>To me, this seems another version of blaming women / mothers
>rather than recognising that there are some very real and structural
>problem in terms of the public / private divide . . . .

You bet it blames women and mothers --- because, as with all other aspects
of culture, culture is not some big monolithic unmoveable force.  It is the
sum total of literally millions of decisions that each of us make each and
every day.  It is difficult to change, no doubt, but it is NOT unchangeable.
But the first step to creating change for the better is to convince people
that things don't have to be this way, and to get them to understand that
every decision they make, every behavior they engage in, every statement
they make that reinforces the status quo is an impediment to change.  Often
it is the other women in the office who are against a mom bringing her baby
to work, or breastfeeding in public, or even breastfeeding in private.  It
is the woman boss with no kids, or who formula-fed her kids, or whose kids
are grown, or the woman who is very proud of her "sexy breasts" who is
unsympathetic.  In my own university, there are departments where no woman
*dreams* of even having pictures of her children on her desk, because it is
seen as "unprofessional".  And not only do these women go along with it,
they actively enforce it, telling new female faculty members to take down
their pictures, and making snide comments to others about a colleague who
dared to leave campus early to take her child to the doctor.  It is often
women who complain about other women breastfeeding in public (because it
threatens them).  Every time a woman wears a sexy bikini or a low-cut
evening dress, or makes a comment to her teenage son about how sexy some
woman looks who has a big bust -- they are reinforcing the dominant cultural
mode of breasts as sex objects.  We are all guilty.


It takes the ability to see the bigger picture, to see that the whole system
could be radically different, and then it takes the courage to think and act
differently in order for the culture to change.  Yes, the problem originates
in the minds of women (and men, obviously).  And the solutions must come
first by changing what is in people's minds.

This reminds me of a discussion by Daniel Quinn in one of his books
(probably Ishmael), in which he is discussing the "prison" of Taker Culture
(basically industrial culture) in which people run themselves ragged making
things and gettings things -- being materialistic.  And he says something
along the lines of people spending all their energy fighting over who gets
to be in charge and have power in the *prison*.  And that currently, white
men have the most power in the prison, and so the women and the minorities
are struggling to get more of the power to control things inside the prison.
And Quinn says that what most people don't understand is that there is
something much better than being at the top of the power hierarchy inside
the prison.  And that, of course, is to be OUT of the prison.

So while people argue back and forth about whether women should stay home
with their kids, or whether women should go back to work and put the kids in
day care -- I'm saying THINK BIGGER.  Imagine a world in which these are not
the only options.  In order to get to a better world, you must be able to
think about it first.

>Furthermore (and with all due respect), it is all very well arguing that
>women ought not to "buy into the idea that work women do in the home isn't
>really work because it isn't given an economic wage", particularly when one
>is talking from the perspective of being in one of the more privileged and
>status conscious positions in the world, that is, a professor in a United
>States university. It must be easy to ignore the perception that work in
>the home and childrearing is not real work from such a vantage point.

This doesn't really make much sense to me.  I am arguing that work that
women do in the home is extremely valuable -- not just the childrearing, but
the cooking and cleaning and laundry and everything else women do to make
like happen and to make it nice.  But many many women in the US have *bought
into* the male perspective that this work is unimportant and insignificant
and doesn't count and is only drudgery and can never be satisfying or
fulfilling.  And they make fun of women who would "choose" to stay home --
they must be morons, is the prevailing attitude.

I would say that 95% of my students, both male and female, will say -- when
they come into my class at the beginning of the semester -- that domestic
work is insignificant and doesn't matter and isn't worth anything.  And that
95% of them leave my class at the end of the semester with a very good
understanding of why this work is just as important to the functioning of
our society as the work of doctors and lawyers and college professors, and
why it can also be very satisfying.  I also teach them about the value of
the work done by the support professions at the university, such as the
secretaries, the cleaning women, the cafeteria workers, the lawn care
fellows, etc.  That just as one can argue that the heart and the brain are
the most "important organs" of the body, that nevertheless you can't
function very well without your pancreas or your T-cells or your urethra or
your skin or your capillaries -- that it takes all the parts, working
together, to make your body work, and so it takes all parts of society,
working together, for societies to work well.

>Morever, in terms of paid work, most women are not employed in such
>positions but rather in occupations such as sales and services and clerical
>work, where bosses take less kindly to a child or the pumping or expressing
>of breastmilk in the workplace, which is anyway, in most instances, not
>conducive to it.

I certainly realize that not all occupations are safe or appropriate to
having the child physically with you.  But there is no reason why any of the
above-listed occupations can't have on-site child care and appropriate
breaks to breastfeed.  And bosses don't take kindly to these issues because
they don't think they are important, haven't done it themselves, haven't
seen anyone do it -- are basically afraid of what it might mean.  I broke
down the barriers in my own department because I had the courage to just
bring Alex with me and act like it was no big deal (and this was BEFORE I
had tenure, so I was taking a HUGE risk if they had truly disapproved).
After everyone saw that it was possible, then a year later, one of the
secretaries brought her newborn child to work with her full-time (not just
the one day a week I did) for the first 1.5 years, and now we have a lab
post-doc who brings his daughter with him to work 1/2 time, and she just
turned one, and suddenly it is just assumed that of course people will bring
babies into the office after they are born.  The post-doc who brings his
baby with him is the one whose dissertation defense I nursed through.
Sometimes all it takes to start to change the prevailing cultural beliefs is
for ONE PERSON to say "No, I won't go along with this.  I think we can do it
differently."

>Lastly, I think to compare the experiences of women working in various
>so-called "developing" countries with those in most industrialised or
>"Western" nations, is dubious. Trawling the rice paddies with baby on back
>is slightly different to going to work at General Motors in Detroit or
>similar cities in countries such as New Zealand, Australia  and the United
>Kingdom.

Yes, of course it is different NOW.  My point is that we should be able to
create a world in which a woman working at General Motors can have on-site
child care and breastfeeding breaks.  Maybe even the same paid maternity
leave that other industrialized countries have.

>Moreover, my own conversations with various women working in
>policy making positions in the South Pacific suggests that women working in
>offices in many of the islands have just as little scope for involving
>their infants in clerical life as women anywhere else.

In Mali, babies are everywhere in offices -- on mothers' backs, or in the
arms of babysitters when mother has to do something that requires not
holding or strapping on the baby.  WHY is child care compatible with office
work in Mali, but not in the US or the South Pacific?  If the office work is
basically the same, then the difference must be in the ATTITUDES of the
bosses and co-workers, and the mothers themselves.  And attitudes are in
people's minds.

>One can only ask why there continues to be such extensive lobbying for
provisions such as nursing breaks and maternity / parental leaves if  the
problem exists
>mainly in women's minds, as Kathy appears to suggest.

You've missed the point.  The reason there is extensive lobbying for nursing
breaks and better maternity leave is because someone HAD THE IDEA FIRST THAT
THESE WERE REASONABLE THINGS TO REQUEST OR DEMAND AND THEREFORE THEY ARE
WORKING HARD TO CHANGE OTHER PEOPLE'S MINDS SO THAT THESE WILL BE A REALITY.
The reason they aren't a reality now is because not enough people -- or not
the right people -- have become convinced yet.  When you get the appropriate
people to change their minds, then all things are possible.

Many of the great social change movements of this century, which have
resulted in better lives for many people, began as ideas in the minds of a
few people, which were radically different from the ideas in the minds of
the majority -- and slowly but surely, enough minds were changed that the
culture changed.  Examples: the US Civil Rights Movement, the Americans with
Disabilities Act, the women's suffrage movement to give women the right to
vote, and so on.  Nelson Mandela had an idea.  Rosa Parks had an idea.
Martin Luther King Jr. had an idea.  Culture begins in people's minds -- and
the great edifices that are built upon people's ideas can be changed by
changing the ideas inside people's minds.


Kathy Dettwyler

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html