Motherhood Is a Social Construction - Essay Example

Proposition: Motherhood is a Social Construction which Fulfils Women Around the World Introduction An ongoing debate, centering on the relevance of family and motherhood as social institutions, has been ongoing since the sixties among academic circles. Some of the more sensationalist, less academic, aspects of this debate has spilled over onto casual conversations at the dinner table and beauty salons; but for this paper, the issue to be tackled is motherhood as a social construction by which women worldwide find fulfilment. By definition, “social construction” is a “concept about the nature of reality, based on societally shared perceptions or assumptions” (Papalia, Olds & Feldman, 2009). Furthermore, motherhood, for the purposes of this discussion, is to encompass the fundamental activities of childbearing and childrearing. Thus, this inquiry will deal not on motherhood as a personal experience, but as social phenomenon that applies to women in general, in seeking to thresh out the issues that have ruled in the debate. Motherhood as Oppression. From as far back as history can remember, motherhood has been traditionally regarded as the primary, one may say overriding, role of women. From the farmer’s wife to the royal spouse, marriage between a man and a woman has always been presumed to serve the purpose of pro-creation. There has generally been no long-standing quarrel on the matter, until the sixties when the feminist movement took impetus and forwarded the thesis that family and motherhood are at the core of women’s oppression by a predominantly male world. The social presumption that women were meant to bear children appeared to shift at about the sixties. In Australia, demographics show that after the post-World War II baby boom, a decline in births signified that young women delayed the start of their childbearing, while older women ended theirs sooner. Australian women took to the new contraceptive pill, at a rate that amounted to the world’s highest per capita use. The following diagram, shows the total fertility rate of Australia between the years 1924-1994. (Gilding, 1997 p. 206) Sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Social Trends, 1996 In general, feminist critiques of family policy highlighted weaknesses in the “white nuclear heterosexual family” (Dominelli, 1991). Some feminist ideas were born of oppressive treatment of women under a male-dominated society (Johnson, 1980). The feminist position encompassed two streams – the first, radical, stream posited that women’s biological make-up was the source of their oppression; and the second, liberal, stream questioned the acceptance of male values and achievements as the standard by which women were measured and found inferior. Biological make-up as source of oppression. Firestone (1972) began writing in the late sixties, a time when the baby boomers (1945-1964) were just coming on their own. The study spoke of the “dangerously prolific production” that was later popularly called the “population explosion,” which, if left unabated, would radically change life the way of life of millions of Americans. It bewailed the futility of the means of contraception and drew a bleak picture of the adequacy of food and resources for the coming generations. The author asserted: “Let me say it bluntly: Pregnancy is barbaric.” It pictured the husband’s guilty waning of sexual desire, and the woman’s tears in front of the mirror at eight months, as gut reactions indicative of the “barbarism” of pregnancy. It further states: “Moreover, childbirth hurts. And it isn’t good for you…At the present time, for a woman to come out openly against motherhood on principle is physically dangerous… At least, until the taboo is lifted, until the decision not to have children or to have them by artificial means is as legitimate as traditional child-bearing, women are as good as forced into their female roles.” The author bewailed that scientific research into the development of artificial methods of production, such as an artificial placenta, was not being more intensely pursued nor more openly accepted and lauded. The study moves on to propose that, in order to effect a qualitative shift in the redefinition of reproduction, it is imperative to destroy the family. Firestone viewed the woman as being biologically disadvantaged by nature because of her body’s design as childbearer and rearer. For this author, childbearing brought physical degradation, early ageing, and death. “Women were the slave class that maintained the species in order to free the other half for the business of the world – admittedly its drudge aspects, but certainly all its creative aspects as well. In the liberal stream, Adrienne Rich criticized Firestone’s approach that in effect adopted the standards of the male perspective. By describing child bearing in terms of men’s attitude to it (the waning of the husband’s sexual desire and the woman’s tearful regard of her pregnant body) in effect validates this perspective. Rich proposed that motherhood as an experience need not be abolished, only the institution of motherhood. The position of Rich was that women should have the choice to either have children or not to have children; what they object to is the definition and restriction of motherhood under patriarchal terms. (Eisenstein, n.d.). In effect, Rich tried to reconcile the issue of motherhood for feminism. In this she differs essentially from Firestone and her hard-line stance against motherhood and family. It is clear that Firestone, by advocating a complete abandonment of childbearing to technology (the artificial placenta), sought to do away with the entire conception-pregnancy-birth-childrearing progression entirely, thus removing women’s distinction from men and making them equal. In this Adrienne Rich appears justified in saying that Firestone’s idea of feminist liberation is for women to deny and alienate her femininity, relegating this to technology, and instead assume the traditional masculine role and compete on masculine terms in the arena of work. But while Rich departs from Firestone, she still