Gude Cause Maks A Strong Arm

Today, I marched with my children in the Gude Cause suffrage commemoration procession. Pretty much everything about the event made me want to cry. It was a gathering together of so many women (and some men), old, young and everything in between, to mark how far we’ve come and how far we have to go. About 3,000 people, from a baby in a “my great-grandmother marched in 1909″ tshirt to women old enough to remember the later bits of the suffrage movement, marched.

I tried to explain to Firstborn, who is four, what this was all about. A hundred years ago, I said, before your Great-Gramma was born, people didn’t let women vote. And so some people got together and worked to make sure that women got the vote, and in the end we did.

She wanted to know who said women couldn’t vote. Other women, or men? Men, mostly, because they were in charge and voted for each other. Why didn’t they just vote anyway? Because people would stop them, and not count their votes. Firstborn noted that she has already voted, for house captain at school, and that “Mummy tried to be a councillor, but the voters chose someone else.”

Then we got into a discussion about whether this was before or after the time of the dinosaurs.

Is that child crazy?

So, in one of my other roles, I’m training to be a trainer on recovery from mental health problems. On Tuesday, I co-facilitated an intro session for the first time, and it gave me-the-parent a lot to think about.

One of the exercises we do in that session is to ask participants what helped them to recover – from anything: a broken leg, a bereavement, whatever – and write up the answers on a flipchart. Usually, we have everything from long walks to chocolate and brushing the dog. Then, we ask people how they’d act if they didn’t have access to any of those things. The point of the exercise is to show that anyone might react in a way that, for someone with a mental health diagnosis, would be seen as “a symptom”, if they felt out of control and unable to look after themselves, which is a situation often imposed on people in, for example, hospital.

But that second list – the “how might you behave” one – always looks a lot like how a small child behaves a lot of the time. People call out things like: angry, shouting, crying, withdrawing, panicking, being un-cooperative. And if you argue that parallel: how much of the time are children behaving in the way an adult would if their life were like a child’s life?

If you lived in a world where you were constantly confronted by new things, which you were expected to assimilate and understand quickly and without showing concern? If you pretty much never got to choose your own activities? If you were regularly touched, lifted and restrained without your permission? If you lived at the mercy of, however loving, people who were in total charge of your comings and goings, your access to food and drink, your access to activities you enjoy?

I’m not trying to say that we all traumatise our children horribly for no reason. This is not mother-blaming central. But too often we don’t see children as people; we don’t think, hey, if I were taken from something I was absorbed in, strapped into a pushchair and hurried down the road without anyone checking I understood what was going on, would I scream and struggle? Probably.

Parents need to protect their children from harm. We also need to get things done. Children don’t have the rich, hard-won, slowly acquired knowledge we have that sets everyday things in context. And so, sometimes (often) we can’t let our kids have the sort of freedom they want. I’m just saying, when I remember they’re humans in a difficult situation, I find it easier not to see my kids as demons; I’m not their torturer (or their psych nurse), but I am someone with immense power who must seem to them to be capricious and not always kind. Sometimes, being myself a human in a sometimes difficult situation, I am capricious and not always kind. But me and my kids, we three humans, we’re in this together.

A job? Well done.

One of the ways that mothers seek to talk about the value of their mothering is to say: this is my job. This is hard, skilled work that takes up much of my time and brainspace; this is something that matters and produces an end result: this is a job with the value of other people’s jobs, it’s just not (mostly, directly) paid.

But when we say it’s a job, we do two things: firstly, we accept that value to the economy is “real” value, and only by being “just like” that can mothering (and other parenting) have real value. Secondly, when we take on that metaphor, we take on a whole load of others, and lose the power to talk about our lives in our terms.

First things first: parenting contributes to the economy, sure. It doesn’t directly promote ecomonic growth, as working out of the home and paying someone else to mind your child during the day does, though, so you may find that your hard graft doesn’t wind up on the right balance sheet (thanks to Ruth for that link). But, for example, breastfeeding saves the NHS money; I think we (defining “we” as “people who don’t have a vested interest in selling formula milk”) agree that’s a good thing.

However, I just don’t think that arguing parenting as an economically vital activity is helpful. Because some of the things I value doing as a parent are not helping any economy. Collecting shells on the beach? Making up silly words to the Postman Pat theme song? Deciding that, for my own sanity, saying “bloody” doesn’t count as swearing in front of the kids? Whatever. Value is in fun and joy and the search for myself within my parenting. Let’s say that clearly. Let’s question any society that doesn’t hear us say it.

And as for money? We shouldn’t be paid for parenting. All human beings deserve the dignity of a basic income, parents and children as much as any other. Humanity is the test, not sweated labour. Even if you’re just having fun, you shouldn’t starve.

