motherhood and career-identification
Jul. 18th, 2013 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateDisclaimer: 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.
At the beginning of the month, I wrote out this list:
It's a little rough, and the Master Naturalist hours probably belong to be un-question-marked and slotted in before crafting, but otherwise more or less in order.
At this point, as primary caretaker of an infant, the invisible brackets put "baby" in the top category by herself, then the next three as bracket 2, the following three (including master naturalist hours) as bracket 3, and the rest are more or less "as available." In practice things shake out a little differently: certain crafting projects combine better with baby care than writing, for instance, and there's a lot of subtle overlap between categories. (Also the "friends and family" bit is shorthand for the things I'm not doing already.) But this is effectively the maternity leave rules.
Over time, as the Megatherium gets more able to entertain and care for herself then what is now bracket #2 expands to cover her and the writing (or other career-related bullet points.) This is equivalent to going back to work for those who do the daycare thing; you're still Mommy, but also [job-title] at an equal rank. By the time the kid gets to high school or so, while she gets no less important, she should need a whole lot less of my time and attention than the near-constant supervision that's the case right now. Somewhere between there and when she leaves the house there's a tipping point at which motherhood drops out of that top bracket-- my daughter becomes no less important to me, but she'll be off living her own existence and our relationship won't be particularly relevant to my world-face. By the time she gets to whatever she wants to do with her life the kind of stuff I'm doing now will fall into the same category as that I used to be an archaeologist, or to work ren faire: important life events that shaped who I become, but by no means something to put amongst the first lines to tell a stranger about my life's existence.
Thirty years ago, a bunch of the people who knew my mother knew her because of me. These days, most of the people who know my mother do so because she tells stories and fights invasive plants and volunteers at the reference desk of the library. This doesn't make her any less my awesome mother, but it does make that part of her identity less relevant as a description.
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.
At the beginning of the month, I wrote out this list:
It's a little rough, and the Master Naturalist hours probably belong to be un-question-marked and slotted in before crafting, but otherwise more or less in order.
At this point, as primary caretaker of an infant, the invisible brackets put "baby" in the top category by herself, then the next three as bracket 2, the following three (including master naturalist hours) as bracket 3, and the rest are more or less "as available." In practice things shake out a little differently: certain crafting projects combine better with baby care than writing, for instance, and there's a lot of subtle overlap between categories. (Also the "friends and family" bit is shorthand for the things I'm not doing already.) But this is effectively the maternity leave rules.
Over time, as the Megatherium gets more able to entertain and care for herself then what is now bracket #2 expands to cover her and the writing (or other career-related bullet points.) This is equivalent to going back to work for those who do the daycare thing; you're still Mommy, but also [job-title] at an equal rank. By the time the kid gets to high school or so, while she gets no less important, she should need a whole lot less of my time and attention than the near-constant supervision that's the case right now. Somewhere between there and when she leaves the house there's a tipping point at which motherhood drops out of that top bracket-- my daughter becomes no less important to me, but she'll be off living her own existence and our relationship won't be particularly relevant to my world-face. By the time she gets to whatever she wants to do with her life the kind of stuff I'm doing now will fall into the same category as that I used to be an archaeologist, or to work ren faire: important life events that shaped who I become, but by no means something to put amongst the first lines to tell a stranger about my life's existence.
Thirty years ago, a bunch of the people who knew my mother knew her because of me. These days, most of the people who know my mother do so because she tells stories and fights invasive plants and volunteers at the reference desk of the library. This doesn't make her any less my awesome mother, but it does make that part of her identity less relevant as a description.
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no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 02:46 pm (UTC)Thirty years ago a bunch of the people who knew our mothers knew them because of us. But we also knew almost every single person we knew because of our mothers (and dads). Neither direction had a great deal of choice--yes, my mom, for example, could choose to participate in a specific babysitting coop and neighborhood group in our neighborhood, in part for the care and socialization of her spawn. But she was going to need to know my pediatrician, my teacher, etc.
Whereas now we have choices that are a lot more equal in footing. We can introduce each other to our friends, but whether Mom takes to
And it takes pretty extraordinary circumstances for an obituary to start by mentioning that the deceased was friends with so-and-so.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-20 01:53 am (UTC)And when you don't end up friends, the adult child has the freedom to back off from the relationship rather than being stuck yelling "I hate you" at the person who provides for their basic needs.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 06:56 pm (UTC)I see this attitude a little in the "I'm so crafty I make people" / it's-a-20-year-craft-project corner of the subcultured-parents/DIY crowd, but it's a small crowd, and an attitude not heard much in the media. I like your take, and the way you've written it. Thanks for sharing.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 11:38 pm (UTC)Also, it's kind of heartening to see "This is ok" on the list. I suspect I'll have to remind myself of the same.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-20 01:57 am (UTC)This household isn't on the whole very good at measuring self-worth that's not in obvious productivity, so the reminder is sometimes necessary. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-07-19 02:25 pm (UTC)