![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
FYI: I don't have babies and I'm not pregnant.
Nevertheless, we contemplate, and I periodically read bluemilk. Some recent quotes that resonated. Writing by bluemilk, links to full entries in titles, bolding by me.
Oppressed by Breastfeeding
This is not only unhelpful but frankly, while we’re talking as feminists, it’s patriarchy-enabling. Babies are helpless little beings designed to fall in love and elicit love and just to generally survive. Really, however infuriating it gets caring for them, that is all a baby is trying to do – survive and love. (Sometimes it helps to look them in the face and acknowledge that to yourself). Whenever the tussle for fairness, for support, for needs being met, for scarce resources is waged between a mother and a baby somebody is being let off the hook, and I would argue that it is a whole society of somebodies. Take or leave ‘attachment parenting’ as you wish but raising human infants is not supposed to be done in isolation by a single caregiver, and yet overwhelming levels of individualism combined with conservative gender roles have positioned us in exactly that place. In our suburbs there is no-one else in the room when a mother reaches the end of her tether – there is no-one left to negotiate with – it is just an adult and a baby, crying in each other’s faces, desperate. No good or equitable negotiation is going to come out of that situation. It is this dynamic that makes “equality between the sexes and freedom for women impossible”, not a tyrannical infant nor a doormat of a mother.
The Terrifying Softness of Motherhood
Why are we so afraid of losing control, of being softened, of giving in, of being affected, of changing?
And yet listening to first-time parents sometimes all you will hear is their burning determination to not be altered by motherhood; to make their babies fit into their lives (lest they be duped into doing it the other way around). This baby will sleep peacefully through dinner parties and know how to behave appropriately in restaurants. This baby will listen to our music, and in fact will prefer our music to nursery rhymes. This baby will not disrupt our lives. This baby will not control us. Another theme among first-time parents, and surely related to the first, is the disturbing unreasonableness of our babies. We are overcome by babies that feed for too long or too often; babies who sleep too little or too lightly; babies who want to be carried too much; babies who are too fussy; babies who cry too much; babies who don’t like car trips, strollers, automated swing seats; babies who won’t be left alone. Babies out of control. Babies who seem to be demanding that a stand be taken against their tyranny. These babies drive us mad. They drive us to responses and decisions we need to justify. It was us or them. Someone or something had to break.
...
What will happen if we lose control? If we succumb to our lives as mothers? What will it say about us? Why do we not want to be changed by our babies? What are we frightened may happen to us? Who will we become? Where do we assume it will end?
Nevertheless, we contemplate, and I periodically read bluemilk. Some recent quotes that resonated. Writing by bluemilk, links to full entries in titles, bolding by me.
Oppressed by Breastfeeding
This is not only unhelpful but frankly, while we’re talking as feminists, it’s patriarchy-enabling. Babies are helpless little beings designed to fall in love and elicit love and just to generally survive. Really, however infuriating it gets caring for them, that is all a baby is trying to do – survive and love. (Sometimes it helps to look them in the face and acknowledge that to yourself). Whenever the tussle for fairness, for support, for needs being met, for scarce resources is waged between a mother and a baby somebody is being let off the hook, and I would argue that it is a whole society of somebodies. Take or leave ‘attachment parenting’ as you wish but raising human infants is not supposed to be done in isolation by a single caregiver, and yet overwhelming levels of individualism combined with conservative gender roles have positioned us in exactly that place. In our suburbs there is no-one else in the room when a mother reaches the end of her tether – there is no-one left to negotiate with – it is just an adult and a baby, crying in each other’s faces, desperate. No good or equitable negotiation is going to come out of that situation. It is this dynamic that makes “equality between the sexes and freedom for women impossible”, not a tyrannical infant nor a doormat of a mother.
The Terrifying Softness of Motherhood
Why are we so afraid of losing control, of being softened, of giving in, of being affected, of changing?
And yet listening to first-time parents sometimes all you will hear is their burning determination to not be altered by motherhood; to make their babies fit into their lives (lest they be duped into doing it the other way around). This baby will sleep peacefully through dinner parties and know how to behave appropriately in restaurants. This baby will listen to our music, and in fact will prefer our music to nursery rhymes. This baby will not disrupt our lives. This baby will not control us. Another theme among first-time parents, and surely related to the first, is the disturbing unreasonableness of our babies. We are overcome by babies that feed for too long or too often; babies who sleep too little or too lightly; babies who want to be carried too much; babies who are too fussy; babies who cry too much; babies who don’t like car trips, strollers, automated swing seats; babies who won’t be left alone. Babies out of control. Babies who seem to be demanding that a stand be taken against their tyranny. These babies drive us mad. They drive us to responses and decisions we need to justify. It was us or them. Someone or something had to break.
...
What will happen if we lose control? If we succumb to our lives as mothers? What will it say about us? Why do we not want to be changed by our babies? What are we frightened may happen to us? Who will we become? Where do we assume it will end?
Tags: