{"id":3298,"date":"2012-02-22T15:33:03","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T20:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=3298"},"modified":"2012-02-22T15:33:03","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T20:33:03","slug":"girl-talk-quick-hits-on-motherhood-and-feminism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2012\/02\/22\/girl-talk-quick-hits-on-motherhood-and-feminism\/","title":{"rendered":"GIRL TALK: Quick Hits on Motherhood and Feminism"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Would Simone de Beauvoir Say?<\/strong> Bringing Up B<\/a><\/em>\u00e9b<\/em>\u00e9<\/a> by former Wall Street Journal reporter Pamela Druckerman is the latest addition to books that highlight our cultural obsession with motherhood, or the failings of American mothers.\u00a0 Even if you haven\u2019t read the memoir you probably know the gist of the story given the raft of media coverage<\/a>: after some time spent living in France where she gave birth to two children, Druckerman concludes that French women are superior mothers because they have time for themselves and their children are better behaved compared with her American counterparts.<\/p>\n

Plenty of critics have taken aim at Druckerman\u2019s argument but few have spent much time discussing the differences between French (read \u201cextensive and nationalized\u201d) and and American (read \u201cfew and individualized\u201d) social supports for mothers and families aside from a quick mention before they move on to tackle other aspects of her narrative.<\/p>\n

Surely it\u2019s not so easy to dismiss these massive differences and the social conditions they create for mothers in their respective countries.\u00a0 As a feminist, I want to focus on these structural problems and solutions, not toss them into a \u201cby the way\u201d paragraph.\u00a0 I agree with my fellow GWPenner, Deborah Siegel, who argues here<\/a><\/a> that we still need to demand some form of national childcare and better work-life options.<\/p>\n

Work v. Motherhood Again<\/em><\/strong> New research in Gender and Society<\/em><\/a> finds that most moms would work even if they didn\u2019t have to.\u00a0 According to Karen Christopher\u2019s findings, mothers said they found more fulfillment in paid work than in parenting, and most women (regardless of class, race\/ethnicity, or marital status), said they would work even if they didn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

Mother-readers, does this ring true to you?\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong: I love my work at the National Women’s Studies Association<\/a>. \u00a0At the same time, I don\u2019t want to have to rank-order work over my role as a mother.\u00a0 To me this sounds like an either\/or choice that we should refuse.<\/p>\n

Feminist Ryan Gosling<\/em><\/strong> Okay, this isn\u2019t about motherhood, but Feminist Ryan Gosling<\/a> falls squarely into the \u201cand Feminism\u201d portion of my roundup.\u00a0 I love Danielle Henderson<\/a>\u2019s take on \u201cfeminist flash cards.\u201d\u00a0 I also love that Danielle is a graduate student in Gender and Women\u2019s Studies.\u00a0 I think you\u2019ll love her work and her sense of humor, too!\u00a0 Check it out and then post a comment here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Would Simone de Beauvoir Say? Bringing Up B\u00e9b\u00e9 by former Wall Street Journal reporter Pamela Druckerman is the latest addition to books that highlight our cultural obsession with motherhood, or the failings of American mothers.\u00a0 Even if you haven\u2019t read the memoir you probably know the gist of the story given the raft of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1905,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21103],"tags":[4124,13676,21575,3109,431],"class_list":["post-3298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-girl-talk","tag-academe","tag-childcare","tag-memoir","tag-motherhood","tag-research"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1905"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}