Feminist Parenting: Understanding anti-mother misogyny and how it affects parenting
Anti-mother misogyny is affecting your parenting, your community, and your existence. The less you realize this, the more intense the effect is likely to be.
This is an installment of my Feminist Parenting series, which offers insights into feminist parenting and exercises to help you become a more feminist parent. It’s not just for parents. Non-parents can learn a lot about supremacy culture, and better learn how to support the parents in their lives—a task that is vital for the survival of our species. This is a daily, limited-run series for paid subscribers only. You can find all previous installments of the series here.
For many women, motherhood was a radicalizing experience, and perhaps even the first time they began identifying as feminists. This runs counter to the trope of the provincial, boring, uncool mother—but that’s because that trope is rooted in misogyny and a desire to ignore and stigmatize mothers.
Anti-mother misogyny is widespread. It plays a major role in the replication of women’s oppression, and in the suffering of children. Understanding how it functions in your life, your relationships, and your parenting is crucial to becoming a better parent, a better feminist, and a better community ally. Everyone should care about anti-mother misogyny because everyone should care about all forms of oppression.
Like all forms of bigotry, anti-mother misogyny is not internally consistent. For example, just as men can simultaneously believe that women are naturally more moral than men and that they need a man to keep them in line, a person can simultaneously believe that mothers are both too obsessed with their children and insufficiently invested.
These internally contradictory believes are actually central to the project of constructing any hierarchy. These contradictions form a tightening net of oppression that is impossible to escape. You’re either too invested in your children or not invested enough. You’re too nice or too mean, too smart or too dumb, too pretty or too ugly.