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It's high time for a practical everyday parenting post. So, I've had this brewing in my head for a while and I haven't been very sure how to approach it until last night.

Kenisha is now almost 6 months old. She is still breastfeeding and, as a matter of fact, she outright refuses to drink expressed milk from a bottle. I even tried formula just to see what she would do and the result was no different. If it's milk, it must come from the breast. Direct from the tap, no substitutions. This is fine except that occasionally, I need a break! She does eat baby food now so if I absolutely have to be away from her she doesn't starve herself anymore. That has at least made things easier on me when I go to work on Saturday nights. As a result of my being home with her more now that I've had to cut my hours back, Kenisha is way more attached to me and my breasts (although the former may be a result of the latter).

Lately, Kenisha has taken to doing two things during our breastfeeding session that drive me insane. The first is biting. She doesn't actually have any teeth yet but those gums can bring tears to my eyes. Every time she does it I howl with pain. And what does she do? She laughs! This makes me want to toss her out the window (not literally of course, if she'd bounce maybe). I've tried not to show any reaction so that she won't get the satisfaction and want to do it again, but alas, it is impossible not to respond to a clamp down on your nipple. This has led to two things: 1) as you may have inferred from the window reference above, I get angry, and 2) I'm very reluctant to (and afraid of) feeding her, especially when I know she's not real happy with me.

The second thing she's been doing lately while breastfeeding is pinching my nipples! She has realized that if she wants to suck and she puts her lips on my breast or starts grabbing at my shirt that I'll feed her. It's good for me because I don't have to guess if she's hungry anymore since she let's me know. But here's the catch: she doesn't always want to eat! Sometimes she just wants the comfort and drifts off to sleep but other times it's a ploy to get at my nipples! She will latch on and suck as if she's sooo innocent and then pull off and look around a bit, then at me, then at the nipple she was just sucking on. And then she does it! she takes her little thumb and forefinger and pinches my nipple. Luckily, her pincer grasp isn't fully developed so this doesn't hurt but sometimes she's try to rake it and grab it in the palm of her hand. Still not as painful and the biting but it is rather annoying. I've obligated myself to the task of breastfeeding. It's demanding; it's tiring and, as illustrated above, sometimes painful. I did not agree to let this little girl fondle my nipples! I get enough of that from her father (and that's a whole other dimension to this story).

I have demands on my body now from both my partner and my daughter. They both drive me insane and I love then about equally as much as they make me crazy (which is a whole lot).

Am I mad about all this because I'm a feminist? I struggled with that question for a while but I've come to realize I'm actually not as mad as I would have been had I not understood the dynamics involved in my situation. Feminism has taught me well to examine each situation and take it apart at it's root. And while initial reactions tend to be heated and angry, I can step back and take appropriate action as a result of this knowledge. Anger is normal, our actions as a result of anger are what need to be examined. Do we perpetuate or to we imped this cycle of inappropriate and hurtful reactions?

In an effort to get my January post out actually in January (I only have 8 minutes left) here's a bit about what I've been struggling with recently. It really gives some perspective to the struggle taken on by feminist activists. I had mentioned in my October 31, 2009 post Feminist Mother Struggles - Part 1 that I would be discussing the forced division of household labor due to economics and how the Second Shift is often more like the third or fourth shift. Well, now is a prime time for that post. This will also touch a bit on the "working mother" versus "stay at home mother" debate. Although I won't really argue for or against, I will give my personal perspective to do with what you will.

My partner works 2 jobs. His part-time job is from 4:30am-1:30pm and his full-time job is from 3pm-11pm. He only works his part-time about 2 or 3 days a week (sometimes not at all depending on what the capitalist management decides is in the best interest of the owners money) and his full-time is usually 5 days a week (with the occasional 4 day work week for the same reasons as his part-time). He also does some catering with a friend of his. The catering is not steady but they do get some work a few times a year and they are usually pretty big jobs that require quite a bit of time. He schedules this in between the other two jobs. So, in short, he's a very hardworking person and understandably tired. I might also add that cooking is his career, not, just a job that pays the bills (trust me it barely does even that).