And the other reason? The metaphorical one? That’s a slippery eel to wrestle (see? See what I did there?). It starts with pregnancy – Carol Tavris, in The Mismeasure of Woman, discusses the ways in which pregnant women are conceptualised when their rights are debated. Just the same as a temporary disability? And then, Tavris uses a suggestion by Zillah Eisenstein: what if, instead of conceptualising the “normal” body as that of a man, and legislating exceptions from that, we said that the “normal” body was that of a pregnant woman? All of a sudden, the world changes:

The law, she shows, would immediately have to become more complex and sensitive to human diversity than it is, because pregnancies range from being uncomplicated and uneventful to being seriously disabling to the mother-to-be, and because some women, like all men, will not become pregnant.

And I experience it, too, in discussions about childbirth. Is it painful? Well, we take painkillers for a broken leg, don’t we? Why wouldn’t you want to be in hospital when there’s pain and blood and risk? Well, because it’s not like having a broken leg, it’s not a dysfunction, it doesn’t need correction: it’s childbirth. It is as it is. And why must we always talk about it in terms accessible to those who haven’t experienced it? Let them come to us. Let them use our words for a change.

And then it goes on. Are you as tired after a week of broken sleep with a teething baby as I am after my nightshift? Am I as stressed about potty training as you are about your appraisal? Is my acheivement in negotiating the kids’ bedtime as important as the training I delivered at my paid employment? For the second time this post: whatever. I’m not going to speak that language. I’m not going to talk myself into knots to justify myself.

My parenting is not a job (though sometimes it’s hard work). My kids’ play is not their job either (though it’s essential for their development). We work, we play, we parent, we watch TV, we fart, we stare into the middle distance and think about sex. We are human, and we have value. That may be a hippie thing to say; it may be a socialist thing to say (I plead guilty to both). Whatever.

Lifestyle choices

Just to add to Ruth’s post at Mothers for Women’s Lib, in which she nicely deconstructs the “but it’s a choice” excuse for denying mothers a decent quality of life:

We don’t say that every other choice means you have to forego any right to complain, or to ask for or receive help. Exhausted after a night saving lives as a paramedic? Dude, it’s a choice, you could do data entry. Upset because a shift volunteering for the Samaritans has left you drained? Could have gone clubbing.

Both of those sound faintly stupid responses, don’t they? Because being a paramedic or a Samaritans volunteer are worthwhile things to do, and we’re grateful to the people who do them. But yet, when I said to my boss that I’m exhausted because I was up three times in the night with my teething toddler, she snapped “It’s a lifestyle choice, Kate.” Yes, parenting is a lifestyle choice; so is a choice of job or volunteering (all of which are constrained choices, not free ones). But good parenting saves lives, keeps people out of prison, makes a lasting contribution to society. And doing it at all, let alone trying to do it well, is mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting.

Is it because it’s unpaid? Is it because you choose it yourself, rather than being chosen by “someone objective”? Is it because it’s mostly just aimed at one, or two, or three (or however many) particular individuals, rather than indiscriminately to “those in need”? All children are in need, and one of their needs is for an adult to attach to: usually, a parent. All kids need parenting, and parenting (in the sense of being the attachment object) is not transferrable. And you do not want to see what would happen if all parents decided they’d rather just do data entry and go clubbing because this is too hard. Unless you think there should be no next generation, you need to support us; we need to support each other.

Queerspawn, Inc

My Firstborn is a revelation on how to read queerness into popular culture, you know. Slowly, the heteropatriarchal culture machine is getting its claws into her, but meantimes, as she was watching her dearly beloved Monsters, Inc., she asked me:

“Does Sully have a picture of Mike in his locker? Because they’re partners, aren’t they?”

It depends where you stand

I’m a lesbian mother (no, really, stop me if you’ve heard this one before), but most of the time, I have more in common with other feminist mothers – trying to raise a boy and a girl in a world that thinks those two tiny facts are all they need to know about them, and hating that. Not all lesbian mothers are at all radical (why should we have to be?) and lots want to be just like the next two-parent two-vehicle two-gender-system-buying family.

So, yeah, radical mamas are my people, really. And most radical mamas, like most mamas, are in relationships with men, whether or not they identify as queer. And in most cases, our challenges are the same because we live in the same patriarchal shitheap of a world.

But sometimes, it’s not the same  world. And I catch that when we’re talking about being a “good feminist”. Because apparently I’m a “good feminist” because I don’t live with a man, shag a man, wash up after a man. Or at least, that’s what I hear when they joke about the “bad feminist” status of being in a relationship with a man. “Ooh, the feminist orthodoxy will get me!”

