There is nothing about this subject that isn’t controversial. Everybody has an opinion. everybody has a mother, everybody knows mothers, everybody has direct experience with working mothers, stay at home mothers and children. Everybody has a vested interest in the next generation being large, healthy and productive members of society.

Despite everybody’s vested interest, we are willing to lump the responsibility of raising the next generation in the laps of the few willing to take on motherhood. Any yet, despite this seeming imbalance everybody seems to have an opinion, a judgement on how those mothers are carrying out their role. That makes ‘Motherhood’ dangerous territory.

With, quite literally, millions of people judging you and your performance as Mother and no KPI’s to guide you, except for pleasing everybody and their disparate demands of what Motherhood should look like (and even what motherhood feel like), being a ‘good’ mother is inherently impossible and ultimately guilt ridden. How can it not be when we fail in every single moment, by someone else’s standards?

Feminism and motherhood have always had a rocky relationship. Motherhood really is at the heart of many of the difficulties women as a collective face. These difficulties have led to imbalance and feminism seeks to eliminate the imbalances in society based on gender. So, Motherhood seems to be the elephant in the room. If women didn’t have burden of motherhood then their participation in the workforce would be higher, it would be more continuous (no pesky maternity leave to contend with), we could just tackle equal pay and housework and everything would be dandy. Oh, except if women as a collective didn’t have the capacity to bear children we would be men – and masculinity as the sole focal point of society is what Feminism is fighting, isn’t it?

Feminism is fighting for the rights of women; for the recognition that women are equal to men, irrespective of the inherent differences between the sexes. Irrespective of our responsibility to birth the next generation.

I am a feminist. I am a mother. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. It is possible to be a ‘good mother’ and a ‘good feminist’. We just need to get on the same page. Feminism doesn’t just serve women by eradicating ‘gender roles’ and making way for women to enter the workforce. Feminism serves women by highlighting the injustices women face in gender roles and in the workforce and working to eliminate these injustices.

I was sent a link by the lovely Elle from GenYElle to an article in The Australian about Elisabeth Badinter’s book Conflict: The Woman and the Mother, that will soon be translated to english and available in Australia. Badinter raises some excellent issues that plague motherhood. But, for me, many of her conclusions are ill thought out and some downright selfish. She points out that extended breastfeeding ‘deprives [couples] of their romantic relationship, and especially their sex life’ as though we are comparing apples and oranges. As though romance and WHO recommendations for child nutrition are equally important.

The decision to have a baby naturally is also not always a ‘moral’ either; there is more to natural birth than elevating oneself in the eyes of fellow mothers. Natural childbirth has drastically lower complication rates for both mother and child. And I see nothing unliberated about making an educated choice about our bodies and following it through with conviction. I agree with her assertion that we over police women during their pregnancies, but stop short of suggesting it is a sound or even liberated decision to smoke or drink whilst pregnant. It also strikes me as odd that she is almost flippant at the ineptitude of fathers ‘Of course men are deficient. So we expect the state to fulfil its duty as equally responsible for the wellbeing and education of the new child.’ What the? Isn’t it the role of feminism to encourage equality?

All in all Badinter raises issues that I believe need to be discussed. Society at large needs to be aware of the real experience of motherhood. The truth of motherhood that isn’t all sunshine, lollipops and Huggies ads. Liberation is being valued and recognised for who we are and what we contribute, not putting our wants (alcohol, partying, romantic trysts) before the needs of our children.

Having said all of this, I simply cannot wait for her book to be released so I can read it in its entirety. It is no doubt a book worth reading.