In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Oh, you bad, bad women.

Chally

So read this from The Guardian: ‘Career women make bad mothers’ billboards pulled.

The Outdoor Advertising Association has ordered the withdrawal of controversial billboard ad which read “Career women make bad mothers” following an outcry from working mothers.

The ads, which were part of an OAA campaign designed to promote the effectiveness of billboard advertising, started appearing on the side of buses and on an estimated 11,000 billboard sites this week and were due to run for two weeks in total.

Just as you would expect, rather than an apology we get a “we totes didn’t mean it!” moment:

The strategy head of Beta, Sharon Johnson, said: “There has been a misunderstanding with an important mothers’ forum about this campaign which is about sparking a debate. It is not what the campaign thinks. But rather than offend people the decision has been taken to replace the posters saying ‘Working women make bad mothers’ with other slogans which work just as effectively.”

Yeah, those Internet people have the wrong end of the stick. (And there’s a nice touch at the end of the article with gratuitous ha ha look at those silly hysterical Internet wimminz, in case you missed it.) Gee, ladies, did you have to get all offended? Couldn’t you rather appreciate our super clever campaign? We’re, uh, playing devil’s advocate, or, um, sparking a debate, yeah, that’s it! This was, what’s that phrase, designed to further public discourse!

No no, Ms Johnson. We understand perfectly. Some people thought it perfectly okay to take something for which women are time and again shamed and use it in their charming demonstration of the power of advertising.

What debate is this meant to be sparking, anyway; whether women ought to be allowed to work? Whether women who choose to do so are bad mothers? You know what? We’ve had this debate, such as it is. It’s been done. It’s silly, and it’s offensive. The thing is, the people who feel comfortable plastering this sentiment all over the public spaces of the United Kingdom haven’t given a great deal of consideration to the actual lives of the real live women they’re talking about.

Because that kind of sentiment? Is classist as all get out. It reeks of the notion that women engaging in paid work are selfish where it’s a very very small percentage of women who have the choice as to whether to do so. The idea that women working to support their children are bad parents because of that just doesn’t compute. Of course, this is in a much bigger context of marginalizing poor mothers. This is a world in which poor women have been sterilized, in which people are blamed for being bad parents because they can’t afford to feed their kids optimally, in which poor people’s children have been taken away and sold to rich people and they’ve had no form of recourse. There are real problems for parents who are poor, but they come from a marginalizing system: poverty does not determine whether one is a dedicated parent or not. It is some breathtaking head-in-sand burying that allows anyone to tie paid work with bad parenting. What on earth more should we require of these women?

And the focus is specifically on mothers, of course. No one else could possibly be a proper parent with valuable contributions to make to their children’s lives. That sort of thing is for women only, and if they’re parenting with a man, the burden and blame around caring for children still rests on them, because that’s the proper place for a woman, right?

It is very harmful indeed to say that particular types of women, as a group, make bad mothers. This kind of thing gets thrown at non-white women all the time, and it is heartbreaking. Fat women are told the same, as though they are unhealthy and disgusting and will infect their children with their shameful horrid fatness. Something that’s been coming up a fair bit recently (as though it isn’t being brought up all the time!) is the astoundingly damaging meme that disabled women aren’t fit to parent. I’m sure many of you saw Cara’s recent piece on Kaney O’Neill, which is an excellent takedown of this trope. And Anna’s got a conversation going on reproductive rights and feminist discussions.

Lastly, the OAA/Beta advertisement plays into the construction of all valuable work as paid work. Mothering women are working women, irrespective of whether they engage in paid work or not. Parenting is hard work, valuable work, work that receives too little recognition as such. Stay at home mothers are doing some of the most excellent and substantial work around, and it’s not right to devalue that as no work at all.

Whether the OAA and Beta endorse the idea that ‘working women make bad mothers’ or not is largely irrelevant. Though frankly, if you’re going to spend £1.25m on a campaign, I’m going to think you might be invested in what you say. The heart of it is that they stuck up the message that women engaging in paid work are bad mothers, no question marks, no room for doubt, bright and bold and public. It must be a horrible thing to have to go past on your way to work, and worse when with your children. And as ever, a tighter hold is taken of those women at the intersections of oppressions.

44 thoughts on Oh, you bad, bad women.

