A waste of space of a man – on mammy memes and narratives of fatherhood
I can’t escape the feeling that the labels matter. If, when we vent, we make parenting synonymous with mothering, we’re doing everyone – not least mothers – a huge disservice. If we want to change the fact that women are walking away from their jobs in droves because it just makes no financial sense for their higher-earning partners to quit, we need to change the notion of ‘woman’ meaning mother meaning maternity leave and sick days while ‘man’ means none of those things, ever.
No woman is an island
“Happiness is within,” so the self-help books say. But what is self-help if the self needs help, reaching out and away for respite, for togetherness? Sure happiness must be within when the outside and beyond is cold and lonely, bills unpaid and children hungry, wombs a battlefield and homes hollow as ghosts. You must find strength within to get up early in the morning, pay your taxes, look after your own, never complain – good man. When there’s no such thing as society and Thatcher rests in peace, take a deep breath, try yoga.
A feminist childcare model - and mammies doing it wrong
Such is the game of pitting mothers against each other: you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. This of course is nothing new; the stream of new studies seems never-ending, and media loves reporting on them – likely because new mothers never fail to fall for the clickbait, desperate for some sort of evidence that they’re doing something right in this most difficult job they’ve ever tried their hand at.
