Disclaimer --It is a team effort to make a baby; in
this blog I aim only to probe the stigma surrounding mothers and specifically
housewives. I acknowledge that many complex relationship dynamics exist,
however for the purposes of understanding the depth of Clara Shavelson’s life
and the perception of women becoming mothers and losing personhood, I ignore
many of those dynamics. --
There is no doubt that having a child entails sacrifice, but
what does it mean to be a mom? For Clara Shavelson it meant giving up her dream
of being a doctor. Her activism shifted from shop floors to organizing Jewish
working wives and mothers. While
in many ways she neglected “motherly” duties, Clara was her own person and did
not solely define herself by the role she held in her family. She sacrificed
some of her personal goals for her family and she sacrificed some aspects of
family life for her activism. Even while on a “socially sanctioned path” Clara
was not a traditional mother.
Mother is a stigmatized term; the dictionary defines it as “a
female animal in relation to its offspring.” Societal norms create a different
definition for what a mother should be; there is something to mothers that the
dictionary definition just doesn’t capture. The verb to mother, meaning to “bring
up (a child) with care and affection,” touches more closely on what it means to
be a mother in American culture.
The stigma surrounding motherhood is held in the expectation
that a mother sacrifice her selfish desires for her children. The children
become the priority, above all other things. Not only is the mom supposed to
give up her life for her kids, she is supposed to love rearing her children.
When a woman has a child, she is no longer her own person; she becomes a person
in relation to the children she has brought into the world. Clara rejected the
expectation of losing herself to her motherhood.
The expectation of mothers in the early 1900’s was much more
restricted than it is now, however, women are still dealing with many of the
same issues surrounding expectations in motherhood. The foundations of what
motherhood is today are rooted in the model of the housewife who serves her
husband and children. She cooks, cleans, does laundry, and she does it all with
a smile. The housewife model denies personage to the wife. The housewife is
limited to hobbies that will not interfere with or distract her from the
caretaking she must do. The housewife has evolved and been complicated by
cultural shifts.
The housewife role gets complicated when a single income
cannot support the household. The mother must work a job and maintain her
household. When mothers work, or workingwomen become mothers we run into issues
with maternity leave, childcare, wage gaps between genders, and societal
expectations about who should raise the child. The role of nurturer and
caretaker is assigned to women, but how society values motherhood is
demonstrated in the ways that businesses and legislators address the
above-mentioned issues. The stigma is challenged when a woman must rely on
forces outside herself to care for her children.
So we have to ask, why do we expect women to do it all? Is
it fair for a woman to be expected to sacrifice her whole self for her
children? Is it fair for a woman to be consumed by her status as a mother? I
think there is a great deal of injustice surrounding parenting. The structures
we have built ask mothers to do so much, sacrifice so much of themselves, without
lending sufficient aid such as mandatory paid maternity and/or paternity leave,
mandatory child care options for working women, equal pay, etc. Clara Shavelson
organized to make changes that would increase the quality of life for her
community. Is it time for women to organize and demand that the value of
motherhood be instituted in businesses, legislation, and media? Clara would
think so.
I am really glad that you defined mother, but it also really surprised me. "A female animal in relation to its offspring." Ignoring the additional problems I'm thinking of in defining a mother as an animal, the dictionary definition of the word is completely different from how we typically use the word. Rather than a term used to describe a relationship, the word mother has typically come to be an identity in itself. Society has completely forgotten about the relationship a woman would have with her children (if she so chooses to have them), and just blatantly assumes all women will have children or do have children simply because we are biologically equipped for it. I think that once a woman becomes a mother, she tends not to be identified as a individual person, but rather through her role as a mother. We forget that she is a person, with her own thoughts and dreams, and only come to think of her as how well she takes care of her children and meets their needs. I think that, in part answering your question about why expect mothers to do it, we expect mothers to give themselves completely to their children because that's how society defines them. Society cannot look past the motherhood relationship and see the mother (or the potential mother) as an individual person.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment Ashley ^.^
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