I graduated in August and have not been able to find gainful employment in my field and have continued to wait tables. I had a second job tutoring until May but I no longer tutor because it was student work. I attempted a new second job in retail (see this post) but the pay was less than what I would have to pay someone to watch my daughter on the off hours that I would be scheduled. I normally work mostly lunch shifts on the mornings he doesn't work his part-time so that my partner is home and we trade off watching the baby when he goes to his full-time job at three. Usually, we need someone to watch her for the hour of overlap time between me leaving work and him leaving home or he will ask for a later schedule and work 4-11pm.

Recently, he has been getting his schedule for his first job later and later in the week and getting scheduled more heavily (3 shifts). My schedule is released on Thursdays; his has been Friday or later. See the conflict? I can't schedule off or find shift coverage if I don't know when he's working before my schedule is released. Normally, if he is working in the morning, I'd be off so that I can be home with the baby. Also, my occasional sitter can't sit for me anymore and we had a nice barter system going: childcare in exchange for cooking dinner. As a result of this recent childcare fiasco, I am know about 95% "stay-at-home mom." I cut my schedule back to 1 scheduled shift a week and I will occasionally pick up a shift when schedules allow. It was either this or get fired for calling out 2-3 times a week.

This decision was not made lightly. We discussed and discussed any other viable option. The problem was there really weren't any. I would have had to pay most (more some weeks) than I was making for childcare. I cannot (and truthfully don't want to) put her in daycare not just because of financial but because the restaurant business is not 9-5 as the centers cater to.

Now, I am, for the most part, in the traditional gender role for my sex. I cook, clean and take care of the baby. Yes, I'm still prepping for law school but only at stolen moments while the baby is sleeping (like this one). I haven't been able to really study for the LSAT in weeks and I'm mostly just preparing application material and contacting potential recommenders. I thank God for email working at all hours of the night and day or this wouldn't be possible. This is driving me insane.

Let me begin by saying this: This situation was completely forced by finances. My partner didn't ask me to stay at home. His paycheck is the biggest and therefore the most important. I am thankful that I am just waiting tables and it is possible for me to hang on to one shift for my sanity's sake. I hate my job so I really don't miss it, just the sense of self-reliance it gave me. Had this break not been about finances and been about me preparing for law school, it would have been welcome but without the money to occasionally have someone else watch my daughter while I study this is just not the case.

Now, I am beginning to feel suffocated. I know in my heart that my partner does not believe that a woman's place in the home but lately it is hard to remember. Past experiences with men who to feel this way and demand that "their woman" take care of home has cause many a knee jerk reaction to a completely benign question. For example:

Him: I thought you were going to wash clothes today?
Me: I was, but I didn't. I did something else today. I worked on some law school stuff while the baby napped.  What's the problem?
Him: Nothing! I was just asking!?

Let me explain. I did say I was going to wash clothes. He needed something that was in the hamper to wear to work. I didn't realize this or, maybe I did and I forgot because I got wrapped up in what I was doing. He was smack in the middle of a 3 day stint of working both jobs. He doesn't have time nor energy to do laundry while he's home. He really didn't mean it the way I took it initially but nonetheless my reaction was based on prior experiences. I won't say that he doesn't occasionally just wait around for me to do laundry. He does. Quite frankly he sucks at doing laundry and I prefer to do it myself. I could use a little help with the ironing but I don't generally do any mopping, vacuuming or scrubbing so I think we're even. We share the cooking. Unless, he is just working too much to have time or is just too tired from constantly cooking at work.

So, he can't really share in Hoschild's "Second Shift." He's really just too busy with trying to support us not because he wants to but because he has to. Coming home after work to take care of the baby is more like a 3rd shift to him. As a kidney transplant recipient, he's really not supposed to be killing himself working this way but with no other options we don't have any other choice. I worry about him and I respect and appreciate all that he does. He sacrifices a lot to do what he's doing, even time with his kids which is something I know he values and wishes he had more of.

The feminist analysis:

What caused this?

