Care-Labor – Part One: “I Am a Mother…”?

by Lucy S.

I have a lot to say about this, and I am afraid I will never get it put up on the blog if I keep trying to say it all at once, so I am going to write about this over the course of a few or more posts.

 My profile, at least in its current wording, begins with the words: “I am a mother…” I usually don’t introduce myself that way. I want to talk a little about why I don’t and about why I chose to do so here. I will start by saying that this blog is an effort to understand labor, both the alienated labor that we are forced to do for income in this society and the labor that we do (paid or not) to create, sustain, understand, and take pleasure in life in its many forms. In part, this is an ongoing attempt to understand and value care as a feeling that leads to action and care-labor (that action itself).

A significant part of my work in the world has been to carry children (before and after their births) and to bear them (during and after their births) – to care for them, enjoy our time together, teach them, and help connect them to the larger world. And of course, this is the work of a huge segment of humanity. So I am trying right now to lift up this work, make it visible, and explore what it means to labor in this way in the actual world that we live in. At the same time, I want to do this in a way that doesn’t contribute to competitive animosities between those who do or don’t have kids, or, for those with kids, do or don’t work directly for an income; do or don’t put their kids in childcare; do or don’t homeschool; and do or do not live any of the umpteen variables here. I have little patience with smugness from various corners about these issues. I can guarantee that whatever you have done or are currently doing with regard to having or not having kids is not an end-all, be-all answer for everyone else alive right now.

It is important to see the specific aspects of this form of care-labor. At the same time, I think we also need to recognize commonalities between this work and other kinds of work. Otherwise, this labor is too susceptible to that ripe-for-exploitation mix of devaluing and saintliness which has plagued care-laborers for too long. This happens not only with parents, but with teachers at all levels, childcare workers (think even about the difference in the titles of teacher and childcare provider), nursing home workers, family and friends who care for their loved ones in many ways, and others who I am probably in my own blindness forgetting. We struggle to make sense of the value, meaning, and ethics of this labor. We don’t want ourselves or others to “just be in it for the money,” of course. Yet because this society demands money to live, and so much of our well-being is, like it or not, bound to having some kind of steady income (or linking ourselves to someone else upon whose income we rely), it is dangerous to imagine and expect ourselves and other care-laborers to be ‘above’ material concerns.

But let me start with parents (at times, mothers specifically; at times, parents or any who take on the act of parenting). Some people question whether this even counts as work – being pregnant and raising your kids. In some ways, it is seen by many in about the same light as having private pets. But however much some people may enjoy and love their pets, having children is not the same as having pets. We do not give birth to our pets. Our bodies do not change forever by carrying them. Moreover, all of us who participate in raising children are making them a part of humanity. We are helping to create the world.

People perhaps feel more justified than ever in feeling little collective responsibility for the children of others (and their parents) since the birth control pill became widely available in some countries during the 1960s. Thus, for many of us, ‘choosing’ to have or not have children is the reality that we have always known. In the context of consumerist ideology, it is not hard to see how having children thus is seen by many as a ‘lifestyle’ which they may opt for or not depending upon their taste.

Just as someone may feel no sense of responsibility toward a friend’s dog, because, after all, she was the one who chose to get a dog, likewise, that person may feel absolved of responsibility toward her children, since she ‘chose’ to have them as well. Conservatives get angry that any of their ‘tax dollars’ go to paying for any costs involved in raising other people’s children. Some liberals and social democrats may insist that they do, in fact, support collective responsibility for children, and demonstrate this support by calling for high quality child-care available to everyone, funded by our taxes. I appreciate this in the context of the capitalist, industrialized society that we have, but having the government pitch in a few dollars of our earnings each hour / day / week (depending upon our pay and tax rate) does not constitute the kind of mutual responsibility that I am talking about. 

It is interesting to consider how thoroughly the notions of innocence and blame are bound up with the bearing of children. I wonder how many women – pregnant or now mothers of children – have been castigated by someone saying to them, “Well, that’s your fault. You’re the one who chose to have kids.” Or, from the ‘tell it like it is’ folks, the blunter and more intrusive: “You’re the one who chose to have sex without being on birth control.” To those who have more than two or three children, there is the smirking: “I guess you haven’t figured out what causes that yet.”  This blame can certainly be put on either parent – and it is to varying degrees – but it is most of all put on the woman who gets pregnant, gives birth, and keeps her children to try to raise.

Sometimes these statements are phrased as interrogations. And what defenses can we make for ourselves if we are already answering as if we have done something wrong?  That is the underlying premise thoroughly infusing these ideas and the statements arising from them. Responsibility becomes culpability. Someone is at fault.

It seems to me that we have limited identities available to us to choose from when forced into these paradigms. The whisper of ‘whore’ and ‘slut’ remains in some of these notions. Some cornered into defensive answers may say that they didn't think that they would be having sex, so they were not on birth control. This sometimes seems to invite from others the shaming: “Then you should have had some self-control,” especially when delivered by older authority figures to the young, single, poor, and pregnant (or many mothers in needy circumstances). 

And anyway, why were we not on birth control, just to be on the safe side? If we try to respond to this, we might travel into what some will see as victim territory. I didn’t have health insurance. I was young and hadn’t had sex before. I thought I was being safe with other methods. I didn’t know enough. I had health problems on the Pill (or similar contraceptives). One friend in her mid-20s told me that some of her hair started falling out – not to the point of baldness, but it became noticeably thinner on the Pill. Others have struggled with month-long continual bleeding and nausea when on it. And some fear future health problems; my mother was on the much higher dosage pills of the late 1960s and 1970s and ended up with breast cancer while still in her 40s with no family history of it and no risk factors. Speaking of these concerns does not mean I am anti-birth control.  These are simply some of the problems many women bear because they, by and large, remain the ones most required to ‘deal with’ the issue.

