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Sun Dec 6
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What's The Deal With Feminists And Babies? |
Appropriate Response |
Young Adult Fiction Is Dark For A Reason |
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Jezebel 
08/28/09
Before the invention and ready availability of modern science/medicine, the infant (and mother!) mortality rate was much higher and women had WAY more kids (200 years ago it was common for women to give birth to A DOZEN children within her lifetime, many of which would not survive to adulthood). Children were a practicality, they assisted in the running of the household and the family business. There was no birth control, no choice over when to get pregnant. It just happened as a natural course of a sexually active adult life. They weren't precious little miracles to be doted endlessly upon. In fact, childhood as we understand and practice it was invented during the Victorian Era.
I'm not saying that there isn't a strong emotional bond between mother (or even father!) and child, but Roiphe and her camp need to realize that they are operating under very specific cultural circumstances that allow this connection. If you had this sort of bond with 12 children and had to watch 9 of them die before the age 10, you would go insane with grief. Modernity plays a huge role in this supposedly transcendental bond.
08/28/09
08/28/09
It's wonderful that mothers today, in many parts of the world, have the opportunity and means to deeply bond with a newborn infant, dote upon them, and feel as intoxicated as they do. But it isn't some timeless thing - it's a tradition that has a short history and is pretty much rooted in wealth.
Things change - motherhood is not the same for all people right now, and it won't be in the future, either.
08/27/09
I do think feminism puts too much emphasis on work. Work is just not that important. Your company won't remember the job that you think is so crucial this week, that you're killing yourself over. It all filters into a bunch of numbers on a financial spreadsheet eventually. (Doctors exempted.) Even if that's not the case, you have to be seriously vain to think there aren't others who could do your job.
Family trumps all for me. Of course, those of you who disagree are perfectly entitled, I just don't get you.
08/27/09
"One day you'll be gone, and I'd rather be remembered for my awesome kids than any work of programming brilliance, literature or legal accomplishment."
So we are supposed to believe our own existence is meaningless, because, really, we're so humble, and selfless, and could not possibly think our literary our humanitarian accomplishments were meaningful.
But are you what your parents (okay, mother, let's be real), should be remembered for? Do you in some way legitimate her existence in a way she couldn't have done for herself?
You say that you want to be remembered for your kids. What if your kid, in all seriousness, becomes a murderer or a rapist? What if your kids hates you, or you don't have a great relationship with him? What if your kid is a vain, cruel person?
I just don't get why it seems better to you to be remembered for your kids, than for yourself. Chelsea Clinton turned out to be a great kid, but I see nothing wrong with remembering Hillary Clinton for herself, and not because she procreated.
And ya know what? You say anyone can do my job? That's probably not true, but I'm sure the percentage of women who can get pregnant and raise a kid is just as high as the number of people who can do my job.
And feminism isn't all about work, btw...but that is a whole different lecture.
I may have kids someday, but it'll be because we want a family, and not because I think having kids validates my existence.
08/28/09
08/28/09
I consider my work to be one of the most important things in my life. I love it. I don't care that I won't be remembered. I am making small changes that might help others, and that is all that matters to me. That the trees I plant and take care of will grow, that the plans I help to make will pull rural farmers up from poverty and help them to make better lives.
Not all jobs are shitty office jobs, and not all shitty office jobs are meaningless. Without these people, we would have very, very different lives. Management is a huge deal. I don't think it's that "no one else can do [your] job", it's that people want to do something that makes them happy. By the way, other people can parent your kid.
08/27/09
Oh, Katie Roiphe. You only say that because you know you aren't fit to carry Edith Wharton's smelling salts.
Seriously, this is the woman who dismissed statistics about sexual violence because it didn't fit into her Ivy League, 25-year-old experience of the world. Are we really shocked that she would be myopic and hyper-judgmental when it comes to motherhood?
Please, I can only hope her child is so entrancing that she never puts pen to paper again, and spares the rest of us from her reactionary gibberish.
08/27/09
The other thing that bugs me about this: the idea that you have to choose one or the other. Just because Wharton didn't have both a baby and an acclaimed novel doesn't mean she couldn't.
08/27/09
But then that would require nuanced thinking, and we know that is a skill Ms. Roiphe has not been particularly gifted with.
08/27/09
What seems to have happened with her 2nd baby is she suddenly is experiencing what some women DO experience, and now she realizes that she has only been dismissive and condescending about it. She now thinks women should be allowed to acknowledge this "drugged" feeling without being called stupid or pathetic or lesser, all things I would guess she used to do.
I think it is important not to throw the baby out with the bath water here- lots of women do not experience the same euphoria, and that is OK. Lots of women do experience it, and that is also OK. It is not a failure, a victimization, anti-feminist, or anything like that. It is what it is, and is individual. Let's not tell ANY women that what they experience is bad.
08/27/09
Love your kids and treat them right but can we please let go of all this "love is transcendent" and "gifts" nonsense? I'm not against people having babies and of course I get it, they're your kids love them to pieces but PLEASE just live in a practical world every now and then.
08/27/09
I did live in the practical world as a parent. Let me tell you there is nothing more practical than cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night.
But what would I choose to express to others? What would I choose to write about, make songs about, paint or sketch about? The magic. Or in some cases, the fear, the overwhelming anxiety, the dark dark night of the soul, when I looked down at my first born and felt absolute emptiness.
Why is it so important to disdain those transcendent feelings?
08/28/09
But I've never been one to give into ANY flight of over-sentimental fancy. Why? Because it's nonsense some poets back in the 1800's thought up because the Industrial Revolution was freeing up people's spare time, increasing the chances of survival of babies and they needed things to occupy their new found free time with. Women have been having babies for a long time and it is nothing special. Maybe it's because I know my mom loves her kids but I would be SHOCKED to EVER hear the women utter some poetic verse about it and I was raised very practically and I refuse to see the good in going over dramatic with your feelings in any situation. It doesn't mean I want people not to love them, I just mean don't operate in an overly flower-y world.
It's like when I shelved a book called "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding" at work and a women behind me with a baby on her hip snorted and told me "Art? What art? Milk comes out of your breast and your baby eats it. It's not a freakin' art. It's a practicality."
08/27/09
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08/27/09
My mother always said the reason (some) new moms feel this way is so that you won't actually strangle your children when they are teenagers and you really, really want to. She's joking, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were some biological truth to that.
08/27/09
Suppose I have a kid, and I've bought into this roses and sunshine bullshit. If I fail to have the same experience as this author, I will assume that I am a) a bad mother and that b) something is wrong with me.
It's irresponsible and dangerous to write shit like this, especially since plenty of women don't automatically experience this feeling, if they ever do. For some, it can take months or years to feel that powerfully about their child. Some women don't respond the same way to infants, but they do to their children, when their children have become individuals with more than just basic needs.
And some may never experience that specific narcotic effect. But is that a bad thing? Do we need or want all women everywhere to fall in love with infants? Is it really necessary or valid to penalize those who don't? To what degree? I can be amazed by a baby, I can be moved, and I can love powerfully and deeply, but I may not experience the drug addled obsession that some women do experience. Does that make me a bad mother? A bad woman?
Of course not. But telling women this, or worse, telling new moms that is reprehensible.
08/27/09
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08/27/09
I had never heard of feminists not liking babies. To me, being a feminist is about supporting women's choices in all aspects of life and making sure that women have the right to make those choices. I have had a man tell me that women fought for equal rights so I could be at work and not at home with my girls but a friend promptly told him that equal rights are about women being able to choose to stay at home or to work outside of the home.
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