I’ve been a fan of Renee from Womanist Musings’ (@womanistmusings) work for a long time and loved having the opportunity to connect with her recently on Skype as we filmed her segment of my toddler years video. I’ve been begging her to guest post for me for a while and am happy to finally have a piece of her work to share with you. Please welcome Renee to the blog.

Teaching a Child to Refer to her Genitalia as the C Word

Every parent eventually has to make a decision regarding what to teach their children about their genitalia.  Some people simply cannot bear to give their children the correct anatomical names and instead make up cutesy nick names for them.  In doing so, what they don’t recognize, is that they are introducing the idea of shame when it comes to both the physical body and sex and sexuality.  As the years pass, it sends a strong message that certain body parts are dirty and not to be spoken of.

The unhusband and I made the decision to tell our sons that they had both a penis and testes. This should not have been a controversial decision; however, when they entered school, one teacher  asked my oldest son to refer to his genitalia as his wee wee, because his forthrightness about his body made her uncomfortable. What should seem like a straight forward decision, can at times become complex depending on the people that you and your child interact with.

I recently came across the story of a feminist dad who decided to push the envelop when it came to talking to his daughter about her genitalia.

I really never thought this would happen. I had a vision that I was going to be able to raise my kids differently than anyone ever had, that they’d grow up free of racial prejudice and television and only wearing pink and all the other bad stuff that’s wandered into the head of any other kid, ever.

Sadly, that is not always the situation. Case study #1: Language.

In college I read Inga Muscio‘s amazing book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence. (I was a feminist! I was the only guy in Womyn’s Issues Now! I could do anything!) Essentially, the point of that book was that the word “cunt” used to be an honorific term for the female ruler of a country, whereas the word “vagina” is an Old English Latin word meaning “sheath for a sword.” And, in the earliest days of changing nappies and learning how female people wipe, I was quick to teach my gurgling baby proto-feminist girl to say “cunt!” instead of “vagina” — or instead of whatever other term you’d use.

No matter what anyone else said, or how they looked at me when I said it. In fact, because of how they looked at me when I said it. (source)

I think there is a good argument to made that teaching a little girl to refer to her genitalia as only a vagina, is teaching her to refer only to a specific part of her anatomy.  It is based in the idea that the only part of our genitalia that matters, is the opening that allows penetration by a man.  I would fully support teaching a child to use vulva instead; however,  I believe that cunt is not the appropriate choice to thwart the limiting social construction of what female genitalia signifies.

There are some women who have chosen to reclaim the word cunt. This is an individual choice, and the same cannot be said for a father who actively chooses to teach his daughter this word.  I think first we must consider that we are talking about a male parent. No matter the intention of the man in question, the word cunt will always be problematic.  He may have done the research of the etymological roots, but the fact of the matter is that today the word cunt is socially understood to be a reductive word used to attack and debase women, no matter how many times you watch the Vagina Monologue and watch as Eve Ensler, encourages the men in the audience to shout out the word.  Intent does not magically alter the social understanding of a word in question.

There are several groups who have attempted to reclaim words.  Some Blacks have attempted to reclaim the slur nigger and some gay people have also done so with the word queer, but despite their efforts, these words are still actively used as a slur, and even within the communities to whom these words belong, the idea of reclamation is not necessarily universally embraced. Then there are communities like the disabled community, who are attempting to ask people to reconsider their usage of words like retard, lame, crazy, and moron, with little success I might add. Regardless of the community that you address, a large part of the issue with these problematic words is that they not only have become socially ingrained, the meaning of each of these words has developed their own unique definition.

In many ways, this mans effort reminds me of those who insist on claiming that they were only talking about a cigarette, when called on their usage of the word f#g. Part of raising socially aware children is teaching them to think for themselves.  It begins by setting a foundation in which they are taught that all people matter regardless of their race, sexuality, gender, age, or ability.  From there, the next step should be a discussion of common isms aimed at historically marginalized group, along with the concept of privilege. The final stage, and the most exciting I might add, is turning their questions around and asking them what they think and why.  This can be as simple asking themselves to picture how they would feel in the place of the marginalized person at first.

I disagree with this man’s approach because his first thought removes choice.  Not all women believe that the word cunt should be reclaimed, and many, myself included, find it extremely offensive. He could have chosen to thwart the common understanding of female genitalia and use the term labia and then had a discussion on why cunt might be a word for her to consider, but instead he used his adult and male privilege to decide for her.  There may well come a time when she pulls away from her father’s understanding and decides that this word is not suitable for her, but we all know that ideas when introduced at a very young age are very difficult to overcome in later years. In this instance, I believe respecting women and encouraging agency should come with the right to name and that is something that was taken from her, in his bid to be the ultimate feminist man. Every person should have the right and ability to cherish their bodies.

Any parent who engages in social justice parenting will tell you that it is an uphill battle.  There are times when your children will say the most insightful things, and you will be filled with immense pride, and others when you feel it is hopeless because they have learned and internalized such negative things from either their friends, or the media.

Renee Martin is the proud mother of two very active young boys. She resides in Niagara Falls On with her family, where she works as a freelance writer and blogger.    Her home blogs are, Womanist Musings and Fangs for the Fantasy.

