I’m not sure what to think about this article by Rebecca Walker. I’ve long admired both Alice and Rebecca Walker, and that makes it incredibly sad and painful to read. I understand where Rebecca Walker is coming from, especially when she writes this:
I love my mother very much, but I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son – her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology.
I’ve never seen my father, and while I admit that If I ever do I’ll probably tell him to fuck off for treating my moms like shit, there’s still something sad to me about never having seen your father. The same is true of my grandfather on my mother’s side. My moms tells me that he couldn’t be bothered to see me either. Now, I understand that the analogy isn’t perfect, but that really resonates with me in painful ways.
But on the other hand, I think it’s unfair for Rebecca Walker to paint all of feminism with the color of her mother’s failings.
The ease with which people can get divorced these days doesn’t take into account the toll on children. That’s all part of the unfinished business of feminism.
Then there is the issue of not having children. Even now, I meet women in their 30s who are ambivalent about having a family. They say things like: ‘I’d like a child. If it happens, it happens.’ I tell them: ‘Go home and get on with it because your window of opportunity is very small.’ As I know only too well.
Ok. Fair enough; but then this:
Then I meet women in their 40s who are devastated because they spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and they missed out on having a family. Thanks to the feminist movement, they discounted their biological clocks. They’ve missed the opportunity and they’re bereft.
Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating.
I’m not quite sure how feminism, which I understand at it’s most basic level as being the radical notion that women are human and shouldn’t be treated like shit or denied opportunities that men enjoy daily, is to blame here.
But maybe I’m missing something here, so anyone inclined to should weigh in on this article. I’m really torn up about it.
Mildly tangential point: I just today cracked open Susan Faludi’s Backlash and that last blockquote of Rebecca Walker’s that you cited sounds an awful lot like the anti-feminist ideas discussed in the introduction.
Also, re: “the ease with which people can get divorced these days” — is it really better (for the couple or for any children they might have) for two people to be forced to stay in an unhappy marriage? Personally, I’m certain that if my parents had remained married, we all would have been a lot more miserable.
The explanation has been it’s the Daily Mail.
It may be that….or it may just be that old thing of a daughter rebelling against the teachings of her mother, except that she goes rightward instead of leftward as most children of conservative parents tend to rebel towards.
Even at that, though, it’s still rebellion in the wrong direction, if you ask me.
Anthony
This chaps me in places I forgot I had.
“Go home and get on with [getting pregnant]“? Yeah, since conception takes all of 30 seconds and is only possible a few days a month, I should absolutely devote myself to it. Never mind the assumption that a woman who says “if it happens, it happens,” may just be deflecting a too-personal discussion. Never mind that, prior to the pill, virtually compulsory conception for married women left them without a choice.
As for the “women in their 40s who… spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and [therefore] missed out on having a family” — are there **men** who missed out by concentrating on their careers? Of course not, because (thanks to in part to people who think like Rebecca) our society and economy are still structured around one person in a couple having to devote (usually) herself to raising kids — and while plenty of women sign on for the caretaker-parent role, very few men do.
The cherry on top is that RW has no numbers to actually support this drama — it’s all just based on her (filtered) experience. Well, if her experience is the sum of reality, so’s mine: and in my experience, out of all the professional women I’ve met, only four were childless, and only one expressed regret, for an estimated whopping .02% — hardly a crisis. (That one, by the way, was waiting for the right man to come along before she’d even consider getting pregnant, which damn sure doesn’t sound like feminism’s fault.)
Feminism isn’t responsible for RW’s problems with her mother (from this piece, I’d guess her holier-than-thou tone, her faulty logic, and her willingness to make public the sort of complaints most of would keep private are the likely culprits for their estrangement). And feminism certainly hasn’t failed women, not even — or perhaps especially — the childless ones.
“are there **men** who missed out by concentrating on their careers?”
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Come to think off it, who takes 20 years to get a PhD?
And yeah, I know lots of professional women. I can only think of one that is childless and that is by choice. My general manager, a lesbian mind you, has two children. So yeah, this whole feminism has left a generation of women childless thing is mind-boggling.
Dang. I can’t really get it up (on my end) for critiquing what someone says from the place of a clearly broken heart. In the abstract, or if I didn’t know who said it and what the circumstance was, yeah, problems all through it, although really, now that I think about it, is it a problem when people say things that don’t make sense? I mean, can I not trust other humans to make up their minds enough about reality that no matter what any one angry person says about it, it still shines through as reality?
Yes, as a self-described knee-jerk feminist since my littlest days, and feeling ever more radicalized as the days go on, all that she says would normally get on my nerves. It is exasperating that people say things like what she says. But, again, having had some personal experience with things like ideology creating distance between people who care about each other, it is a sorrowful situation to me. Sorrow filled. Thank you for posting about this Kevin – seriously I like that you talk about this, and that you are someone who says things that constantly do my heart good. It is invaluable.
“I love my mother very much, but I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son – her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology.”
There is something strange about this statement.
The implication of the first line is that she chooses not to see or speak with her mother.
The implication of the last two lines is that her mother will not see or speak to her.
I feel strongly that I am being manipulated, but since I do not know the truth, I can only suspect that she is not being honest with herself or her reader.
@Joan Kelly: “But, again, having had some personal experience with things like ideology creating distance between people who care about each other, it is a sorrowful situation to me. Sorrow filled.”
Yeah, that’s what’s tearing me apart here as well.
[...] see many folks talking about this, but perhaps it’s just old news by now. I did see Kevin at Slant Truth had a post about it, and I agree with some of what he said (notably the [...]