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News & ArtsWednesday, March 24, 2010
The Ladies Can't We All Agree That Children Are the Ultimate Oppressors?
Posted by Cienna Madrid on Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 3:26 PM
When I acted up as a child, my mother used to loudly—and publicly—threaten to drown me in the bathtub like she did all of my brothers and sisters. Then she'd say, "I need a goddamn lemon drop." Perhaps that is why I adore French feminist Elisabeth Badinter, whose latest best-selling book, Le Conflit, La Femme et La Mère (The Conflict, The Woman and The Mother), talks about how children are tyrants and feminists are better off salting their wombs than giving birth to their own personal oppressors.
How can mothers reclaim their identities (aside from bathtub drownings) according to Badinter? Reign in all the motherhood bullshit. Start by giving up on Mother Earth.
“Between the protection of trees and the liberty of women, my choice is clear,” she says. “It may seem derisory but powdered milk, jars of baby food and disposable nappies were all stages in the liberation of women.”
Then give up on breast feeding.
“If you don’t want to breastfeed, you are asked, ‘But Madame, don’t you want the best for your child?’. It makes you feel terribly guilty.” So most mothers breastfeed anyway, and many go on to do so for months or years. “This worries me, because we are creating another model of motherhood where the mother is with her baby 24 hours a day for at least six months. This is a model that eats the personal part of each woman as an individual,” she says.
Then, she says, give up on nurturing society and go get yourself a drink. And maybe a foot rub.
Critics say that Badinter isn't in touch with modern women and their aspirations, and that she's in denial about motherhood (she has three children and a bunch of grandkids). I think she makes a great point about how prioritizing your individuality as a woman doesn't make you a bad mother.
I mean, my mother never cooked and arguably only has room in her heart for one child at a time, but look how I turned out: Excellent in the kitchen and cautious around bathtubs, both of which have kept me alive these twenty-odd years. So thanks, mom. You did good.
1
I like a lot of what she has to say. Making children the total center of adult attention isn't good for kids and it's not good for parents either.
That said, whether you are a man or a woman and don't want to give up your freedom, DON'T HAVE CHILDREN. There is no way, short of criminal neglect, that you can become a parent and not lose many, MANY personal freedoms, especially when kids are young. Don't like the tyranny of breastfeeding? Don't like how a million trivial but important tasks suck up your intellect and get in the way of other ambitions? Don't have kids.
That said, whether you are a man or a woman and don't want to give up your freedom, DON'T HAVE CHILDREN. There is no way, short of criminal neglect, that you can become a parent and not lose many, MANY personal freedoms, especially when kids are young. Don't like the tyranny of breastfeeding? Don't like how a million trivial but important tasks suck up your intellect and get in the way of other ambitions? Don't have kids.
2
Hmmm.. so the message is "find balance in your life" or "don't obsess over your kids"?
Duh.
Doesn't seem like we need a whole stupid book to get that message across.
So tired of contrived trends and memes.
Duh.
Doesn't seem like we need a whole stupid book to get that message across.
So tired of contrived trends and memes.
3
Self-serving and self-deluding.
It must piss of scientists who work so hard to get grants to gather data for longitudinal studies of hundreds or thousands of children and have their entire body of work rubbished by one writer saying, "But I turned out all right!"
Yes, dear. If you turned out all right then that settles it. Run along now.
It must piss of scientists who work so hard to get grants to gather data for longitudinal studies of hundreds or thousands of children and have their entire body of work rubbished by one writer saying, "But I turned out all right!"
Yes, dear. If you turned out all right then that settles it. Run along now.
4
I wish society would fucking figure out that adults are more important than children. Lions have that shit down, why can't we?
6
My mother was relatively hands off. She gave me time to play and be creative on my own, which I think is really important for kids. One thing that appalls me about many parents I see these days is how they never seem to leave their children the fuck alone. You don't have to play peekaboo with your kid on the bus, you know. Maybe he/she would like an opportunity for some quiet for a change.
And every time I go to a friend's or family member's house, their kid is always the center of attention. I wonder if this is the reason why there are so many attention-whore narcissists running around these days.
And every time I go to a friend's or family member's house, their kid is always the center of attention. I wonder if this is the reason why there are so many attention-whore narcissists running around these days.
8
@7- I am a parent, and sometimes kids just want some quiet time. Your daft reasoning is the same as saying "if you never served in the Military you can't say who should be allowed to serve."
@6- When I was a kid I always wanted to be the center of attention most of the time. One of the reasons people with kids end up hanging out with other parents all the time is that the kid's distract each other. Of course, kids also used to have siblings around to play with, and now single children are more and more common. And kid's do require more attention than dogs or cats, if you're going to be friends with a parent, you have to understand that you aren't going to get the same amount of attention as you get from your non-parent friends.
@6- When I was a kid I always wanted to be the center of attention most of the time. One of the reasons people with kids end up hanging out with other parents all the time is that the kid's distract each other. Of course, kids also used to have siblings around to play with, and now single children are more and more common. And kid's do require more attention than dogs or cats, if you're going to be friends with a parent, you have to understand that you aren't going to get the same amount of attention as you get from your non-parent friends.