Photo credit:moxieg on flickr

I like StumbleUpon. It is a great way to share and discover content on topics that interest me. If you’re not familiar with it, you can check out my guest post about StumbleUpon and how it works on Kids in the Capital. Today when I went on the site, they were promoting the “new” StumbleUpon, so I decided to check it out. Turns out, there is a nice page that lists my interests and has a photo to go with each one. One of the images jumped out at me right away. The one for feminism.

Pretty pink paper dolls? Unless it is intended to be ironic, I can’t think of anything much more anti-feminist than that. The dolls are dainty, identical, weak, wearing dresses, and pink. While each woman certainly can make her own choices (and I do love both pink and dresses, although I don’t think I currently own any pink dresses), the image smacks more of Stepford Wives or obedient perfect daughters all falling nicely in a row, than it does of women fighting for equality, opportunity and choice.

I will say that I liked a lot of the other images though, like the multicultural babies that didn’t have bottles and pacifiers in their mouths, the fresh vegetables portraying health, the activist fits in the air, and so on.

But the feminist one was a miss, for sure.

What does feminism look like to you? What image would you suggest for StumbleUpon?

A new study was just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association about a blood test that can predict the sex of a fetus using a non-invasive procedure (blood test) at 7 weeks pregnancy. My colleague Kristina wrote a post explaining more about the procedure and technology at Care2. I have mixed feelings about it, just as I did with the expanded prenatal genetic testing that I wrote about in January.

On being pro-choice…

I am pro-choice. I trust women. I trust women to make good decisions about what is right for themselves and for their bodies. While I do not think that I could get an abortion, that is just me trusting myself to make the right decision for myself and my body. In the same way that I trust myself, I trust other women to make the right decisions for themselves, which may mean getting an abortion.

I understand that a lot of women get pregnant at a time in their lives when they are not ready for it. Whether they feel like they are too young, too poor, or simply not ready, I’m okay with that and realize it is simply none of my business. If they were raped or are in an abusive situation, I completely understand the decision to have an abortion. In fact, I cannot say that I with certainty that I wouldn’t choose that route too in an abusive situation.

I support women. I trust women. I am 100% pro-choice (even if that sometimes surprises my readers).

On shopping for the “right” baby…

I understand people wishing for a baby of a particular gender. We wanted to have two children and had a boy first. With our second child, I definitely wished for a girl (and I got my wish). If we’d ended up with a second boy, I would have welcomed him into our family and we would have then had the discussion about whether we want to try for a third in order to have a girl. We would have talked about how that would change our lifestyle (would need a bigger car, bigger house, may not be able to afford some of the thing we can now, etc.) and we would have talked about the risk of having twins or triplets and ending up with more children than we bargained for. I don’t know what we would have decided, but the discussion definitely would have been about whether to try to conceive a third child, not about whether to abort the fetus that was the wrong sex.

Because I am pro-choice, I would support another woman’s choice to have an abortion because the baby didn’t have the sex that she hoped for. But I would cringe inside. Is gender really that important? Couldn’t the family just love the baby no matter what? What happens if she aborts a baby for having the wrong sex, only to get one that has the genitals she hoped for, but that turns out to be transgender? How would she treat that child?

On societal pressure for gender selection…

I trust women. I support women. That means that I am pro-choice, but it also means that I believe they deserve to be protected from patriarchal power systems that seek to control their bodies and their decisions. If a woman truly wants a baby of a particular sex, I will cringe but support her in her decision.

My bigger worry, however, is that women will be forced to abort female fetuses because the patriarchal society that they live in places higher value on boy children than it does on girl children.  Ultimately, I worry that this early sex detection will be used as a tool to control women, rather than as one that gives them more freedom.

What do you think?

How do you feel about this new test? Would you have used it to learn the sex of your fetus? Would it have impacted your decision about whether to carry the baby in any way?

Image credit: lumaxart on flickr

The featured topic in the July/August 2011 issue of New Internationalist is “The changing face of masculinity.” In the first article, “Cooking up a Storm”, author Nikki Van Der Gaag shares some interesting statistics:

Being a ‘traditional’ man is risky business. A national survey of adolescent males 15 to 19 in the US found that those with more traditional views of manhood were more likely to report substance abuse, violence and delinquency, and unsafe sexual practices. Results from a multi-country study involving 11,000 interviews with women and men found that men who hold more rigid views about what it means to be men are more likely to be depressed, and overall less satisfied with their lives and their relationships. And in Britain, where suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 35, Jane Powell, Chief Executive of CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) says: ‘The kernel of the problem around suicide is that men are not supposed to ask for help. For a guy to say “I can’t function” is to say “I’m not a man.” ‘

I find this quote and the rest of the article interesting from a couple of perspectives.

First, when women are looking for a future spouse, they are often looking for (or are portrayed to and told to desire) men who are more traditional, meaning that they are strong, good earners, and able to “take care” of the woman. This makes me wonder. Do women who look for men who are masculine in the traditional sense also enter into relationships with an expectation that they will both take on more traditional roles? Or do women who expect equality in a relationship nonetheless seek out men who exude stereotypical masculinity? If it is the latter, is that why there is often so much conflict in relationships when women suddenly end up taking on more of the burden for household duties and child rearing?

Second, as I’ve discussed previously in my post on feminism, fathers and valuing parenthood, achieving equality for women requires a change in men. It isn’t just about giving women the opportunity to do anything that men can do if that means that they are still saddled with everything that women are expected to do. Men need to be willing to take on roles traditionally assumed to be the woman’s domain. In a heterosexual relationship and in a society populated with men and women, there needs to be give and take, not just take.

