Femininity and Motherhood: Towards an Uncoupling?

Transformations: Gender, Reproduction, and Contemporary Society

Week 5

Caroline Wright

How do these quotes construct Femininity and Motherhood? ‘… a house without a child is like a garden without a flower, or like a cage without a bird. The love of offspring is one of the strongest instincts implanted in women; there is nothing that will compensate for the want of children. A wife yearns for them; they are as necessary to her happiness as the food she eats and the air she breathes.’ An unnamed doctor, 1911, cited in Ann Oakley (1979) Becoming a Mother, p. 9

‘We refuse to believe that women are hollow shells unless and until we have brought forth issue.’ Letty Pogrebin, feminist journalist (no date) cited in Angela Neustatter (1989) Hyenas in Petticoats, p. 78

‘I long for them to go. I can’t wait to see the back of them. When was the last time I had ten days all to myself? But I also feel terrible about it. I’m scared of losing them … It’s terrible to want to get rid of them and to want so much to hold on to them.’ Quote from an informant in R. Parker (1997) ‘The production and purpose of maternal ambivalence’ in W. Hollway, & B. Featherstone, B (eds) Mothering and Ambivalence, Routledge, p. 30

‘I began to realise that there wasn’t going to be a right decision or a wrong one for me. Whatever I did, there would be costs and benefits … my ambivalence continued throughout the pregnancy.’Kathy West, in S. Dowrick and S. Grundberg (1980) Why Children? Women’s Press

Structure of Lecture Second-wave Feminists Theorise Motherhood

Shulamith Firestone Adrienne Rich Ann Oakley

Deconstructing Motherhood: Carol Smart Dominant Discourses of Good/Bad Mothering Counter Discourses: Celebrating ‘NoMos’ The Myth-Reality Gap Social Class and Mothering Bio-Mums vs. Step-Mums

Shulamith Firestone The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Fundamental class division is between women and men

Giving birth associates women with and confines them to domestic sphere, subordinate to men

‘Women must be freed from the tyranny of their biology by any means available.’

Firestone imagines: Fertilisation in lab Artificial placentas

Critiques of Firestone

Poses one overarching, universal explanation for women’s oppression

Assumes that state-organized reproduction in labs would be benign

Overlooks the strategic power their capacity to bear children gives women

Overlooks women’s investment in and pleasure from giving birth

Assumes heterosexuality, nuclear family

Conceptualising Motherhood

Institution: Patriarchal

Social Construction: social norms

and myths eg. mothers are

selfless

Experience: connects

women with their bodies

Adrienne Rich (1977) Of Woman Born

Social Construction of Motherhood Ann Oakley showed on basis of

empirical work that maternal instinct isculturally induced

Women don’t naturally know how to

mother Motherhood may induce depression Myth of motherhood: ‘that all women

need to be mothers, that all mothers need their children and that all children need their mothers’ (Oakley, 1974, p. 186)

Deconstructing Motherhood Motherhood as legal and social institution emerged

in 19th century from elite feminist campaigns, separation of public and private and rise of middle classes

Elite women seeking rights over children post-divorce/separation emphasised importance of mother’s care in private sphere

Elite standards of motherhood imposed on all mothers, disciplining working class mothers

Emergence of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothers

‘Patrolling the boundaries’ of 20th century motherhood Discourse: institutionalized way of thinking, ‘limits of

acceptable speech’ (Butler) Welfare discourses: eg. unwed mothers as burden on

state; financial penalties in welfare system for women without husbands; rise and fall of single parent benefit

Moral + legal discourses: eg. absymal status of illegitimate child; Endowment of Motherhood campaign favouring married mothers

Psychological discourses: Post WW2 eg. maintaining that mothers’ presence is crucial for well-being of small children (misreading of Bowlby)

Changing Boundaries of ‘Bad’ Motherhood Unmarried mothers in 19th century had to

manage, poverty and social exclusion the price they and their children had to pay for their ‘immorality’

From 1940s unmarried mothers should give their children up for adoption to a ‘better’ home

By 1970s unmarried mothers should raise their children, with state help if necessary

1990s backlash against lone mothers Today?

