Performing motherhood

TRIGGER WARNING: Body policing, motherhood policing

Hey! Did you hear the news? Victoria Beckham is a bad mother. She carried her child in her arms while walking in stiletto heels. Some commenters think that women shouldn’t wear shoes like that when they are pregnant. Some commenters think that walking in those shoes could cause her to trip and drop the baby. Some commenters think that there weren’t enough blankets wrapped around the baby. Therefore Victoria Beckham is a bad mother.

Hey! Did you hear the news? Sarah Palin is a bad mother. Someone told Joe McGinnis that she can’t cook and someone else said they went into the kitchen once and there was burnt mac and cheese on the stove and the girls were trying to open a package of ramen noodles. And do you know where Palin was? She was upstairs in her bedroom. Therefore Sarah Palin is a bad mother.

Hey! Did you hear the news? Emily Deschanel is a bad mother. She won’t give up being a vegan and start eating meat again now she is pregnant. Many commenters insist that although Deschanel looks radiantly healthy and has consulted top nutrition specialists, she shouldn’t be allowed to risk her unborn child’s health by eating differently than do they. Therefore Emily Deschanel is a bad mother.

Hey! Did you hear the news? Katie Holmes is a bad mother. She let her five-year-old daughter walk from the car to the door of the school wearing red lipstick. Some commenters also thought the little girl’s clothes were inappropriate for her age or for kindergarten. Therefore Katie Holmes is a bad mother.

Hey! Did you hear the news? Angelina Jolie is a bad mother. Some commenters think one of her daughters dresses too much like a boy. Some commenters don’t like the way another daughter wears her hair. Some commenters think Jolie only takes her children to parks, movies and museums in order for the PR. Therefore Angelia Jolie is a bad mother.

Hey! Did you hear the news? Every women is a bad mother. Either she is too fat or too thin. She either holds her child back or forces them to grow up too quickly. She is feeds them too much or too little. She doesn’t encourage them enough to pursue their talents or she is a stage mother living out her ambitions through her children. Therefore if you are a mother, you are doing it badly.

NOTE: The author is not interested in reading anyone’s opinions about any of the women mentioned in this piece. The point of this piece it is draw attention that to the fact that all mothers, everywhere, are constantly being scrutinized and judged by everyone.

--mmy

---

 

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Comments

[Kit Whitfield]

Hey! Did you hear the news? I'm a bad mother. After twenty-four hours of induced labour, I asked for and received an epidural, thus rendering my son's entry into the world a medicalised and non-participatory experience. I felt the pain was unbearable, but some people feel that it's selfish to accept pain relief and despite the lack of evidence that epidurals pose a risk to the baby, a good mother refuses to have one.

Also, I let anybody who wanted to hold him from birth. Although this never distressed him and at one year old he's an extremely confident and outgoing boy who loves his mother but shows very little separation anxiety, some people feel that too much handling by too many people confuses and stresses young babies.

Also, I let him sit in a bouncy chair rather than holding him constantly. Although I was right beside him, responding to whatever needs he expressed, and although the bouncing action soothed him more than cuddles, some people believe babies should be held right next to the mother's body constantly when they're young, and anything else is neglect.

Also, I feed him pureed food. Although the food is home cooked and nutritionally balanced, and although he's growing at a perfect rate, is strong and healthy, and already using his mouth to say proto-words, some people believe that pureed food is an unnecessary Western intervention and that babies should be given exactly the same food as adults.

Also, I breastfed him while taking anti-depressants. Although medical research has determined that the medication I take does not harm breastfed babies, and although I began the course when he was six months old and partially weaned, and although he shows no ill effects, and although prior to the medication I was very sick indeed, some people believe that breast milk must be absolutely free of medication.

Also, I haven't put him in a nursery. Although nurseries are prohibitively expensive for someone earning at an unreliable rate, and although I take him to activities, and although he's sunnily sociable with everyone he meets, some people believe that failing to put babies in a nursery damages their social skills and denies them opportunities to get along with their peers, while also showing a deplorable lack of initiative on the mother's part.

Also, I let him watch television when I need a break from caring for him on my own during the day. Although I deliberately choose to have him watch CBeebies, an educational, non-violent and progressive channel, and although his speech development is slightly ahead of the curve and his problem-solving abilities are very sound, some people believe television stunts babies' brains.

Also, I sing him songs. Although this is supposed to be good for his social, verbal, mathematical and musical development, apparently I sing the wrong ones, according to the man in the park who berated me for teaching his son 'terrible class ideas' when I sang my son a music-hall ditty called 'Burlington Bertie from Bow' and 'The lady goes a-pace a-pace'. (He then requested me to sing 'See Saw Margery Daw', which was bizarre on two levels: first, if you have a go at someone, they're probably not going to take requests, and second, you really think 'Johnny shall have a new master / He shall have but a penny a day / Because he can't work any faster' is teaching a kid better class ideas than a song written for a working-class audience that parodied a song about rich people?) But no: apparently I am not just a bad influence on my child, but on other people's children as well.

Also, I'm the primary caretaker. While my husband works in an office and I work from home, making this the most practical arrangement, some people feel that this models female servitude and will teach my boy to be a sexist.

Also, I let him play with any toy that interests him, which means not snatching away a 'girl's toy' if he picks one up. While it's my personal opinion that if he's interested in it, he can learn from it, that his gender identity won't be affected by toys and that it's my job to love him whatever it turns out to be anyway, some people feel that if you don't masculinise a boy from birth, he won't grow up to be a proper man.

Adding them up, I'm too neglectful and distant, and also too clingy and home-dependent, and also isolate him too much, and also expose him to far too many people, and also expose him to bad influences no matter how I entertain him, and also model both sexist and feminazi ideas, and also am far too old-fashioned while also being corrupted by decadent Western society.

What can I say? I'm a bad mother.

Now push off and let me get on with caring for my son.

--

In other news: people have finally found a good mother. (TW: tragic death of parent in earthquake):

http://www.orthodoxmom.com/2011/09/mothers-love.html

This story is circulating the Internet at the moment and seems very popular. It's gotten loads of Facebook forwards, and everyone loves it.

Rescue workers in Japan found, following the earthquake, the crouched body of a dead woman. Beneath her, protected by her hunched pose, alive and asleep, was her baby son. She had with her a mobile phone on which she'd texted 'If you survive you must remember that I love you.'

And everyone is passing this story round like it's heartwarming.

Basically, the poor woman died a lonely and frightening death, not knowing whether her little boy would die an even more lonely and frightening death after she was gone, and now he has to grow up without her and has nothing left of his mother's love but a text message. This is a horrible story. The happy story would be that they'd both survived and she'd been around to bring him up, and she'd done it imperfectly and they'd quarrelled sometimes and she'd made mistakes but she'd been there and they'd done their best and they'd had a normal life together. That would be a happy ending.

Instead, I think we've discovered what you have to do to be considered a good mother by the Great General Public. You just have to die protecting your child from an act of God that you can't possibly be blamed for. And if you do, then everyone will share the story of your death and feel all warm inside.

People expect an angel mother. Living women can't possibly measure up.

[Coleslaw]

I have to admit, I saw a lot of this judging on my own part and that of my coworkers in 36 years of working with children with disabilities. I frequently had to remind myself that I don't know how much better I would have done if I had been in the same situation as many of the parents we complained about. It was easy for us to say, "Your child won't make progress if you don't do the stretching/mouth exercises/handwriting practice/30 minutes of reading a day at home", but we often didn't know how many other demands were being placed on parents at home from schools, coaches, elderly relatives and employers.

[Mmy]

My sister is a single mother who soon learned that everyone felt they had a right to criticize how she parented. If she kept her child in indoors she was stunting his social and physical development and if she let him outdoors and he fell and skinned his knees then she was either abusing him or neglecting him. People felt free to interrogate everything from his table manners to his diction.

[julezyme]

Nope. You can't win. The minute you start thinking, maybe it's kinda working out here for us, you can be sure some Dr Phil clip or urbanbaby post or Sunday Styles piece will circulate telling you that you're doing it wrong. Better grab a bigger slice of privilege so you can stay home and also work in order to buy that new model plastic accessory which will turn your baby into the next Richard Feynman and/or a meth addict, while cultivating a shameful but compulsory eating disorder, and also all the other mommies are making festive seasonal cupcakes, but no pressure.
Motherhood in popular culture: The glimmering capstone on the hulking great pyramid of ways you can't win.

