'you're going to breastfeed, aren't you?'

Lest anyone think I am solely obsessed with pink and blue, and the gendered nature of a baby’s environment, I thought I’d take a swerve back to some of the fun pregnancy and newborn baby moments that I’ve experienced. And when I say ‘fun’, I mean, of course, ‘hugely invasive’, ‘stupid’ and ‘downright offensive’. I’ll leave to one side the apparently common pregnancy experiences, such as random people touching your tummy without your permission, for the one incident that really sticks in my mind.

I was about seven or eight months pregnant, and still at work, when a kind of colleague (i.e. one I don’t know very well) plopped herself down on the couch next to me during a break, laughing to colleagues that she’d sit next to me because it made her feel slim. No, that wasn’t the offensive part, that was just the latest example of mildly amusing (read: not at all amusing) pregnancy humour directed at me.

Once the room had emptied out somewhat, she then bailed me up about whether or not I was planning to breastfeed. I should explain that that this was a tricky subject for me: I wanted to try breastfeeding, but I knew that my mother had not been able to do it. Feeling that snapping back ‘mind your own business’ was not really appropriate workplace banter, I decided to hedge and hope that my off-hand ‘well, if I can’ would be rightly interpreted as a polite version of ‘mind your own business’. Given that she felt that it was perfectly all right to ask me about this in the first place, I should’ve known that my diffidence would actually be interpreted as invitation to keep going on about it. And on and on.

‘Oh no you must!’ she cried, as if I’d actually said, ‘I’d rather crawl naked over broken glass, rather than breastfeed.’

‘You must,’ she insisted. ‘It’s so important for bonding with your child. You don’t get the same bond from bottle-feeding.’

Feeling more and more uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going, namely, the increasingly missionary zeal with which I was being buttonholed about breastfeeding, I tried to close it down. Unfortunately, I had learned nothing from my opening gambit. My feeble ‘well, I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself’ and ‘it doesn’t work for some women’ had the opposite effect to the one I’d intended. Instead of shutting her up, she instead took this as a challenge, hectoring me about how I’d be short-changing the baby if I didn’t, and how the cracked nipples and mastitis were all worth it in the end (side-note: really?).

At the point someone else decided to join in, so they could double-team me, I felt suffocated enough to do what I should have done in the first place. I stood up, said I wasn’t comfortable with the conversation and left the room. For good measure - perhaps to create a teachable moment, perhaps out of spite - I added that ‘some women, including my own mother, weren’t able to breastfeed, so I didn’t take it as a given.’ Needless to say, next time I saw them they were quite apologetic.

And so they should have been. The issue here is not whether or not I was going to breastfeed - I was able to, as it turns out - but the fact that this woman felt entitled to tell me what I should and shouldn’t be doing, when her opinion was neither desired nor required.

I am not the only expectant mother who has felt under pressure about breastfeeding. It’s a tricky one, because New Zealand has low breastfeeding rates, and the Ministry of Health has been running a campaign for the last few years to turn that around. I’m well aware of the benefits of breastfeeding but I’m also well aware that I turned out OK as a formula-fed baby. So my diffident answer turned out to be how I really felt: I would try to breastfeed if I could, and, if I couldn’t, I didn’t want to beat myself up about using formula. Surely, it’s more important that the baby is not left to starve, right?

But this little incident got me thinking about more than just the personal pros and cons of breastfeeding. It happened to coincide with my reading an article about French feminist Elizabeth Badinter, who had come out swinging against the "holy alliance of reactionaries". According to the article in the The Australian (committing a cardinal sin here by not reading the book myself - I aim to rectify this in the near future), this alliance is:

pressuring women to be "perfect mothers" who stay at home to wash cloth nappies, prepare organic purees for "tyrant" children and suckle them to exhaustion ....In her explosive bestselling book Conflict: The Woman and the Mother, Badinter targets ecologists, pediatricians, breastfeeding zealots and the media for peddling a return to "naturalism" and an idealised concept of motherhood that elevates concepts of masochism and female sacrifice to unforeseen levels. The new "subterranean ideological war" is making women across the world feel horribly guilty, she says. Most dangerous, it is threatening the gains of decades of feminist struggle for sexual equality and is even slashing birthrates.

I didn’t agree with all that she was reported as saying, but this passage had a lot of resonance for me. While I felt that I wanted to do the best I could for my child, I was a little suspicious about the reification of the natural in child-birth and child-rearing. Isn’t this another way of assigning women to their ‘natural’ roles as mothers and keeping them there?

But head and heart are often at odds. I’m still figuring out how to navigate what I intellectually and politically agree with, and what I feel is the right thing to do. I also feel like I want to maintain an identity independent of being someone’s mother and I don’t want to be a drudge. So, how do I do it?! Well, I’ll get back to you when I’ve figured out how it’s possible to have your cake and eat it and throw it round the room. Maybe it’s time to dust off that Muddling Through(c) technique again ...

review: Delusions of Gender

I had read about psychologist Cordelia Fine’s book Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences when it came out in 2010. Newspapers were falling over themselves to say that she had proved that women weren’t biologically predisposed to be caregivers or pole-dancers, and that gendered behaviour was, in fact, culturally determined. ‘You don’t say,’ I thought to myself, as I read these reviews. ‘Another scientist proves the bleeding obvious. Haven’t feminists been saying this for decades?’ I did give a small cheer that someone was keeping this argument in the public domain, given that we moderns seem to have the attention spans of fruit flies, but didn’t think it would tell me something I didn’t already know.