Looks like I’m entering conference season. I think I’ll be at about one conference per month from July through to November. I hope to catch up with some of you at some of the conferences that I’m attending.

Women’s Worlds

Women’s Worlds is a huge international feminist conference that is held in a different city once every three years. This year it was held in Ottawa and I jumped at the chance to not only attend, but to cover the conference on a media pass for Care2.  If you want to hear about some of the sessions that I attended, you can check out my p0sts about the conference.

Women’s Worlds: Ottawa Welcomes International Feminist Conference (introduction to this great conference, which combines academic and grass roots work, and aims to be very inclusive, although there were some complaints that there was a very anti-sex worker and anti-sex work atmosphere at the conference)

Are Women and Girls Groomed to Choose Oppression? (pondering this as my four year old daughter sang “I’m a Barbie Girl, in a Barbie World” to me this afternoon…sigh)

Women and Leadership in Politics and Business (Great panel, but I had to contain myself when the executive from McDonald’s talked about what a great company it is)

What is Maternal Feminism? (on the great work of Andrea O’Reilly and others)

Women’s Worlds: Breaking Ground (on the closing plenary session about what ground still needs to be broken and what a women’s world would look like)

BlogHer ’11

Next month, I’m heading to San Diego for BlogHer’ 11. I’m honoured to have been selected as one of this year’s Voices of the Year, which means that I’ll be getting up on stage to share one of my posts with potentially thousands of people. I can’t tell you which post it is (and I will not respond to guesses!), but it is a piece that I’m really proud of.

There are many, many other amazing bloggers on the list, including fellow Canadian bloggers Kate from Sweet Salty and Bon Stewart from Crib Chronicles and some of my other blogging friends like Miss Britt and Cecily Kellogg. Several of the posts that I nominated were also listed as honorees, including Katherine Stone’s post On Blogging, Popularity Contests and Why I QUIT!, Neil Kramer’s post The Inconsiderate Breastfeeding Woman, and Karen Walrond’s video called a response to satoshi kanazawa, psychology today, and the horses they rode in on.

More to come…

As I attend these conferences, I’ll try to share the interesting things that I learn and experience. I hope to see some of you at the conferences in person too.

A couple of weeks ago when we were having one of those peaceful family dinners, I asked my partner if I could blog and tweet about his vasectomy, which was scheduled for the next day. My mother, who was staying with us, choked on her wine. My partner, much less phased by this request, said “sure, if it will help someone else.”

Being Done

“Vasectomy should be considered permanent and irreversible. Don’t be fooled by claims of reversible vasectomies…there is no such thing. If you attempt to reverse your vasectomy within the first three years of having it done, you have about a 70% chance of success (this falls considerably after ten years).” - Vasectomy.ca

The decision to get married, to have a child, to have a second child, and to be done having children all seemed to come fairly easily to us. The timing of each either made sense or felt right or both. We always had practical reasons for making those decisions and the emotional side seemed to follow along fairly easily.

I’d love to have more children. The sensation of snuggling up with and nursing a fresh newborn baby is something I would like to do over and over again. But, doing that would mean giving up other goals and dreams and making other substantive changes to our lives that neither of us is prepared to make.

We have two wonderful and exhausting children that complete our life. We were ready to make the permanent and irreversible decision to close the book on baby making.

Why a Vasectomy?

For every man who has a vasectomy, four women have a tubal ligation. - Joy Thompson from Planned Parenthood in Toronto Sun

A lot of people asked why we opted for a vasectomy. The answer seems fairly obvious to me. First, I had taken care of birth control for the past 16 years and as a couple that believes in equality, I guess that means it is his turn for the next 16 years.

In the man’s case, it’s a vasectomy. A quick, internal snip in the scrotum with a knife using a local anesthetic. It takes about 10 minutes, results in a few days of discomfort and heralds a condom- and baby- free future. Unfortunately, according to family therapists, some men believe a vasectomy will make them less of a man and refuse to take the plunge. For women, sterilization isn’t quite as simple. Tubal ligation, as its known, requires surgery under general anesthetic — in itself more risky — to sever the fallopian tubes. – Steve Payne for the Toronto Sun

Second,  if a man can undergo a short (less than 15 minute) outpatient procedure with local anesthetic, why should the woman be subject to major surgery? The third issue is the cost. Although both procedures are covered by public health care in Canada, the cost to the health care system (and therefore taxpayers like us) is about five times as much for a tubal ligation as for a vasectomy.

Ultimately, while each couple needs to make their own decision, I don’t see any reason why someone would opt for tubal ligation over a vasectomy, except perhaps in cases of abuse where a woman is trying to ensure her abuser cannot get her pregnant again. Maybe there are other reasons and I’m sure my readers will enlighten me if there are.

The King of Vasectomies

Q. What happens if I get an erection during the procedure?
A. Funny you should ask. Out of some 31,000+ vasectomies, I have seen this occur only once. It is not an issue. - Vasectomy.ca

Ottawa has a king of vasectomies. Almost everyone (like 99.9%) of people here seem to go to Dr. Weiss, who has performed more than 31,000 no-scalpel vasectomies from his office on a residential street in the Glebe. No hospital, no long waits, no astronomical parking charges, no knife. There was no question. We went to Dr. Weiss.