rejected the idea of motherhood as definitive of womanhood, alluding to it rather as a choice one may engage in or not. Another feminist, Ann Oakley, wrote instead about childbearing and childrearing as the special role attributed to women, and men as merely the means to attain this role. This is explained by the fact that mothers have a biological attachment to their children, a bond strengthened and made generally visible by gestation and lactation. On the other hand, the father’s ties to the mother or his children are less visible. “Women’s achievements are listed by nature: childbearing is their authentic accomplishment as women. By comparison, the achievements of men have no ready-made definition, but have to be carefully wrestled out of a strictly cultural mould.” (Oakley, 1981) These pronouncements are an interesting departure from those of Firestone and Rich. However, by relegating to men the inferior, and apparently insignificant, role of fathers as mere impregnators, the view reduces the family into a loose association of woman and children, on one end, and man on the other end, merely for purposes of food, clothing, shelter and resources, as a means of transmitting property from one generation through another through inheritance, and of legitimizing sexual relations between man and woman to ensure the man is supporting children that are truly his own. Oakley had done other pioneering research particularly in socialist-feminism, which emphasised women’s labour in the family which included childbirth and childcare, viewed in the same light as housework. She described women’s domesticity as a cycle of “learnt deprivation and induced subjugation” (Gilding, 1997 p. 34). Based on the above, it is evident that what feminists pose as challenges to the precepts on motherhood may be summarized as follows: 1. Firestone: Motherhood is an oppression from which women should be liberated. 2. Rich: Motherhood is an option which, if taken, must be on her terms, not men’s. 3. Oakley: Motherhood is a special ability for which women’s bodies are endowed, and men’s role in the child’s conception and rearing are but incidental to the process. In the section that follows, each of the above views shall be examined. Motherhood as social construction. . . The view of Firestone is that the biological make-up of women for childbirth is the cause of her oppression, consigning her to bear children and remain in the home to do housework. Firestone equates liberty with going out of the house, earning a living and having a career, without the encumbrance of having and raising children that would keep her at home. She also has an aversion to the pain of childbirth and takes this to further signify women’s further victimization. These may have been true in 1969, when Firestone first advanced her theories. Should one examine her arguments, however, none of them touch on the essence of motherhood, just its circumstances. Motherhood was assumed to automatically preclude a woman from work and career and commits her to home and housework which are viewed as inferior and demeaning. Yet in other cultures and other times, this was necessarily not so. Many matriarchal societies regard women as managers, rather than servants, of the household, relegating to women the purse strings in the family, such that men turn their entire earnings over to their wives to apportion as they saw fit. Women also engaged in productive work, such as putting up small shops, running eateries and engaging in handicrafts production with other women in the community. And, not to say that housework is not productive work, but that apparently Western construct is not a universally held truth. Many women no longer cling to the strict notion of scrubbing floors, washing and ironing, and doing dishes, for which now there are modern conveniences, and actually enjoy doing the groceries and cooking as liberating work. In contrast, they detest staying eight hours a day in a small office cubicle, or engaging in repetitive and uncreative employment in which they exercise little prerogative. (Loh, 2008) Furthermore, the “pain of childbirth” is not a necessarily unmanageable thing now, with the advances made in localized anesthetics and epidurals; nevertheless, many women view the pain of childbirth not as a form of oppression, but celebrate it as a significant aspect of the miracle of childbirth. The evolving construct of motherhood since then had been closely linked to the changing concept of marriage and family. Several researchers describe the conjugal family as the less-than-cohesive unit than present social systems have idealized. Gilding (1997) viewed marriage and the conjugal family as essentially existing “in isolation” from other adult relations (parents, siblings, other kin) and dependent on emotional attraction. The “isolation” was necessary to allow for residential mobility and, through the occupational milieu, status mobility. Essentially, family status was derived from the occupational status of husband and father – which, in turn, reinforced the segregation of gender roles in the family. “The ‘dominant mature feminine role’ for women was that of ‘housewife or of wife and mother’” (Gilding, 1997, p 48). Gilding goes on to explain that in the last two generations, the further progression of the occupational system in American society increased the segregation of the sex roles rather than their fusion, which is evidenced by the glamour pattern. The result was greater tensions within the “American type of family system”. The diagram below depicts the relative percentages of men and women who currently hold jobs, both singly and in multiple numbers. It is apparent that a greater proportion of working women than men are multiple job holders. This may be explained by the greater need for single mothers to earn more in order to support their children (Australian Social Trends, 2007, p. 15). Gilding described a different scenario in the case of 16th century European families. There existed intense scrutiny by the community that regulated meetings between lovers, nuptials, and relations of husband and wife. For instance, neighbourhood