motherhood and career-identification

Disclaimer: I may be talking to the wall on this one, but it's an angle that I've been vaguely irritated not to have seen any reference to.

There have been a couple instances lately of people pointing up places where a supposed tribute has taken the form of "she is/was a mother[/cook/other "feminine" role] who was also a great [rocket scientist/career role for which she's being honored.]" And there follows the long unwinding of people who don't see a problem with this, and people who are offended at the casual diminishment of somebody's professional life's work in ways that don't happen to men, and people who suggest that maybe we ought to see more people listed as fathers first... You know how this goes; you've all been on the internet before.

In any case, being at the beginning of the motherhood cycle myself, one of my first thoughts is that calling someone a mother first when she's well on her way to being a grandmother or great grandmother is a good sign that whoever wrote the piece didn't understand how parenthood works.

Any woman who has given birth has been a mother first for a little bit, if only while she was in the process of giving birth. Most people find it a bit hard to multi-task on that one. If she goes back to work after having the baby, she'll probably be a mother above all else for the duration of her maternity leave (though if she's recovering from surgery at the time, that may be a bit more complicated...) But at some point, other needs and self-identities move up into the same bracket, and if you've reached retirement age and the primary thing non-relatives think of you as is a mother, then your kids probably really wish you'd find yourself a hobby, and you're unlikely to get a write-up in a major newspaper about it.

( an illustration with examples from life )

motherhood and career-identification

Disclaimer: I may be talking to the wall on this one, but it's an angle that I've been vaguely irritated not to have seen any reference to.

There have been a couple instances lately of people pointing up places where a supposed tribute has taken the form of "she is/was a mother[/cook/other "feminine" role] who was also a great [rocket scientist/career role for which she's being honored.]" And there follows the long unwinding of people who don't see a problem with this, and people who are offended at the casual diminishment of somebody's professional life's work in ways that don't happen to men, and people who suggest that maybe we ought to see more people listed as fathers first... You know how this goes; you've all been on the internet before.

In any case, being at the beginning of the motherhood cycle myself, one of my first thoughts is that calling someone a mother first when she's well on her way to being a grandmother or great grandmother is a good sign that whoever wrote the piece didn't understand how parenthood works.

Any woman who has given birth has been a mother first for a little bit, if only while she was in the process of giving birth. Most people find it a bit hard to multi-task on that one. If she goes back to work after having the baby, she'll probably be a mother above all else for the duration of her maternity leave (though if she's recovering from surgery at the time, that may be a bit more complicated...) But at some point, other needs and self-identities move up into the same bracket, and if you've reached retirement age and the primary thing non-relatives think of you as is a mother, then your kids probably really wish you'd find yourself a hobby, and you're unlikely to get a write-up in a major newspaper about it.

( an illustration with examples from life )

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