Preparation

My partner had to pick up a preparation package in advance of his vasectomy. It included detailed instructions (with visuals!) on how to shave, a surgical razor, a support to wear on the day of the vasectomy, a prescription for the Valium to take an hour before the procedure and pain medication for after the procedure, an ice pack and a few other random items.

V Day

My partner had the “all in one” vasectomy, which means that he had his consultation and vasectomy all in one day. “Consultation, what consultation?” is what he said when I asked him about it. Essentially, he registered online, was given a time and date for his appointment,picked up the preparatory package, shaved, popped a Valium, and went to his appointment.

Q. Can my wife cut the tubes?
A. Not unless you’re having the baby. Secondly, did you ask her if she wanted to? Third, unlike a birth, everything is sterile…so, sorry, but no. Vasectomy.ca

I had no interest in “cutting the tubes,” so this wasn’t an issue. When we arrived at the clinic (about 25 minutes early), we had barely sat down when he got called in. The procedure itself took no more than 10 minutes, didn’t hurt at all, and he got a Coke when he was finished. All in all, less pain and less fuss than giving blood. We then had to sit in the waiting room for another 15 minutes before we were allowed to leave. We left the clinic before the actual scheduled time of his appointment. Easy and quick.

Q. What happens if you cut the wrong tube?
A. That would be terrible! If the testicular artery were cut, it might result in loss of the testicle. Fortunately, this is not a common problem and has never occurred in Dr. Weiss’ career. – Vasectomy.ca

Having this procedure, like any other, obviously requires you to trust that your health care provider knows what they are doing. With 31,000 vasectomies behind him, we felt pretty confident going to Dr. Weiss.

The Recovery

“Mommy, you have to bring me to bed tonight because Daddy’s tentacles hurt.” – Julian, age 6

The day of the vasectomy, after I brought him home, my partner sat down on the couch and watched a movie. He iced the area off and on with the ice pack that was provided to him by the doctor, but didn’t even need the pain medication.  I did the dishes and put the kids to bed that evening, but otherwise he was relatively low maintenance. Nowhere near as bad as a man cold. For several days, he had periods of feeling slightly uncomfortable, like he had sat down wrong, but otherwise said that it was pretty easy to deal with.

Q. Do I have to ejaculate 20 times before doing the test?
A. What you tell your partner is your business…but time is more important than the number of ejaculations. Do your test at least 12 weeks after the vasectomy regardless of the number of ejaculations, although I recommend as many as possible. - Vasectomy.ca

In addition to the physical recovery, there is the clearing of the tubes. It takes about 12 weeks until the risk of getting pregnant is gone, so couples who don’t want a “surprise” baby still have to take precautions for a little while.

Q. Am I going to gain weight after my vasectomy?
A. Only if you eat too much and don’t exercise enough. – Vasectomy.ca

After the short recovery period, everything is back to normal. Life goes on, but no more worries about birth control after the 12 week waiting period has passed. I no longer have to pump my body full of hormones or jump through other hoops to ensure that I don’t get pregnant again. We’re done.

More Stories

You want to read more about vasectomies, don’t you? Check out these other vasectomy posts from people in my social network:

• Andrea from a Peek Inside the Fishbowl: Dr. Snip
• Julie from Mabel’s Labels: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Vasectomy Clinic
• Dani from Postcards from the Mothership: Beloved Visits Dr. Zap
• Karen from The Kids Are Alright: Worst Nurse
• Wildsau: V is for Vasectomy
• Matt Haughey: My Vasectomy

Image credit: kevjblack on flickr

Today I’m happy to welcome Andrea Doucet for another guest post on my blog. In this post she is sharing her thoughts on equally shared parenting and the book on that topic by Amy Vachon and Marc Vachon.

Twenty-one years ago, my life was very focused on equally shared parenting.

I was a new doctoral student interviewing British couples who were trying to share housework and childcare (although such couples were notoriously difficult to find back then). And I  was a new mother sharing parenting and housework with my husband. While we did not know it at the time, we were in fact practicing what Marc and Amy Vachon describe in their book as “Equally Shared Parenting” (ESP):

“Equally shared parenting is the purposeful practice of two parents sharing equally in the four domains of childrearing, breadwinning, housework and time for self.”

We were both students living in a small student apartment at Cambridge University. With our families back in Canada, we had no family support in England; with my scholarship as our only income, we had little money for extra childcare help. We had no car, no TV, no Internet access.  We just split our days between work and childcare, housework (not much), and leisure. While breastfeeding introduced some  differences in our days, my husband took on other routine domestic tasks.  When our daughter started half-time daycare at the age of two, we alternated the dropping off and picking up, and we had mommy days and daddy days.

That was a long time ago.

In the last twenty one years, I have continued to research and write about the lives of couples who challenge traditional gender norms in paid work and care work (e.g. stay-at-home dads, single fathers, breadwinning mothers, fathers who take parental leave, and gay fathers). And my husband and I have raised three daughters (now 21 and 17-year-old twins) and have gone from equal breadwinners to me being the primary breadwinner. I would describe our journey as shared parenting but not equally shared parenting.

I greatly appreciated the book, Equally Shared Parenting: Rewriting the Rules for a New Generation of Parents. It describes an important political and personal approach to achieving gender equality at work and at home. This is a goal I share with the Vachons, although I have a slightly different approach to this issue.

