Some recent quotes from Feministe:
Ha. Sure. Yes, it is your children’s RIGHT to scream in a restaurant, and you are definitely not going to interfere or tolerate a dirty look from another patron who does not enjoy hearing screams in restaurants, because your children are EXPERIMENTING as is their RIGHT! No special treatment requested, though. None at all. And it’s definitely everyone else in New York City who’s a self-centered jerk.
Saying that not allowing small children at a wedding is akin to saying “Mums unwanted at my wedding” strikes me as really silly. Moms are welcome at the wedding. I’d bet that plenty of moms would be in attendance. Moms, being physical distinct beings from their children, are actually physically capable of going somewhere without their kids in tow (especially to a long, formal event).
Parents? You also need to stop acting like entitled dicks…Children are part of society, but part of raising children is teaching them how to behave when they’re out in public.
Airlines really should make some reasonable accommodations for parents…At the same time, parents need to be realistic. And some of the parents in [an NYT article on children in airplanes] seem a little… clueless… [note: the next segment of the post is a quote about a mother being refused milk for her baby when she ran out, and being told that her children couldn’t move around the aisles.] Shocking that efforts to let “active” children move around the cabin and stretch their legs into the aisle were not welcomed by the plane’s staff. Have you been in a plane? The cabin is not large!
Jill is careful to qualify, in each post, that she doesn’t personally hate kids, and that of course kids have a right to be out in public. But, she says. But.
Here are some quotes I’ve come across in radical blogs and zines:
I know in my head all about the politics of taking up space. Of women of color, girls of color, taking up space. Of non conforming bodies taking up space. Of how those bodies are punished and controlled and disappeared for the audacity of taking up space. I’ve spent the last year *blogging* and *walking* and doing activist work that is connected to examining and asserting the right to space–the right of all human beings to *take up space*–because space belongs to *HUMANS* not capital or companies or the nation/state.
But when my heart sees my cocky little girl setting up three pillows and thee blankets on a fully opened chair so that she can throw her legs over the side and read while her health gently takes care of itself????
I cringe.
We all have so much untraining to do within ourselves.
And also:
Why do we need single mamis at this conference?
It’s funny you should ask. Mamis of color are leaders in creating media that services the communities most in need radical media justice. They’ve created zines, blog communities, news papers, radio shows. They write and speak with children on their hips, on their breasts, and with the most limited resources possible. They can make a meeting happen with three people in three different cities, one car, and an awesome white dude. They don’t leave their neighbors behind because it’s a car with four seats, they make more seats in the car.
This is leadership. Single mamis of color are the leaders of the media justice movement, and I really am not sure why or how we would have a conference if they weren’t there.
From Maia’s guest post on Feministe:
im not a feminist ( yeah, i said it…shrug). but i dont understand people who claim to be feminist on one hand, and on the other hand think that children should be designated to certain public and private spaces, not mixing in ‘normal’ public areas, such as restaurants, stores, airplanes, etc. cause in us culture, when you create little reservations for children, you are really creating little reservations for mothers. it is the mother who will be sent away to take care of the child. and how is that supporting all women and girls?
…
you know in a lot of cultures, like the one i live in now, the lines between adult spaces and child spaces are much more porous. it is assumed that kids will be around. that people of all ages will be. because of this kids learn early on what is expected of them in various social situations. they dont expect that every space they enter will be made to cater to their age group. and they learn to negotiate boundaries with various people.
From Eleven O Clock Alchemy:
Scorn towards mothers, children and families is hardly a revolutionary mentality. In fact, this position is a direct holdover from capitalist, authoritarian ideology. Unfortunately, instead of challenging this rhetoric as reactionary, anarchists and other radicals often accept it in our midst.
While giving lip service to the sanctity of motherhood and putting social pressure on women to procreate –alas, soldiers and workers do not come from thin air–in actuality, a capitalist framework places a very low value on child rearing and penalizes all women (some far more than others) economically and socially for becoming mothers. This is particularly true in the US version of capitalism. M/others on the low-end of this totem pole (whether single, of color, receiving government assistance, poor, young, or undocumented) are the recipients of increasingly complicated layers of discrimination, intolerance, and exploitation.
