Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 are here. This is more of the presentation I gave at this motherhood conference. My presentation at that conference looked at some of the big themes I see coming out of all the responses I’ve received to my 10 questions about your feminist motherhood.
In this section I examine what people saw as the difficulties with being a feminist parent:
- Common response – how to express their parenting decisions without coming across as confrontational:
- “Being the type of mother I am and the type of person I am means that fitting in with other new mothers has been a challenge at times. My ‘wanting to be liked’ side conflicts with my ‘opinionated and judgemental’ side. Yes, I want to be tolerant and respect other people’s choices, but I also want to speak my mind without being pigeon-holed as the freaky-hippy-lesbian mum”.
- Questioning themselves for taking on traditional roles:
- “Right now, I’m home all the time andis always working. Somehow we’ve delved into a very traditional model of family. I once asked my neighbor, how did this happen? We’re here and our partners are out working. She was offended”.
- “When I look at the roles in our household I definitely do the majority of the housework. I hate what this models for my son. I feel like I’m failing him in terms of his future relationships with women (and failing those women too)”.
- “I suppose, in some ways I am defensive about it because from the outside it looks like we’ve taken on such traditional roles in our family, and I want to say, take me seriously, I really am a feminist”.
- Under-cover feminism:
- Singaporean mother: “My feminism is a silent one, sneaking behind a facade of conservatism and maneuvering itself around a watchful patriarchal society, waiting to pounce”.
- American mother: “I live in a very Christian Conservative culture and the word feminist is frightening to most mothers here. (But they are lurkers and soaking up new ideas they are liking)”.
- In conflict with family members over pornography: “Yes I did feel compromised when I realised that he (her son) was accessing pornography – that was tricky.. This is a tricky subject between mother and son. But I have hope – at the very least he has to think about it”.
[...] presentation on feminist parenting. Part 4 covers “what is feminist parenting?” and Part 5 looks at the difficulties with being a feminist parent. She also talks about the idea that some [...]