An Appreciation

One cannot help but admire the Vachons. Perhaps the best way to give you a quick snapshot of their lives is from this glowing Mother’s Day article about them in the Boston Globe:

“Amy Vachon has the life most working mothers only dream of. Vachon, 48, works 32 hours a week at a job she loves. Her husband does the same, and they switch off  picking up their two kids. She makes dinner on Mondays and Fridays, he cooks on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and they eat out on Tuesdays. In Amy Vachon’s world, “doing laundry” means whites only – Marc, also 48, handles the family’s dark loads. He schedules their kids’ dental checkups; she handles doctors’ appointments.”

Equally Shared Parenting is a wonderful book. It is beautifully written, steeped in some of the latest research, and written with a balance of passion, intelligence and practicality. To their credit, they tried out these ideas in conversation with an audience of enthusiastic followers and critics. They launched their blog as a venue for that exercise.

Marc and Amy Vachon have responded clearly to their critics. For example, after they were featured in a New York Times magazine article by Lisa Belkin, the Vachons were criticised for taking a rigid 50-50 model to parenting as though it meant color coded charts and “keeping score.” As they make clear in their book:

“One of the biggest misconceptions about ESP is the idea that it involves a perfect 50-50 split of every task and if this is so, it leads to onerous charting to reach an even division of socks washed, kids tucked in bed and overtime hours worked each week… Sharing the work of running a family is not about exact division by chore. The name for his lifestyle is not equally divided parenting but equally shared parenting; the point is not put a hatchet into the middle of every activity.”

One of the strengths of the book is that it is written by a mother and father about the successes and challenges faced by both mothers and fathers. Their four-part approach – breadwinning, childrearing, housework, and time for self – ingeniously brings together complementary parts of a whole as they consider how these all play into an equal and balanced family life.  More researchers should pay heed to this four-fold formulation.

They also astutely point to the many roadblocks that get in the way of shared parenting. For example, they highlight the importance of:

1. dad being on his own with the kids so that he can develop his own competence;
2. challenging the assumption that only mom will take sick days to be with the kids;
3. fathers being involved with infants, either through parental leave, paternity leave, or time off from work;
4. the constant negotiation around housework;
5. and the constant societal pressures on mothers and fathers, both in community spaces and in work spaces.

The Vachons’ point about striving for equal breadwinning is also a good reminder to new parents. As my colleague Bonnie Fox depicts so well in her book, When Couples Become Parents, the transition into parenting often marks the beginning of a long slide towards gender inequality. Joan Williams also brilliantly highlights this in her recent book on why men matter in reshaping work-family debates. Meanwhile, a new book just released in the UK, Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality, repeats an age-old argument: “The mother feels that she must cut back her paid work in order to look after the children because the father is working long hours; the father feels he should work long hours because the mother has cut back her paid work.”

These are not new points; they have have been made many times by many gender and family scholars (including myself) Nevertheless, they’re so important that they’re worth repeating, especially to fathers who want push for flex hours, reduced work hours, or paternity/parental leave.

ESP is One of Many Narratives of Shared Parenting

The Vachons are very explicit in saying that this approach is not for everyone.

Recently one mother publicly agreed with that point. Claire Hodgson wrote in the UK’s The Independent that her experience with ESP was “ a disastrous double act” and the “worst year of marriage.”

What I have learned from being here and from studying this issue is that ESP is only one of a wide range of “sharing” narratives. The Vachons admit that “parents who practice equal sharing fit many different categories.” And they are explicit about not judging other families. Nevertheless, they also sometimes fall into an unfortunate binary between “traditional families” or “more standard parenting styles” and ESP families.

This makes me wonder where I “fit”  since I am neither of these. On the other hand, my scholarly side is bothered by trying to hold the messy, dynamic, and constantly changing “stuff of everyday life” into boxes or labels.

I want to make four brief points here:

• First, there are many approaches to sharing the joys and burdens of breadwinning and caregiving (while also getting the housework done and having time for self).

To Claire Hodson’s reflections on her failure with ESP, the Vachons provide a thoughtful and respectful response on their blog. Nevertheless, they also seem to posit only two possibilities for her – ESP or “a traditional arrangement”:

“We would like to offer that ESP itself – the true equal sharing of breadwinning, housework, childraising, and time for self – is not the core of the problem that this article describes. And that when two parents want the same deep connection with their kids, the bravery of addressing this head on might actually be more satisfying than the lives that a traditional arrangement might have provided” (my emphasis).

My response to Claire Hodgson and her partner is to say that there is something in between ESP and “traditional”. I would say to her: You do not have to choose between a traditional style of parenting or ESP. You can succeed by working out your own version of sharing. And just know that it will shift across time.

This is a point that I share with Annie here at PhD in Parenting who wrote a few months ago that “we’ve been practicing own brand of equally shared parenting.”

• My second point: I believe that couples have evolving and continually changing stories. I am more apt to think about these dynamic and fluid stories rather than trying to categorize the people or couples by giving them labels.

• Third, I think that there is a continuum of approaches to shared parenting that combine gender equality and gender differences in breadwinning and caring.

