it’s certainly not their job to keep track of lunch bills and permission slips and PTA meetings. It’s one word that tells women fine, you can get a job if you need to, but heaven forbid you ever share the responsibility of childrearing; no, unto you falls all the hassles of work AND keeping track of everything about your children; only men are allowed off work after 5, you just shift jobs. It’s one word that perfectly sums up the double standard of parenting, and it’s one word that makes radfem instructions to avoid procreation to avoid perpetuating patriarchy seem to make sense. It’s one word that if changed could change the world; it’s one word that will probably only be changed when the whole world changes first.

I didn’t hear the rest of the piece; my blood was boiling too loudly, and I snapped off the radio in self protection. The story actually had nothing to do with the calls to moms; that was just an aside, a fun little half-second bit to prop up the patriarchy and keep the wimmins in their place. Nothing, really. Just the dimminuization and essentialization of my entire self as woman with child. Just the erasure of my coparent’s existence and responsibility. The story moved on, even if I could not, stuck and struck as I was by how much misogyny just one little word could convey.

But hey, the pizza was good.

* For an excellent piece this reminded the tiny part of my brain that hadn’t just imploded at the word “moms” of, see Womanist Musings on If you’re poor in New Mexico.