motherhood

motherhood
- many children feel as if their mothers were born when they were
- if a child is good, we believe they were mothered well
→ if a child is bad, we blame it on the mother
- the meaning of a mother is not fixed in time, it changes
→ a good mother 100 years ago would be a bad mother today
- motherhood is constantly reinvented
- motherhood vrs mothering
→ should not be used interchangeably, completely distinct
- motherhood is the institution and ideology that tells women to mother a particular way, not in her best interest, require her self denial ***
→ feminists who critique this critique the institution, not mothering (the practice of raising children)
- we can mother in different ways that don't require self denial
- four conceptions of mothering in history:
1) goddess culture, mothers respected
2) agriculture rise, became a liability for women, made them stay at home
3) second revolution (industrial of 18th century),
→ every time there is a significant, cataclysmic, way in which we organize society, motherhood responds to and is shaped by it
4) WW2 (war based society to peace based society
5) 1990s rise of intensive mothering
- the motherhood we have is not a natural condition
- comes in 20th century, gets refined in 1990s
- during agriculture time, had children for economic reasons
→ no concept of childhood during this time period (children will grow up and be farmers, don't need to read to them etc.)
→ and women had too important work to do to mother children
→ in agricultural communities older siblings raised younger siblings
→ so little kids looking after little kids, 6 yr old looking after 1 yr old
→ can't do that today, this shows that motherhood is a construction
→ teenagerhood did not exist 50 years ago
→ and now we've added early adulthood 20-25
→ this is a social construction, not real or natural
→ children 200 years were a lot more capable than they are today and they became valuable members of the family
→ arguing that the more we go to this excessive patriarchal motherhood increases anxiety, obesity, depression etc. ***
- as long as you breastfeed a baby – you give milk (doesn't have to be yours) ***
→ one person's job in agricultural society would be to breastfeed children, they'd go away for 1-3, maybe 4 years, called wetnurse, one per village **
→ today women are bad mothers if they leave them at daycare
→ seen as job being invented for 19th century: motherhood, childhood ideology came out at this time
- in working class and rural families, not gendered as even the boys took care of their younger siblings
- in 100 years you can leave kids alone for 10 hours, today not 5 min or police are called

Watched Rosie the Riveter
- talking about how the airplane parts are like cutting dresses, or welding press = juice extractor

Motherhood: Selections from Mother Matters and Pemale courtney Hall 433-441 in CWS; FIlm: Rosie the Riveteer