‘Good’ Mothering Motherhood represents the

ultimate fulfillment for real women

All real women want to bemothers as a natural expression of their femininity

Children need their mother’s undivided attention to develop ‘normally’

Mothering is best done in the heterosexual nuclear family

Good mothers are naturally selfless and self-sacrificing

Good mothers do not have paid work, or balance well

Celebrating No-Mos25% of UK women aged45 have nothad children

The Myth-Reality Gap Choi et al interviewed mothers about their

experience of having their first child Nearly all said motherhood myth had left them

unprepared for realities, all-encompassing work They did not naturally know how to care Some felt they couldn’t ask for support as being

seen not to be coping, or even not finding it easy/natural, would threaten their identities as ‘real’ women

Feelings of inadequacy, depression, desperation were hidden

Performing Supermum ‘femininity is performed by not revealing their true feelings

and taking up the discourses of the perfect woman who can cope and who does not need help. The gender performance then becomes a masquerade or a façade that depicts the supermum, superwife, supereverything and hides the opposite’ (Choi et al, 2005, p. 177).

Result: don’t get support needed and myths of motherhood are perpetuated

Over time women may be able to recognize and resist the myths about motherhood

Abandoning ‘perfect’ for ‘good enough’mothering important for mental health

How is ‘perfect’ motherhood constructed here? What standards are set? 

A thirty-ish woman who may be exhausted from a bad day at the office but is still wearing a neat, fashionable suit and a tolerant smile. That’s her in the kitchen now, wholesomely sexy in jeans and an oversize sweater, whipping up a tasty, nutritious meal for the family. Her kids wear adorable, unbesmirched outfits and possess perennially sunny natures…

http://www.cybermommy.com/Commentary/commentary.html

 

If you’ve ever thumbed through the pages of a popular women’s magazine, you know [her] – she’s the athletically slender, well groomed, perennially smiling woman with attractive, clean, happy kids who amuse themselves will all sorts of non-messy developmentally-appropriate activities and enjoy eating a perfectly balanced diet – especially veggies and organic fat-free tofu cut into animal shapes or little smiley faces…….

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but those mothers aren’t real – the kind of motherhood you see in glossy magazines and on TV doesn’t exist, not anywhere on planet earth

http://www.mothersmovement.org/books/reviews/mommy_myth.htm 

Mothering and Social Class US Sociologist Annette Lareau argues parentingstyles are class-specific

MC/UC parents practice Concerted Cultivation: developing child’s skills via structured activities focussed on improving school performance and professional employability. Risk: unable to play; over-entitlement

WC parents practice Natural Growth: partly choice and partly circumstance, less organized activities, more free time to play, less emphasis on educational achievementRisk: reproduces class inequalities

Cherry’s Parenting Dilemmas: Think about social class norms re parenting styles

Parent-Mother Slippage

Wicked Stepmother Myths Biological mothers are good mothers Step-mothers are bad mothers Snow White and Cinderella portray step-

mothers as good mothers to their biological children but jealous, mean, mistreating step-

daughters to point of trying to kill them

 

Bio-Mums vs. Step-Mums Christian: How step-mothers in US cope with myth Analysed 69 narratives posted to online Forum for ‘blended

families’, 65 of them posted by step-mothers Alternative myth is produced rendering biological mother

bad and stepmother good Biological mothers portrayed as inadequate, uncaring,

unreasonable, mentally unstable, ‘Moms’ Portray themselves as rescuing child through good

parenting Create a new binary opposition to their advantage, a counter

discourse among themselves Reproduce idea that mothers can be classified as ‘good’ and

‘bad’ according to single criteria

 

CelebrityMothers

Women can now choose whether or not to have children, No-Mos are 25% of women and increasingly visible

Decoupling femininity and motherhood allows us to explore constructed aspects

Dominant discourses about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ motherhood change over time and work for and against particular groups of women historically

Myth of the perfect mother is bad for all women; not mothering is ok and mothering can be ‘good enough’

Concerted Cultivation reproduces MC/UC advantage, hard work, WC mothers ‘blamed’ for parenting style

Myths about motherhood are not easily despatched, and contesting them risks setting up new myths

Conclusions