Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

i don't want to start hating a guy for doing it to me.

It is all in the partnership and finding one that fits. No way did I even consider having a baby with my last two exes. My last two marriages were so intolerable because I worked 60 hours a week. My exes worked 40. I came home and did all the cooking and cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry. I was a homeowner with a yard in my 2nd marriage so added yard work to the list. I refused to mow and the ex would whine and bitch about a total of 150 square feet that only needed it every now and then. Fuck if I was going to do that too.

If I could have just worked an office job 40 hours a week, come home and have everything else done for me, that would have been pretty damn blissful and I was very happy doing this when I was single. Instead I was nailing down a roof and tree trimming on weekends. Things that had to be done and I liked doing but I had interests and projects and 48 hours of free time a week. The fact that I was living with an unappreciative lazy ass (twice) who never remembered my birthday or got me a decent Christmas gift...that shit would have gone far.

I am now married with a baby and no longer work at an office. I feel there is a balance of job duties now as well. My husband's work is extremely labor intensive. I feel we both work hard. I like housework and mom work. My life is pure misery for anyone who doesn't like housework or raising a child. I do breastfeed, just seems easier to do, no messing with sanitizing bottles or measuring out formula and cheaper.

I have friends who work 40-60 hours a week and have lil babies. They wish they could spend more time with their kids. Both could but they would have to sacrifice shopping trips, leather purses, shoes etc... We travel for work so our baby doesn't have a decked out nursery or anything like a nursery. She has what she needs.

being the sole breadwinner all of the sudden and working long hours under that pressure and THEN doing relief baby shifts in your spare time isn't exactly cake either, just sayin

― look at this quarterstaff (Hurting 2),

congrats but it isn't all about easy/hard. it's that a lot of other things that affect women negatively come out of the women = moms, men = making $$$ thing

I feel like there's a bad feedback loop, too, when one spouse is the primary or sole income and the other has a lot more time with the kid. I've always been very skeptical of critics of single-parent households (where the parent is the mother) who claim that the kids are missing the things a father is supposed to provide.

If they're referring to the traditional stay-at-home mom, working dad model... well, those things are *all* a dad really has the time to provide. Having a male role model who is at work all the time and seems like the "nice" guy to mom's always-around disciplinarian, and does what, teaches his son how to play sports and glares at his daughter's dates?

I like to think that my relationship to my daughter consists of much more than a paycheck.

More than a paycheck and date glaring, I should say.

http://www.askmoxie.org/2012/09/free-but-not-cheap.html

All the stuff that has to be done for kids, though, those things are jobs. Changing diapers, researching carseats, driving to soccer practice, washing clothes, catching vomit with your hand, putting to bed, filling out forms, searching out a replacement wubbie on the internet, making lunches, making dinner, making breakfast, making snacks. Many of those tasks are not that brain-intensive, and are not valued highly, across all societies.

Good article, even better comments section!

I think women and men have internalized the idea that women = primary babycare giver to a greater extent than they often realize.

Just as an example, ask yourself honestly, if you were going to have a baby and go back to work, and hire a nanny, would you be equally open to hiring a male nanny? Would there honestly be no hesitation on your part based on the fact of his maleness? I realize this is a somewhat skewed hypo because I've never even met or heard of a male nanny. But these things are self-reinforcing too, e.g. men who work around kids are viewed with more suspicion, by women as much as men.

being the sole breadwinner all of the sudden and working long hours under that pressure and THEN doing relief baby shifts in your spare time isn't exactly cake either, just sayin

― look at this quarterstaff (Hurting 2),

congrats but it isn't all about easy/hard. it's that a lot of other things that affect women negatively come out of the women = moms, men = making $$$ thing

― horribl ecreature (harbl), Thursday, September 13, 2012 7:06 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Honestly I don't think you're entitled to give me a smarmy "congrats" here, because you're getting het up about a hypothetical that is not your life, and that you can still opt out of, while I am actually living this.

I will refer you to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x81M3g3zjXc

men who work around kids are viewed with more suspicion, by women as much as men

i think no matter which work or lifestyle situation, people are more likely to interpret male behaviour in terms of sexuality, and people are more likely to suspect men of (for want of a better term) sexual perversion than they are to suspect women.