[Amaryllis]

It doesn't stop, either...Hey, have you heard the news? I'm a bad mother, because my 21-year-old child has done things with her time and her money that, whether or not they're in her actual best interests, she didn't ask my opinion beforehand.

Or maybe I'm just a bad mother because I didn't teach her better when I had the chance, or something.

the man in the park who berated me for teaching his son 'terrible class ideas' when I sang my son a music-hall ditty called 'Burlington Bertie from Bow' and 'The lady goes a-pace a-pace'. (He then requested me to sing 'See Saw Margery Daw',
* jaw drops *
I don't know whether to scream or giggle (but not having to listen to him myself, I'm inclined to giggle).

So let's see, what shall we sing instead?
As I was going to St Ives... nope, endorses polygamy.
How many miles to Babylon... nope, unrealistic about travel logistics.
Wee Willie Winkie... of course not, can't have children running around in public in their nightclothes.
Pat-a-cake... Shouldn't you be baking your own cakes, instead of harassing the baker's man?
Pease porridge hot... are you trying to give the kid food poisoning? "Nine days old," indeed!

It's a puzzlement.

[cjmr]

And if you're really really *really* lucky, it will be your mother-in-law who thinks you're a lousy mother and tells you at every opportunity, not just strangers from off the street judging you.

[Rodeobob]

Psst.... hey, did you hear about that one bad mother? You know, the one who's child died, and she got a tattoo afterwards, and there were pictures of her out drinking and partying? I heard that child died of suspicious circumstances! I mean, I know she wasn't found guilty of anything in the legal sense but she must have killed her child because she's obviously a bad mother!

Or hey, a couple of years ago, a kid vanished on his way to school. The kid is still missing, but at one point, after months and months of searches and media interviews, that mom went to the gym! What a bad mother! I bet she was involved in his disappearance somehow!

You think it's ugly when people criticise mothers when things are good, just watch how vicious they get when there's actually something blame-worthy going on!

[Mmy]

@Rodeobob: You think it's ugly when people criticise mothers when things are good, just watch how vicious they get when there's actually something blame-worthy going on!

The thing is that people don't actually wait for something "blame-worthy" to happen. There are mothers out there right now who are being threatened with the loss of their children because someone doesn't approve of their mothering. Mothers who are denied access to medications because someone 'thinks' that by taking them would make them bad mothers. Mothers are being arrested for the "crime" of not mothering the "right" way.

[Literata]

To which I would add: a mother having her newborn taken away because the mother ate a bagel with poppy seeds on it...nope, can't win.

[MaryKaye]

Not to mention that the flood of totally unreasonable accusations is no help at all in the cases when something bad *is* going on. If you react to ordinary parenting with cries of abuse, what do you do when you encounter actual abuse? You've destroyed your credibility.

My older-child adoption hasn't produced as much of this as I think parents of younger children get. But our first pre-adoption social worker laid it on REALLY THICK. We didn't eat at McDonald's enough, I kid you not. But of course if we'd eaten at McDonald's all the time that would have been bad too!

As a parent of a teen, what I hate the most is when people say stupid things like this in front of my son. Teenagers need to develop the capacity to see the difference between "You require me to shower four times a week" and "You force me to do half of the dishes" on the one hand, and "You treat me as if I'm worthless" or "You beat me" on the other. This essential task is made much harder by adults who can't seem to tell the difference themselves.

How in the gods' names can we both be so good at cutting parents down, and so bad at spotting and stopping actual abuse?

[cjmr]

"Mothers who are denied access to medications because someone 'thinks' that by taking them would make them bad mothers."

THIS.

One of my high school friends has a chronic pain condition. Her twins were born with opiates in their systems--because of the prescription drugs she had been taking, *with* her OBs approval. CPS has been 'graciously allowing' her to keep her children as long as she jumps through all their hoops, and takes random drug tests for opiates. This means she can't take the only truly effective drugs to manage her condition, and is in pain more days than not. The twins will be three soon, and show no long term effects so far, but she hasn't been 'released' from monitoring.

[Mmy]

@MaryKaye: How in the gods' names can we both be so good at cutting parents down, and so bad at spotting and stopping actual abuse?

Perhaps <cynical mode> because many people are more interesting in policing motherhood than in actually protecting children </cynical mode>

[Ruby]

Rodeobob: Psst.... hey, did you hear about that one bad mother? You know, the one who's child died, and she got a tattoo afterwards, and there were pictures of her out drinking and partying? I heard that child died of suspicious circumstances! I mean, I know she wasn't found guilty of anything in the legal sense but she must have killed her child because she's obviously a bad mother!

Actually, in the legal sense, she was found responsible for over $200,000 for leading law enforcement to believe that her child had been kidnapped by a non-existent nanny.

Because, in the legal sense, she was found guilty of lying to law enforcement personnel. Four times.

It doesn't do anybody any favor when we pretend that bad people don't exist at all.

[Leum]

Because "lying to a police officer" totally isn't a trumped-up charge that probably wouldn't pass constitutional scrutiny if we had an unbiased Supreme Court.

[Ruby]

@Leum--What does the Supreme Court have to do with the Anthony case right now?

As well, do you think the jury was correct to find Anthony not guilty of so much as child abuse, but, in the same case, incorrect in finding her guilty of "trumped-up" charges? If so, why would they do that?

[Mmy]

Nudge, nudge -- let's not derailed with the specifics of a particular court case.

I would agree that much of the verbiage that was flying around the coverage of the case was about the performance of motherhood--which is separate from the verdict on any of the charges.

[Froborr]

My mother was* neglectful, vengeful, and emotionally abusive... but what actually got her marked as a "bad mother"? What the court actually based their decision to remove my sisters on? At 16, 14, and 11, we knew how to do laundry and cook (though the 11-year-old wasn't allowed to do the latter unsupervised).

*Verb used advisedly. She's acknowledged it and made a real effort to improve in the last decade or so.

[RodeoBob]

I hinted at the Anthony case exactly because much of the discussion I encountered was not about evidence or facts, but judgement of "appropriate mother-behavior". In the local case of Kyle Horman, people actually were critical of the mother because after two weeks missing, nonstop media coverage, and multiple interviews a day with reporters, his mother went to the gym, and this was reported on as a suspicious/negative behavior.

[histrogeek]

As I have often said, the greatest problem for parents, especially mothers, are nagging scolds who give impossible advice. Yes parenting is important and there are some really crappy parents out there (even the non-abusive ones). However, there are way more useless scolds.

[Leum]

@Ruby: I don't think "lying to a police officer" should be a criminal offense and I don't believe making it one is Constitutional.

[Amaranth]

It's worse when your child has some sort of chronic illness or condition. My five-year-old was recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and believe me, I find myself doing the "I'm such a bad mother" number to myself all the time.

I've been told over and over again that it *isn't my fault*, that I didn't do anything to cause it and there isn't any way I could have prevented it, but still...and the list starts. I should have taken better care of myself when I was pregnant. I should have eaten less fast food. I should have breast-fed longer. I should have pureed my own baby food, instead of buying Gerber. I should have brought organic. I should *made* him eat more vegetables. I should have eaten more vegetables myself (tough for me, because I can't stand the taste of most of them). I shouldn't have vaccinated, or I should have waited to vaccinate, because I mean what if there IS something in those things that causes auto-immune diseases?? I should have seen the signs before he got sick enough to need hospitalization. Should've, should've, should've. (Intellectually, I *know* that nothing on that list caused my son to get diabetes, but...I still wonder.)

And because he's so young, I'm the one managing this disease. If his sugar gets high...well, it means *I* shouldn't have given him that ice cream, or *I* forgot to check the sugar, or *I* didn't do the carb calculation right. And the more I slip up, the worse his overall sugar average is, which in turn increases the chances that he'll have eye, foot, kidney, and other complications when he gets older. I mean, if I was a GOOD MOTHER, I could keep him healthy. And it never stops, every day, on top of worrying about how much TV he watches or how he's been on this bout of lying to me or how he behaves at school or why they expect kindergartners to know how to friggin READ already, I have to watch the damn sugar. Because he could go blind if I don't.

I'm lucky. I haven't encountered any external judgment (yet) from this. I think it's because most people don't know much about type 1 diabetes, and those that do know understand that it's just something that happens and it's not anyone's fault. But I fear the day some terribly uninformed person will exclaim "But only unhealthy people get diabetes! What on earth have you done to this child??"