Finally, we move from the ‘accidental’ pregnancy into ‘choice.’ If something in the situation has ended up less than ideal, we again may feel cornered into a sort of victimhood to explain ourselves. I thought it would be a good time; I didn’t know we would lose our jobs and health insurance. I didn’t know we would break up. I didn’t understand enough about how much responsibility I was taking on. I was young. I was getting older and was worried I would never be able to have kids if I waited much longer. And in these defensive answers, we may be cast as either victims of bad luck, our own naïveté, or both. Our stance may then be that of the guilty plaintiff; the bitter former fool; or the gosh-golly good-natured ‘wasn’t I dumb’ one-time dingbat (with all its insulting connotations) who now shruggingly bears the burden and makes the best of it. Or we might move back and forth along this continuum.

For some, women who have children, especially more than two, are seen as deluded milk-cows who waste their potentials. A personal anecdote may help illustrate this. Tom, the second husband of one of my aunts, provided me with a way to more fully visualize what this kind of woman was for him and for those who think in similar terms about (some or all) women who bear children. During a visit to see my aunt (and by necessity, him) about five years ago, Tom was reminiscing again about the good old days when he’d been an engineer for Lockheed and had some sort of involvement in the Stealth bomber.  For a few minutes, everyone else was doing something else and I became the only other person he was talking to. Tom – ardent feminist that he suddenly metamorphosed into in that moment – began bragging about a woman engineer whom he’d mentored. She had been worth his effort, he said, because she had decided not to have children. She wanted to do more with herself, he told me, than to be a cow.

As has too often been the case when I feel taken aback by the harshness of something said, especially when I experience it personally, I initially felt blank. Maybe I winced slightly. I remember that for a moment, the image of  a cow nursing her calf flashed in my mind, and I thought: “Well, I like cows.” Then I felt it as a putdown without forming very distinct words about it in my mind.  Afterward, I thought that I should have conveyed in some way that what he’d said was offensive and wrong. I could have reminded him that I had, not one or two, but five kids and that his statement seemed just a tiny bit at odds with his frequent claims to like and respect me (especially when my example was being used as a comparison against my aunt's daughter).  But I was not interested in personalizing it with him.  I made some noncommittal sound, stared off for a short time, and soon moved away to “go check on something,” thinking that the next time my aunt wanted to see me, it would have to be somewhere else.

I don’t think that I was deeply wounded by Tom’s assessment of women who have children. It was not hard to tell myself that I didn't care what he thought about that or any other topic. Still, it left me with this question: is this what many people think of me and other women who have kids?

And beyond Tom and his assessments of women who have kids, I continue to wonder what people think and feel about those who have children in our society.  Isn't this just part of what it is to be human? Not all of what it is -- not something everyone needs to do -- but is it not a major part of human life? Do we need to defend why we have children? Is it wrong or is it good? Do parents need more blame or more care?

 In classes where we’ve gone around the room saying something about ourselves on the first meeting, I usually don’t say anything about having kids, even if others do. Later, I’ll end up mentioning something I was reading to two of my kids or say that one of my kids is active in the IWW union or relay some similar anecdote or bit of information.  I’m happy to have my kids go with me anywhere and introduce them as my kids -- some of them or all five of them (though this doesn't happen as often anymore). I feel that saying, “I’m a mother,” or “I have five kids,” conveys very little. What do these nouns say about me or these kids I “have”? And hearing five kids and homeschooling may elicit a lot of stereotypes and presumptions from people. In particular, I don’t like to see the shock from people who hear five kids; it makes me feel like a freak. So I have preferred for people to come to know what they do about this part of me and my life in terms of what I and my kids DO or in the context of our lived relationships.

Because our society is so commodified, maybe the labor which is not neatly sliced off from our personal lives is what confuses us most. I remember a professor saying to me, when we were in some interesting conversation for the independent study that we were doing and somehow the topic changed for a few moments to the question of how many hours per week his job required: “I don’t know; does this count as work?” Feeling defensive on his behalf at the idea that someone would dare suggest that it did not, I said, “Yes! Of course it does!” He did not get paid anything extra for doing it, and he was not required to do it. Did it count because he still met with me at the university as a professor? If he had neighbors who could not go to college and met with them at his kitchen table once a week to discuss a reading and perhaps some responses they’d written, would that be work? And what if he enjoyed it as much as they did and found that he too learned? Furthermore, would we call what the neighbors did labor as well? If some foundation would give them all a grant for these studies as part of a study in alternative modes of learning, would it all of a sudden finally become real work then? At the same time, what might be lost in their labor if they had to track everything they did carefully in order to get paid?

I am thinking about what it means to have a society in which so many of the most meaningful actions somehow do not count as real work while other work that makes the world worse instead of better not only counts as work but makes the person who does it much more respected by many than the work of unpaid care-laborers. I am thinking of those who helped send Stealth bombers out into the world. Then again, the people whom I respect most will not respect that work more than mine. So perhaps the most important issue is material. What does it mean to live in a society in which care-labor for one’s own kids or other family members and friends does not count as work? In what ways are both those who need care and those who provide it often put into precarious circumstances?

I am going to bring this first post to a close for now, but I will keep exploring this issue, and I hope others will comment on it or email me if they’d like to contribute a guest post on this issue. I will end by saying that I would like us all to dig deeply into our ideas about what it means to labor to bring kids into the world, raise them, and continue to care for those human beings during their lives. Is most of this to be borne by the parents of those people as a huge gift to society? Is it to be defined as a private decades long activity which they do for their own enjoyment? Or is this labor ‘real work’ and if so, what does that mean?