While some couples like the Vachons and the ESP couples in their book are able to hold onto an approach that balances their lives in equal ways, I have also seen couples move in and out of differing positions on this continuum. There are couples who reverse roles and yet still balance “traditional” and “egalitarian approaches” in their parenting. There are couples where one person is the breadwinner for a few years and then things switch, either forced or by choice. There are feminist stay-at-home moms and pro-feminist primary breadwinning dads. There are households with stay-at-home dads and breadwinning moms where childrearing is still shared while other aspects of paid and unpaid work are divided differently, and unequally.

I also think that many of the readers’ comments here at PhD in Parenting demonstrate this flexibility and diversity really well.

• Building on my third point above, my fourth and final one is about the interplay between gender equality and gender differences.

Equality, Differences, and Balance

For the Vachons, the heart of their approach is on equality and balance. For me, it is about equality, differences, and balance.

In my relationship with my husband, I actually do not ask questions about equality. When I have focused too much on equality, we start heading into conflict because we have, at varied points, taken very different approaches to childrearing, breadwinning, housework, and time for self. The question “equal to whom” is important here. Sometimes when I have pushed for “equality”, this can translate into me asking him to take on my priorities and my approaches. So instead of focusing on being “equal”, I tend to ask the questions which matter to us, such as:  Are the kids OK? Am I getting what I need? Is he getting what he needs? Are we both meeting our goals? Are our family relationships strong?

My scholarly approach also informs the way I make sense of this in my everyday life – and the questions that I ask.  Specifically, from a wide body of feminist work, including that of feminist legal scholar Deborah Rhode, I take the crucial point which is: “The critical issue should not be difference, but the difference difference makes”. The key question is thus: “What difference does difference make?”

Moreover, Rhode draws attention to an important distinction between “difference per se” and “the disadvantages that follow from it”. It is this distinction that begs us to ask: Which differences turn into disadvantages? And this is where I focus my attention when it comes to assessing how fairly and equally my husband and I are sharing the work of raising our family.

Looking back on twenty-one years of parenting and that same amount of time of scholarly work in four countries, my view is that equally shared parenting is just one way to achieve balance and equality in domestic life and in gender relations more widely. It is an excellent one. And I wholeheartedly commend the Vachons for providing real life examples of how this works in practice through their book and web site, as well as ample support and encouragement for couples who are motivated to adopt this model.

But this is just one of many ways to share the important work of breadwinning and caregiving and to achieve a balanced life that leads to wider relations of gender equality.

In response to their point that “you’ll want the overall division of labour in each domain” – breadwinning, childrearing, housework and time for self - “to be about equal between you,” I would add the rejoinder: Do not be afraid to embrace your differences within and between all four domains across time.  While striving for “equality’, do also think about “the difference that difference makes.”

What do you think? Does – or would – Equally Shared Parenting work for you? And what differences make (or do not make) a difference?

Guest author Andrea Doucet is a Professor of Sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. For the last twenty years, most of her work has hovered around, and landed on, two central puzzles; the first relates to enduring gender differences in the ‘response-ability’ for care work, domestic life, and community work while the second is about how we come to know and represent ordinary and extraordinary stories.  Visit Andrea’s  website to learn more about her work.

There has been a lot of talk on the Internet and in traditional media about a Toronto couple that has decided not to reveal the sex of their child to anyone other than the midwife and the child’s older brothers.  This is not the first time this has happened — a couple in Sweden got a lot of press for doing the same thing a few years ago (I haven’t been able to find any updates on that story, but would be interested in seeing how things are going now that the child is four).

My thoughts on this are quite simple:

1. I agree that it is best to shield small children from gender stereotypes and being pigeon-hold into specific roles, likes and dislikes.
2. I think that most children will begin to identify with a gender at a certain age (my guess based on what I’ve seen/read would be around 3 to 5 years old), whether that gender has been pushed on them or not. If a gender has been pushed on them that does not fit, that may be about the age when they start to feel uncomfortable with the gender that has been ascribed to them.
3. I think that the most damaging gender stereotyping starts at about that same age and continues through to adulthood, so I’m not sure that making a baby/toddler genderless will make much difference except perhaps in those children who would have been labelled with the wrong gender (transgender).

Ultimately, my opinion is that:

• If parents do not want to reveal the sex of their child, then it isn’t a big deal because the child will probably reveal his/her gender soon enough. The child is unlikely to go through life as genderless unless the child so chooses.
• Regardless of whether the parents reveal the sex of a baby/small child, I think that there is work to be done in battling gender stereotypes.

What do you think? Does it really matter if parents opt not to reveal the sex of their child? Does it make a difference (positive or negative)?

Image credit: HORIZON on flickr

Right now I’m in Toronto at the Motherhood Activism, Advocacy, Agency Conference organized by the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement. According to the conference description, this conference:

…will examine the subject of maternal empowerment from the perspective of both scholarship and activism, drawing from and building upon Motherhood Studies research and the activism of the 21st century Motherhood Movement. It will bring together scholars who research maternal activism as well as activists who work with and on behalf of mothers. Grounded in a long history in which women activists, writers, and feminists focused much effort on strengthening the social, personal, and political power of mothers, this conference will examine deployments of women’s power as mothers – and mothers’ power as women – that afford women greater authority, resources, and status so that they may adequately care for their children while living full and purposeful lives. This conference brings together the fields of economics, health, law, sociology, political science, humanities and women’s studies to examine how to empower mothers from a variety of perspectives and in a multitude of contests including community activism and engagement, politics, law, public policy, the economy, education, mental and physical health, the family, maternal practice, discourse, ideology and cultural expression. The conference will pay particular attention to the ways in which issues of race, class, nationality, sexuality, age, ability, religion and ethnicity affect (positively or negatively) the ability of mothers to advocate for and achieve authority, agency, respect and empowerment.