It's like being pregnant again...everyone thinks they know better than you how to "take care of" your child, and any time the disease manifests itself it's because you, as a mother, have not been doing your job. Or at least that's what it feels like some days.

[Mark Temporis]

About the 'wrong songs', until they understand language, what does it matter? Just sing what makes you and baby happy. I don't have any memories until the age of three, so I can't see how baby could get any ideas from a song, right or wrong.

The one time I had to improptu sing to my nephew when he was still a baby, I did "Angels are Weeping" by Nox Arcana since it had just come up on the fuze. It worked fine, but it's about as subversive as you can get.

But I'm a guy, so it's just nice and sweet that I'm not actually trying to eat the baby.

[Kit Whitfield]

About the 'wrong songs', until they understand language, what does it matter?

According to that guy, I was teaching his five-year-old bad values. And evidently it was my job to change repertoire rather than his to make a teachable moment for his son or go to another bench.

Whether he would have assumed the same thing if it had been my husband singing is, of course, another question.

[Nick Kiddle]

//Teenagers need to develop the capacity to see the difference between "You require me to shower four times a week" and "You force me to do half of the dishes" on the one hand, and "You treat me as if I'm worthless" or "You beat me" on the other. This essential task is made much harder by adults who can't seem to tell the difference themselves.//

That one really hits a nerve, because social services are doing their own variant. When they talk to xCLP about what's going on at home, he complains of being hungry. To a not-quite-six-year-old, this just means that when he fancies biscuits and chocolate in between meals, I say no, and if he suddenly decides he's gone off rice after it's cooked, I don't jump to offer an alternative. To social services, it apparently means I'm starving him.

Other reasons I am a bad mother: my settee is covered with stuff, xCLP's bedroom was until recently a mess, xCLP is not interested in joining the Rainbows and doesn't play regularly at other people's houses, I'm openly trans in front of xCLP, I'm getting married next year (I kid you not, I had to be interrogated about how we were handling step-parenthood as though millions of families haven't already done it successfully)... Interestingly, although I'm legally male, I still get the "bad mother" stuff, probably because everyone involved still considers me to be female.

[Julezyme]

Amaranth, as a biologist I have to point out that type I diabetes is different from type II, which is the kind that can come from (but not always) diet; type I is a possibly an autoimmune problem triggered by some combination of genetic factors. Short of keeping you baby in a bubble, you could not have done anything to *cause* it.

[kisekileia]

//Teenagers need to develop the capacity to see the difference between "You require me to shower four times a week" and "You force me to do half of the dishes" on the one hand, and "You treat me as if I'm worthless" or "You beat me" on the other. This essential task is made much harder by adults who can't seem to tell the difference themselves.//

There's a lot of stuff in between those two categories that makes things complicated too. Where does "you treat me like my disability symptoms are my fault, and attack my character because of them, and you nag me about said symptoms in ways that make them worse" fall? Maybe it's just because I'm so close to the situation, but I still have trouble figuring that out for sure.

I do worry, when I see stuff about how society puts too much pressure on mothers, that it'll lead to giving people a free pass to abuse their kids. It still seems to be pretty socially acceptable to yell at and berate kids, even in circumstances that don't really warrant it, and corporal punishment is still widely socially accepted in many places even though almost all the scientific evidence shows that it has significant negative effects. It seems like even though in some ways mothers are pressured too much, in other ways people still justify unacceptable parental behaviour.

[Kit Whitfield]

It seems like even though in some ways mothers are pressured too much, in other ways people still justify unacceptable parental behaviour.

In some cases, yes. But today we're talking about how the problems of parents, not children, and it would be nice if the conversation didn't get turned round into an attack on parents.

[kisekileia]

Fair enough. Sorry.

[Kit Whitfield]

That's okay; I know it's an important issue for you, and in other threads, problems people have had with their parents are a perfectly legitimate subject for discussion. It's just that parents get treated badly too, and one way of maintaining some balance between those two truths is to take turns.

[kisekileia]

Okay. No problem. :)

[Mmy]

@Amaranth: It's worse when your child has some sort of chronic illness or condition.

When I was diagnosed as a child with celiac disease my mother not only had the "did I do anything when I was pregnant/she was a baby" guilt she also on the receiving end of a lot of the "well it must be something from YOUR side because no one in OUR family has ever had that problem."

Over the years more and more of my dad's family got diagnosed (about 1/3 of my generation and 1/2 of dad's.) I asked mom whether any of the people who criticized and needled her every came back years later and apologized.

You can guess the answer to that.

[Amaranth]

@Julezyme: Indeed, and intellectually I know this. What I think I'm doing is a case of "my baby fell and skinned his knee = I am a bad mother for not preventing this", only writ larger. Because although most days I have a pretty good grasp on "this is not my fault", part of me will still wonder if perhaps I should have, in fact, kept my son in that impossible bubble. :P

[cjmr]

@Kit I googled the lyrics to Burlington Bertie. That's a great song! I'm sure your 'gentleman' would not approve of some of our sing-a-long choices, either. Lots of Weird Al.

[Tonio]

People expect an angel mother. Living women can't possibly measure up.

Where does that expectation come from?

[Kit Whitfield]

@Kit I googled the lyrics to Burlington Bertie. That's a great song!

It's got a good bouncy rhythm too, which is why I sing it to him; it's a good dandling song. You can see Julie Andrews singing it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOJp_oJgMTM

It's not the only music-hall song I sing him. Frankly I don't see why I shouldn't; they were written to comment on society from below and they're part of his cultural heritage.

[Ross]

@Tonio: Society has always needed little enough excuse to find fault with women.

But I imagine that insofar as there's a specific cause, it probably has something to do with the fact that most people who have memories of their own mothers have memories which antecede them developing a sense of perspective and the capacity to make reasoned judgments. Not everyone, but enough for it to drive the public consciousness.

[Tonio]

Ross, that makes sense. Just once I'd like to see a mother deliver a righteous rant against these judgmental people, telling them to mind their own business.

[cjmr]

@Tonio: Mostly I do that (righteous ranting) in the privacy of a locked post on my own blog, but I have let my mother-in-law (and my own mom) have it more than a few times.

[sarah]

[[MaryKaye: Teenagers need to develop the capacity to see the difference between "You require me to shower four times a week" and "You force me to do half of the dishes" on the one hand, and "You treat me as if I'm worthless" or "You beat me" on the other. This essential task is made much harder by adults who can't seem to tell the difference themselves.]]

Heh. When my middle brother was a teenager, he had an argument with my dad and yelled that he was going to call DSS (Dept of Social Services, though I think the name has changed in Mass since then) on my parents. My dad, who's a social worker and has had lots of contact with DSS, picked up the phone, dialed the first 9 digits and said, "The last number's 9. Go for it." My brother, of course, backed down. But as kids, we also had enough contact with the people my dad worked with to understand the difference between "I'm having a fight with my parents" and "my parents are abusing me."

[Kit Whitfield]

Where does that expectation come from?

Two things, I think.

1.

Women are traditionally restricted to motherhood. Sexists have had such an investment in keeping us in that role and that role only that motherhood has been talked up as an ideal by way of pretending that being denied a life outside the home doesn't deprive you of anything - to the extent that now none of us can measure up.

2.

Mothers always had had and always will have far too much power over the feelings of their children.

We always need our parents' love and approval no matter how old we are, and any frictions between us are magnified in proportion to that need - which is huge. As mothers are usually the primary caretakers, it gets magnified even more. No woman can possibly be as good a mother as a child needs her to be. Every mother makes mistakes, every mother has faults, and they hurt the child.

My hope for my child is that I won't hurt him to the point where he becomes unable to heal his own wounds. My fear is that my faults will loom as large to him as my mother's did to me in my most angst-ridden, cabin-fevered, family-argument moments, and that he'll stay that angry permanently. (This was one of the central beliefs of my postnatal depression.) It's my belief that one of the main reasons parents want their kids to have kids of their own is that it makes us realise what our own parents were up against and forgive them a great deal. We start to understand, on a visceral level, that our parents really are human beings and not titanic figures. It's something that's easy to understand intellectually and very difficult to understand on an emotional level.

But the fact remains that I'm not perfect and as far as my relationship with my son goes, I will doubtless get on his nerves and hurt his feelings sometimes. Because I'm his mother, that will be a big deal for him. In order to spare him that pain, I'd have to be an angel mother.

And I wish I could. But I can't.