How wrong I was. Not in the sense that the argument is novel to me: it is broadly, as I outlined above, what feminists have been saying politically one way or another for decades. What is different is that it is rebutting the contemporary - not, I was horrified to discover, nineteenth-century - scientific research that had allegedly proved that gender - not sex - was given in nature (specifically, brains), and was biologically determined. This includes, for example, research that allegedly proves that little girls are biologically more empathetic than little boys by seeing how well babies respond to a smiley-face card held up by a researcher (yes, I’m serious!). Fine meticulously surveys numerous psychological and neurological studies that have claimed essentialist differences between the sexes, and unpacks their biases, assumptions, and mistakes. Her witty exasperation makes what could be dry or strident material a pleasure to read.

So what prompted me to pick up this book now? Well, having been on the receiving end of a lot of well-meaning but reactionary gendered claptrap after our daughter was born, my husband and I both felt the need to re-arm ourselves with the latest literature on gender difference. Because a lot of these pronouncements seemed so old-fashioned, it seemed to us that people were reverting back to the idea that ‘woman is to nature, as man is to culture’ that anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner, for one, interrogated way back in 1972). We were particularly struck by 1) how much of the recent literature deals with gender as biological (or, more insidiously, neurological) and 2) how women and girls are increasingly being defined - and objectified - by their biology. It’s a depressing thought for new parents of a daughter.

But Fine has made me, at least, take heart. She fulsomely and humorously rebuts the research that has received widespread attention and helped encourage this trend. So, for example, in a section on neurosexism, she unravels the supposed sex differences in the brain, from popular self-help books, to the research that it is based on, to the school policy that is being informed by it. It was neurosexism that propelled Fine to her writing desk: ‘three years ago, I discovered my son’s kindergarten teacher reading a book that claimed that his brain was incapable of forging the connection between emotion and language. And so I decided to write this book (174)’. It’s alarming to think that educational policy is being built around conservative values, and a warning that we should be on the look-out for it.

I was particularly interested in her comments on supposedly gender-neutral parenting. In contrast to those parents who half-heartedly give their boys dolls and girls firetrucks and, when the children show little interest, conclude that little girls naturally like dolls and boys trucks, she cites the example of psychologists Sandra and Daryl Bem who really put in the hard yards to raise their children in a gender-neutral way. The Bems didn’t just opt for white baby clothes, they had to substantially alter their children’s environment:

This entailed, at its foundation, a meticulously managed commitment to equally shared parenting and household responsibilities. Trucks and dolls, needless to say, were offered with equal enthusiasm to both children; but also pink and blue clothing and male and female playmates. Care was taken to make sure that the children saw men and women doing cross-gender jobs. By way of censorship, and the judicious use of editing, WhiteOut and marker pens,the Bems also ensured that the children’s bookshelves offered an egalitarian picture-book world. (214)

The amount of effort that this couple had to make to counteract the gendered messages and associations that circulate in culture were astounding. And Fine then draws out studies that have analysed the gendered play preferences of boys and girls to show just how gendered a child’s cultural environment is. It certainly made me think twice about things that I had done without even thinking about it, such as giving default male names to new toys (Boris the Bear), unless they looked feminine (Drusilla the pink striped dragon). Although I had put my foot down about pink clothes, I had given no such scrutiny to the all-important task of toy-naming. Since reading this book, I have named a soft toy puppy with a pink blanket Douglas and I can tell you that it initially seemed very counter-intuitive indeed.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book: it gave me hope that there are women out there in these disciplines monitoring the sexist nonsense that passes for objective research, and a little more awareness about how to navigate the gendered world on behalf of my daughter.

'so how old is your little boy?'

If I had a dollar for everytime I’ve heard ‘so how old is your little boy?’ or something similar, then I’m pretty sure I would no longer have a dilemma about whether or not to return to work. My baby is a little girl, but, for some reason, the fact that she is not dressed up as a pink doily seems to lead apparently rational human beings to think she is a boy. We are currently mostly dressing her in stripes, red, blue or multicoloured, denim, and white. There are no trucks or helicopters to be seen. There’s even the occasional semi-puffed sleeve, handknitted cardigan or denim dress. But apparently this is just not feminine enough for a ten-month old. People appraise my daughter and give a hearty ‘hey mate’ obviously meant for a little boy. When I gently correct their mistaken assumption, I can tell that I’m being judged for not following convention and causing someone else to make a faux pas regarding her gender.

As a child of the 1970s, I find the current fashion for the rigidly gendered clothing of pink for girls and blue for boys both mystifying and old-fashioned. What ever happened to brown and orange? Yet it seems that I am the one who is old-fashioned, as things that were old are once again new. I have attended various groups and classes with my daughter and often felt like we were the odd ones out: most of the other girls had at least one item of pink on, some were festooned in head-to-toe pink like giant uncooked sausages with eyes.

