From a comment I posted elsewhere

[ailbhe]

My anecdata indicates that most mothers feel responsible for the well-being of their baby all the time, however far apart they are, and some fathers feel that, eg, they are not responsible for forgetting to feed the child [in their care] because they forgot.

Also, most mothers are too fucking tired to sort it out themselves. There's the whole, well, world and all the people in it, out there, and most of them expect the mothers to do it all - whether or not they also work a 40 or 60 hour week in a paid job - and pay for all the childcare too.

And then there's newspaper headlines: TRAGIC CHILD HORROR ALL MOTHER'S FAULT is one that they needn't even put back in the box between uses, it's so often needed.

And everyone blames the mothers who don't fight this, this, this weight of expectation and pretty much lets their well-meaning but also not fighting it partners off scot free. And if the mother rants about the partner she's a whiny nagging cow.

That's all for now. We now return me to my regularly scheduled blood pressure. Emer is GORGEOUS today and has been enjoying the swing. I have another post about unexpected visitors to post later.

Comments

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

I don't blame mothers - especially working mothers - who don't have any energy left over to fix the world and all its ills.

But I feel very disempowered, not to mention hurt and resentful, when my advice on how to tackle a few marginal issues is met with hostilty and "what do you know, you don't even have children". (Present company exluded of course)

It's not just me - any woman dispensing parenting advice is scrutinised on that score. Pretty much every single review of a new parenting reality show will mention "Nanny So and So, mother of 3" or "Nanny Such and Such, who has no children herself".

It's a Catch22: the mothers have no time, and the ones who have the time are not mothers.

[ailbhe]

Part of it is that a lot of the advice from non-mothers feels like "when you are feeling exhausted and vulnerable, cut your heart in two and place the sections in separate boxes."

And part of the reason for that is that the feeling of total responsibility is very difficult to imagine. Almost no families I know personally, especially in the UK, actually divide responsibility between the parents equally - even those who divide the tasks equally.

And there's the fact that well-informed opinions do change after people have a child. On stuff like sleep-training and diet and smacking and, oh, everything.

I do appreciate the childless/childfree allies, but it can be exhausting giving them/you the necessary data to allow them to *be* allies.

Oh, and mothers who give advice are scrutinised too - What would you know, you only work part-time / you don't have a job / you get lunchbreaks because you do have a job / your partner helps/doesn't help / your other children are older/younger, etc etc etc.

I partially remember a very funny story about a woman who met another mother with twins in a library. W1: Oh lovely, twins! W2: Yes, they will start school soon, I can't wait. W1: Oh that's nice, we home-educate ourselves, will yours be going to Random Local School? W2: OH well I couldn't POSSIBLY home-educate because I have TWINS and it's SO MUCH WORK. You can't POSSIBLY understand, etc etc etc [getting increasingly upset]. W1: Actually I have twins too. W2: Oh really? How old are they? W1: One set are 4 years old and the other set are 2.

The point is that almost EVERYTHING feels like an attack and removing authority from people becomes a sort of basic self-defense. And it's daft. And it's TOXIC.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

Um, what made you think I meant parenting advice? You had them, and frankly I'm quite happy for it to be your problem how you raise them... *g*

No, what I was talking about was political advise, but that tends to be just as unwelcome - probably because the women I talk to then think I'm attacking them for not being politically active enough, as per your example above...

For the record: I'm only trying to help! =)

[ailbhe]

"It's not just me - any woman dispensing parenting advice is scrutinised on that score."

That's what made me think it.

Of course, I'm now not sure how to distinguish between political and parenting advice when it's issued to mothers. Because women-and-children are subject to very similar social rules, the whole thing is hopelessly confusing.

And I do find it all interesting but I have officially reached my Too Exhausted Limit today. FWIW I did notice what you said about discrimination against mothers seeking or in paid employment costing the economy a fortune, but again, too tired to go further with it.

[jexia]

I'm struggling with this a lot at the moment.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I am glad that Emer is gorgeous!

[ailbhe]

Today, she spent minutes cuddling me - she put her arms around my neck and rubbed her cheek on my cheek. Then she swapped sides and rubbed the other cheek. She kept swapping sides until she couldn't aim her face for laughing.

[rmc28]

I'm not paying for the childcare myself as it gets paid from joint money (and both Tony and I are getting the taken-before-tax childcare vouchers). But the bulk of the burden of finding and engaging childcare has fallen on me. This is probably because I'm the logistics-and-organisation half of the marriage, rather than because I'm the mummy and Childcare Is My Problem. But when I'm grumpy, short of sleep and time with Tony I can't help wondering about that a bit.