And that, I think, is the other foundation stone of the angel mother. We all want an angel mother because human mothers do things we don't like, and because the relationship is so important and begins in such utter inequality of power, those things get magnified. The fortunate thing is that most of us want our actual mothers more than we want an angel mother, even if the lady herself does sometimes get things wrong. It's one of those relationships where the conflict is often proportional to the love. But I think the notion of the angel mother partly resides in what we all want our mothers to be - or perhaps to what our mothers were to us when we were tiny babies too young to identify their faults clearly, when they really did seem benevolent giants.

The angel-mother is a child's conception, not an adult's. But adults will use it to infantilise women nonetheless. I don't blame a child for being mad that his or her mother isn't perfect, but I do blame a society that can't move beyond that conception.

[cjmr]

*watches video*

I figured that had a lot of schtick to go with the lyrics! I thought I'd seen every musical Julie Andrews has been in, apparently I missed this one.

*adds to queue*

[groundedchuck]

People expect an angel mother. Living women can't possibly measure up. Where does that expectation come from?

I think it also comes from the same place as bullying: The social pressure of perfectionism weighs on everyone, but many people feel they can build themselves up by pushing someone else down. "If you're a bad mother because of X, and I don't do X, then I'm a better mother [parent] than you!"

Also, the "angel" thing figures into other aspects of human relationships as well. 100% of marriages end in either divorce or death. My wife is keen to point out whenever someone criticizes divorce that apparently the only "successful" marriages are the ones where somebody's died.

[Tonio]

We start to understand, on a visceral level, that our parents really are human beings and not titanic figures. It's something that's easy to understand intellectually and very difficult to understand on an emotional level.

I like to think I've come to understand that more, and I sometimes reflect on that in the way I parent my own children. No matter how controlling my own parents have been, they were trying to do their best as parents as they understood it.

One of my siblings seems to think that it's natural for adult children to have adult relationships with their parents. I've tried explaining to the sibling that I'm not sure such a relationship is possible with our parents, for two reasons. One is that they don't respect my boundaries, something I've discussed here before. The other is from my own perspective that approval and disapproval from parents have inherent power and authority. Their criticisms and condemnations hurt more than if these came from someone else - the child has an emotional vulnerability in the relationship that outlasts childhood.

[Lonespark]

This is a good thread. I don't think I can get past the triggery nature to write much. *poutface*

I kind of want to hyperventilate and run away screaming because sarah typed "DSS." (And yeah, it has a new name now. There's been consolidation of state agencies. I know the environmental/transportation ones, and that happened recently so everyone is still getting the terminology and phone numbers wrong. Also TANF is no longer TANF but we can't remember what it's called, and foodstamps is SNAP but I never remember what that stands for...)

[Lonespark]

the child has an emotional vulnerability in the relationship that outlasts childhood.

I think this is a YMMV thing. I have a lot of issues with not wanting to piss off my parents and at the same time wanting them to tell me if they're upset so I can deal with it...but that's because we live in their house. I'm acutely aware that we are hugely dependent on them in a way I haven't been before as an adult. And the relationship is more frought with emotion than another landlord or roomate relationship would be, but that's because of the situation and our finances far more than any automatic value their approval would have.

[Literata]

Expecting angel mothers is also, in my mind, a kind of inversion of the communal child-rearing structure. It may not take a village to raise a child, but the whole village gets to tell the mom how to do it.

[Lonespark]

I really want to rant about what happened at the mall, but I keep crying and having to erase the post.

I went to buy suits. My daughter was in the fitting room but then she ran out and I didn't see; I thought I was still between her and the door. She decided she wanted to play hide and seek, and that the best place to hide was the total opposite side of the department store. So she ran over there, ducking behind clothing racks and giggling. She's fast.

I couldn't find her in the fitting room, so I got security and a salesperson on the other side of the store already had her. The whole incident was in the range of a few minutes. A grandmother-aged lady on the other side of the store went on, and on, and on about how I was a horrible mother and keeping watch on a two-and-a-half year old who loves to run and is very independent and self-assured is easy, or at least, not hard enough that there could ever be any kind of excuse... I was really worried that she was going to call social services, and then what would they find? Would they take her first and ask questions later? How would I pick up my sonf from school if I had to go answer questions? Would I then be doubly neglectful? OMFG, what if someone comes to inspect the house?

[Tonio]

but that's because we live in their house.

Yes, I can see how that would raise the emotional stress in the relationship. When I lived at home after college, and took a job that involved irregular hours, my mother was upset that I wasn't always fulfilling my responsibilities with household chores. But even today, two decades later, when my children don't put away their things, I cringe a little at what my parents would think. And in particular, what they would tell the rest of the family, because I can easily imagine them going on about how we're not strict enough and so forth. My parents used to say the same things about other families.

[Mmy]

@Literata: Expecting angel mothers is also, in my mind, a kind of inversion of the communal child-rearing structure. It may not take a village to raise a child, but the whole village gets to tell the mom how to do it.

Exactly.

I was about to add one of my theories to the board -- which is that by off-loading responsibility and blame on mothers the rest of us get to walk away from our own civic/social responsibilities.

My next door neighbour's children, and the children down the street, will be the people who determine what type of world I live in during the years to come. They are people who will work, pay taxes, run for Parliament. They are the doctors and the garbage collectors, the lawyers and the safety inspectors. They are the future and they will determine MY future.

I should consider their safety and health part of my responsibility since I will benefit from their good citizenship. By berating their parents I evade my responsibilities and offload them onto someone else.

After all, it was someone else's child who helped minister to my mother as she lay dying. It is someone else's child who helps me see that my father's needs are met.

In my opinion, you don't even have a right to enter the conversation unless you are actively helping--if only by supporting systems which provide parents with needed resources. And by actively helping I don't mean telling other people what to do I mean asking other people in what way you can help them. Then doing what they ask.

J K Rowling wrote that while she was a single mother trying desperately to survive on limited funds she actively thought about stealing to make ends meet. Do you know what she was tempted to steal? Nappies. Diapers. No one has the right to criticize the choices a mother makes unless that person has made sure that the mother is not over-tired, over-worked, stressed, worried about present and future expenses--and even then they don't have the RIGHT to do so.

[Lonespark]

...whereas my parents are all about the clutter, and the hand-me-down clothes and furniture found on the side of the road. I was completely unaware of how bad the "thrifty" approach looks when you are being evaluated for fitness as a parent by social workers medical staff who have been informed by the social worker that you are dangerously crazy.

Sometimes a dirty house is a sign of neglect and poor health, and usually it's a sign of people who are very busy and spend a lot of family time doing things besides cleaning up. I just don't see how going after a bunch of things at once makes sense. If you're worried about a parent's mental health or a kid getting lost in a store, why bring household cleanliness or what the kid eats for breakfast of where their clothes were bought into it immediately...

(Ok so I am getting in to rambliness that mostly equates to sympathy with Nick.)

[Mmy]

@Lonespark: A grandmother-aged lady on the other side of the store went on, and on, and on about how I was a horrible mother and keeping watch on a two-and-a-half year old who loves to run and is very independent and self-assured is easy

Trigger Warning: Language

And I cry bullshit on that grandmother-aged lady. Cause that means she is probably somewhere in age between me and my dad (dad is old enough to be my grandfather.) I can remember when I was little that people wouls simply thrust their kids out the door and tell them to amuse themselves until dinner. Kids in kindergarten walked for blocks on end to school and back. And my dad can remember my sister running off after every milk cart (they still had horse-drawn milk carts in the city in which they lived when my sister was little). The only long-term impact I can think of is that my sister grew up to love horses and now lives full-time and works part-time at a horse farm.

When that grandmother-ages woman was having kids (or the people around were having kids) everyone let their children run around. So the next time someone tries that one out on you -- fire back.

As for mess -- wow, I can remember when I was told I might have cancer (I didn't, but that is another story) I hesitated to tell my mother not because the possibility of cancer would upset her too much but because my place was a total mess and I didn't want people seeing that.

[groundedchuck]

Tonio: the child has an emotional vulnerability in the relationship that outlasts childhood.

I think you're absolutely right, but by the same token, I think this can be navigated if both sides are willing to aknowledge it. I needed to move out and spend several years practicing careful boundary-setting, but I have managed to redefine my relationship with my parents into a more adult one. (I also give a lot of credit to family friends who, despite having changed my diapers way back when, have been quick to accept me as an adult and have been good about demonstrating and reinforcing that role.)

