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Lately, in my conversations with mothers, I’ve been troubled by the level of frustration some mothers are experiencing. Instead of the joys of “having it all”, more mothers find themselves unhappy and unfulfilled, mostly due to the hard work of it all—the structural and societal barriers that make mothering so hard. Even more tragically, we don’t even seem to have the tools to envision the world as different or the bandwidth to make it happen.
Part of the frustration and let down, may be that we held unrealistic expectations that marriage and then, motherhood, would be our ticket to joy and satisfaction. We also (perhaps foolishly) believed that our marriages would be idealistic 50-50 partnerships (or 100-100 as my friend says) with a co-equal parenting dynamic. In reality, even in the best of marriages, the domestic burden always shifts, sometimes in slow incremental ways, onto the woman. And, yes, breastfeeding plays a role in that shift in the early days. Sometimes women say they don’t want to exclusively breastfeed because it doesn’t allow for that ideal shared parenting relationship they’ve imagined and want from their partner. These days it will be hard to find a husband who tells his wife that it is her womanly duty to stay home and nurse the child. Instead, in an ideal world, both parents together weigh the evidence and then make an informed decision to breastfeed. Then other, logical decisions follow: she alone fed the child, so she naturally knows better how to comfort the child, tend to the child when she is sick, and so on. Something happens from that initial breastfeeding decision, and the road traveled thereafter often changes expectations. I get it.
But perhaps there is something to be said for that dynamic. In all mammals, the female is the parent who nurtures the young, who fights most fiercely to protect them, who expends the most energy to guarantee their survival. And quite frankly, it is hard to find a woman who truly feels like she is in an equal parenting partnership no matter how “great” her husband is. In truth, the whole ideal is a set up for disappointment in the first place. Perhaps the traditional male-dominated partnership ideal doesn’t work, but maybe neither does the 50/50 model either.
What if, we bear a greater part of the parenting burden because we are actually the best partner for parenting? Just as one partner may be naturally better at household financial management or taking care of home repairs. Perhaps the burden falls unequally because, in fact, we are just more proficient in the skills that modern parenting needs. Researchers across the globe are finding that children are distinctly better off when the mother has enough income and authority in the family to make investing in children a priority. One study on Gender, Adjustment and Macroeconomics revealed this shocking nugget: “Evidence is growing that the internal distribution of resources in female-headed households is more child-oriented than in male-headed households.” (Adjustment and Macroeconomics, World Development, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1995)
This powerful finding, emerging from decades of research and study of economic development show that mothers are so much more likely than fathers to invest in children’s health and education and that the surest way to promote economic growth in poor countries is to educate and empower girls. Apparently, nothing improves human capital so much as capital in the hands of mothers. Perhaps, a woman-centered family, and I would argue society, is the optimal arrangement after all.
By Kimberly Seals Allers
How wonderful that Facebook executive, Sheryl Sandberg, has decided to now acknowledge that the experience of single mothers is challenging and unique. Last week, on the anniversary of her husband’s death, Sandberg confessed, via Facebook, of course, that when she wrote her best-selling book exhorting women to Lean In, she hadn’t realized how hard that might be for single moms.
While I can appreciate her newfound empathy and insight I, however am more troubled by how someone who made millions of dollars writing a tome to allegedly empower all women, clearly had not considered the experiences of ALL women when writing such a manifesto. How dangerous to write a so-called prescriptive guide for dealing with the very, real problem of women advancing in the workplace and then later admit your research laziness and myopic privilege of not considering the varied life circumstances of all women, when doing so.
Ms. Sandberg, you may be financially successful but you are also phenomenally irresponsible.
“Before, I did not quite get it,” she posted. “Some people felt that I did not spend enough time writing [in my book] about the difficulties women face when they have an unsupportive partner or no partner at all. They were right.”
While, as a single parent myself, I can appreciate Ms. Sandberg’s mea culpa, it is very much too little, too late. It is a gross disservice to women (and feminism) when we exclude the experience of all women while engaging in a so-called quest to help women. Your story is not everyone’s story. And the number of women completely disregarded by Sandberg’s call to action is no small group. According to U.S. Census Bureau, three out of about 12 million single parent families in 2014, more than 80 percent were headed by single mothers. That’s a lot of women, who Sandberg, now says are the original “lean inners.”