[ailbhe]

Someday I'll meet a man who takes this responsibility (without a screaming row).

[k425.livejournal.com]

I can give you "we chose nursery together" if that's any help. And any time YB's been sick, we've taken it in turns to stay home with him, without any screaming rows, or rowing at all.

But we do sometimes have "I think YB's getting hungry" "have you considered giving him something to eat?" "Oh, okay, what shall I give him?" "the kitchen is that way".

[ailbhe]

Yes, actually, it does help. I hate thinking about this stuff because it's so draining.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

"You're better at logistics" is usually just a cover up phrase for "I think it's women's work". After all, before we married them they were perfectly able to get from day to day without our planning every little detail for them, including quite complicated logistical transactions like buying new cars and going on holiday abroad.

This is by no means a reflection on Tony - I dare say he's better than most - just a reiteration of Ailbhe's point about responsibility. To apply a less personal filter to a similar situation, have you observed how often, at work, it is the person who has responsibility for doing something that finds a way of getting it done? When your bonus is on the line, all of a sudden a lot of these imaginary constraints about who's better at what don't seem so hard to overcome - and that holds for men as well as women.

[rmc28]

Nah, it's not code. I do finance and organisation and logistics because that's what I enjoy doing; Tony does cooking and cleaning up afterwards because that's what he enjoys doing. We have a family joke that we got married so I could do his paperwork and he could feed me. I can cook, and sometimes do; he can organise and sometimes does. Both of us do the laundry; neither of us likes cleaning the bathroom - eventually I got a cleaner to solve this problem.

I'm currently doing more of the housework and childcare but I believe that's because he went back to full-time work sooner than I did; when we both worked part-time it was much more balanced. I expect it to be more balanced again when I return to full-time hours in June.

It made sense for there to be only one of us ringing childminders up and making arrangements for interviews and so on, and it made sense for that person to be me; but I found it all emotionally draining and was generally doing it when Tony was at work.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

What else can I say but, yeah, this. It's one of the reasons I strive in my particular situation to render help, not advice, the latter of which often just ends up sounding like judgement.

[ailbhe]

's why I had such massive difficulty offering my acquaintance advice which it turns out she badly wanted. This stuff is hard. Let's do math.

[(Anonymous)]

My middle son is the stay-at-home parent in his family. His wife is in paid employment, having just gone back after maternity leave, but is currently only doing a 4 day week. The thing he finds hardest is being treated as a bit of a 'social outcast'. He is looked at strangely and feels somewhat excluded by the mums at the 'mother-and-baby' group he attends with his three and a half year old daughter and 7 month old son, and he misses male company during the week.

He does, of course, feel - and take - full responsibility for the children in his care. (But he did ring his wife no less than five times one day recently when the (breast-fed) baby wouldn't stop crying all day! Though they both admit he had no idea what he thought she could do about it!)

My second son works from home and his wife is a nurse, working full-time but on shift work. They share equally the care of their 3 year old twins and 2 year old, while approximately a third of the time the girls are all in a Nursery, paid for from the 'pot' into which both their salaries go.

Both these sons give me some hope that the current pressures on mothers WILL change, but I can't help feeling that until child-care is properly valued, and seen as the vitally important job it is, I am afraid they will continue to be exceptions rather than the rule.

Elaine xx

[k425.livejournal.com]

In August my husband takes early retirement and will be staying at home to look after our son and the house when our son starts school in September. From that point on it will all be his responsibility (although I'll probably still do the household accounts because I like it).

I'm afraid I laughed about your son ringing about the baby - I did similar. It wasn't so much that I wanted OldBloke to do anything, I just wanted some sympathy, and to hear something that wasn't a crying baby!

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Fascinating discussion. We concluded last night that N is much more "responsible", in the sense you mean, for Unny than for Fiachra. There's still very much a feeling that Only Mama Can Comfort The Baby. When hunger is the problem, of course, this is for the moment true, but I'd like it to be less readily assumed in other situations.

Childcare-wise, we chose the creche of evil memory together - that was pretty much equal. And it was paid for out of central funds, to which we each contribute most of our income. More recently, I feel the bit that Biascut calls the "ticker-tape" planning for childcare has fallen more on my shoulders, not out of any principled reluctance on N's part, but because his job has been much more swallowing than mine in the past while. Which is, of course, its own gender-related issue.

As for the housework, we're still not as equal as I'd like, though there's a lot of goodwill and we've made plenty of progress. It's hard to say how much my enjoyment of meal planning and cooking is socially conditioned, but it is nonetheless genuine. Whereas floor cleaning and laundry ... not so much.