This doesn't mean my mother couldn't cut me deep with a single remark, but she's not the type to ever do that intentionally and we've broken a lot of the habits that would do it inadvertantly.

On an unrelated note to Lonespark and Nick: I wish I could offer more than just sympathy to you. That sort of bureaucratic idiocy is one of my biggest paranoias about having kids.

[sarah]

[[Lonespark: I kind of want to hyperventilate and run away screaming because sarah typed "DSS."]]

Oh! I'm sorry! Should there be a TW on my post for that? (Talking about, um, the agency-that-shall-not-be-named happened a lot in my house, between my dad being a social worker and then my parents being foster parents for a little while.)

[Lonespark]

Sarah, I think in general the TW for the OP covers that. Others may have different opinions.

[Lonespark]

Oh, and on the subject of celebrity moms... I've read a few articles about celebrity families in, like, People or whatever, where it comes across as minimizing or even totally denying the fact that these parents have a lot help from nannies and cooks and schedulers and so forth. And personal trainers so the moms can look hot again soon after having a kid, since if you're a movie star (or most kinds of celebrity, these days) your livelihood depends on looking a certain way.

I do get kind of jealous when I imagine having a personal assistant and a housekeeper...but I really, really hate the way it seems to be accepted and encouraged to downplay the help. Because femininity must be effortless? So that the celebrity moms can get credit for perfect angel childrearing, in which paying competent help isn't good enough? The better for the rest of us to aspire to truly impossible standards?

[Jenny Islander]

When the tsunami hit Indonesia there was a case of a woman caught in the rising water who had to hold on tight with at least one hand to avoid being washed away and killed . . . and she had two children too small and weak to hold on for themselves. So she let one go. The press talked about what a bad mother she was for weeks. What else could she have done?

(The sequel, that the child she had to let go of was found alive, was mentioned only briefly.)

[Kit Whitfield]

And personal trainers so the moms can look hot again soon after having a kid

As I understand it, the full-time cook is another part of that, as is having a daytime nanny and a nighttime nanny so they never have to step off the treadmill to deal with a crying baby, or gulp down a bar of chocolate just to get the energy to make it through the next hour.

A therapist I saw for postnatal depression also told me that professional beauty was related to the bias against elective Caesareans. (As an article in the paper I read pointed out, some people have a big song-and-dance routine about how women who have elective Caesars don't BOND properly with their kids, but have nothing to say about women who had emergency ones. I'd add that if anything, an emergency Caesar is, if anything, more likely to cause bonding problems, because it's more traumatic and it's harder to bond when you're traumatised.)

She said that it's apparently easier to 'get your figure back' after a Caesarean than a vaginal delivery. Hence some actresses and models whose careers depended on their figures developed a tendency to get elective Caesareans, as it made the most sense in their circumstances. Gossip and fashion magazines spread the practice, and some doctors started getting irritated and associating it with Demanding Major Surgery For Frivolous Reasons.

As someone who's seriously considering an elective Caesarean if I ever dare get pregnant again (because avoiding a forty-hour ordeal that resulted in PTSD that turned into depression is not, to my mind, a frivolous reason), they can sod right off.

[Kit Whitfield]

What else could she have done?

Died. Then everyone would have loved her.

I'm serious. If she'd let go and been swept away, they could have found the pathetic body of a woman still! clutching! her! children!, and everyone could have enjoyed a good weep. Her crime was that she denied people the opportunity to shed a sentimental tear about how self-sacrificing mothers are (never mind that it must have been heart-scalding to have to let one child go to save the other).

If she'd been found dead with her kids, people could have taken some pleasure in their own sensitivity in mourning her. She failed to provide that pleasure, therefore the scarlet BM was at the ready.

[Mmy]

Trigger Warning: Death of Children and Painful Childbirth

@Jenny Islander: When the tsunami hit Indonesia there was a case of a woman caught in the rising water who had to hold on tight with at least one hand to avoid being washed away and killed

I was listening to a special (on the CBC) about the tsunami hitting Thailand and one of the couples being interviewed lost both of their children. The man was cut off from the building they were in by the waters and the woman was left inside trying to hold onto their children. As she told the story she paused as said "and then I realized that I wasn't holding them any more and I don't even know when the waters tore them away."

One of the things that amazed me (in a good way) is that they was not a hint from the man that he "blamed her" nor was there a breath of criticism from the reporter. It was framed in a "some people lived, some died and no one had much power over it" way.

@Kit Whitfield: Never having had a child I can't speak to the difference between painful childbirth and a c-section but I did have surgery similar to a c-section (massive tumour in/around uterus). I am allergic to morphine and have a really nasty reaction to most pain-killers so I was off pain-killers very quickly. Have a nasty scar but even without pain-killers it is quite a manageable surgery. I would take what I went through over what lots of women go through in childbirth any day.

[MaryKaye]

I think the big dilemma for DSHS (and yes, they often handle it very badly) is that they learn not to believe anyone.

My father sat on a jury for an assault case. He said that, with the exception of the cops (who had little stake either way, just doing their jobs) it was pretty apparent that every single person who took the stand, on either side, was lying. Made it hard to sort out what had actually happened. Every one of them had things they didn't wish to discuss under oath--many, he thought, had lifestyles where "where were you Friday night?" simply could not be safely answered. DSHS finds itself in similar situations constantly, and it is hard to know how caseworkers should respond.

My impression of my DSHS caseworker was that she had dealt with the situation my father described way too many times. She looked for a dirty house because she *could*. She didn't believe she would learn anything useful by asking us. And she wildly overreacted to any concerns we raised, because she was used to assuming that if you admitted to a 1x problem it meant you had a 10x problem. "I have a drink now and then" meaning "I get drunk every night." "We sometimes quarrel" meaning "We're lucky not to have attracted police attention."

By the end of our relationship (and thank the gods it's over) everyone was advising us to lie to her; it seemed to be a better service to the truth than honesty. But I tend to be most bluntly honest when most furiously angry, so that was really hard for me.

Some of this could be solved by better funding and lower workloads. I don't know what to do about the rest. It's notoriously a job that chews people up, and that is bad for everyone.

[Lonespark]

if you admitted to a 1x problem it meant you had a 10x problem. "I have a drink now and then" meaning "I get drunk every night." "We sometimes quarrel" meaning "We're lucky not to have attracted police attention."

By the end of our relationship (and thank the gods it's over) everyone was advising us to lie to her; it seemed to be a better service to the truth than honesty. But I tend to be most bluntly honest when most furiously angry, so that was really hard for me.

Yeah, this is something I have come around to understanding very late in life. I was raised to be cynical about many things. For instance, I never, ever believe that politicians are telling the truth, except incidentally when it helps their cause. And I have a pretty healthy suspicion regarding the national and state governments keeping secrets. But somehow this never properly translated into keeping stuff from social workers and police, even though it certainly did translate into not calling them. For some reason I felt like if I were honest, they would understand that my intentions were good. It's a stupid, privileged attitude to have, and I'm definitely over it now.

When my son was born I was annoyed that I ended up having to pay for drug tests because they weren't "medically necessary" since I was healthy and so was the baby, but there was no way anyone was taking my word for the fact that I wasn't using.

Some of this could be solved by better funding and lower workloads.

Absolutely. But the same people who want to enforce the ideal of motherhood never want to pay for it.
I also feel like there's a problem having family services agencies be quasi-law-enforcement. Or maybe I'm getting it wrong and they're all compliance/enforcement and counseling/financial support/training things are on loan from other departments? Depends on the state, I guess. But anyway, you end up in this situation where you sort of want to be found deficient or suspect enough to get services, except that that seems like a nightmare that ends, if it doesn't begin, with having your kids taken away.

[Ellen Brand]

My mother was a HORRIBLE mother, by a lot of people's standards. She worked outside the home from the time I was... I dunno, three or four? I went to day care until I was ten. She had short hair, she wore suits, played sports, and didn't care if I ran around playing with squirt guns and action figures, or Barbie and My Little Pony. She bought me He-Man and Ninja Turtles toys, no matter how dumb she thought they were.

Not that she's perfect-- I was diagnosed with Aspergers in college, and we're both looking back at my childhood and realizing that a lot of my problems at the time came from her expecting me to act like a neurotypical child. But that was the 80's and early 90's, and it's not like anyone knew much about Aspergers in our circles, let along believed it affected girls.

She still doesn't entirely treat me like an adult, but she tries.