From Sasha Vodnik’s “Being an Ally to Parents and Kids” (Rad Dad #20):
For all of us who want to see a strong left, who want to take steps toward a just world, I think we need to see ourselves as building and sustaining multigenerational community. Young adults shouldn’t be isolated, trying to reinvent the wheel simply for lack of authentic relationships with movement elders, and none of us who are grown should leave our children to that fate. By prioritizing children–and elders–at the hearts of our movements, and putting effort into maintaining that space and strengthening it, we can continue to knit these bonds of community and affinity and mutual aid that must be part of the foundations of strong, vibrant movements for justice.
From an interview with artist Meredith Stern (The Art of Dismantling #2):
At the heart of social change, is mutual aid and cooperation which are the methods towards liberation for everyone.
[An experience I find myself reflecting on again and again as I near my due date: I was working as a nanny for an extremely fussy eight-month-old, and one day, as I was making copies of a short story to submit to journals, she started bawling for no discernible reason. At first I tried to calm her, but when it became apparent that she was going to keep howling until I got the stroller moving again, I focused my efforts on just finishing the copy job as fast as possible. To the other people in the copy shop, I may have looked like one of those “asshole parents” who don’t give a shit, when in reality I was trying my best to get out of there and save everyone’s eardrums. I was 23, utterly inexperienced with kids, and steeped in embarrassment.
Then I heard a voice behind me speaking in cheerful, playful tones. The baby stopped crying. I turned around to see a guy who regularly performed children’s music at the farmer’s market leaning over the baby’s stroller, entertaining her. He was able to keep her pacified until my copies were finished and I thanked him profusely. Judgement, glares, and angry mutters wouldn’t have had any effect on the situation–but just a little help from someone with more experience made life drastically better for everyone in that copy shop, including the baby. And, more importantly, I got to learn a little about how to distract a fussy infant.]
And, finally, a thing I wrote last night on Facebook, in response to the first quote above:
I really can’t remember the last time I felt like I had something substantial in common with the mainstream “feminist” “movement.” Not when sentiments like this are broadcast over and over and over again, with zero analysis of race and class or, indeed, any explicit self awareness whatsoever. I want a better feminism for my daughter. (Because seriously, what kind of feminism is it when my very first message to her has to be, “you need to stay out until you can keep your mouth shut?”)
My main point isn’t that mainstream feminists never have anything positive to say about children and parents. My point is that, among writers with less money and privilege and power, attitudes like the above aren’t actively cultivated and encouraged. (If you think it’s unfair that I seem to have cherry-picked the above quotes from Feministe, just try to find me an equivalent number of similar quotes by, say, radical women of color or low-income radicals–as opposed to radicals with privilege who don’t bother to educate themselves but think anarchism is sexy.) Keeping the focus on individual people who don’t do what you think they should be doing, rather than the deeper social structures that feed these kinds of schisms, makes it possible for privileged people to ignore the hegemony that benefits them. One very basic example: how easy is it to defend “child-free” public spaces when everyone you know employs a full-time nanny? To be totally honest, it reminds me of the Good Minority/Bad Minority dichotomy: it’s easier to ignore the oppression of entire communities when one can continually steer every discussion back to, “But these Bad Minorities are acting bad! We need to make absolutely certain that everyone knows how bad they act! I’ll only take them seriously when they stop acting bad!”
When attitudes toward such a fundamental aspect of human existence are so cleanly divided along race and class lines, doesn’t that warrant a modicum of curiosity?
Thank you for this. I’d been thinking a lot of this, but hadn’t been able to put it all together like you did.
Thank you for this. The recent posts had been nagging at me, and I hadn’t been able to pin it down. You just nailed it.
Ha. Don’t go over to Pandagon. By comparison, Feministe is like the official blog of Erma Bombeck.
I suspect it’s a combination of a couple of things in addition to privilege: an abreaction to the patriarchal standard that women are not really adults, much less women, unless they are mothers, with all kinds of baggage about what a “mother” should do; and acquiescence in the patriarchal standard that devalues women and women’s work.
