gender: marriage/family

Stephen W. sent in this clip of an Iowa news story about interspecies mothering. Always cute, of course. But the narration towards the end contributes to the social construction of mothers as born-to-nurture-and-nurture-only.

The narrator asks: “Why would an animal show such grace?”  And the answer is “obvious.”  He continues:

For most mothers, it’s just what they do. An instinct so deeply wired into them, that often all they know is to love and care for life.

So “most” mothers “just” mother.  They do so instinctively.  “All they know” is mothering.  In fact, hang onto your kiddies people because they might just mother your kids too!

Interesting how this narrative leaves invisible all of the female animals that kill and eat other animals, including other animals’ babies.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Christine B. sent along this Mother’s Day card:

It captures the normative idea that boys are naturally naughty (“I was just doing my job”).  It also normalizes the notion that moms will be driven crazy by their sons, but accept their misbehavior as inevitable, even lovable.

(By the way, I know I can’t see the child’s face; it could be a girl.  Reading the cues — short hair, blue and green colors — and the cultural context, I figure it’s supposed to be a boy.)

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Claude Fischer, at Made in America, argues that the biggest change of the last 50 years is the increase in the number of mothers in the workforce.  From the beginning of last century till now, that rate has accelerated precipitously:

While some women have always worked (at unpaid housework and childcare, selling goods made at home, or in paid jobs), most women now work outside of the home for pay.  So long “traditional” family.  Why the change?  Fischer explains:

First, work changed to offer more jobs to women. Farming declined sharply; industrial jobs peaked and then declined. Brawn became less important; precise skills, learning, and personal service became more important. The new economy generated millions of white-collar and “pink-collar” jobs that seemed “suited” to women. That cannot be the full story, of course; women also took over many jobs that had once been men’s, such as teaching and secretarial work.

Second, mothers responded to those job opportunities. Some took jobs because the extra income could help families buy cars, homes, furnishings, and so on. Some took jobs because the family needed their income to make up for husbands’ stagnating wages (a noteworthy trend after the 1970s). And some took jobs because they sought personal fulfillment in the world of work.

And married working mothers changed the economy as well.  Once it became commonplace for families to have two incomes, houses, cars, and other goods could be more expensive.  Things women had done for free — everything from making soap and clothes, to growing and preparing food, and cleaning one’s own home — could be commodified.  Commodification, the process of newly buying and selling something that had not previously been bought and sold, made for even more jobs, and more workers, and so the story continues…

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

I saw this commercial at least a dozen times before I noticed the erasure of any clue that the man’s wife had a career or anything at all to do with herself, other than follow her man. After all, if my partner up and moved to Istanbul, I could just up and go. Couldn’t all wives? What’s the chance that we’re doing anything important, after all?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

gabrielleabelle sent in an online ad for Minute Maid orange juice that reinforces gender stereotypes, particularly that women are desperate to get married and feel competitive with one another regarding their progress toward this all-important goal. The ad is part of Minute Maid’s “Mmojo” campaign, which consists of ads showing people drinking Minute Maid and then instantly being more successful, desirable, and generally awesome. This ad included images of two people who clearly have lots of mmojo and asks how you compare. How could we tell? Well, the guy is covered in lipstick kisses and looks a little overwhelmed by the attention:

Now, how would we know a woman was magically charmed? Oh, that’s right — she’d have managed to get herself an engagement ring:

Because there would be no better proof of a woman’s magical powers than her ability to get a man to propose to her. I can’t even imagine how much mmojo another woman would have to have to top this.

Deeb K. sent in a story from the New York Times about who does unpaid work — that is, the housework, carework, and volunteering that people do without financial compensation. Based on time-use surveys by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this chart shows how many more minutes per day women in various nations spend doing such activities compared to men:

Childcare stuck out as an area with a particularly large gap:

On child care in particular, mothers spend more than twice as much time per day as fathers do: 1 hour 40 minutes for mothers, on average, compared to 42 minutes for fathers…On average, working fathers spend only 10 minutes more per day on child care when they are not working, whereas working mothers spend nearly twice as much time (144 minutes vs. 74) when not working.

The full OECD report breaks down types of unpaid work (this is overall, including data for both men and women):

The study also found that non-working fathers spend less time on childcare than working mothers in almost every country in the study (p. 19). And mothers and fathers do different types of childcare, with dads doing more of what we might think of as the “fun stuff” (p. 20):

Source: Miranda, V. 2011. “Cooking, Caring and Volunteering: Unpaid Work around the World.” OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 116. OECD Publishing.

Clayton W. sent us a political mailer that recently went out against Rose Ferlita, a candidate for mayor of Tampa, Florida. What makes her unfit for office? Among other things, she’s single:

Text from the other side:

(Via Think Progress.)

So, awful, right? She’s single, she has a “suspect commitment to family values,” which I think it isn’t a stretch to say means “she might be a lesbian,” she’s a bitch. Given our current political alignments, we might legitimately assume this mailer was created by a very far right, possibly religious-based group, presumably on the conservative side of the spectrum.

But the story turns out to be weirder than that. Ferlita is a Republican, though Tampa’s mayoral races are non-partisan. The mailer, as you can see in the return address, is from Less Government Now, a 527 political action group (that is, one that can take unlimited donations as long as they do not directly advocate voting for a specific candidate). And it’s tied to a man named Scott Maddox, a Democrat who ran (unsuccessfully) for office last year. In that race, he had a friend enter the campaign as a fake Tea Party candidate in hopes of splitting the Republican vote.

It appears that Less Government Now is pursuing a similar strategy here, sending out materials that attack candidates from the right by coming up with the types of arguments they imagine will resonate with very conservative voters and thus split their vote. It doesn’t seem clear whether the other candidate for mayor of Tampa, Bob Buckhorn, had any knowledge of the mailer, or if Less Government Now acted on its own (Buckhorn has denounced the mailer).

I gotta say, I thought this was repugnant when I first saw it and assumed the group who put it out might actually believe this kind of crap. But to encourage people to vote based on sexist, homophobic values that you presumably don’t even agree with, simply as a political ploy? That is some nasty, nasty business.

UPDATE: Suzie emailed us about her post on March 20th at Echidne of the Snakes (there’s no way to link directly to the post, sorry) questioning the origin of the mailer. The St. Petersburg Times Tampa Bay site reports that according to the post office, the permit number listed on the mailer is fake, and there’s no evidence it was actually mailed. Less Government Now denies all knowledge of it. It’s possible that this is a fake mailer created to discredit the Democratic candidate by making it look a Democrat-affiliated group sent out something sexist. The person who first made it public, claiming to have received it anonymously, has been involved in political consulting and has a history of criminal charges. This is all making my head spin.

Dr. Bethany Pope, Pris S., and Christine each sent in the trailer for the Disney film, opening today, called Mars Needs Moms.  It is impossible not to be sarcastic about this trailer.

What can I say.  The premise of the film is that only women can parent (and by “parent,” I mean feed and vacuum).  I’m sure all of the human women out there with children really appreciate this sentiment.  Dads, HUH!  …what are they good for!  Absolutely nothing! Or, at least, that is what nearly every corner of Western society is trying to tell us.  How convenient, given that raising kids is rewarded with, basically, absolutely nothing concrete. Thanks, thanks for nothing Disney.

Also, as far as the trailer goes, it appears that this movie focuses almost entirely on boys and men. I wonder if it even passes the Bechdel test.  Twist the knife, why don’t you.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.