motherhood

motherhood – many children feel as if their mothers were born when they were – if a child is good, we believe they were mothered well → if a child is bad, we blame it on the mother – the meaning of a mother is not fixed in time, it changes → a good mother 100 years ago would be a bad mother today – motherhood is constantly reinvented – motherhood vrs mothering → should not be used interchangeably, completely distinct – motherhood is the institution and ideology that tells women to mother a particular way, not in her best interest, require her self denial *** → feminists who critique this critique the institution, not mothering (the practice of raising children) – we can mother in different ways that don’t require self denial – four conceptions of mothering in history: 1) goddess culture, mothers respected 2) agriculture rise, became a liability for women, made them stay at home 3) second revolution (industrial of 18th century), → every time there is a significant, cataclysmic, way in which we organize society, motherhood responds to and is shaped by it 4) WW2 (war based society to peace based society 5) 1990s rise of intensive mothering – the motherhood we have is not a natural condition – comes in 20th century, gets refined in 1990s – during agriculture time, had children for economic reasons → no concept of childhood during this time period (children will grow up and be farmers, don’t need to read to them etc.) → and women had too important work to do to mother children → in agricultural communities older siblings raised younger siblings → so little kids looking after little kids, 6 yr old looking after 1 yr old → can’t do that today, this shows that motherhood is a construction → teenagerhood did not exist 50 years ago → and now we’ve added early adulthood 20-25 → this is a social construction, not real or natural → children 200 years were a lot more capable than they are today and they became valuable members of the family → arguing that the more we go to this excessive patriarchal motherhood increases anxiety, obesity, depression etc. *** – as long as you breastfeed a baby – you give milk (doesn’t have to be yours) *** → one person’s job in agricultural society would be to breastfeed children, they’d go away for 1-3, maybe 4 years, called wetnurse, one per village ** → today women are bad mothers if they leave them at daycare → seen as job being invented for 19th century: motherhood, childhood ideology came out at this time – in working class and rural families, not gendered as even the boys took care of their younger siblings – in 100 years you can leave kids alone for 10 hours, today not 5 min or police are called Watched Rosie the Riveter – talking about how the airplane parts are like cutting dresses, or welding press = juice extractor Motherhood: Selections from Mother Matters and Pemale courtney Hall 433-441 in CWS; FIlm: Rosie the Riveteer