>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