Well, it's more that the relief shifts are your solo parenting time, whereas the rest of parenting time is either the kid's mom or a combination of both of you. So dad solo is "relief parenting" and not just your solo parenting time. It's kind of limiting for the dad and the kid.

x-post to Hurting

there are male nannies, I know a couple. (they are called "mannies" btw lol)

altho yeah male caregivers are absolutely suspect as sexual predators, and are often barred from roles in which they might have the opportunity to abuse/molest children/infants (ie, male workers not being allowed to change diapers when working at Head Start, for ex)

its hard being a man

it's hard

period

raising kids that is

being a mom (in most cases) > being a dad (assuming you actually take responsibility and are not a complete dick) > being a childless woman or man

Well, it's more that the relief shifts are your solo parenting time, whereas the rest of parenting time is either the kid's mom or a combination of both of you. So dad solo is "relief parenting" and not just your solo parenting time. It's kind of limiting for the dad and the kid.

x-post to Hurting

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Thursday, September 13, 2012 12:16 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree with this. But without drastic changes in the structure of work/employment in this country (which I guess some minority of people have thanks to work from home jobs, freelance work, etc.) I don't see how to change it.

both parents take lesser-paying jobs with more flexible hours? sounds good in theory, probably not as possible in practice.

Right. For one thing, it's very unlikely that two people will be able to suddenly, simultaneously find work that pays them, idk, 60% of the money for 60% of the time.

There is no such thing as relief parenting, in my opinion, unless you mean a sitter and that is relief but not parenting.

"relief parenting" is like calling "babysitting" - it's your kid, you are parenting

i've been fortunate in my freelance work of late that they allowed me to have days off occasionally or come in to work late when the nanny's schedule was in conflict with our work schedules. anyway my wife and i work about the same amount of hours and she's the one who is still feeding our little man at night since we're cosleeping. it's been far tougher for her than for me, since i don't have a 15 month old pawing at me at 4 AM. my mornings now that i'm off work consist of playing in the living room with him, making him breakfast, taking him on walks, teaching him words, reading with him. i think it's fantastic! it shifts things. it's also made us want to move to a cheaper city soon so we don't have to devote ourselves to insane schedules in order to merely have a decent place. we'd like to work normal hours and have a nice place for him.

xp -- phrase was used in a tongue-in-cheek manner, but thanks for the correction guys, I was really not aware of my role in my own daughter's life

er I guess that was also in reference to mh's post, sorry for overly defensive post, touchy subject

to backtrack a little, what I was really trying to get at was the way the baby spending the vast majority of time with mom impacts parenting. For example, multiple times a week K has screaming fits where nothing I can do will calm her down, but when mom finally comes over she stops immediately. This was something I didn't understand prior to being a parent, when I assumed it would always be like "Ok now my turn to get up, now your turn to get up." Sometimes this works, but sometimes it just does not, because K is more bonded to her mom than she is to me by virtue of time together and breasfeeding.

fathers are terrible parents & terrible ppl in general

pretty sure after the first year or two it becomes a depressing "I could leave work earlier today, but my kid barely acknowledges me anyway, better to work an extra hour because we'll need the money"

always good times on the feminist theory thread

I missed the beginning, how did this thread get on to fathering? Pretty sure we could use a fathering thread.

it was about breastfeeding

I always feel like posting a lot when someone mentions something I can't do, because I certainly can post.

I mean, it is an issue of relevance to both gender and feminism, I guess, although if it's becoming too much of a threadjack we could start a new thread.

dadsplaining

There's a whole board about parenting isn't there

But I think it's not out of place here, today's thread convo

all of this is about feminism anyway
i think the article that L posted a link to earlier today points out why: it all comes down to relationship. Can everything that has to do with other people (which i would argue *is* everything, socio-culturally speaking), parenting-related or otherwise, ever be always "fair" and/or "equal"? I don't think so, not at this time in history anyway, but everything can be reflected upon in light of a broader definition of equality + individual circumstances. Reflection like this is really not that hard to do nor does it take more than 2 seconds, but it's hard to get into the habit of. I think that part of what that article is saying is that when you have kids, you (though unlikely all parents do) become more reflective on your relationship to your child, to your partner, parents, siblings, and by extension the world. Of course, there are other ways to do that without having a kid, but having a kid seems to force the matter, is how I interpret that.

