View from the Left on Motherhood

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Sunday, August 15. 2010

View from the Left on Motherhood

A series of essays on modern motherhood at Boston Review, subtitled Stay-at-home mothering is bad for mothers, their kids, and women�s equality.

I read no article there about Apple Pie, but I may have missed it. The academic lingo is tough at first, but you can get the hang of it. Something called "Care Theory," which I think, in plain English, means not wanting to be a mom.

One of the essays is Time for Public Childcare. Surely that must be so moms are free - I mean liberated - from their annoying and demanding brats so they can golf and play tennis and be CEOs and have lunchtime affairs with the tennis pro.

Posted by The Barrister in Our Essays, Politics, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 13:20 | Comments (15) | Trackbacks (0)

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Dear Barrister:

Thanks for the posting--however, you missed the point: the ideal goal is to have mothers absolutely removed from the raising of their children--just like in a Russian Gulag!

#1 apple pie on 2010-08-15 13:40 (Reply)

What amazes me in these kind of articles, is that no one asks the children what they want - who do they prefer in raising them? Nanny, daycare, afterschool program or parent? We have entire generations raised in daycare - ask them. I gotta think they are not going to say "I wish I had more time with Ms. So and So in daycare", but rather "I wish my Mom had spent more time just being with me."

#1.1 Sandy Bryant on 2010-08-15 17:35 (Reply)

Good point. Ask a preschooler who has been in day care and at home with mom care. My admittedly biased sample stated MOST EMPHATICALLY that mom care was better than day care. I cannot overstate how emphatic the opinions were.

#1.1.1 Gringo on 2010-08-15 17:51 (Reply)

Why ask the children?
Or the parents for that matter?

They don't know, they can't know, what's good for them because they're not the state.
Nanny knows best, you should know that by now, and nanny is the state and Her appointed professional agents.

#1.1.2 J.T. Wenting on 2010-08-16 06:59 (Reply)

Oh, the lies these people tell women...

If I had a dime for every good looking, accomplished late 30 or early 40 year-old woman I knew who swallowed the so-called feminist lies early, and then lived to regret it in wealthy, prestigious, unhappy and usually single or childless adulthood...

Cads are preferable to feminists. At least the lies they tell cause brief genuinely happiness, and they may ultimately result in a child, and a child brings joy if only you are receptive to it. The further reaches of feminism past equal pay and equality before the law bring only unhappiness, at least to every childless (or child'ed, over-stressed, miserable) practitioner I've ever met.

#2 Jim on 2010-08-15 14:28 (Reply)

Who better to raise the serfs...I mean the kids, than the gooberment. After all, The State is the best mother/father/god there could ever be...

As the days drag by, like iron dragging on concrete, I am slowly grinding my teeth into stumps.

#3 RM on 2010-08-15 14:48 (Reply)

I was blessed to have a "stay at home" Mom. She stayed home during the day.

At night, she worked for the telephone company.

Raised 5 kids, with Dad working during the day shift and Mom working the night shift.

I am 56 years old now, and I sure as heck don't know when she slept. All I know is that I was one dang lucky kid. Didn't know it at the time, but sure as heck do now.

#4 Shirley on 2010-08-15 15:32 (Reply)

Yesterday, Instapundit had a disturbing photo essay called Then and Now, Part II, from a blog called Citizen Renegade. It's a shocker. The 'then' pictures were of Americans in the 1930s, I think, some of which may have been part of the WPA Art Project of the time. They were wonderful pictures, some of them so good that they could have won awards, if awards were given for photographs in that time period.

The 'now' pictures were just that, pictures taken within the last year or two, of Americans of today -- disgustingly obese, wearing t-shirts with vulgar legends on them, dragging children behind them on leashes, even on their backs across the floor. One woman should have been arrested for indecent exposure, with her great fat naked belly hanging over a tiny pair of shorts.

I don't know where these folks come from, because I don't get out as much as I used to, but I dis-own them nonetheless. Please tell me that we Americans are not like this. Please?

Marianne

#5 Marianne Matthews on 2010-08-15 15:43 (Reply)

Snapshots, MM as you know, very accomplished little liars they often are, especially when the story in the picture is all true. But because in this case the juxtaposition supports a truth (that in 1940 our national character was different) it seems itself --the juxtaposition i mean --to be a truth.

But think about it --it was selected and arranged --so it's artifactual --ipso-facto not phenomenological.

there. feel better now?
:-)

#5.1 buddy larsen on 2010-08-16 03:22 (Reply)

Not to defend obese Americans now, but people in the '30s were hungry.

No excuse for not being well dressed now, though.

#5.2 the gold digger (Link) on 2010-08-16 09:44 (Reply)

As a former at home dad ( ten years) I can't begin to say what a bad idea I think this is. I also happen to be a teacher (before and after and can tell you that there is a hierarchy i see in the classroom; kids with at home parent, kids with decent childcare, kids who spent 5 days a week in the local all day headstart program.

#6 JimS on 2010-08-15 21:17 (Reply)

In my early grades, I remember the daycare kids standing out starkly from the kids with stay at home moms. The daycare kids tended to be unruly and disruptive in class and did not do as well grade wise. After the 2nd grade we moved and I never went to school with daycare kids after that.

#7 feeblemind on 2010-08-16 10:21 (Reply)

I'm a stay at home mom. With a Ph.D. My former academic colleagues were horrified when I chose family over job. They never understood that the deciding factors had anything to do with their refusal to allow my children to be at the office with me, their expectation that I was to socialize with students during the evenings [i.e. no family time], or their arranging my schedule in an unnecessarily complicated way so that I could not teach for a few hours early in the morning and be with my kids the rest of the day [something that would have been easy for them to do]. Their message was clear: We hate children and families and you have to choose between us and them. So, I quit. We took a huge dip in income but I never again had to hear my kids crying when I left for class in the morning, or had to listen to colleagues criticizing folks with families.

Turns out our local public school is a joke and so we started homeschooling, which we love. This means I spend a lot of time with my children. I will never ever be sorry for it. [I do, however, wish it paid better.]

Interestingly, I have heard people [people approaching middle age] say that there's no way they could homeschool because they couldn't stand to be with their kids that much. Sad.

Older people almost always say, 'Good for you!', when they hear that I stay at home and that we homeschool. They're very supportive. I've never heard anyone older say that they wish they'd spent more time at work instead of with their kids. That's pretty significant.

#8 weaver on 2010-08-16 14:42 (Reply)

Socialists always go after the women, get us out of the home and into the work place where we can be controlled. The stay-at-home mom is one of the greatest threats to them, because that is a home they will never be able to enter and quite possibly a child they will never truly be able to control as an adult.

Fifty-seven years into the feminist revolution--single, childless, and working hard for my money--and I'm only now realizing there is some truth to the old saw, "The hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world."

#9 BarbB on 2010-08-16 15:33 (Reply)

Three cheers for you, BarbB. The tongue that tells the truth also rocks the world.

#9.1 buddy larsen on 2010-08-16 16:51 (Reply)

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Sunday, August 15. 2010

View from the Left on Motherhood