Because you know who’ll get me? You know who the fear is of? You know why I don’t feel confident dressing my boy in “girl colours” like you do? Because I might look good to some imaginary feminist orthodoxy, but I sure as hell look bad to the people who actually have power. And they use it against people like me.

That’s my world. And, however feminist a space might be, it’s sometimes a world that shows up more in the myth than the practical acknowledgement. Other mothers make hard judgement calls, too. This isn’t the Oppression Olympics. But like everyone else, I have moments of realising that “my people” are not my people. They are the sons and daughters of life’s total denial of those who are slightly more different.

Uniform thinking

My Firstborn is starting school in, as she advises strangers in bus queues, “only four weeks“. She’s been to “induction day”, she’s already got a new best friend, and she refers to “when I was at nursery” with an admirably well-developed nostalgia. I am suffering from emotional vertigo, and more aware that I have been for a couple of years of the memory of the day she was born.

Partly, I just resent the idea that I will cease to be Reference Point Number One. It’s already clear that her new class teacher will have that role. She seems like a nice woman, but I made that child from a bundle of cells and fed her with my own body, and, as is supposed to happen, she’s going to stop caring about that nearly so much in a while.

One thing I fiercely regret is that she’s looking forward so much to her school uniform. She’s looking forward so much to the erasure of her identity, to the end of choice five days a week. She’s craving the chance to disappear. Children like that, I’m told. Uniform makes them all equal. So much easier not to have to choose in the morning. Is it worth the tradeoff? Clearly it’s not for most of us – who, after all, wears a uniform on their days off? And as for “equality”, in my experience the sameness of the uniform just invests the little details with the same level of importance that a whole outfit usually holds – shoes, bag, hairslides, length of skirt, precise slump of socks. If children want to be the same, do we encourage that?

Firstborn wants to wear a skirt as part of her uniform (ostensibly they have the choice between skirt and trousers; I’m unsure how free that choice is for boys in particular). The school uniform skirt is a powerful indoctrination tool, I think. Who talks about the colour of boys’ underpants? Who tries to pull their trousers down in the playground to look? Who laughs at them when they swing upside-down from the climbing frame because “I can see your kni-ckers!”?

(Some of the answers to those questions, I’m sure, are not as rhetorical as I think, and may be something I find out as Secondborn reaches school age. I am ignorant about how boys are indoctrinated into boyhood, really.)

And so it starts. Or, so a new phase starts. For Firstborn, of course, it will be also wonderful. Also full of new people and experiences and ideas and, vertiginously, learning to read, which for my word-oriented girl can only be a great thing. Also a chance to live in worlds other than ours and her dads’, damnit.

We stand poised on the brink of a new era. I hope it’s not a terrifying future; however, uniform-wearing is a feature of futuristic dystopias in all media. Maybe, with really colourful knickers, she can hold onto her identity. Maybe I should worry about my own knickers and let Firstborn worry about hers.

The unthinkable

In May, someone I’ve known for more than a decade was convicted of child abuse and related child pornography charges. I think for anyone who knows anything about where I live and what I do, you can put a name to this guy in a second. I won’t, though.

He wasn’t a friend, but a long term acquaintance and colleague, someone I respected and admired. I never had one moment’s suspicion about this man. I would have left my kids with him in a heartbeat. A while ago, clearing out my email inbox, I found an email from him congratulating me on my first baby’s birth.

I am shaken to my core. Not just because of what this says about the world, but because of what it says about me. Some while ago, I decided to respect my “he’s a creep” instincts, and move swiftly and impolitely, if necessary, away from men who gave me the heebies. I was brought up to be polite, to assume the best of people, to presume that my instincts were not terribly important. I suffered for that. Honestly, I have tended to know, at least in the moment, who endangered me (keep in mind that I don’t date/ have sex with men), and it’s been my gendered conditioning that’s made me unable to protect myself.

So I think I’d assumed that, while my children were small enough to keep with me, I could protect them too. And now I know, in the most direct and visceral way possible, that I cannot. My instincts don’t work. I’d have put them in harm’s way and had no idea.

So what can I do for them? Aside from never, ever letting them out of my sight? (Which, believe me, is an option.)

I suppose, I can teach them not to be like me. Teach them to trust themselves, to scream loud, and to tell, tell, tell. To expect respect for their bodies and selves. Not to let that first breach of their boundaries slip past in case they were mistaken, in case he meant it nicely, in case they’ll be thought uptight or rude.

