Mother's Day

How we Fetishize Motherhood but Devalue Mothers

In a patriarchy, women’s bodies and sexualities must be controlled. This has been true throughout history, but in the United States, it is epitomized by the 1950s into the 1960s.

Motherhood is inextricably tied to sex, and the patriarchal control rests on dichotomies such as the Madonna-Whore syndrome. All girls were conditioned to believe that their only success rested on producing babies and being a mother. Women should enjoy sex, to do otherwise rendered her a prude. But not enjoy it TOO much, and not before securing a support contract from a man. But if she did, absolutely do NOT get “knocked up”.
But, immediately after finalizing such a contract, she MUST get knocked up.

And stay that way until she aged out or her body gave out. Never mind whether she had other talents. Never mind if she was entirely temperamentally unsuited to have one child, much less six of them.

The urge to procreate runs across all species, and the urge to protect and raise the young across many complex species. But we, the humans have evolved in such a way that reproduction is not an imperative.

And it certainly is not even across the sexes. A man’s success was never judged entirely on the ability to fulfill the reproductive imperative. It is true that achieving the role of “alpha-male” included the ritualized show of virility involved in having a large brood. But basic success did not rest on that. It was just another form of the “whose dick is biggest” contest.

The actual involvement of the male was over in a few minutes, after which they were expected to provide economic support as they could, and to deal with any serious discipline issues.

But what about the MOTHER? She had the following conditions to contend with: pregnancy itself is incredibly dangerous and profoundly hard on the body. And children, even the ones that are wanted and loved, are not merely “little bundles of joy”. They start out completely helpless. They poop and pee all over everything. They are not immediately possessed of the ability to give back or to show empathy. That comes later if it comes at all. In short, they can and do suck the life out of the primary caretaker, AKA, the MOTHER.

But the patriarchy must hide all of that. This is done by sentimentalizing the “sacrifice” and “sacredness” of maternity.

Mother’s Day in its modern form was an exemplar of this. The original Mother’s Day was an anti-war movement, created by women tired of giving their sons in war. But empires are inherently war-like and our modern iterations are no different. If the fetishization requires the sacrifice of women’s bodies and lives on the alter of motherhood, the fetishization of war requires the sacrifice of boys and young men.

The protest of the pesky pacifist mothers was not to be born. So, the holiday was co-opted and transformed into the one day in which we as a society honor the mothers by being nice to them for one day out of the year.

You might think that feminism has changed this dynamic. That we have risen above the sexual politics. That women now have reproductive freedom, that slut shaming is a thing of the past, that families now co-parent, and that pregnancy is now safe. I must ask, do you believe that we have somehow “smashed the patriarchy”`? There is no evidence that this is the case.

It may have stepped to the back of the room for a time, say between 1980 and 2015. But the when Roe was overturned the truth should have become clear. The new patriarchy is exactly like the old kind. And now, the current regime, in addition to wiping out that most basic tenet of female equality, reproductive choice, they are also pushing women back into our aprons and diaper bags. They have spoken about giving women a moderate sum to bear children for this Reich. Provided they are of the correct religion and have the required lack of melanin.

That is a short history of the role of motherhood. I turn now to the devaluing of actual mothers. This devaluing is part and parcel to the general devaluing of all women in a patriarchy. But this particular aspect is grounded in economics. The act of making and birthing babies is both required and held in high esteem. But the SUPPORT for the resulting children and the women who must care for them is at best lacking, and at worst, nonexistent.

Caring for young families as a society is an investment, and one that the form of plutocratic capitalism we have today is not willing to make. The corporate class have defined that sort of support as an externality. This effects poor women the most and middle class women to a noticeable extent. The rich have other issues.

For the poor, the safety net has been worn away until it is more hole than fabric. What used to be called welfare was society’s way of leveling the playing field for the children of the poor, and allowing their mothers to be present as such. These programs had serious faults, no doubt. The rules were invasive and contemptuous. The only thing a CAPITALIST patriarchy hates more than a women is a poor person.

But the welfare and food stamps served an important purpose. Keeping children and their mothers housed and fed. One of the great examples of hypocrisy in our time is the right wing evangelist shouting against both abortion and a secure safety net for the children once born.

For the middle class women, the lack of support was different. While at one time the financial support was expected to come from the husband (and of course there WAS an assumed husband, even if this left out widows, the abandoned, and God forbid, the single mom).

In the brave new ostensibly post-feminist world it showed up as bad daycare, prohibitively expensive. It showed up as the “mommy track” and lost opportunities. No amount of legislation can fix that in the private sector in a capitalist economy. So women either failed as mothers or lagged behind.

The withdrawal of support for mother in the United States is growing with every edict issuing forth from the maw of the regime. They don’t want to merely go back to 1950 0r even 1450. They want to go back to something worse. Techno feudalism with a healthy dose of Gilead.

But what would it be like if women and women AS mothers actually were supported? Earlier I stated that children suck the life out of mothers. But it does not have to be so. If the process of motherhood was SUPPORTED rather than sentimentalized every step of the way, it would produce happier healthier kids and retain the humanity of the mothers.

Absolute reproductive choice. Pre-natal care for every pregnant woman. Universal health care, universal and equal free education, and a universal basic income. And a social structure that prioritizes involvement by the community at large in the raising of children. A village.

Because that is the only way to support and free those women who CHOOSE motherhood.

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