A few things: a broken capitalist economy, an invisible working class, men's labor being valued more than womens, the job market. I could probably name more.

We fall into a category that is in the crack between poverty and middle class. We are working class. Our income is just above the poverty line used to determine eligibility for government assistance and therefore are left to fin for ourselves. I do take responsibility for some of this though. We bought into the capitalist idea of credit as a legitimate option for purchases. We have a car loan, credit cards, medical bills, student loans... way more than we can afford to pay in our current situation. We have depleted our savings trying to stay afloat. But really, how are we supposed to know any other way of living in a society and economy that is so heavily reliant on consumer debt and is so classist that we are taught to want more, more, more than we can actually pay for. It's not just the wants that get you into debt. Gaps in medical coverage have left us with a stack of bills as well as the incredible cost of higher education.

And, why the hell is the poverty line so damn low! Seriously, I think we should have the people who decide these things try to live off of the money they set the limits at.

How do we change this?

Well, activism is a big one. We feminists know that much. Most of us live and breath it. I also think that we need to teach our children to avoid consumer debt and the capitalist trap (you knew I had to tie this into feminist parenting practices, right?). We should teach our children the art of simple living and to avoid materialism, particularly when excess is going to cause unnecessary financial burdens. Of course, that means we must also follow the same principles. We must also advocate on a larger level for society to look in the cracks. To acknowledge we exists is at least a start. Dare I say we do something as a society to prevent people/families from falling in the cracks. Or worse! How about we stop everything below the crack from falling off completely. How radical and idea! Uh oh, someone might call me a socialist... if I'm lucky :D

FYI: Technically it is not January anymore. It is 7:53am on 2/1/10 but I started the post before midnight and the baby woke up so I finished this morning while she slept. She's awake now so I better be off. Comment away!

Many of my friends are 20 and 30-somethings who are eagerly anticipating engagement, frantically confronting what it takes to plan a wedding, or quietly adjusting to life post-honeymoon. Equally as many of my friends won’t ever get married because in most places the law forbids them from doing so. The adults in my life (well, [...]

Every generation worries about the upbringing of the next. Many times this includes criticizing the younger generations’ way of dressing. In the 60s it was long hair and bellbottoms. In the 90s the midriff ruled. Now parents are dealing with what their children are wearing at an even younger age. Apparently, baby heels are all the rage!

Good Morning America featured this segment about little girls in high heels. Apparently, celebrity children are leading this trend. Like responsible adults parents are asking question about how these shoes may be affecting their child’s mental and physical development. Maybe it isn’t the best thing to follow a celebrity trend blindly?

I think it would be a shame to push girls to wear heels at 3 years old, 13 years old or even 30 years old. High heels won’t help if you want to climb trees, ride bicycles or walk on the beach. However, shoes are not the real issue here.

As one mother stated in the video, a girl needs to “learn to be a lady.” This is where I seriously start to question the importance of shoes! Socialization and gender is a much more complicated issue than shoes! Creating rigid gender roles at such young ages is the real problem.

When I was a kid I played dress up with mom AND dad’s clothes. Really I would wear whatever got the grown-ups in the room to swoon or laugh. It was attention I desired more than a feeling of being girly or not.   

 But back to the shoes. If your child wants to wear heels I don’t see a serious problem with letting them wear heels. This goes for if they are a girl or a boy. Of course, follow doctor’s advice and limit the amount of time you put their poor little feet through the stress of heels. Really whatever you decide on the shoe front is fine because you know your child better than anyone.

Recently, I read a very interesting post by Hugo Schwyzer that made me think about how often men are expected to pay a role of infantilized, immature and helpless little creatures in a relationship. Hugo's description of how he used to feel in his relationships is very telling in this respect:
"In my past marriages and relationships, I found myself– like so many men — taking on the part of the "naughty boy" and the "helpless child." Time and again, I turned wives and girlfriends into mother-figures, and the result was inevitably disastrous. I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers as to why we do what we do, or even why I did what I did. I do know that I’m not the only man who found "courtship" easier than "relationship." Over and over again, I devoted time and energy to "getting the girl", and when I succeeded, soon felt vaguely let down and confused about my role. It was all too easy for me to become increasingly childlike. I figured out that most of partners were students of my emotions, and most of them were eager to make the relationship work. So they were the ones who took over the "feeling work" of the relationship. They were the ones who brought up when something wasn’t working, they were the ones who took on the primary role of keeping what we had "oiled and running", as it were." (The rest of Hugo's interesting post can be found here.)

This is precisely the balance of power within a romantic relationship that the media always portray for us. Women are bustling around men, trying to figure out "how to make a relationship work", "what is wrong with the relationship", and "where the relationship should go". Think about the endless discussions on these topics on Sex and the City, where women seem to do little else other than engage in endless attempts to figure out men and relationships with men. Think about such shows as Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, According to Jim, and the like, where the relationship inside a middle-aged couple looks more like a relationship between a.mother and a teenage son.
Many women automatically think that being in a relationship means that they have to take upon themselves the greater share of work needed to maintain the relationship. This goes both for housework and for any practical and emotional issues attendant upon being part of a couple. This sad reality robs women of time and energy that they invest into all that housework combined with having to work as a psychologist and couples' therapist within their own relationships. As a result, being with somebody becomes for many women one more full-time job rather than an opportunity to relax and enjoy themselves.

Hugo Schwyzer tells us honestly why men agree to play the part of a helpless child within a relationship: it seems easier. Of course, as he also recognizes, this stunts your emotional growh and robs you of power to decide what actually goes on both inside the relationship and inside your own house. For my part, I'm more interested in why women agree to take on this model of behavior.
The answer, I believe, is manifold. On the one hand, there is that feeling of being indispensable that I discussed in my post on gender and housework. There is also a need to conform to the patriarchal standard that presents all women as more emotional as men, better at communication than men, and more capable of resolving emotional issues than men.

And then, of course, there is this whole issue of empowerment and control. As women, we often feel disempowered in view of continued gender inequality within society. We still don't get equal pay for equal work, we are still often prevented from career advancement, our right to control our own bodies is still in grave danger, we still have to fight extremely hard to get taken seriously, we still get the least prestigious, badly paid, menial and monotonous jobs, we are still severely underrepresented in the Senate, the Congress, the Supreme Court, etc. Our society offers us the romantic and emotional sphere as pretty much the only space where we can be completely in control. If you are infantilized by men at work, in a classroom, in the public sphere, it often seems like the only solution is to infantilize them in return in the personal sphere.

What we get as a result, is an unhealthy and unequal balance of power both in the public and in the private sphere.

So as we can see from this table, even when both partners are employed full-time, women still do a lot more housework than men. Why does that happen?

I've been thinking about it a lot and according to my observations, women themselves are often to blame for this state of affairs. In my experience, most if not all men are more than willing and capable of cooking their own meals, doing the laundry, cleaning their place of abode, etc. Granted, I haven't spent much time with fundamentalist freaks, so I'm mostly talking about normal, educated men who do not believe actively that women are inferior by nature.

What I often observe is that women go to great lengths to do everything they can and more around the house and stifle any attempts that men make at doing their share of housework. Often, when I visit a couple I know I observe the following scene: when we finish eating, the male partner gets up to remove the dirty dishes and the woman immediately jumps up and almost screams: "Don't! I'll do it myself!" Usually, these are very progressively-minded, feminist women.

The myth that you have to be a good housewife to be loved and appreciated is too deeply ingrained in our minds. It's often difficult to get rid of the feeling that a sink full of dirty dishes is somehow your problem just because of your gender. As much as we might advocate for gender equality, we often end up doing everything we can to infantilize men and prevent them from learning to fulfill their household obligations. In a way, it makes sense. If a man feels completely useless around the house, it makes a woman feel more indispensable.

What we have to do is learn to give up on this fake feeling of indispensability and remember that we are valuable not for the amount of household work we perform. We shouldn't strive to be useful and convenient to the detriment of our equality. Contrary to what the title of the above-quoted table says, men do not need looking after. They are perfectly capable of doing that for themselves.