condemnation and ridicule were brought to bear on the sexual trysts and unfaithfulness of wives, ‘complaisant cuckolds’, and husbands who allowed themselves to be chastised by overbearing wives were often the subject of public derision through mock serenades and parading through the community on a donkey. Due to this, relations between spouses, and parents and their children, were often brutal and distant. Child abandonment was widespread, and the death of an infant was not profoundly mourned. Mothers would actually just relegate their dying infants in the gutters and dung-heaps of London. Rich acquiesces that women could opt for motherhood if they want to, but this is a far cry from saying that motherhood is a fulfilment of womanhood. It was as if Rich tolerated the idea of motherhood as a mere option; it is even possible that she adopted this position merely to avoid, in Firestone’s words, “speaking bluntly” at the risk of alienating the majority who believe in motherhood. The lip service Rich pays to women’s ability to conceive, carry to term, and give birth to children is still considered secondary and inferior to going out of the house, getting a job, and having a career. Again, this study was written decades ago, before the advent of modern methods of digital communication. Today, mothers no longer need to “go out”. Increasingly, both men and women are able to hold jobs from the home, through online communications and the World Wide Web. Neither is work from the home time bound, allowing the mother (and father) full discretion in structuring her (his) day. Work and family have ceased to be mutually exclusive propositions. (Loh, 2008) Oakley’s theory is closer to the construct attributed to motherhood today, except for the corollaries she draws about the significance of the male counterpart. Women’s role as the wellspring of future generations is held as an important – in fact, the most important – consideration in the social construct, not a means of oppression or a choice to be tolerated, but the main and primary role. The only difficulty with this concept is that it goes to the extreme of dehumanizing the male of the human species as mere impregnators of the female, as if the few minutes it takes to reach ejaculation were his only significant role in the human drama. Oakley asks in her treatise on Subject Women: “What are husbands for?” (Oakley, 1981) Her reasoning is not entirely strange among women in the 21st century. With the present-day options of artificial insemination and other medically-aided forms of fertility and conception, women are opting more to pursue motherhood without getting married. Apparently, women can do without husbands, but seek completeness – fulfilment – in motherhood. Wearing (1984) distinguished, as shown in the table that follows, between two constructs of motherhood – the utopian and the ideological, that are (or were) applicable in contemporary Australian suburban society. The constructs pertain both to “at home” mothers in a two-parent relationship living in a working class area, as well as single, employed and feminist mothers, all with pre-school children. As Oakley’s assertion above, the ideology effectively removes from men the “joys” of parenting while reinforcing their power in the wider society. The utopian ideas, however, challenge certain aspects of the ideology, but do not contradict the power attributed to the fathers in society. The overall effect was to create the idea of the “superwoman,” termed as the “superwoman syndrome.” (Wearing, 1984). The ideal shows an attempt by women to comply simultaneously with the social roles of both male and female genders, that is, to compete with men outside the home while maintain the traditional social and domestic responsibility of motherhood. Ideology and Utopian Ideas of Motherhood … which fulfils women around the world While there are detractors to motherhood, there are also authors that support it. In a study by Joyce Joseph, it was determined that women have a stronger psychological attachment to their children rather than their husbands. It may be true that early feminist writers allege that for many feminists, the family is a primary site of women’s oppression and seek to abolish it (Barrett and McIntosh, 1982; Oakley, 1997). However, many argue that the greater number of women associated their happiness with marriage, children and a family, a reality which feminism reconcile itself. Authors such as Maureen Freely (1995) rose in defense of the role of women as mothers. Freely confronted “femstars” for being, for the most part, childfree: “The feminist canon has it that we are the great beneficiaries if we can escape Biological Destiny.” (Oakley, 1997). In a modern study of the kibbutz system, Dr. Erella Lamdan (2004) examined the significance of the personal experience of motherhood relates to the communal rearing of children in a kibbutz system. The distancing of mothers from childcare and childrearing (which were, nevertheless, still performed by women, though on a communal level) should have liberated the, (following the feminist line of reasoning) for more meaningful, satisfying, equal engagements as men in the working world. In the traditional kibbutz system, the family occupied an extremely limited role with communal life taking over most of the care and formation of the children; slowly, however, a growing space of expansion has been granted to family life. Several researchers attributed this development to pressure exerted by women for family life to be given greater prominence. Apparently, women’s status was considered by them to be low both in the arena of work and in kibbutz functions, and the move towards more significant family life was with the intention of enhancing this status (Ben Rafael & Witman, 1986). The conclusions drawn by the study are enlightening in trying to describe the social construct of motherhood. Lamdan begins her conclusions with a single categorical statement: Motherhood takes central place in their identity as women. In her determination of the reasons why women exerted pressure to a more cohesive family life even in the kibbutz system, she deduced that women preferred to reintegrate childcare within the family for their own sake and that of their partners. Women today are more satisfied and fulfilled with the centrality of the family – not solely where the children are concerned, but also with their partners. Far from a withdrawal out of the world, this move comes hand in hand with evidence of a desire to enter into business economic entrepreneurship. It appears the construct now is for the strengthening of family life and sharing of responsibility between partners as providing both with opportunities to explore the public-political and economic arena while maintaining a strong family center. It is apparently a 180-degree reversal of the constructs created by either Firestone and Rich. The study affirms that, given the absolute freedom to choose to work outside of the home, women will still gravitate towards motherhood and family life. Other authors tended to suggest that women’s “retreat” to family life was in reaction to discrimination in the workplace, and that by opting for the family women sought to shore up their focus of power as the remaining sole alternative. Lamdan disagrees. She joins Zamir (1998) in the finding that women returned to focus on (not “retreat” into) the family, “because they objected to the comprehensive communal education, which distanced them from caring for their own children.” (Lamdan, 2004, p. 41). They “fought to preserve the family as a basic, natural and primary need” (Zamir, 1998, p. 272). Lamdan reasons that, were the assessment of Ben Rafael and Witman accurate, that the return to family life is a strategy to enhance women’s status in society, women should have by now experienced an enhancement of social status and power. Research proves this has not happened. On the contrary, a corroborating study by Plotnik (1992) emphasized “child deprivation” as a disorder suffered by women when their children slept communally, and viewed that the return to family life was in response to a profound need to address these deprivations. One cannot discuss motherhood without discussing the social context of motherhood, which centers on the family. The family provides its members a level of security and a system of relations governed by rights and obligations that cannot be found anywhere else. It is often acknowledged that young children are emotionally dependent on their mothers; fewer people realize that mothers are emotionally dependent upon their children (Barrett and McIntosh, 1982). Thus, when the children have grown and left the family home to establish lives of their own, mothers especially suffer the “empty nest” syndrome. Less frequently recognized is the emotional dependence of grown, adult children on their parents. This becomes evident in the fact that, even after they have established their own residences and families, grown children are inordinately concerned when their parents get divorced, suffer a debilitating illness, or die. It is as if children have the option and are naturally expected to reject the parental home as they mature, but it is taken for granted that the parents are expected to continue maintaining the integrity of the family home and preserve a minimal level of security for the adult child. Conclusion For tens of thousands of years, virtually since the emergence of the first hominid, the unbroken chain of procreation had always been the result of copulation, conception, gestation, and birth. The rearing of offspring for survival completed the process by which the human species has propagated itself. Not surprisingly the female of the species had the presumptive central role in this endeavour. Biologically and socially, the continuance of the species, lineage, and more recently the family name, dependent upon the woman’s fertility (and the man’s virility), and women were completely accepting of this fact. It was only relatively recently in Western culture, from the first stirrings of feminism in the 1930s to the academic treatises of the seventies and eighties, to the blogs of today, that motherhood was regarded as oppression, victimization, and means of enforcing inequality. The radical stream of feminism attacked it from the biological stance, the liberal stream from its sociological implications of constraint from self-determination and pursuit of a career. In these social constructs of motherhood, the fact that one was a mother was inextricably linked to economic dependence on the male, relegation to manual housework, labor pains in childbirth, and withdrawal from the public political and economic arena. Recent studies, however, that this social construct of motherhood is no longer relevant. The modern circumstance of “Motherhood” has been divorced (pun not intended) from housework, lack of a career, inability to earn a living, and even, in some instances, marriage. Freed from these shackles, women had naturally tended towards motherhood and a family-centric orientation. The studies on the kibbutz and its evolution away from the communal and towards family life shows that “motherhood takes central place in their identity as women” (Lamdan, 2004). Women seek to have children and raise them, and feel incomplete when they grow into adulthood and leave. They take great pains to conceive children even as they reject marriage or cohabitation with a man, and express a sense of fulfilment with their offspring. From all indications, womanhood and motherhood are a unified, singular social construct. In the ultimate analysis, taken purely of itself and without the attendant, unnecessary, biased qualifiers, women will opt for motherhood in search of self-completion – and fulfilment. REFERENCES Australian Social Trends, 1996. Australian Social Trends, 2007. Barrett, Michele and McIntosh, Mary. The Anti-social Family. 1982. Ben Rafael, A. & Witman, S. Women and the reinstatement of the family on kibbutz. Megamot 3 pp. 306-320, 1986. Dominelli, L. Women Across Continents: Feminist Comparative Social Policy. Harvester, New York, 1991. Eisenstein, Hester. Contemporary Feminist Thought. Unwin Paperbacks,London. Firestone, Shulamith. 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