The conference has been fascinating and exhausting so far (from first thing this morning until 9:45pm tonight) and continues for another two days. I’m sure it will provide me with plenty of food for thought as well as theoretical and practical background for my future posts here.

What I Learned

I’m too exhausted from the conference to write an exhaustive post on all of the things that I learned from the dozen plus presenters I saw today, but I thought I would share a few of the observations I noted over the course of the day:

• Part of the value statement for the Mother’s Program at the Women’s Health Clinic in Winnipeg is that it “acts AGAINST the conventional constructions of motherhood, by introducing a vision of mothering that is woman defined and centred, empowering and promotes social change.”
• The Museum of Motherhood is doing a Mama Blogger 365 for 2011, putting up a post each day from different mothers sharing their thoughts on mothering. You can submit a post too.
• Sara Epstein from Deakin University in Australia talked about the relationship between mothers and sons in feminist parenting. She mentioned that the dominant discourse positions the son and mothers as bipolar opposites and requires that the son separate himself from his mother and that he have a father role model to teach him how to be a man. She talked about how feminist mothers reject  this mainstream approach and are raising their sons differently.
• Lynn Kuechle from Minnesota State University talked about empowerment. She explained that empowerment is a process. It involves first becoming aware of power dynamics in our own life context. It also involves developing skills, capability and capacity to gain some reasonable amount of control over our lives. Empowerment also requires that we do not infringe on the rights of others — i.e. we should not empower ourselves by squashing others. Finally, empowerment involves actively supporting the empowerment of others in the community (it is not just a selfish act).
• Gaisheda Kheawok talked about the matriarchal tradition in aboriginal societies and shared her “all things come from the mother” approach, values and beliefs.
• Amber Kinser from East Tennessee State talked about forgiveness. She talked about the need for us to forgive our own mothers, to forgive our children and to forgive ourselves. Examples of the questions she asked included: Can we forgive our mothers for not being omnipotent? Can we see imperfect children (including ourselves) and not blame the mother? If we could forgive our mothers for not being perfect would that make it easier to forgive ourselves? Can we forgive our children for coming into our lives at the wrong time? For being too needy? For not being needy enough? Can we forgive them for remembering things differently than we do (especially if that paints us in a bad light)? Can we forgive our children for having a better life than we did and not appreciating it? Can we forgive our children for not being all the things we wanted to be but weren’t or can we forgive them for being the things we wanted to be when we couldn’t? Can we forgive ourselves for all of our imperfections, poor choices, failures and inadequacies?
• Fiona Green from the University of Winnipeg talked about interviews she did with feminist mothers years ago and recent follow-up interviews she did with their now adult children.
• Lynn O’Brien talked about resisting and rethinking generational differences among feminist waves, which was fascinating. In her conclusion she said something that really resonating with me. She noted that mutual responsiveness between the mother and a child allow them both to achieve their own identity/potential while still retaining a connection with each other.
• Erika Horowitz from the University of British Columbia talked about resistance and motherhood and examined the reasons why women resist the dominant discourse of motherhood.  Resistance is empowering, complex and not always easy. Moms who resist in some ways likely comply with the dominant discourse in other ways.
• Finally, in the evening panel, there were presentations by several women on the work that they are doing to help women in specific communities, including Aboriginal communities and moms who have had their children taken away from them.
• There was also a presentation by Ariel Gore from Hip Mama, who mentioned that the transition of radical writing from print to online has resulted in it having a different (broader, whiter, more mainstream) audience and that it also resulted in the writing being less radical than it was in print (likely due to the level and volume of scrutiny that online writing gets and also the silencing techniques that are often used in online discussions).

That was just today and just part of today. There are still two more full days of the conference and I hope my brain is big enough to fit it all.

An Observation: Swag-free conferences are great!

When I go to conferences, I don’t go there to be marketed to. I go there to network and to learn. In the past, I haven’t been impressed with the over the top commercial presence of sponsors who want to market to women at the blogging conferences I have attended. This conference is also a conference for women, by women, and about women, but there are no big corporate sponsors to be seen. There is a local feminist bookstore running the book table. There is a convention centre providing catering for the event. The conference fees were only $275 for a 3 day conference or $125 for students, so obviously this is possible. I just wish it was more common.

I had the pleasure of having coffee with recently with Andrea Doucet, a sociology professor at Carleton University who focuses, among other things, on feminism and fathering . This week I’ll be featuring a series of guest posts by Andrea, who has been studying these issues for the last twenty years both academically and in her own home.

Are you “still the mother”?

I’ve been interviewing mothers and fathers on changing motherhood and fatherhood for twenty years. Some of their voices remain lodged in the back of my mind.

One voice that I keep hearing is that of a British mother named Monica. I met her, and her husband Joshua, in 1993 in a small village outside Cambridge when I was writing my doctoral dissertation on (heterosexual) couples attempting to ‘equally share’ housework and childcare.

