Elisabeth Badinter’s The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women made me feel really sad. It’s a shame that one of the world’s leading feminist philosophers should waste her time on explaining things that are so painfully obvious to everybody who has at least some brain activity. For instance, Badinter demonstrates to the truly unintelligent among us that women who choose not to have children are neither sick nor miserable. She proves that people who choose not to have children are happy and fulfilled and that the excessive attention towards the reasons behind their choice distracts us from more important concerns:
We do not ask questions about the legitimacy of the wish to have children, although we are all aware of the devastation caused by irresponsible mothers. How many children are brought into the world to play roles of compensation or distraction? How many children are abused, neglected, or abandoned? This subject remains unexplored. Society seems more concerned with women who try to assess their responsibilities rigorously than with those who take them on with little reflection.
Badinter’s words are so eminently reasonable that I wonder how anybody can find it in themselves to disagree.
Badinter is a French feminist and, as we all know, Europe is undergoing a demographic crisis at the moment. In Germany, for example, about 1/3 of all women decide not to have children at all. Without in any way condemning that choice, Badinter analyzes the cultural and ideological environment that makes child-bearing unattractive to the growing number of women.
After the great feminist revolution of the 1960-1970, many women discovered that professional and intellectual fulfillment to which feminism gave them access is not without its costs. Fighting for success in a capitalist economy is hard. It is also an ongoing struggle that you never win definitively. The perfect sales this month don’t help you if you fail to produce any in the coming months. Several publications in one year don’t mean you can relax and publish nothing in the future. For many women, the environment of intellectual growth and professional fulfillment is the only one we can survive in.
For some, however, it proved to be too hard. So what do you do when you realize that you haven’t managed to achieve fulfillment through practicing your profession, bettering yourself intellectually, and making money? The answer is simple: you declare that none of these things are worth anything because a woman’s real value lies in her physicality. This was how the “naturalist” movement was born. This movement proposed that a woman’s only goal in life is to be a mother and created a set of pretty unrealistic expectations of what one needed to do in order to pass for a “good” mother.
[To be continued. . .]
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//people who choose not to have children are happy and fulfilled
+ the quote in your post
I would guess that for many women, including quite many feminists, it isn’t painfully obvious. At least, not on an emotional level.
Also, if plenty of women want to have children, but are forced not to because of the job market (professional fulfillment = no children), as I am sure happens in quite a lot of cases, it’s a tragedy. Not a less tragedy than to be forced to give birth to an unwanted child in hard to achieve abortion situation.
// In Germany, for example, about 1/3 of all women decide not to have children at all.
Is it because 1/3 really, truly don’t want children? Or because of job market and high costs of child care?
Do you think 1/3 of all women just don’t want children? I disagree and even read (forgot it) about some reasons for the situation.
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“//people who choose not to have children are happy and fulfilled
+ the quote in your post
I would guess that for many women, including quite many feminists, it isn’t painfully obvious. At least, not on an emotional level.”
– Badinter demonstrates (using her research) that people who condemn the childless women most vocally are precisely those who perceive their own parenthood as a disappointment. It’s more of a “how dare you escape the suffering I’m experiencing” kind of thing.
“Also, if plenty of women want to have children, but are forced not to because of the job market (professional fulfillment = no children), as I am sure happens in quite a lot of cases, it’s a tragedy.”
– This is a bit more complicated. Women with high-powered careers can afford to have a nanny (it isn’t that expensive at all) and don’t have to miss more than a week or so of work if that’s what they want. And women with minimal salary jobs don’t tend to opt out of motherhood.
“Do you think 1/3 of all women just don’t want children? ”
– No, of course not. And neither does Badinter. That’s the entire point of the book. Wait for the next 2 parts of the review, they explain this. 🙂
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//Women with high-powered careers can afford to have a nanny (it isn’t that expensive at all) and don’t have to miss more than a week or so of work if that’s what they want. And women with minimal salary jobs don’t tend to opt out of motherhood.
I was thinking about middle class women (more numerous than high-powered careers women) and middle class Catch-22 OR children OR middle class life with professional fulfillment. Imo a country should help with child care to make it easier. Has Germany done anything about accessible child care and parental leave?