I can rehearse the cultural meanings attached to pink and blue baby clothes with which I’m sure we’re all familiar: the former are dainty and pretty, the latter are practical and sturdy. It doesn’t take a PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory to work out that these are values that conventionally accrue to femininity and masculinity: they lay the foundation for the ‘natural’ roles of women as carers and men as breadwinners. These are values that second-wave feminism interrogated - hence the fashion for brown and orange back in the day - as conservative and stifling to both girls and boys, women and men. Yet they are still being uncritically reproduced in infant fashions throughout the land.

Cultural critic Marjorie Garber points out how comparatively recent the fashion of pink for girls and blue for boys is. Before the first world war, boys wore pink and girls wore blue. Pink was considered to be a ‘stronger, more decided colour’ while blue was thought to be ‘delicate’ and ‘dainty‘ (cited in Vested Interests: cross-dressing and cultural anxiety, p 1). Of course, the same perceptions about masculinity and femininity are displayed, but the fact that they are attached to the opposite colour shows that there is nothing natural about the associations being made.

So why does it matter if little girls are dressed in pink and little boys in blue? On an everyday level, I guess it seems like I’m obsessing. No-one is forcing me to dress my daughter in pink - although given the number of gifts we received that were pink, I’m not 100% sure about that. But I’m becoming increasingly offended when people assume that she’s a boy because she’s not wearing pink. Are our notions of femininity, particularly for little girls, so narrow? Can they only aspire to be ‘delicate’ and ‘dainty’ - or,worse, Barbie - if they want to win conventional approval? Does the lack of pink signify that she is somehow ‘un-feminine’ or - gasp! - proto-lesbian?! These questions seem ridiculous when applied to a baby, but as she grows up, becomes a girl and then a woman, what gender theorist Judith Butler calls ‘the policing and shaming of gender’ (Critically Queer, p 582) will begin to kick in even more.

And the policing of gender also has economic implications. If women can be confined to realising their ‘innate’ feminine abilities as carers and nurturers, they can be channelled into low or unpaid work, or work that is perceived as lower in value. From there it’s but a short hop, skip and a jump to the maintenance of unequal pay and lesser economic power.

The cultural meaning of clothes is, of course, even more circumscribed for little boys. But that’s a whole other post. It seems like these days the policing of gender begins in the crib.

the personal is political

I’ve got a few things to get off my chest. So naturally I took to the net. Instead of trolling round other blogs, however, I thought I’d dust off my own soapbox. Over the past ten months of motherhood, and the nine months preceding it, I have been bombarded with all manner of messages, advice, information, conventional and alternative wisdom, and frankly it’s doing my head in. And I’m sure it’s only going to get worse.

The straw that broke the camel’s back, and subjected the blogosphere to blog 3.0 from me, was reading Zoe William’s article in the Guardian last week, ‘Come Back Superwoman: the lost ideal of combining motherhood and work.’ Although not exhaustive, it crystallised for me some of the things that have been bugging me for a while, namely, the great leap back to the 1950s we seem to have taken when it comes to motherhood and child-rearing. Suddenly, the - admittedly difficult to live up to - ideal of combining motherhood and work (aka ‘Superwoman’) is no longer as feted as it once was a few years ago. Confessing that you find breastfeeding a real drag and that you’re kinda bored stuck at home seems to require ten ‘Hail Marys’ and an ‘Our Father’ for penance.

I exaggerate, of course, and the only experience I’ll be drawing on is my own, which is both Pakeha and middle class. That experience so far has brought home to me the import of the feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’. Practices and purchases that we make as parents, whether we actively choose them or not, say something about what we believe or don’t, what we’d like for our children and what we don’t. And these are political - with a small ‘p’ - whether we like it or not.

One of the things I’ve noticed so far in the last 19 months is the naturalising of everything: science is the new alibi for making sure women should be stuck in the home, or, if they aren’t, that they should feel pretty darn guilty about it. And science, or ‘hard-wired’ biological difference, is being invoked as the real reason why girls like pink and dolls and, hence, why women are ‘natural’ carers and nurturers. ‘Natural’ childbirth seems to be enjoying a new period of fashion too, and breastfeeding is ‘nature’s perfect food’ so why wouldn’t you make every effort to do it? Until the twentieth century, nature killed large numbers of mothers and babies in childbirth too, but perhaps we shouldn’t mention that.

Let me be clear. I am not against natural childbirth, breastfeeding, stay-at-home mums, working mums, dolls or scientific research. But, speaking as a cultural critic, it seems like something’s going on. As I try and implement my own parenting technique - the soon-to-be-patented one of Muddling Through - I aim to unpack what that might be.

As I mentioned above, I’ve got nearly two years’ worth of material stored up, and that’s before I even get to things that are irking me at the present moment. Along the way on this wild ride, I’m likely to ruminate on such things as gender performance, the politics of birth and breastfeeding, consumerism, role-modelling and the superwoman ideal, childcare and whether, how and when to go back to work. And I might even throw in some book reviews of some material I’ve been reading to try and get my head round these issues. You lucky people.