9
@ 8, I feel very, very sorry for your kids. And your response to 6 explains a lot about your insufferable personality.
Speaking of daft reasoning, you think that someone else knows better than you when your kid wants to be left alone? I know when mine do.
Speaking of daft reasoning, you think that someone else knows better than you when your kid wants to be left alone? I know when mine do.
10
I cringed at her viewpoint on breast-feeding. If the remaining alternative is feeding babies chemical-laden GMO soy formula (since wet-nurses aren't exactly all the rage these days) than I say mom should breastfeed since that's what we've all been doing since since, I don't know, the last several million years. That's part of the gig. And besides, does this woman realize breast pumps exist for a reason? Pump ahead and let somebody else feed the lil' one sometimes.
11
@8,
Pretty much all of my breeder friends/family members have multiple children; they had 2-4 kids with the reasoning that their children needed playmates. The kids still never get left to their own devices, at least not when there are other adults present.
@9,
I've witnessed on numerous occasions parents fretting over "neglecting" their children by letting them play by themselves for once. Meanwhile, the kids were perfectly content.
Pretty much all of my breeder friends/family members have multiple children; they had 2-4 kids with the reasoning that their children needed playmates. The kids still never get left to their own devices, at least not when there are other adults present.
@9,
I've witnessed on numerous occasions parents fretting over "neglecting" their children by letting them play by themselves for once. Meanwhile, the kids were perfectly content.
12
@6: Oh my god, I can't stand it. I mean, I like kids and this shit drives me nuts. Like when everyone's gathered in the living room for a drink, and the three-year-old comes in and turns on cartoons, then wanders into another room to play. And the cartoons stay on, all night, because if the kid comes in and finds them off, he'll have a fit. And they wonder why we're not friends anymore.
14
i hate this person's ideas. just sayin. disposable diapers are not a form of liberation. they are a product of capitalism and the culture of convenience. they are a dependency.
15
@10 "chemical-laden GMO soy formula"
So....... we should pretend that women don't ingest disgusting chemicals from their processed food/cleaning supplies/simply breathing invariably polluted air?
Breastfeeding is no more "unpolluted" than formula at this point.
So....... we should pretend that women don't ingest disgusting chemicals from their processed food/cleaning supplies/simply breathing invariably polluted air?
Breastfeeding is no more "unpolluted" than formula at this point.
16
"[Motherhood] eats the personal part of each woman as an individual"
If that were NOT the case, then pro-choice arguments--in a roundabout way--wouldn't really have a leg to stand on.
So let's just say I find this kind of ironic.
If that were NOT the case, then pro-choice arguments--in a roundabout way--wouldn't really have a leg to stand on.
So let's just say I find this kind of ironic.
17
This seems pretty simple to me. If you don't want to give up personal freedom, don't have kids. If you're okay with the trade-off, then have them.
18
Isn't it bad enough that cynical corporate ad-men have hounded women with this message of failure and helplessness for most of the last century?
19
Yuck. Ironically, this attitude couldn't be more childish. Children are completely self-centered and think the world exists to serve their whims, and any inconvenience they have to suffer due to sharing the world with others is "oppressive." So, good, this overgrown child has learned to write a book about what an infant she is. Bravo.
20
Eh. I'll get my payback when I'm old and feeble and my kids have to buy my groceries and mow my lawn. Circle of life, bitches.
21
I'm glad someone is saying this.
Our generation probably expends 500% more time, energy, and money per kid than our parents. And I don't remember our parent's laissez faire approach as being a bad thing. By age 5 I was allowed to roam our block in search of other kids. If I got up before my parents, I fixed myself a bowl of cereal and watched cartoons on TV. No bulky mandatory car seats that all but force you to buy a minivan (a fucking minivan!?) if you have more than 2 kids. It was awesome!
Time for the pendulum to swing back that way.
Our generation probably expends 500% more time, energy, and money per kid than our parents. And I don't remember our parent's laissez faire approach as being a bad thing. By age 5 I was allowed to roam our block in search of other kids. If I got up before my parents, I fixed myself a bowl of cereal and watched cartoons on TV. No bulky mandatory car seats that all but force you to buy a minivan (a fucking minivan!?) if you have more than 2 kids. It was awesome!
Time for the pendulum to swing back that way.
22
P.S. Best explanation I've heard for why we parent so differently than our parents is that we're much older than our parents when we started having kids.
23
@21 word. it wasn't that long ago either. i remember the car my mom had when i was about 6. it was this massive hunk of blue painted metal with no seat belts in the back and only lap belts in the front. the heater didn't really work all that well, so i used to have to get out and scrape the ice off the windows while my mom kept the car running. i never complained or thought it was unfair, it just was. although i did hate getting ice shavings all over my hands. this kind of stuff was normal, and it was only 25 years ago. personally, i think kids should be treated like second class citizens, chores and discipline and being told to shut up and sit down and all that. i mean, i remember very distinctly as a kid actively rebelling against such things. i even saw my daycare keepers and babysitters as unjust authority. but it was clashing with those boundaries and battling, even out-smarting, adults that developed me as a person.
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