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“Imo a country should help with child care to make it easier.”
– Badinter agrees with you completely.
” Has Germany done anything about accessible child care and parental leave?”
– Badinter demonstrates that the situation in Germany is particularly bad in this area. However, it is also true that the most progressive governmental policies of daycare access and parental leaves (including near mandatory paternity leave) do not have a huge effect on the women’s decision to have children. As Badinter demonstrates very convincingly, the general attitude within a society and the image of motherhood that we collectively accept is really central to this decision. She show that in France where the governmental daycare and parental leave policies are much worse than in Sweden, motherhood is MORE, not less, popular. And she explains how that happened historically and ideologically.
Conclusion: the government will not solve this for us. We, the women, will. And we’ll do that by defending our right to our own lives and screaming down the miserable failures that constitute the naturalist movement. They have been guilt-tripping us, let’s guilt-trip them, for a change.
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//She show that in France where the governmental daycare and parental leave policies are much worse than in Sweden, motherhood is MORE, not less, popular.
Does she take into account the difference between born in France women and immigrants from completely different cultures?
//And she explains how that happened historically and ideologically.
I hope you’ll talk about it in the following posts. This book sounds fascinating.
I want good governmental daycare and parental leave policies not to make women have more children, but to ease life for parents (in RL read “for women”).
//screaming down the miserable failures that constitute the naturalist movement. They have been guilt-tripping us, let’s guilt-trip them, for a change.
Why should we waste time and powers on them? Who cares?
I don’t care about guilt-tripping, I do care about laws (like access to abortion, daycare, parental leave, etc). Do those people want to pass anti-women and/or anti-mothers laws? Wouldn’t they be interested to make being a mother easier (childcare, etc)?
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“Does she take into account the difference between born in France women and immigrants from completely different cultures”
– The daughters of immigrants procreate at the exact same levels as non-immigrants. Studies show that without any immigration, the growth of population in France would not have experienced any significant changes. It’s all in Badinter’s book.
“Why should we waste time and powers on them? Who cares?”
– The book explains that women do care and either give up on childbirth altogether or engage in huge amounts of self-sacrifice. It’s all in the book. It is a very good book. Well-written, too, although the translator often disappoints. For example, you keep reading about “sexual equality.” I wondered for as long as I kept reading what that was supposed to mean until I figured out that this was a clumsy translation of “gender equality.”
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“Do you think 1/3 of all women just don’t want children?” I actually think it’s entirely possible. As women gain control over their reproductive rights, as women continue to gain success in the work force, and as motherhood ceases to be upheld as the ultimate ideal, it strikes me as entirely reasonable that 1 out of 3 women, will embrace a childless/free lifestyle. (For that matter, it strikes me as reasonable that 1 out of 3 PEOPLE will decide that parenthood is not for them.) This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t establish affordable day care and generous parental leave policies of course. But I think that decreasing numbers of mothers are very much linked to women’s social and political advancement.
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“As women gain control over their reproductive rights, as women continue to gain success in the work force, and as motherhood ceases to be upheld as the ultimate ideal”
– This sounds like you are quoting directly from Badinter’s book. 🙂 I think she’s the kind of feminist you might like.
” But I think that decreasing numbers of mothers are very much linked to women’s social and political advancement.”
– Without a doubt. Every country where women’s rights advance, there is a sharp decline in birthrates. Which is a great thing for a planet that is suffocating because of overpopulation.
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The only trouble I have with this post, though I agree with most of it, is the need to choose between “defending” being child-free or “defending” the value of mothering. Both are under attack, depending where you look. And, both are under attack for the same reasons: distracting and dividing women so we’ll never actually achieve the kind of power we need to make the world a more woman-friendly place. (Written very quickly, but I think I’m saying what I mean…)
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Exactly! Men don’t have to defend being childfree, having children, staying single, or what have you. Women’s choices should be left up to the individual woman.
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Actually, men get the same comments as women about all of this.
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I wish I could “like” this comment. (Consider it “liked.”) 🙂
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