I always feel like posting a lot when someone mentions something I can't do, because I certainly can post.

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Thursday, September 13, 2012 4:34 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

irl lol!

But to get back to Hurting's earlier comment:
I think women and men have internalized the idea that women = primary babycare giver to a greater extent than they often realize.

This reminds me of that recent study that men in management were less likely to promote women in their employ or hire women if they had stay-at-home wives (I may be misremembering part of this). I am not sure what the baseline here is, in that there's probably still a sexist bias in the absence of this variable, but this is kind of a self-fulfilling belief. If you are a man married to a woman who is a primary caregiver, or if you are a woman acting as a private caregiver, then you are more likely to have internalized this idea as a universal thing than someone for which that isn't the case.

I have my suspicions this also applies to children who grew up in that situation.

p.s. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, my dad was kind of a workaholic, so I fall into the latter category but I like to think I'm learning.

yes, the problem is the judgment of experience (especially from a place of believing in a universal), as if one way of being a loving, caring parent is better than another way (breastfeeding or formula, stay-at-home mom, working day, vice versa, etc)

or for that matter one way of being a person is better than another way (man or woman, rich or poor, etc.)
this is what i mean about everything being in relationship constantly - we are always making judgments, and some of those judgments keep us alive and well, while many are mistakes (hopefully to learn from... on macro and micro levels)

(i meant working dad not day in that last post)

I do wonder sometimes about how my unconscious attitudes about this stuff are overdetermined, e.g. my father was a warm and affectionate dad, but he was also the primary breadwinner and a slight martyr about it and not there anywhere near as much as my mom. And now here I am.

the louis ck youtube has 0 to do with what i am saying. i said i would like to not have kids in part because i don't think it's possible or think it's too difficult to maintain a distribution of household/childrearing work that would be acceptable to me given how stuff is. i think it is unfair and i can avoid that challenge by just not doing it. i am not disagreeing that dads can try hard at it and do a good job and i am not offering an opinion on anyone's particular arrangement. not having kids does not mean i can't have an opinion on how i feel about myself having kids. and it's assholish to say parents > nonparents.

yeah, that's sort of why i took most of the day to post itt, trying to get where that comes from and why it makes me angry

some good (tho very new yorker) satire: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2012/09/17/120917sh_shouts_allen?currentPage=all

not that that louis ck bit isn't funny - it's funny bc it's him and he's good at being that loveable asshole 'this is my experience, disagree or whatever, that's what i see' stuff. obv he's not actually saying that non-parents don't have problems or profound experiences.

yeah i get what he is saying. he's not talking about me though because all of my complaints are completely legitimate and everyone else's are petty bullshit until they have seen for themselves what i've seen.

I like being in a marriage where we both work like a team. When J. works we both are in work mode. I wake up early, before he does, get breakfast on, put lunch together, turn on the coffee pot...he tends to August while also dressing, we drive to the job site, drop him off, get back home and start our day. In the last job we moved from a house to a motel and breakfast was not as easy to do, so he'd grab it at the yard. Errands included grocery shopping (daily, those motel fridges are small) for his lunches and our hot plate dinners, doing regular laundry and his work laundry. Then we'd wait for the call to pick him up. He'd get home and have an hour or two of down time, showering, decompressing then we'd eat dinner and hang together. Six days a week. Now that we are on a small break between jobs, there are no schedules and we pretty much hang as a family all day. J. helps with August, makes dinners... We keep each other in check, it is not without a few kinks some weeks.

Compromise and appreciation go far. In the last marriages I was all too aware of the inequality for lack of both. This team work strategy is all new to me but works.

harbl: I know what you are saying too...I felt the same for years and years.

well exactly, right - comparing our problems to other people's problems (or successes) in a more-important/valuable vs less-important/valuable way does not lead to much in the way of social equality and personal-political understanding! i see feminism as it is now saying that equality is in who we are not on a hierarchical scale of what we do or how we do it, but in being alive and in relationship with everyone/thing else. <-- maybe a bit of utopian mutual respect thinking but i'm gonna stick with it

xps

xp (to tera) That's kind of what weekends are like for us, and I always am struck by how well, but just BARELY, it works when we are BOTH in full gear all weekend getting shit done and handing off K to one another, and I always think "it would be great if it could be like this every day, but how the hell does H do this by herself?"