[Tonio]

I have a relative who is a therapist and social worker who was employed by an agency for a couple of years, assigning children to foster families. My understanding was that this was mostly looking after the children in their new situations. From the relative's description, I had the impression that the vast majority of cases where children were taken away involved physical or sexual abuse, or substance addiction or even drug dealing. What are some of the other reasons children would be removed? I know too many people who think of such agencies as being about welfare only.

[Kit Whitfield]

Not that she's perfect

Nobody is. I reckon that if my son is reasonably functional and still speaking to me by the age of thirty, I'll have done about as well as can be expected.

[Mmy]

@Tonio: I have actually read of cases of parents being threatened with losing their children because the children were overweight.

@Kit Whitfield: I reckon that if my son is reasonably functional and still speaking to me by the age of thirty, I'll have done about as well as can be expected.

Sounds like a reasonable ambition. Part of the job of a child is to differentiate themselves from their parents. That is a painful process for the parents because they have to stand back and watch their children make their OWN mistakes.

[Tonio]

Mmy, yes, that's way too extreme and unjust even if the parents were feeding the children nothing but soda and potato chips. Were the agencies out looking for such cases? If not, I'd be curious to know how those families came under the scrutiny in the first place. I suspect that in many cases, the agencies got dragged into an interfamily or intrafamily dispute and didn't know or didn't care about the whole story.

[Mmy]

@Tonio: Here are some links to the most recent case I know of:

Obese children to be put up for adoption and Dundee Council Removes All Seven Children From Fat Family

[hapax]

My mother was a HORRIBLE mother, by a lot of people's standards. She worked outside the home from the time I was... I dunno, three or four? I went to day care until I was ten. She had short hair, she wore suits, played sports, and didn't care if I ran around playing with squirt guns and action figures, or Barbie and My Little Pony. She bought me He-Man and Ninja Turtles toys, no matter how dumb she thought they were.

One of my Treasured Possessions is a Mother's Day card my son made for me when he was mmmm, maybe three.

It was obviously a "Fill-in-the-blank" form prepared by the daycare workers*, where they would ask the child questions and write down their answers.

His says:

"My mommy is pretty because SHE WEARS BLACK.
My mommy is special because SHE HITS ME WITH SWORDS.
I love my mommy because SHE WATCHES GODZILLA WITH ME."

Like I said, it's a treasure -- I still have it tacked up on my bulletin board -- but I was worried for quite a while that I was going to receive a visit from the authorities.

*Yes, I also got slapped with the scarlet BM because I have always worked and my kids attended daycare from the age of six weeks. I remember once asking my kids if they would preferred that I went part-time and stayed home with them more. The look of sheer SHEER HORROR on their faces at the prospect would have made me sad, if it hadn't been so funny.

[Tonio]

So is that type of thing consistent and widespread? I would imagine that a case like that in the US would be all over right-wing radio, but then, I don't listen to those stations. I thought I remembered some Slacktivistas saying they knew of cases here were removal was threatened because the parents were Wiccans or pagans.

[cyllan]

@Kit Whitfield: Never having had a child I can't speak to the difference between painful childbirth and a c-section but I did have surgery similar to a c-section (massive tumour in/around uterus). I am allergic to morphine and have a really nasty reaction to most pain-killers so I was off pain-killers very quickly. Have a nasty scar but even without pain-killers it is quite a manageable surgery. I would take what I went through over what lots of women go through in childbirth any day.

I had an emergency C-section and no labor, and everything turned out just fine. I came home from the hospital able to handle my daughter without any issues, and I recovered easily. Would I advocate for everyone having a C-section? No; it is a statistically longer recovery time; it does have more complications than a vaginal labor and delivery. Would I advise someone who went through hell-on-earth doing a vaginal delivery to just get the c-section? Absolutely.

[sinned34]

Did you hear? All mothers are deadbeat dads!

[Literata]

There have in fact been cases of custody either put in question or decided on the basis of parents' religions, although the one or two that I recall were (I think) cases of divorced parents where one parent used the other's religion as a reason not to grant custody or joint custody. (Father's lawyer: "And she's a witch!" - that kind of situation.) I can look up references if it matters. Mary Kaye's situation here was probably more representative if less clear-cut - IIRC, her family's application to foster/adopt was inexplicably delayed for months or a year.

[MaryKaye]

Literata wrote: Mary Kaye's situation here was probably more representative if less clear-cut - IIRC, her family's application to foster/adopt was inexplicably delayed for months or a year.

There were a series of delays: delay in approving the home study (about 9 months) and then a general reluctance to refer children to us for the next year and a half, and then when the home study ran out they refused to renew it, saying that they would need to do a new one from scratch. At that point we had it re-done by a private agency. I wish I'd done that in the first place. The private agency had many Pagan clients and no issues with them (QUILTBAG clients too, and deaf clients, and single parents). They were searching but fair and reasonable when they did the home study.

How much of the delay syndrome was about about our religion and how much was about the severe culture clash between the social worker and us...I don't know. Near the end of the nine months we demanded to see her superiors, and had a long talk with them: that seemed to get things unstuck, I think because we looked more "normal" than her accounts of us suggested. But it was very clear at that talk that religion was an issue. They were supposed to be religiously neutral and they knew it, but what the heck was this Paganism thing? They had never heard of it and that made them very uncomfortable. We got hassled over various things with "pagan" in the name that they found on websites or in the newspaper.

I thank the Gods on a regular basis that I'm now an adoptive parent and not a foster parent, so DSHS has no more power over me than over any other parent: and that my son's mental health issues have a lot of supportive professionals involved, all of whom will take my side if DSHS does try to intervene.

I have seen religion come up in a US child-custody trial, but the side making that argument lost. The judge turned out to be a Unitarian and familiar with Unitarian Paganism; he was quite critical of the non-custodial parent's attempt to make it an issue. Could easily have gone the other way with a different judge, of course.

[kisekileia]

Mmy: That case is disgusting. It honestly sounds to me like the whole family probably has some sort of metabolic disorder. Unfortunately, because society is so busy blaming overweight people for their size, there doesn't seem to be nearly enough research going into figuring out what biological factors lead to entire families being overweight. I am honestly convinced that much of the obesity epidemic is biologically based, probably due to environmental pollutants or something along those lines, because it can't be just a self-control/lifestyle issue for so many people to be unable to maintain a healthy weight without going hungry.

I think that removing a child from a family because the family's religious views are actively abusive (e.g. Christian patriarchy/Quiverfull, any religion that denies kids appropriate medical and psychiatric care) might be justifiable, but the cases in which it seems to be considered seem to be the opposite of the ones where it would be appropriate.

[truth is life]

I am honestly convinced that much of the obesity epidemic is biologically based, probably due to environmental pollutants or something along those lines, because it can't be just a self-control/lifestyle issue for so many people to be unable to maintain a healthy weight without going hungry.

Well, I would say...lifestyle in the sense that "modern life" requires or forces people, in some sense, to live in certain ways, combined maybe with the sorts of diets that modern society maybe not exactly forces on people but which people generally seem to adopt. If everyone was a hunter-gatherer or had to survive on substinence agriculture, then there probably wouldn't be (much) obesity, environmental pollutants or no. Also, if it was the result of some type of pollutant, you would generally expect that obesity rates in the West would have peaked some time in the past (due to environmental laws being passed in most Western countries during the 1970s) and be falling, which I don't think is the case. Unless perhaps it was due to something being passed through food itself which isn't being regulated.

For instance, look at this Nature paper from a few years back; it talks about how not getting adequate quantities of good sleep causes metabolic issues which could contribute to obesity and diabetes. As they note, "sleep curtailment has become endemic in modern society," but that obviously isn't some type of pollutant. Still, there are so many demands on your time, and maybe you need to get up earlier than you would really like to commute in, so you stay up later than you should to to finish doing everything that you need to do. And then your metabolism apparently breaks and you can't fill yourself without gaining weight and you can't lose weight without starving yourself.

For another instance, this one personal--I would love to work out. I go to a university that has a huge (I mean gigantic) very nice quite new gym on it, and have free access (since I'm a student). But I simply don't have the time. Indeed, in theory I don't really have the time to post here at all. And I would suspect quite a lot of people are in the same boat, they are forced to be sedentary because of their jobs, which has quite a large negative effect on your metabolism, or so I understand. Society forces people to be sedentary, and maybe exercise later doesn't make up for exercise now. In any case, it isn't really voluntary, like most "lifestyle" choices--you live how you live not necessarily because that's the way you'd like to live but because you're somewhat forced to live that way due to lack of resources, whether time, information (maybe you simply don't know of any gyms around, or you don't know how to work out safely, or some such), money, or whatever.

