5.1

13

Feminist Parenting

Feminist focus on children was a central component of contempo­

rary radical feminist movement. By raising children without sexism

women hoped to create a future world where there would be no

need for an anti-sexist movement. Initial!y the focus on cluldren pri­

marily highlighted sexist sex roles and the way in which they were

imposed on children from birth on. Feminist attention to children

almost always focused on girl children, on attacking sexist biases and

promoting alternative images. Now and th en feminists would cal!

attention to the need to raise boys in an anti-sexist manner but for

the most part the critiqu

men had it better than al

that boys always had mor

inists prioritizing a focus

One of the primary

confronting sexism withi

male parents were the

households where no a

women taught and teach

people assume that any

matriarchal. In actuality

society often feel guilty

e of male patriarchy, the insistence that al!

l women, trickled down. The assumption

e privilege and power than girls fueled fem­

on girls.

difficulties fenlÏnist tlunkers faced when

n families was that more often than not fe­

transnlÏtters of sexist thinking. Even in

dult male paren tal caregiver was present,

children sexist thinking. Ironical!y, many

female-headed household is automatical!y

women who head households in patriarchal

about the absence of a male figure and are

72 DOI: 10.4324/9781315743189-13

2 0 1 4 . R o u t l e d g e .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

EBSCO Publishing: eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) printed on 5/19/2025 8:31:28 PM UTC via CERRITOS COMMUNITY COLLEGE 864857; bell hooks; Feminism Is for Everybody : Passionate Politics Account:ehost.

73 FEMINIST P ARENTING

hypervigilant about imparting sexist values to children, especially

males. In recent times mainstream conservative pundits have re­

sponded to a wellspring of violent acts by young males of all classes

and races by suggesting that single women cannot possible raise a

healthy male child. This is just simply not true. The facts show that

some of the most loving and powerful men in our society were

raised by single mothers. Again it must be reiterated that most peo­

ple assume that a woman raising children alone, especially sons, will

fail to teach a male child how to become a patriarchal male. This is

simply not the case.

Within white supremacist capitalist patriarchal cultures of dom­

ination children do not have rights. Feminist movement was the

first movement for social justice in this society to call attention to

the fact that ours is a culture that does not love children, that contin­

ues to see children as the property of parents to do with as they will.

Adult violence against children is a norm in our society. Problem­

atically, for the most part feminist thinkers have never wanted to call

attention to the reality that women are often the primary culprits in

everyday violen ce against children simply because they are the pri­

mary parental caregivers. While it was crucial and revolutionary that

feminist movement called attention to the fact that male domination

in the home often creates an autocracy where men sexually abuse

children, the fact is that masses of children are daily abused verbally

and physically by women and men. Maternal sadism often leads

women to emotionally abuse children, and feminist theory has not

yet offered both feminist critique and feminist intervention when

the issue is adult female violence against children.

In a culture of domination where children have no civil rights,

those who are powerful, adult males and females, can exert auto­

cratic rule of children. All the medical facts show that children are

violendy abused daily in this society. Much of that abuse is life­

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74 FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYBODY

threatening. Many duldren die. Women perpetuate this violence as

much as men if not more. A serious gap in feminist thinking and

practice has been the refusal of the movement to confront head-on

adult female violence against children. Emphasizing male domina­

tion makes it easy for women, including feminist thinkers, to ignore

the ways women abuse children because we have all been socialized

to embrace patriarchal thinking, to embrace an ethics of domination

which says the powerful have the right to rule over the powerless

and can use any means to subordinate them. In the hierarchies of

white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, male domination of females

is condoned, but so is adult domination of children. And no one re­

ally wants to call attention to mothers who abuse.

Often I teil the story of being at a fancy dinner party where a

woman is describing the way she disciplines her young son by pinch­

ing him hard, clamping down on his little flesh for aS long as it takes

to control him. And how everyone applauded her willingness to be a

disciplinarian. I shared the awareness that her behavior was abusive,

that she was potentially planting the seeds for this male child to grow

up and be abusive to women. Significantly, I told the audience oflis­

teners that ifwe had heard a man telling us how he just clamps down

on a woman's flesh, pinching her hard to con trol her behavior it

would have been immediately acknowledged as abusive. Yet when a

child is being hurt this form of negative domination is condoned.

This is not an isolated incident - much more severe violence

against children is enacted daily by mothers and fathers.