You see a lot of that in childfree spaces, where there is a vocal contingent of women spending a lot of time anxiously separating themselves from “cows”. No, no, boys, I’m not one of those awful women, I’m an independent, powerful, special snowflake!
Yes. This.
I also think that there’s a total buy-in to the “saint mother” thing: the idea that when you become a mother you die as both a human and as a woman. So “how dare you be a mother out in public?” somehow becomes feminist.
Did anyone actually *read* the feministe articles, or just conclude that anything criticizing parents must be wrong and evil?
All it asks is for a level of basic consideration, on both sides. We should realize that parents sometimes must bring kids into situations they could become annoying in, but parents need to realize that in doings so they are imposing on others, and they cannot expect limitless tolerance.
It’s like navigating a crowded airport or train station with many large, cumbersome bags. We recognize you probably are only doing so out of necessity (moving to another country, etc), but you cannot expect us not to swear at you the tenth time you run over our feet with your baggage cart.
Nobody anywhere is talking about banning all parents from all public spaces, just that parents need to realize that not everyone has the same tolerance for kids as they do. They’ve been desensitized by overexposure, but to others, a screaming kid is like fingernails on a chalkboard over and over, rendering the immediate area uninhabitable. Just be considerate and realize that what you’ve grown used to, we find intensely annoying and far more than a minor inconvenience. And we will”suck it up” for a time, but you cannot ask us to without limit or in all situations.
There are really multiple arguments here:
1) Children should be banned from public spaces. This is (as stated) obviously ridiculous. It’s easy to attack.
The harder ones though:
2) Children should be banned from some spaces which are otherwise open to adults. This is less ridiculous: the aspects of children which cause us to ignore most of the social rules regarding behavior are also the aspects which a lot of people find annoying as all get-out. It’s also harder to attack. After all, the more child-free spaces that exist and are accessible to those who can’t stand to hear high pitched voices or have breakdowns when folks skin their knee, then the less that those folks are able to demand that kids remain quiet in other spaces.
It’s tempting to straw-man this view as generically suggesting “children should be banned from public spaces” but that’s inaccurate and unhelpful.
3) Children should not be allowed to act in a way that lots of adults find unpleasant or distracting, when they are in certain adult-heavy (usually expensive to be in) locations, and children who don’t meet behavior standards should be immediately removed, even if removal is unpleasant for the child and inconvenient for the parents. This is even more reasonable, of course. You can bring your three year old to a fancy restaurant if you want, so long as he sits still and stays quiet! But if he tosses a bun at the neighboring table or starts to yell, you should pick him up and leave.
Again: it is tempting to straw-man this one as “children can’t go out in public.” Which is BS, because of course they can. For example, my kids can, and I’m proud to say that they don’t annoy folks. I’ve had to leave though; it took a few “stick kids under my arm and exit rapidly, screaming or not” situations to make them understand that bad behavior isn’t OK in restaurants.
It’s doubly ironic because the reason that people often want to bring their kids is because a space is relatively kid-free. You often want to bring your kids into a huge library reading room BECAUSE you want them/you to experience the spine-tingling hush of brains at work. You often want to bring your kids to a fancy restaurant instead of chuck e. cheese BECAUSE you don’t want them/you to have to duck flying pizza crusts. You often bring them to a hip local gastropub BECAUSE you want to experience the atmosphere of being around a lot of kid-free adults.
Deep inside, the folks who permit their kids to disrupt spaces often know that they shouldn’t be there. Deep inside, they often know that, if everyone did what they were doing, the space would be radically different, and they wouldn’t want to come there at all. They’ve just forgotten it, or they ignore it, or they treat it like the commons.
Wow. What an excellent job of ignoring everything Julie was talking about, while displaying the exact same kind of privilege the blogs she quotes were addressing.
The issue is not whether the NYT’s latest recycled “yuppie parents: threat or menace?” article has any valid points. It’s this: Keeping the focus on individual people who don’t do what you think they should be doing, rather than the deeper social structures that feed these kinds of schisms, makes it possible for privileged people to ignore the hegemony that benefits them.
I mean, look at your own argument: it is entirely optional for parents to bring children to fancy restaurants, and when they do so it’s done deliberately, as a Learning Experience, or because the parents are too selfish to think about whether it would be appropriate. There’s no recognition whatsoever that there are other kinds of public spaces where people bring their kids. You know, like grocery stores. Or buses. Or political meetings. There’s no recognition that people take their children into these spaces because they don’t have a nanny or an at-home parent waiting 24/7 to do childminding. (And let’s be blunt, g&w: by “people” we are, for the most part, talking about mothers.)
“Keeping the focus on individual people who don’t do what you think they should be doing, rather than the deeper social structures that feed these kinds of schisms, makes it possible for privileged people to ignore the hegemony that benefits them” means that when we limit ourselves to griping about Jerk Starbucks Dad, we don’t have to ask uncomfortable questions about why poor moms aren’t showing up for our Organize the Block meetings. We don’t have to think about whether kids are actually a part of the community, instead of a wholly individual hobby for people well-off enough to keep them out of sight and out of hearing. And we certainly won’t need to give a moment’s thought to how the burden of keeping children sequestered falls heavily, and in many cases entirely, on women.
(Also, what is considered an ‘appropriate’ space for children is here being defined to the norm of upper-middle-class and largely white people. When my kids were very small, we lived in a neighborhood where virtually all of our neighbors were poor or working-class families from Michoacan or Jalisco. It took me a long time to get used to seeing people smile at little kids at the grocery store or the park, rather than staring apprenhensively or scowling lest the little twerps fail to remain silent.)
Mokele @5: “Sides” is already buying into the wrong narrative. This isn’t parents vs. the childfree. (Really, being a parent doesn’t make having one’s seat kicked on a nonstop cross-country flight enjoyable.)
WHOA no. I am NOT letting this thread devolve into yet another “dick entitled parents versus dick entitled childfree folk” thread. Nope. Not gonna happen. Any other comments along that line will be deleted and fed to my cat.
You want that thread, Feministe has several waiting for you.
(Really, being a parent doesn’t make having one’s seat kicked on a nonstop cross-country flight enjoyable.)
Heh. On our last cross-country flight, my six-year-old was getting really pissed off at the six-year-old behind him who was kicking his seat. (And I don’t even think he was trying to kick it. I think he kept sliding down in his seat and then pushing himself up by pushing against the seat.)
Mythago, did you actually read my post?
You say “
that there are other kinds of public spaces where people bring their kids. You know, like grocery stores. Or buses. Or political meetings.”
In response I would direct you to the FIRST PARAGRAPH of my post (how’d you miss that one?)
What the heck? Disagree all you want, but don’t misrepresent me like that, please. The first thing I did was to say that there are a lot of public spaces where it’s absolutely ridiculous to bar children. The second thing I did was to point out that the existence of non-kid spaces makes it even LESS reasonable to bar children, since alternatives exist.
if you’re reading this as anti-kid, you’re misreading. try again.
The issue needs to be limited because “parents who are unable to bring kids to political meetings and therefore cannot attend” and “parents who are unable to bring kids to expensive restaurants and therefore cannot attend” are not equally valid social issues and they shouldn’t be treated like they are.
And finally:
Really? Thanks for telling me that.
Actually, not thanks, because it is damn obnoxious . From gay parents to stay at home fathers, to single fathers to those men who have good sharing arrangements: the number of men who participate in childcare is growing. AS IT SHOULD BE. Which is a good thing.
So since we’re being blunt, let me be blunt, mythago: Unless you’re backing off from the very excellent “more men should step up to the plate and parent their children” position of feminism, you should reconsider your implied “piss off from the discussion, this is a women’s problem” attitude. It’s not very consistent. Or accurate.
FWIW, I can promise you that I do more parenting than plenty of people on this board (should we ban childless folks, while we’re at it?) I am the primary caregiver. And I do things like advocate for childcare at town meetings and bug the school board for better hours, and all those things that are “feminist” problems. Maybe I missed the memo.
Very interesting articles from Feministe Jill, making some excellent points. Thanks for pointing them out.
Mythago, did you actually read my post?
Sure did. Did you bother to read Julie’s? And are you actually listening to yourself?
Julie’s post was not about whether ‘should kids be allowed out in public’ is a valid argument (nobody is actually making that argument, AFAIK) or expensive restaurants or majestic libraries:
Keeping the focus on individual people who don’t do what you think they should be doing, rather than the deeper social structures that feed these kinds of schisms, makes it possible for privileged people to ignore the hegemony that benefits them.
And you still haven’t talked about this, at all. You’ve explained how you made sure your kids didn’t bother anybody and that kids-should-never-be-seen-or-heard CFers are silly. You’ve mused about the secret motivations of parents whose kids act up. In other words, you’re doing exactly what Julie pointed out is the problem: focusing on optional trips to expensive restaurants, instead of talking about how privilege and power affect our definition of ‘public spaces’ and ‘appropriate behavior’ – and especially how assumptions about childrearing and families fall very hard on poor parents, single parents and parents who don’t have the resources to have the nanny or a stay-at-home spouse whisk an offending toddler away.
Julie’s post said that focusing on X problem is a way of reinforcing privilege and avoiding talking about Y issues. And your response was, mhmm, let me muse on and expand on the arguments about X problem some more. You….really don’t see the issue here?
Speaking of “misrepresenting”, btw, I seriously have no idea where you’re getting some of the stuff you think I said. “Anti-kid”? Please point out where I accused you of that, srsly. “Piss, off this is women’s work?” Sorry, do we need to have the patronizing lecture about the difference between infer and imply? Recognizing that we live in a culture where childcare is perceived as women’s work and valueless does not mean “only women take care of children” or “only women care about these issues” or “men never have these problems because they don’t care for children”. It’s a recognition of how childrearing is not thought to be part of ordinary life, but is shunted off into the private sphere where women, who certainly aren’t good for much else, are expected to handle it for free – and don’t you think buying into that cultural expectation is a bit problematic when privileged white feminists do it?
(Good grid, I would think that you, as a primary caretaker of children, ought to be familiar with all the fun that comes with those cultural expectations about the value of childcare and who’s supposed to do it. Mr. Mythago is the primary caretaker in my family, and we live in Californiaforgodsake, and yet we still hear people express ‘you’re a saint for bothering to pay attention to your own kids like that!’ to ‘whoa, buddy, who wears the pants in your family’ to ‘but you’re going to go get a real, paid job soon, right?’ to ‘gosh, I don’t know how your wife does it, oh wait, *you* do it? sorry, mind blown.’)
TL;DR: Julie is trying to talk about something much different and larger than whether Jerk Starbucks Parent is a jerk or whether Entitled Childfree Hipster is an asshole hipster. Why did your post have to stubbornly rehash all that? Again?
mythago @3:
My impression of the Pandagon bloggers (based on what they write about their lives) is that they don’t have kids. As many of us who do [have kids] have discovered, it’s easy to be an “expert” on how one should raise kids if you’ve never had any. Once you have them, of course, all that expertise goes away :-) .
Mythago @12:
Also parents of children with disabilities that affect their behavior. Or are just not naturally compliant or easy-going.
IMHO, having easy-to-raise children is a kind of privilege, too.
Ha, seriously! I’d say that begins with pregnancy. Here I had all these grand ideas about how I was going to be the Best Pregnant Woman Ever and eat nothing but fresh healthy food and get plenty of exercise. Now I’m on my third donut of the afternoon. The only exercise I got today was walking to the store to buy the donuts.
Thanks for this. I’ve been really enjoying some of blue milk’s guest posts on Feministe recently (her recent post on breastfeeding why-breastfeeding-is-a-feminist-issue makes a similar point about debating individual situations and choices to the detriment of addressing broader structural issues), but the latest iteration of “some parents/children suck! some non-parents suck!” has about killed me.
For those of you here who’ve chimed in with “but some parents/children do suck!”, think about the fact that there are many people whose public behavior is assholeish, but when they are people from privileged groups we tend to treat them as individual assholes, and very rarely sit around having a dead serious debate about where it’s appropriate to let white guys in business suits, with their loud business conversations and tendency to take up an inappropriate number of seats, into various venues and business establishments. More importantly, we don’t debate the ways in which society should or shouldn’t accommodate their needs and behavioral quirks, because society is built around those needs and quirks, to the point that they’re not seen as distinct needs or quirks at all. Whereas for children (and for other oppressed groups) we suddenly are in (yet another) debate about children as a group.
Thanks for this Julie. I think the points you make here are really important.
While I think the general level of kid acceptance is much higher in New Zealand than it is at least in coastal US (recently I got invited to a wedding where kids weren’t allowed – and my other friends were shocked, because they’d never heard of such thing. And the idea that kids might get in your way is really beyond my experience. I’ve seen kids in all sorts of places and I don’t remember their kidness being a problem. Possibly this is partly a mindset – kids sometimes hang off the ropes in the swimming pool and that makes it hard to swim – but then so do adults so I group them together as “hanging off the rope is annoying behaviour” rather than assuming this is kids). But the pattern still holds – white middle-class culture, institutions and assumptions are much more likely to hve boundaries around where children are likely to be. On the left/feminist movements I know here the discussion is about how to be child friendly – and how to make that meaningful – rather than where children shouldn’t be.
I think it’s a really important wider political point as well – if the world as it is organised means that people are struggling over scarce resources (in New York it seems to be space) – then if you spend your time arguing about the fine lines of how people should behave given that there isn’t enough for everyone – then you are legitimising that scarcity – rather than imagining the better world that is possible. With the posts and discussions feministe I find myself asking ‘what is political about this?’ The fine policing of how people should live their lives is not what I want from politics.
That’s completely backwards. What I’m getting from reading others’ experiences in the thread is that because I’ve, with very few exceptions, inhabited entirely non-child spaces since passing out of adolescence, the “normal” state of things seems to be one where there are no children present.
If I’m out somewhere and see someone with kids, on some level, my teeth clench, my gut tightens, and I start wondering if they’re going to make a scene. And I’m certain that if I’d grown up with adults simply having kids around in most places–that if no-kids spaces were weird exceptions, like places where you can’t wear a hat–I wouldn’t have that attitude.
Has there ever been an instance where segregating people in most instances makes it easier and more comfortable for those people to mix in the few remaining circumstances?
Thanks to the people writing here; it’s nudged a lot of assumptions I didn’t know I had.
Thanks for this post Julie. I have also found all that stuff on Feministe pretty disheartening. Needless to say, I now know to stay away from Pandagon.
Maia, I’m from NZ and have in the past couple of years been invited to a “no kids” wedding. Even when this does happen though babies are definitely never counted as “kids”.
grendelkhan:
That’s very aptly put.
No, not that I can think of, after a few minutes’ reflection. Familiarity may breed contempt, but it also breeds understanding.
I know that I learned something about parenting from each of my children, and once I had children, I had a vested interest in watching other parents and learning from them. I now interact with other people’s children differently than I did before I had some parenting skills. For one thing, I keep a weather-eye on their safety, while maintaining appropriate boundaries, which I simply did not know how to do before.
I’m an introvert. I can definitely find kids annoying. But part of the price I pay for living in society is paying for the schooling of people I don’t personally know, and paying for roads I don’t personally use. For the on-duty parent, the welfare of the children is an absolute priority, and that’s often exhausting and no fun. Those of us who have the luxury of walking away should cut those who don’t a lot of slack. And maybe even lend a hand from time to time. The world would probably be a better place in general if that were the default expectation.
Grace
Good article. I would guess that the original quotes from Feministe weren’t just from privileged people. They sound to me like they’re from people who don’t have kids, either because they’re young or because they haven’t gotten there yet.
One of the things I’ve learned from parenting is that you can try to make them behave in public, but it’s not always that easy. Kids are supposed to move around, make noise, get dirty.