So, probably some combination of things like that, changes to our diet over time (in particular, the much higher meat component which I understand to be a key part of the "Western" diet), and structural issues that force people to do those things, such as unhealthy diets being much cheaper to maintain (in time especially, but also in money). That's what my money is on, anyways.

[hapax]

One thing I've noticed, as my children have been getting older, that I tend to be criticized less by strangers (for things I have little control over: "Can't you stop that THING from crying?") and praised more (for things I have little control over: "My goodness, what excellent scholarships -- you must have raised her right!")

I'd think it would be the other way around. Most of the things my children were praised for when they were young ("Such lovely manners!") and criticized for when older ("How dare you criticize your teachers!") can be morefairly laid at my feet.

Has anyone else noted a similar trend, or is this just me?

[MercuryBlue]

I am honestly convinced that much of the obesity epidemic is biologically based, probably due to environmental pollutants or something along those lines

I'm mostly sure it's big agribusiness. Corn subsidies and corn syrup.

[cjmr]

Hmmm, I usually get praised for aspects of my children that are genetic (appearance, intelligence) and criticized for aspects I allegedly have control over (behavior, shyness).

The weird (to me) thing is that if I take just one child (no matter which one) on errands, s/he is perfectly well-behaved, but if I take two (in any combination) they act up the whole time. (And all three is an utter madhouse.)

[Ross]

Well, I would say...lifestyle in the sense that "modern life" requires or forces people, in some sense, to live in certain ways, combined maybe with the sorts of diets that modern society maybe not exactly forces on people but which people generally seem to adopt. If everyone was a hunter-gatherer or had to survive on substinence agriculture, then there probably wouldn't be (much) obesity,

Also, a lot of the people who are obese in the society we live in would have died in childhood. There's a huge class of metabolic irregularities that are linked with childhood conditions requiring medical intervention, and another huge class that would have incredibly deleterious effects on childhood development if you didn't have a reliable food supply.

It does wonders for obesity statistics when a big chunk of your population is one meal away from starvation.

[kisekileia]

That's really interesting, Ross. Do you have any links where I could read about that further?

[Tonio]

Mary Kaye's situation here was probably more representative if less clear-cut - IIRC, her family's application to foster/adopt was inexplicably delayed for months or a year.

although the one or two that I recall were (I think) cases of divorced parents where one parent used the other's religion as a reason not to grant custody or joint custody.

Thanks for the explanation. Originally I was looking for cases that didn't involve custody disputes or foster families, but instead where agencies decided unilaterally and out of the blue that people were unfit parents. In the case of obese families, I would think there would be many alternatives to taking away the children, even if the threat to their health was fairly critical.

[Mmy]

Re what Ross wrote about: It is "interesting" to realize that the one has a condition that is more common now merely because people didn't use to live that long with it. They didn't die "of" it, but it weakened them so much that they died of opportunistic diseases. So now more of us live long enough to have children who have children.

At the same time I always worry when the conversation wanders off into diet that it will end up again with mother blame. Somehow women are supposed to hold down full time jobs, spend hours getting back and forth to work, struggle to make ends meet financially AND spend lots of time in the kitchen.

[storiteller]

Hmm...apologies if this double-posts. I had a link in it originally and it may have gotten caught in the spam queue.

So, probably some combination of things like that, changes to our diet over time (in particular, the much higher meat component which I understand to be a key part of the "Western" diet), and structural issues that force people to do those things, such as unhealthy diets being much cheaper to maintain (in time especially, but also in money).

There's actually some proof that non-processed healthy food can be cheaper money-wise than fast food. (On the other hand, processed "healthy" food is usually the most expensive of them all.) But as you mentioned, the real killer is time. Not only time spent cooking but then the time spent to clean it up. For a single mom, making dinner and doing dishes takes a lot of time.

And of course, there's the time to buy the food in the first place. If you live in a food desert, you have to go significantly further to purchase produce, which depending on the store, will probably be of much lower quality than those in the richer areas.

The time issue is too huge for me to wrap my mind around, but I do a lot of work in changing food systems because of the access issue. If we can bring fruits and vegetables to people's own neighborhoods or help them grow their own through urban farming, we can start to change that entire dynamic. In particular, I think the advent of being able to use food stamps at a lot of farmers' markets is a great thing.

There's also the major structural issue of transportation. Most people's major form of transportation is the car, because it's either too far or too inconvenient to use anything or alternatives just plain aren't available. If we can develop affordable housing closer to places of employment and surround it with good public transportation, biking and walking infrastructure, that would make a huge difference in terms of exercise. Instead of having to pay for the gym, it would be right built in to your day. For parents, they would be able to walk or bike with their kids places (or allow them to do it on their own) and not have to worry about safety. That's why a lot of kids in poor urban areas don't get enough exercise - there's nowhere safe (because of traffic or crime) to play outside.

[sarah]

[[The time issue is too huge for me to wrap my mind around, but I do a lot of work in changing food systems because of the access issue. If we can bring fruits and vegetables to people's own neighborhoods or help them grow their own through urban farming, we can start to change that entire dynamic. In particular, I think the advent of being able to use food stamps at a lot of farmers' markets is a great thing.]]

Oooh! You should check out the Camden Center for Environmental Transformation: camdencenterfortransformation.org/ (Sorry, I don't know how to do the link-thing). They work in Waterfront South, the neighborhood I lived in for a while, and my friends Cheryl and Andrea are two of the founders. They do a lot of work in urban farming but also in environmental education. Awesome people.

[Mmy]

@storiteller: Hmm...apologies if this double-posts. I had a link in it originally and it may have gotten caught in the spam queue.

Nope, you aren't in the spam queque -- but TypePad may be a bit overloaded today. I looked back over the last 4 hours of spam and it has been extremely and unusually heavy today. One particular piece of spam was sent to every single open post on our board. At least it wasn't pr0n. Sigh.

[Dav]

You also need equipment on hand, and you may have not insignificant start-up costs. It may work out cheaper per meal, but first you'll need to buy oil and cinnamon and cayenne and salt and pepper and rice (in bulk, of course, if you can afford it and have some place to put it) and containers for leftovers and containers for vegetables and at least one knife and a cutting board and a couple pans and a skillet and probably a spatula or something, and individually these things aren't exorbitant but they can come together to be very, very spendy, especially on a tight budget.

Also, there's some disabilities that make cooking very challenging - I've been eating take-out or freezer food for weeks because of some wrist injuries - I just can't hold anything moderately heavy, or make fine movements, and that's pretty much put the kibosh on my skills. (Not to mention that it took me several years to get to the point of being a confident cook, on my own, which is a different gig than cooking for a captive audience. *I* am okay with sardines in cottage cheese as I rush out the door, but my imaginary three-year-old might not be.)

Local grocery stores here deliver, and I evangelize about it - it's about $5-10 if you want them to do the shopping, or you go and shop and then they deliver for free. (Alas, Trader Joe's doesn't do this.) It saves me all sorts of time, and the extra money is worth not making two or three trips to the grocery a week to stay stocked, and then hauling stuff home by bus.

[MaryKaye]

Yes, shopping time really matters. If you can only afford to shop once a week, you will not have as many fresh fruits and veggies, because they don't keep well. (She says, looking sadly at the slumped eggplant in her veggie chiller....) If you can only afford to shop once every two weeks, you will also need a car, because there's no way you can carry that home.

We have a fairly fresh-food heavy lifestyle and no car, but we shop every 2 days--I get off the bus on the way home, pick up groceries and walk 6 blocks home (larger loads on weekends with two people)--and we are in whatever the opposite of a food desert is. A food rainforest, I guess. Even so. only the occasional car-share lets us manage the cat litter purchases. (When we do have a car, we buy a hundred pounds or more of cat litter. It goes fast with five cats.)

And if you need to shop for bargains, you'll want to buy bulk, and it's generally not practical to buy fresh stuff in bulk. You can freeze meat but most veggies lose their appeal, if you can do it at all. A large family on a tight budget can use a huge box of cereal or a freezer full of frozen meat, but what can they do with ten pounds of peppers or eggplants? And again, bargain shopping demands a car, both because it spreads out your purchases among more stores--my parents would routinely hit four or five stores on a big shopping trip--and because you'll buy larger amounts at once. There is a Costco reachable from my house on a 45-minute two-bus transfer, but there's no way I'm going to make use of it--the trip back would be awful.