Indeed the crisis the children of this nation face is that patriar­

chal thinking clashing with feminist changes is making the family

even more of a war zone than it was when male domination was the

norm in every household. Feminist movement served as the catalyst,

uncovering and revealing the grave extent to which male sexual

abuse ofchildren has been and is taking place in the patriarchal fam­

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75 FEMINIST PARENTING

ily. It started with grown women in feminist movement receiving

therapeutic care acknowledging that they were abuse survivors and

bringing this acknowledgment out of the private realm of therapy

into public discourse. These revelations created the positive ethical

and moral context for children to confront abuse taking place in the

present. However, simply calling attention to male sexual abuse of

children has not created the climate where masses of people under­

stand that this abuse is linked to male domination, that it wil! end

only when patriarchy is eliminated. Male sexual abuse of children

happens more often and is reported more often than female abuse,

but female sexual coercion ofchildren must be seen as just as horren­

dous as male abuse. And feminist movement must critique women

who abuse as harshly as we critique male abuse. Beyond the realm of

sexual abuse, violence against children takes many forms; the most

commonplace forms are acts of verbal and psychological abuse.

Abusive sharning lays the foundation for other forms of abuse.

Male children are often subjected to abuse when their behavior does

not conform to sexist notions of masculinity. They are often shamed

by sexist adults (particulady mothers) and other children. When

male paren tal caregivers embody anti-sexist thought and behavior

boys and gids have the opportunity to see feminism in action. When

feminist thinkers and activists provide children with educational

arenas where anti-sexist biases are not the standards used to judge

behavior, boys and gids are ab Ie to develop healthy self-esteem.

One of the most positive interventions feminist movement

made on behalf of children was to create greater cultural awareness

of the need for men to participate equal!y in parenting not just to

create gender equity but to build better relationships with children.

Future feminist studies wil! document al! the ways anti-sexist male

parenting enhances the lives of children. Concurrently, we need to

know more about feminist parenting in general, about the practical

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76 FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYBODY

ways one can raise a child in an anti-sexist environment, and most

importantly we need to know more about what type of people the

childten who are taised in these homes become.

Visionary feminist activists have never denied the importance

and value of male paren tal categivers even as we continually work to

create greater cultural appreciation of motherhood and the work

done by women who mother. A disservice is done to all females

when praise fot male participation in patenting leads to disparage­

ment and devaluation of the positive job of mothering wamen do.

At the beginning of feminist movement feminists we re harsh critics

of motheting, pitting that task against careers which were deemed

more liberating, more self-affirming. However, as early as the

mid-'8ûs some feminist thinkets were challenging feminist devalua­

tion of motherhood and the overvaluation of work outside the

home. Writing on this subject in Feminist Theory: Fram Margin to Center

I made the point that:

Working within a social context where sexism is still the norm,

where there is unnecessary competition promoting envy, distrust,

antagonism, and malice between individuals, makes work stress­

ful, frustrating, and often totally unsatisfying ...many women

who Iike and enjoy the wage work they do feel that it takes too

much of their time, leaving Iittle space for other satisfying pur­

suits. While work may help women gain a degree of financial in­

dependence or even financial self-sufficiency, for most women it

has not adequately fulfilled human needs. As a consequence

women's searçh for fulfilling labor done in an environment of

care has led to rt;emphasizing the importance of family and the

positive aspects of motherhood.

lronically just when feminist thinkers had worked to cteate a more

balanced porttait of motheting patriarchal mainstream culture

launched a vicious ctitique of single-patent, female-headed house­

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FEMINIST PARENTING 77

holds. That critigue was most harsh when it came to the guestion of

welfare. Ignoring all the data which shows how skillfully loving sin­

gle mothers parent with very litde income whether they receive state

assistance or work for a wage, patriarchal critigues call attention to

dysfunctional female-headed households, àct as though these are

the norm, then suggest the problem can be solved if men we re in the

picture as patriarchal providers and heads of households.

No anti-feminist backlash has been as detrimental to the

well-being of children as societal disparagement of single mothers.

In a culture which holds the two-parent patriarchal family in higher

esteem than any other arrangement, all children feel emotionally in­

secure when their family does not measure up to the standard. A

utopian vision of the patriarch al family remains intact despite all the

evidence which proves that the well-being of children is no more se­

cure in the dysfunctional male-headed household than in the dys­

functional female-headed household. Children need to be raised in

loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lack­

ing. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight,

headed by females or males, are more likely to raise healthy, happy

children with sound self-esteem. In future feminist movement we

need to work harder to show parents the ways ending sexism posi­

tively changes family life. Feminist movement is pro-family. Ending

patriarchal domination of children, by men or women, is the only

way to make the family a place where children can be safe, where

they can be free, where they can know love.

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