Last week, I read an article about a gender discrimination complaint filed against Toys R Us.  The complaint was launched by a bunch of Swedish 6th graders who found the Toys R Us 2008 Christmas catalogue offensive because it reinforced stereotypical gender roles by featuring boys in active roles and girls in passive ones. According to the class’s teacher, the complaint brought forward by these children is the result of more than 2 years’ work on gender roles.

This story makes me want to jump for joy. To see an example of young people recognizing and trying to actively combat sexism and outdated gender roles gives me hope that today’s youth really can effect change in the world. One of the students even stated that children of either sex should be able to be whoever they want to be even if “guys want to be princesses sometimes.” How could I not swoon?

And then I read the online reader comments that followed the story. And I wanted to cry.

Although I’ve been around the block enough times to know how attached people are to the idea of gender and gender roles, I somehow am repeatedly shocked at how essentialist some people get. Several readers who posted comments seemed to confuse the Swedish children’s complaint as a desire to obliterate sex/gender altogether and homogenize all human beings, and many argued that there is a distinct, innate difference between boys and girls. Seriously, people, it’s the 21st century and you’re still trying to peddle that nonsense?

There’s really too much to address on this topic in a simple blog post, and, frankly, this whole discussion is so old that I can’t believe I’m even writing about it. But after having researched and written many an undergraduate psych paper on gender roles, I do know that an array of reputable psychologists and sociologists have studied gender and gender roles in children and have pretty much determined that gender is largely socially constructed. The types of toys children are given to play with, the types of clothes they’re dressed in, the types of activities they’re encouraged to pursue, and even how adults interact with boy babies versus girl babies: all that stuff makes a mark on a kid.

I don’t think the Swedish kids are calling for a complete erasure of sex and gender. I think the point is that we all need to be more mindful of how boys and girls/men and women are treated and represented and what kinds of expectations we have on each. The point is that difference shouldn’t be based on biological sex. Boys can be princesses and girls can be knights in shining armour. Get over it.

Related posts:

1. Children, let us rigidly dictate the rules of gender
2. Alberta cuts gender reassignment surgery funding
3. Student debate on sex-reassignment surgery

Chauvinism pervades every single area of our lives to an incredible degree. Even scientists, whose job is to discover and report objective data, prefer to push their patriarchal ideology instead. A recent article in Science Daily is a perfect example of that.

The article is titled "Unnatural Selection: Birth Control Pills May Alter Choice Of Partners." Its main goal is to bash the most important scientific breakthrough of the XXth century: the birth control pill. Many patriarchally-minded people hate the pill because it liberated women from having their lives controlled by their biology (as I discuss in my last post.) So they come up with studies which are aimed at scaring women off of the pill.

The main problem with taking oral contraception is that it will destroy your personal life. Giving birth to an unwanted child every year of your life, of course, will not do that. But taking the pill definitely will. So how does the oral contraception damage our lives? According to the article, by "interfering with a woman's ability to choose, compete for and retain her preferred mate." Women who are on the pill, the article claims, are less likely to prefer "men showing dominance and male-male competitiveness." Of course, female interest towards domineering jerks is diminishing (which in my book is great). This is a natural process for a society that is trying to move away from patriarchal stereotypes. The only group of people who might find this tendency scary is domineering men. So, in reality, the pill doesn't prevent women from "retaining their preferred mate." What happens is that domineering losers cannot retain a woman in a new reality where women aren't tied forever to these idiots by constant child-bearing.

In order to sell their idiotic propaganda to women, these pseudo-scientists tell us that if we dare to mess with nature's design that destines us to be perennially pregnant, we will not be able to find us a man: "The authors also speculate that the use of oral contraceptives may influence a woman's ability to attract a mate by reducing attractiveness to men, thereby disrupting her ability to compete with normally cycling women for access to mate."   I have no idea since when specialists in Animal and Plant Sciences, as these pseudo-scientists are, qualify to talk about purely sociological issues such as mating and dating. But from personal experience of someone who has been on the pill for 15 years, I can tell these stupid women-haters that they can relax. My attractiveness hasn't suffered and I have never in my life had to compete with any women ("normal" or otherwise) for access to men. Somehow, men never give me the chance and just keep competing for me, as annoying as it is to me.