There's a very real sense in which I can afford to NOT have a car precisely because I am well off. If I were poorer I would need one.

This is all kinds of wrong, but I don't see how to fix it completely. Getting rid of food deserts would certainly help, though. I had to explain the concept to my fourteen-year-old when we were stuck in one of them on a missed bus transfer. He was infuriated. "Don't poor people have enough problems without that? What is the *point*?"

[Mmy]

Yeah, I had a post on my blog about how important time/other forms of privilege were to eating/cooking affordably.

We (spouse and I) both have control of our own time. We both cook and clean up. And (I timed this) the last "big" shopping trip took us over 4 hours. In a small city and we had a car. With both of us doing intensive comparison shopping/checking everything out. Two people and over 4 hours.

We have the luxury of time. We have a freezer. We already own all the necessary appliances. There are two of us. We enjoy cooking together.

I remember standing in the store looking around at people who were trying to shop while amusing/distracting their children and who I knew were going to have to do all their cooking/cleaning after long, hard days at work and was just overwhelmed with my sense of relative privilege.

[Kitryan]

I'm glad that some people have pointed out that the lower costs of fresh/bulk foods are offset by the high start up costs in volume and tools/other supplies. Also, if you live someplace with bugs/rats/mice, you may not be able to store a 10lb bag of rice or other bulk goods. Getting cheap individual meals is quicker/simpler/less fraught/more available to you.
in response to kisekileia's request for more info on nutritional issues in infancy from Ross's post:
I apologize if someone's covered this already and is in moderation-
there's juvenile diabetes, which used to be deadly, there's PKU which is the inability to completely break down the protein phenylalanine because a necessary enzyme, phenylalanine hydroxylase, is deficient. (partly copied from the About.com article) If you know what it is and are tested and can eat a special diet, possibly for the rest of your life you're fine. If not, the build up causes brain damage and other stuff. Congenital Hypothyroidism, Sickle Cell,and Galactosemia are other metabolic disorders that are routinely tested for in most of the US. Additionally, it's relatively recently that we've discovered that a lack of a nutrient can cause illness- like scurvy or rickets. People just didn't (as recently as well, now-considering that scurvy is reappearing in inner cities and that not the whole world has access to medical knowledge, let alone technology) know that you needed to eat a balanced diet- new availability of fancy modern or 'rich' foods like formula (in the early days of formula) or white rice lead to deficiency illnesses. I just googled 'metabolic disorder' and 'nutrition disorder' to refresh my memory on details I'd forgotten. (I remembered PKU but not the name exactly)

[cjmr]

Actually, I think rickets is making a comeback, too, in some areas, due to Vit D deficiency.

[Stella parva]

I once came across the line "motherhood- the longest guilt trip you'll ever take". That was long before I even knew my husband, so I just filed that under "uh oh... do I really want to go there?". Now my second baby is wailing at me while trying to fall asleep on my breast, so I have a little bit of experience.

Actually I never had anybody give me any crap. Apparently I project something that makes the cranky old know it all lady back off, although I am (most of the time) willing to listen to the experiences and advice of other parents.

My ideas as to why everyone lays it on mothers: everybody has one. So everybody has got an opinion and thinks they are an expert. It's like armchair psychology or the way people become instant experts on warfare and politics after a few beers- it touches your life, it's nice to hear yourself talk, you are convinced you're right and why can't everybody see this?

Also, we can blame the oh so romantic 19th century for this. A lot of the views of women as sole caretaker of the family, those angelic faces and extreme expectations come from the latter half of that century, at least in Europe. I think it is a form of extreme nostalgia for something that never existed at a time when the enormous industrialisation made for awful living conditions. At the same time nationalism in Europe grew to modern proportions, pathos was the tone of the day but political involvement at least in Germany was mostly prohibited so people (well, mostly the middle classes) turned towards the home and stylized the role of the woman at home into something larger than life.

Also, a lot of historical interest rose at that time, discoveries were made and books were written which painted the life of the Ancestors in the manner of the day. This is important for our topic: the histories written at that time cemented those 19th century values as Very Old and Natural. Even today I come up against people who think "but women have always been the homemaker, it's the way to be". The debate was very vicious over the decades in Germany, and it's far from over. But at least the point that there are many ways to raise kids and structure family life seems to have entered the community consciousness.

I think there was another point I wanted to make, but my nursing dementia is still in full swing, so I hope I am making sense.

[Kitryan]

cjmr:
There's definitely a lot more stuff I'd read in the past and don't have full details on or time to look up again on nutritional deficiency both in the places you think of it happening and right under the noses of the 'developed world'. Fad diets can cause nutritional deficiencies too, even in very well off people, though the safety net that comes with money and status usually catches them. I find it so frustrating that a lack of knowledge can kill people. You get such a big result for so little effort if you just give people the knowledge and opportunity to help themselves!
I particularly found it interesting that limes aren't really very good for treating scurvy, but that it was a catch all term for citrus fruit- and that the navy normally used lemons and when they replaced them with limes when limes were more readily available (and processed in a way that made them even less effective) there was a belief that the earlier, more effective methods using citrus hadn't really worked,leading to deaths in Royal Navy arctic exploration missions. This is somewhat simplified.(there's a really good article online-I think this is it: http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htms
and a book I'm meaning to get from the library, but all this is also in the Wikipedia entry on scurvy)

[Samantha C]

in the obesity epidemic discussion, I feel compelled to add the idea that a "healthy weight" might be defined as "the weight a person maintains without effort while eating healthfully and exercising regularly," and not "the weight that the BMI scale says a person should maintain no matter what their habits".

Fatness is very much genetic - it makes sense that children with fat parents will grow up and become fat adults themselves, but people trip all over themselves trying to prevent this heinous outcome without consideration that those children are likely to be fat no matter what their behavioral patterns are, and that skinny children who are dieting in order to escape the spectre of someday becoming fat, or those who are sitting on the couch all day paying no attention to their nutrition because they're skinny, and therefore healthy, can be at much greater risk than the fat kid who takes karate and eats a normal, varied diet that includes McDonalds sometimes.

[storiteller]

You also need equipment on hand, and you may have not insignificant start-up costs.

That was one of the things that surprised me the most about Nickle and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich's book on posing as a poor person. The fact that the deposit was so high in some places that people had to live in hotels or other places with no cooking infrastructure was so foreign to me.

In terms of general privilege about food, I think that hit home for me when my boyfriend (now my husband) and I volunteered for a summer lunch program in an inner-city park one summer in college. His mom asked, "What mom wouldn't feed their child lunch?" Honestly, I was absolutely shocked by that question. Not by the possibility - as I could think of loads of reasons off of the top of my head - but by the ignorance. Most of all because she came from a fairly poor family who did struggle a lot of the time. I'm sure it was only with some clever money-management and plain old hiding or going without herself that her mother managed to feed them lunch every day.

[storiteller]

Also, both of the stories about obnoxious guy in the park and grandma know-it-all are really kind of horrifying. I'm sorry those happened.

[Ruby]

Coincidentally enough, this week is the first ever Weight Stigma Awareness Week.

http://fitbie.msn.com/2011/09/26/do-americans-hate-fat-people-fight-prejudice-against-overweight?gt1=50002

[hapax]

Coincidentally enough, this week is the first ever Weight Stigma Awareness Week.

Just in time for all the blather over a possible Chris Christie (governor of NJ) presidential run.

I'm no fan of the gentleman's policies, history, rhetorical style, or really anything about him -- but the "humor" the Left has seen fit to unleash all seems to center around "being fat makes you unqualified to be President."

Really folks, were you willing to put up with that about Al Gore or Michael Moore? Then why are you dredging it up here?

[MercuryBlue]

I'm glad I haven't seen any of that so-called humor.

[Mmy]

@hapax: Really folks, were you willing to put up with that about Al Gore or Michael Moore? Then why are you dredging it up here?

Yeah, unlike MercuryBlue I have come across the type of body-policing anti-fat humour/commentary that hapax is talking about. I have tried to call people out on it but I am deeply upset that we even need to.

[syfr]

For those that want/need to talk about their parents/upbringing, may I recommend the Dysfunctional Families Day thread, which can be found on the front page at the moment?
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight