Did you see this article in the Australian last weekend? (I must confess that I didn’t. I saw a link to it on Rachel Power’s blog.) It’s an interview with French Academic Elisabeth Badinter, author of “Conflict: The Woman and the Mother.”
Badinter argues that a new “idealised concept of motherhood that elevates concepts of masochism and female sacrifice to unforeseen levels […] is making women across the world feel horribly guilty […and] threatening the gains of decades of feminist struggle for sexual equality”. She blames breastfeeding for keeping women tied down; co-sleeping for depriving couples of their romantic relationship, and especially their sex life; and an excessive focus on healthy natural pregnancies for an emerging tyranny of controlling the bodies and behaviours of pregnant women.
As a solution to this problem Badinter champions what she describes as a ‘nonchalant’ or ‘mediocre’ approach to pregnancy and motherhood; arguing that there should be no pressure on mothers not to smoke and drink during pregnancy; to breastfeed their babies instead of giving them formula, or to avoid placing young children in the care of others in order to resume their intellectual and social lives (and, in this context, she specifically mentions nannies and state-provided childcare, because “Of course men are deficient”).
Now, here’s where it gets tricky…
I must state upfront that I agree with Badinter’s argument that this current obsession with forcing women to live up to the ideal of the ‘perfect mother’ is regressive and is setting women back a long way in terms of our ongoing struggle for equality. I loathe the repeated attempts to control the bodies of pregnant women, to guilt trip mothers who choose not to breastfeed their babies, or to make women who make use of childcare feel inadequate. However (and there had to be a however, didn’t there?), I really think that Badinter is being fundamentally lazy in her analysis of both the roots of the problem and the solution. She is succumbing to what I call “half-arsed feminist analysis.”
Feminism, at its core, is a critique of patriarchy. It is a critique of a social system that is completely designed around the needs of men (or, at least, some types of men…). The most obvious problem with a social system that is completely designed around the needs of men is that women are going to come off second-best. Our needs are necessarily going to be sacrificed in order to ensure that men get priority.
Where I think that Badinter gets it completely wrong is that in her analysis it is the children – the babies, in fact – that are cast into the role of ‘tyrants’. Now let’s be honest here: if any group under a patriarchal social system comes of worse than women it is children. Children are not the powerful group under patriarchy. In fact, it would be very difficult to imagine any social system that could really allocate such a level of agency and power to babies. They are, after-all, incredibly vulnerable and powerless by nature. This being the case, it is absurd to attempt to solve the problem of women’s subjugation by downgrading the status of children. To do so is the equivalent of victims finding someone weaker than themselves to pick on in order to make them feel better. It might work, but it is fundamentally wrong. It is also a half-arsed solution to the real problem and the bullying will still continue.
A truly feminist approach to the problem of patriarchy is to tackle the system itself. The fundamental problem is the fact that our social system is designed around the needs and priorities of men (not women, and certainly not children). Therefore, any real, lasting solution can only come from actually challenging the way that the social system is organised. The only lasting (and morally responsible) solution has to come from fundamentally reorganising society.
Now, of course, this is not a simple task and it is not one that will be completed quickly. It has and will continue to take many generations. In the meantime it is quite true that women will continue to suffer from inequality – that is fundamental to the design of patriarchy. Part of the result of this is that when women have children they will be inadequately supported. Many will find it difficult to breastfeed those children while continuing to engage in the world in a way that feels fulfilling and rewarding. Many will find it challenging to provide the kind of family-based nurturing care that babies need in order to really thrive while still maintaining their own sense of identity and still striving to fulfill their own dreams.
This is absolutely unfair and absolutely should change. However, it is not the fault of children and a lasting solution should not involve their sacrifice. A lasting solution should involve reorganising society so that the needs of children can be met without such overwhelming sacrifices from their mothers.
What about those mothers who are caught up in the present arrangement? What about those mothers who are faced with the current reality and want a faster (albeit temporary) solution to their own challenges with pregnancy or motherhood? Well, personally, it is here I do have to agree to a limited extent with Badinter. I do think that these women should be given the latitude to work out their own solutions to these issues. I don’t see why they should have to be martyrs to the cause. It is not their fault that society is arranged the way that it is and they shouldn't be made to feel guilty for not being willing to shoulder all of the burden that it currently places on women (and, especially, mothers).
Let’s not pretend that this is a real solution though. Let’s not pretend that babies and children aren’t currently the sacrificial lambs in this struggle. Most importantly, let’s not lose sight of the real solution by letting patriarchy off the hook and conveniently casting society’s most vulnerable members into the role of ‘tyrants’.
That’s just dishonest. And it’s lazy.
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