In case you don’t know much about Sandberg’s back-story–she has two Harvard degrees and a personal worth just shy of $1 billion. Sandberg was named the fifth most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine — all this, in addition to raising two young children in concert with a totally supportive spouse up until his untimely death just over a year ago.
Even after the book’s publication, and others noted Sandberg’s elitist approach to climbing the corporate ladder, Sandberg still did not even then acknowledge the blaring blind spots in her approach. It was only when Sandberg’s own personal circumstances changed that she could conjure up the capacity to consider others. This is not noteworthy or congratulatory. This is cowardly and completely unacceptable. And the repercussions are dangerous.
What is worse than the privilege of her own myopia, is the obvious short-sightedness of the many, many people who were also involved in Sandberg’s book publication and promotion. As an author, I often share my thoughts and actual manuscripts with my close circle of friends for feedback. My agent reads it, my editor reads it and perhaps even my editor’s assistant has weighed in. So it is strange that in the whole process of book writing, editing and publication that no one raised this glaring omission to the point of adding even a sidebar, appendix reference or even a footnote. Is myopia contagious? Or is Sandberg’s circle of influence full of privileged people just like herself who are therefore similarly afflicted? We need an antidote. Stat.
The most important lesson here (there are many) is to consider the viewpoint and experiences of others in everything we do, for the so-called “good of women”—whether that is in healthcare, corporate advancement, breastfeeding support, economic empowerment or reducing disparities—nobody should have the privilege to assume that their experience is universal and defining for all women without being forced to consider an intersectional approach.
No, we can’t live the experience of every woman. But I think we owe it to each other and the sheer significance of the struggle, to at least, consider it. And then hold others accountable for considering it. Even, and perhaps particularly, the COO of Facebook.
Ms. Sandberg, in Facebook parlance, considered yourself un-LIKED.
In motherhood,
Kimberly Seals Allers
Her Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/sheryl/posts/10156819553860177?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_campaign=Express_%272016-05-11_02%3a00%3a00%27&utm_content=66375
I don’t want to get the “pet parents” all riled up, but dogs, cats and parakeets should not be given more consideration than newborn infants. There, I said it. I’m specifically referring to recent news reports showing the growing trend in England of employers offering “paw-ternity” leave—time off to settle in a new pet—as a workplace perk.
According to a recent article in the Guardian, many British businesses have been offering paid time off to staff so they can be at home and care for their animals. One Manchester-base, IT company offers three weeks paid leave when a pet joins a family.
Three weeks!!! That’s a slap in the face to American mothers who gestate and give birth to a helpless infant and don’t have any federal paid maternity leave option to “settle in” to motherhood, breastfeeding and bonding with their actual human being. We need paid family leave. Just because you put a sweater on it and push it around in a stroller, does not make it comparable to a human being. (I’m sorry, it needs to be said.)
It is unconscionable that the U.S. remains the only industrialized countryto still have no paid federal maternity leave policy, while employers in other countries are giving three weeks for a pet. While companies consider the needs of an animal transitioning to a new home, what about the ever critical womb to world transition of an infant. The critically important—“fourth trimester.” Babies too, need time to regain their orientation to their new world—after all, the womb world is dark and quiet while the outside world has light and loud noises. In the womb, a baby is constantly “held,” in the outside world, there is a multi-million-dollar business of swings, cribs and heartbeat teddies designed just so that a baby will not be held.
Unlike other mammals, humans are the only animals born with underdeveloped brains—and are completely helpless and dependent on caregivers to tend to their every need. “By one estimation, a human fetus would have to undergo a gestation period of 18 to 21 months instead of the usual nine to be born at the neurological and cognitive development stage comparable to that of chimpanzee newborn,” notes one article in the Scientific American.
Unlike newborn foals, who get on their legs almost immediately after birth, humans take up to a full year to learn how to walk because our brain is unusually complex and it takes longer for it to meet the level of development needed to walk on two legs.
All of this means, that critical fourth trimester, is an important time for continuing the development of humans—that emotional development depends on bonding, nurturing and the neurological and cognitive development is nurtured by breastfeeding. All of these processes are stunted when mothers have to return to work days and weeks after giving birth. If companies recognize that pets need care from a dedicated caregiver when they come home, why won’t U.S. policymakers take a similar stand for all babies?
Yes, it is a dog eat dog world out there, but it should not be a world where dogs trump newborns.
