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Ain't I A Woman
Apr. 21st, 2012 12:20 pmI take a dim view of most parenting advice, which is consistent with my lack of regard for generalized advice of all kinds. I'm not interested in how a stranger thinks I should talk to my husband who she's never met. I don't want to hear what I "must" do to avoid the writer's block I don't have, or what colors someone who's never seen me thinks I should wear to look my best. I appreciate outside inspiration. I do not appreciate out-of-touch corporatized management of what are definitively personal aesthetic choices.
Parenting advice from strangers is elevated above the other forms by its particular zeal and lack of basis. A writer telling me how to write is someone who has at least once put pen to paper. Parenting advice is often prefaced with "I don't have kids and don't intend to, but. . ." and may be directed toward someone who similarly has no children, simply as a mechanism of superiority. It seems to thrive in circles from which children are utterly excluded, and take for granted cold truths which are revealed as absurd the moment they contact a warm child. Can we call these theorized constructs "idea children" or "imagichilds" to differentiate them from the flesh and blood sort, and go about our business peaceably?
The zeal is another matter, the "for the children" rhetorical turn which should be retired to the same pasture as "just like Hitler." I avoid La Leche League like any other religious cult; I think they're less harmful than anti-abortion protesters, but that's close to the highest praise I'll give them. They're about level with PETA. Natural parenting, much like veganism, does not strike me as all that natural. It's riddled with the gender essentialism that sunk third-wave feminism. Motherhood may be hard work and motherhood might be delightful and rewarding, but motherhood is not the transformative event of every woman's life. I'm not willing to say lesbians and single ladies aren't real women, or that once you've gone through menopause you're no longer female. Reproductive organs do not define a person, used or unused.
So I should be thrilled by Elisabeth Badinter's The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women, which has been floating around for at least a year but was only recently translated into English. Predictably, I am not, because the premise of the book has mainly been used as a cudgel in another round of Op-Eds where self-appointed authorities set up straw men to tell me how mothers are doing it wrong, and should instead put their infants into full-time childcare immediately (paid for with. . .) and return immediately to pre-pregnancy levels of recreational sexual activity (regardless of their own sexual desire or lack thereof). Otherwise, they are not only bad mothers, but bad women.
Instead of telling me what do with my genitals, I humbly suggest these authors go fuck themselves.
I am already tired of the latest round of "the French do it better," which seems to be hitting on all fronts, championed by Americans who have never been to Europe.
Incidentally, if it's been a while since you've read the Sojourner Truth speech referenced in the title, it's still as good a piece of oration as I ever expect to read. And was made more than 150 years ago and is still relevant today what the hell.
Parenting advice from strangers is elevated above the other forms by its particular zeal and lack of basis. A writer telling me how to write is someone who has at least once put pen to paper. Parenting advice is often prefaced with "I don't have kids and don't intend to, but. . ." and may be directed toward someone who similarly has no children, simply as a mechanism of superiority. It seems to thrive in circles from which children are utterly excluded, and take for granted cold truths which are revealed as absurd the moment they contact a warm child. Can we call these theorized constructs "idea children" or "imagichilds" to differentiate them from the flesh and blood sort, and go about our business peaceably?
The zeal is another matter, the "for the children" rhetorical turn which should be retired to the same pasture as "just like Hitler." I avoid La Leche League like any other religious cult; I think they're less harmful than anti-abortion protesters, but that's close to the highest praise I'll give them. They're about level with PETA. Natural parenting, much like veganism, does not strike me as all that natural. It's riddled with the gender essentialism that sunk third-wave feminism. Motherhood may be hard work and motherhood might be delightful and rewarding, but motherhood is not the transformative event of every woman's life. I'm not willing to say lesbians and single ladies aren't real women, or that once you've gone through menopause you're no longer female. Reproductive organs do not define a person, used or unused.
So I should be thrilled by Elisabeth Badinter's The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women, which has been floating around for at least a year but was only recently translated into English. Predictably, I am not, because the premise of the book has mainly been used as a cudgel in another round of Op-Eds where self-appointed authorities set up straw men to tell me how mothers are doing it wrong, and should instead put their infants into full-time childcare immediately (paid for with. . .) and return immediately to pre-pregnancy levels of recreational sexual activity (regardless of their own sexual desire or lack thereof). Otherwise, they are not only bad mothers, but bad women.
Instead of telling me what do with my genitals, I humbly suggest these authors go fuck themselves.
I am already tired of the latest round of "the French do it better," which seems to be hitting on all fronts, championed by Americans who have never been to Europe.
Incidentally, if it's been a while since you've read the Sojourner Truth speech referenced in the title, it's still as good a piece of oration as I ever expect to read. And was made more than 150 years ago and is still relevant today what the hell.