And odds are, sometimes, it won’t be enough. Odds are, someone will hurt my babies. Someone won’t care. So perhaps I can teach them that it’ll never be their fault, that they can always tell, and always be listened to.

And odds are, still they’ll be hurt. Somebody’s babies were hurt by that man I trusted. I have to trust the world with them; I am part of the world that every other parent trusts with their children. So, while it’s a dead weight of fear that tempts me never to let them interact with anyone, I know that’s not the task. The task is to make them strong, and to make the world a modicum safer.

How not to flaunt your childfree cluelessness

So, a friend linked to this Straight Person’s Guide to Gay Ettiquette, and to be honest, it pissed me off a lot.

A lot of it doesn’t apply in the same format to British queers, anyway – we can, for example, have our same-sex relationships legally recognised, though the author is right about how insulting it is when well-meaning people call it “marriage” when that is very specifically not what we were given.

But then it comes on to the question of children.

Another bone of contention will most likely be procreation. You have probably already noticed, if you have small children, that with most people who do not have them, a certain glazedness will begin to cloud their previously limpid eyes after about 5 minutes of looking at your baby pictures. This is because nobody but you is as excited as you are about your baby, and single persons who have yet to taste the joys of diaper changing are remarkably uninterested in the play-by-play daily drool and burp report. You have learned to adjust, if you still have friends. If you have noticed a marked dropoff in your extrafamilial social life, you may just have found the source of this problem.

Ah, here we go: a standard child/parent hater statement. Talking about children is dull; parents only ever talk about their children; if you want to retain non-parent friends you must never talk about your children; your non-parent friends are quite right to drop you if you don’t comply. Hey, I got a line on my bingo card!

A related, but different process of adjustment awaits with your gay  friends. Sure, they will happily dandle your little one and play airplane with him when they visit, but they will not take it well if they find your conversation revolves around the little tyke 24/7. This is because many gay couples would like to have children, but can’t, because we live in a country where judges think it’s more important that a child’s sexually abusive stepfather have visiting rights because the kid “needs a male role model” (actual words from an actual judge, no lie) than that s/he be raised in a loving home by two parents of the same gender. By prattling on obliviously about Janey’s first succesful trip to the potty, you are reminding them that if they ever do have the chance to toilet train a spawnling of their own, it will only be after some serious medical intervention and perhaps one or two long-drawn and vicious court battles.

See what they did there? Yes, that’s right. Us gays who actually already do have children either don’t exist, or can no longer be spoken about with the generic word “gay”.

Leaving aside “we live in a country” which, in fact, we don’t all live in, there’s then the assumption that getting kids as a queer necessarily involves medical intervention. News: turkey basters are in the cookery section, not in medical supplies!

And then there’s a bit that makes me want to cry:

“So do you and Rebecca plan to have children?” There are several possible honest responses to this question:

…

• No, because I’d rather not inflict a life of shame and ostracism on some poor little entity that never did me any harm.

Oh, that would be an honest response, would it? Those of us who’ve chosen to inflict a life of shame and ostracism on our children thank you for that little spurtle of self-hatred.

Basically, all you need to remember is that if you pretend that your friends can lead exactly the same kind of life you lead as a heterosexual, you are not making them feel more accepted and at home.

Well, quite. Quite. That’s quite the take-home, transferrable lesson, isn’t it? This piece is meant to have queers reading it with a wry self-identification, I think, the sort of thing that makes us feel at home and supported among other queers, so we can face the world with renewed strength. Well, I guess that’s something we breeders can’t hope for.

Never mind, though, because I need to tell you that Secondborn used the potty this morning!

Big Daddy is watching you…

Reading Anji over at Mothers for Women’s Lib writing about her regrets that her son doesn’t share her last name reminids me of a story…

See, my kids do share my last name. It was a no-brainer for me: before my daughter was born, not a single person with my last name had ever appeared in the records of Scotland, since 1580. Who wouldn’t want to be the first? And being someone with a slightly odd and very unusual last name has been a fairly big part of my identity all my life. I couldn’t imagine bringing up children with one of the frankly pedestrian options on offer from the other three parents. (I did offer to hyphenate with one of them, but everyone pointed out that that would sound stupid.)

This episode happened when we went to register Secondborn. (I don’t recall it happening with Firstborn, which is odd.)

The registrar had filled in all the details of Secondborn’s names and biological parentage on the computer. She turned the screen towards me and his bio-dad and asked if we were absolutely sure that these were the details we wanted, as after she clicked the button, there was no going back. Yes, we agreed. She clicked. And a pop-up window appeared:

Child’s surname is not the same as father’s. Continue? Yes/ No

Yes, that’s right. The patriarchy is actually programmed in to the registration system. Wow.