Monica and Joshua were both managers in the British government. Since she had the upper level job with a demanding travel schedule, Joshua took on the daily running of the household. Monica called home every night. But she was upset when she was unsure about what her two daughters were doing on any particular night:

“I hate it when I don’t actually know what they’re doing. Like I rang home yesterday evening and I’d got the nights wrong and I was thinking Emma would be going to guides and she wasn’t. It was choir.  And I hate that feeling.  Because I’m their mother! And I ought to know.”

Across two decades, four countries, and three generations, most of my scholarly work has focused on couples who challenge traditional gender norms. Most of these stories are from two-parent families where women are primary breadwinners while men are stay-at-home dads or (shared) primary caregivers.

My long-term research has, in turn, been inspired by the late feminist philosopher Sara Ruddick and her provocative statement that “men could mother.”  I explored that statement in my book Do Men Mother?

I am still exploring this issue in my forthcoming book on breadwinning mothers (and caregiving fathers). I’ve also thought about this constantly over the past twenty years as a breadwinning mother (of three) with a fully involved husband.

Am I still the mother? Or am I part of an interchangeable parenting pair? Can parenting be gender-neutral?  Should that be the goal of feminist research on families?

What I have heard from hundreds of couples across time is that even in households where traditional gender roles are challenged or reversed, there is a mixed set of answers.

“Because I’m their mother”

On the one hand, some mothers (and fathers) confirm what Monica said so many years ago.

I heard it from Nina, a psychotherapist in Ottawa, ten years ago:

“I get right irate when people say – but really Mitchell is the children’s mom. He’s the one that’s staying home and therefore he’s the mother”.

When I asked her why this bothered her, she answered:

“Because I’m the mother. I carried them, I bore them, delivered them, nursed them. I’m perfectly comfortable with saying he’s their primary caregiver. I have no problem with doing that, but don’t say that he’s their mother. I’m their mother!”

Nearly a decade later, in 2009, Laura, an insurance broker and mother of four in Connecticut, also told me that she held onto a unique mothering identity; she reasoned that even though her husband was home all day with the kids, they still had that “mother bond with me that never goes away.”

Men, too, have often joined in and supported this view. I have now lost count of the number of times I have heard stay-at-home dads send a cautionary note to other men: “Don’t try to replace the mother.”

In my visit to Sweden last summer, a father (a doctor) who took parental leave for each one of his three children explained to me why his wife (also a doctor) took most of the leave with each child. “After all, she is the mother,” he said in a completely matter-of-fact way.

And just a few days ago, a mother named Melissa left this comment on my bread and roses blog:

“The interesting thing though is that even though he spends more time with our daughter, there is no question that I am the ‘mom’ in our family.”

But just as some women, and men, hold to the view that Monica first planted in my mind – “I’m the mother” – I have also heard an equally loud chorus of voices that contest that view.

Equal Shared Parenting?

While most couples admit that pregnancy, birthing and breastfeeding can create distinct mother/father roles for a short period of time, some also point to these as the only differences that can, or should, matter.

For example, in Boston in 2009, I interviewed Winona, a video game developer, and Jeremy, a stay-at-home dad. Aside from nursing, which provided Winona with what she also called a ‘mother bond,’ they were both primary parents to their two-year-old daughter. As Jeremy put it, “parenting should not be limited to being a mom.”

Peter, a stay-at-home dad and part-time web designer, and Linda, a teacher, an Ottawa couple whose story I have followed for over a decade, have constantly reiterated to me: “As parents, we are completely interchangeable.” Meanwhile their two boys have always called out for  “Mommy or Daddy” and have used a combined “Mommy-Daddy” label.

This Mommy-Daddy approach was well depicted in the recent Globe and Mail article on the quest for not-so perfect motherhood. In that piece, my colleague Gillian Ranson spoke about how many of the couples she interviewed for her book Against The Grain tended to move away from the labels ‘mothering’ and ‘fathering’ towards ‘parenting.’

One of the most well elaborated arguments for gender-less parents is Marc and Amy Vachon’s recently published book, Equally Shared Parenting. To their credit, they astutely recognize the difficulties for some women to let go of primary parenting, and the challenges for men to take full confidence in their role as shared primary parents. To this end, they even offer tips from other Equally Shared Parenting (ESP) couples “on how Moms can let go of childcare work and responsibility to make room for sharing these evenly with their partners.”

Some of the their recommendations include:

“During your maternity leave, intentionally save some of the childcare activities (bathing, nail clipping) for your partner when he returns from work.”

“Don’t denigrate his parenting style or skills to others or directly to him.”

“Don’t bail him out when things get tough … He is as capable as you.”

“When you feel the urge to ‘correct’ his way of handling the kids, frame your comments so that you’re talking to a true peer.”

For Marc and Amy Vachon, a “commitment to equal childraising as a team” means  becoming “aware of what each of you must do to steer clear of gendered assumptions in your parenting roles”.

This Mother’s Day, we ask the question: Are you ‘still the mother’?

Guest author Andrea Doucet is a Professor of Sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. For the last twenty years, most of her work has hovered around, and landed on, two central puzzles; the first relates to enduring gender differences in the ‘response-ability’ for care work, domestic life, and community work while the second is about how we come to know and represent ordinary and extraordinary stories.  Visit Andrea’s  website to learn more about her work. Cartoons used in this post are by Cathy Thorne, whose work can be viewed at Everyday People Cartoons.