As we all know, marriage is an institution that is beneficial to men and detrimental to women. Married men live longer than single men, while married women live shorter lives than married women. Married women still do most household chores for the family, so while men gain a cleaner and a cook, married women lose time and energy needed to serve two people instead of one. As Susan Faludi demonstrated in her great book Backlash (which reads like a mystery novel, so I highly recommend to any one), single men suffer a much higher rate of depression and neurosis than married men because of their single status. Single women, however, suffer from depression due to their single status a lot less than single men.

Since the institution of marriage is so detrimental to women and beneficial to men, ideological devices needed to be created in order to make it seem desirable to women. In our societies, marriage is presented as the only way for a woman to gain an acceptable status and a certain legitimacy as a member of society and a representative of her gender. We are bombarded with TV shows, movies, articles, books, etc. that show us an endless succession of women desperate for a marriage proposal. Why that proposal is a good and a necessary thing for a woman is never explained. The way ideology works is by presenting something as simply existing. As a result, it never occurs to most people to question why these movie and book characters are so desperate to enter an institution that will shorten their life span and bring them a lot more boring housework.

These ideological devices often go to ridiculous lengths to make their point. We have all watched Sex and the City, a profoundly patriarchal show that has no connection to reality. In real life, beautiful accomplished women like the characters of this show receive marriage proposals by the bucketful from a very early age to the day when they die. Never would women like Carrie, Miranda and Samantha have to humiliate themselves for the sake of getting some loser to validate their existence by an offer of a relationship. Still, the television and the movies create an alternative reality where women are desperate to get a proposal pretty much from anybody. As a result, women see themselves as incomplete without being married and consent to getting married so much more readily.

Of course, there is always another side to this story. Women would not participate in the "get-married-or-society-will-see-you-as-worthless" ideology if they didn't gain something from it. Marriage is such a nifty little institution that it manages to accomodate everyone. What women as a group gain from it occurs precisely at the point where they lose something else. We have known at least starting with Aristotle that human beings are social animals. We all need to feel socially accepted and validated by our peers. Getting married is pretty much the only way for a woman to feel that she has been successful as a member of society and a representative of her gender. As limiting as this is, it is also very easy. Proving your social value through working, through having a career, through having enough money to maintain yourself and your family (which is the only way that men have to prove their social and gender worth) is a lifelong enterprise. It is something you have to engage in on a daily basis. No matter how successful you were yesterday, if you lose your job today, you will feel like a lesser citizen and a lesser male. Getting married, however, is a one-time thing. You do it once, prove your worth as a member of society and a woman, and you are pretty much done. If you lose your job, or fail to graduate, for example, it will be painful for you, but no woman (that I know of, at least) feels less of a woman because of unemployment.

God knows I love Canada. It's the place I call home, it's where my family lives, it's a beautiful country with amazing people. But recently news from Canada have been more and more and more disturbing.

In an article titled "Can a busy female politician give reliable evidence? A judge says no," Globe and Mail reports: "Lisa MacLeod's evidence in trial of Ottawa mayor was dismissed because she was commuting to Toronto, ‘leaving her husband and child in Ottawa'. MacLeod is a young female politician who commutes to her job at Queen's Park from Ottawa and leaves her husband, Joe, and four-year-old daughter, Victoria, at home. Mr. Justice Douglas Cunningham of Ontario Superior Court said this is a big distraction for the 34-year-old woman and as a result he felt he could not accept her evidence as corroboration of the Crown's key witness in the recent high-profile, influence-peddling trial of Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien."

It's unbelievably disturbing that in Canada a woman's evidence at trial isn't given any weight because she dares to be a working mother. This is beyond disgusting. Shame on you, Justice Cunningham! You give a bad name to all Canadians.

Now I have a question: is the growing frequency of such outrageous events a result of the noxious influence of Canada's Conservative party? Does the conservative ideology trickle down from the Prime-Minister's seat to infect all strata of our society?