  1. Ugh, what a mess. They wanted controversy, they could’ve done “abortion access saves lives” or “help prevent rape: don’t rape people.” There’s PLENTY of controversial stuff (sad as that may be) among the messages that actually help to make the world a better place, rather than those that encourage people to make it worse.

  2. Working mothers do make bad mothers or they make bad workers. You can’t devote adequate time to your children while devoting adequate time to your job. Something has got to give and if it is not time with your children it will be time to your job. Bottom line.

  3. I’m astounded. I saw this pic on a website and laughed. I assumed it was a parody–it never occurred to me that it could be anything else.

  4. courage the cowardly dog: Again, that’s a silly and offensive thing to say. Plenty of people obviously do both. Even if someone isn’t coping with both, don’t you think that might say more about a system that requires too much of people rather than whether someone is “bad” or not? And why should the pressure be on mothers in particular?

    On a related note, what I think would be fabulous would be if all this weight wasn’t just on mothers, but also co-parents, if any; there should also be more solid support systems in the wider community, because the idea that people ought to do it all on their own – irrespective of their capabilities – can be quite damaging.

  5. Working mothers do make bad mothers or they make bad workers.

    Thank you for that insight. Which jobs are you referring to? All of them? I thought my mom did a great job balancing raising my brother and I and working f/t at a convenience store, but ymmv.

  6. @courage, by that definition, most men in modern society are bad fathers. Is someone automatically a “bad” parent if s/he isn’t the primary caregiver? Are people “bad” workers if they work part-time? What about people who manage to have successful careers at home, *while* they take care of the kids? Or parents who arrange their schedules so that they work while the kids are at school or sleeping? I don’t think you really thought this one through.

  7. In retrospect, my comment contributes nothing except notice that I am snarky. I’m sorry for leaving something so antagonistic.

  8. You don’t need to apologise, Anna, I think your comment is fine.

    Right, I think that particular comment is well and truly addressed everyone, so let’s leave it be now.

  9. courage: so you define being a “good” parent by the time you devote exclusively to your children?
    A. that makes most parents in human history bad parents
    B. that makes the crushing majority of men today bad parents

    But hey, let’s focus on mothers, because God knows we don’t harass and intimidate mothers enough in our society.

  10. “Mothering women are working women, irrespective of whether they engage in paid work or not. Parenting is hard work, valuable work, work that receives too little recognition as such. Stay at home mothers are doing some of the most excellent and substantial work around, and it’s not right to devalue that as no work at all.”

    Seeing as most of these mothers are raising sexist, racist, and disablist children (as evidenced by the overwhelming numbers of sexist, racist, and disablist adults) I would be less apt to call what they are doing ”valuable work”. The world would be a much more better place if people (many of them stay at home moms) didn’t pass on their idiotic views and environmentally destructive lifestyles to their kids. The rate at which current bigots breed will always be greater than the rate at which anti-oppression activists can reach and change minds.

  11. I’m always interesting in anti-working-mother stuff because for years, as a poor child (no running water until my junior year of high school, hand-me-down clothes, no money for movies/hanging out with friends/sometimes watching my parents skip meals so that I could eat) – my mother did not work. And I hated her for it, and was deeply ashamed, because the feminist writings I was being exposed to to be screamed that she SHOULD work, that her choice to raise me was weak and made her useless, because if she worked we maybe wouldn’t be so poor.

    It’s worth stating that I no longer feel this way, and have a better understanding of the whys behind my childhood – but I was angry about it for a good ten years.

  13. Personally, I think there’s a problem with mothers who don’t work, in that their daughters often get the message by looking at them “society denigrates motherhood and treats my mother as if she is a totally unimportant person, because she doesn’t work; therefore a. I should also treat my mother as totally unimportant b. even if I treat my mother as important, the fact that society doesn’t means I should never have kids”.

    This isn’t an actual problem with the women who don’t work at all; it’s a problem with society treating them as if they’re worth approximately dog shit. When you’re the most important thing in one person’s life, but *everyone* else in the world treats you as worthless, it’s going to shape how that person views you and how you view them… and unfortunately, the pushback against the attitude that mothers are worthless is often against the concept that women can be mothers rather than promoting the concept that women who are full-time mothers are still worthwhile human beings.

    The virulence of the “working mothers are bad mothers” meme is only matched by the virulence of the “full-time mothers are worthless people” meme, which puts enormous pressure on women not to have kids at all, except of course then there’s all the “as a woman, you must feel empty and unfulfilled without children” bullcrap, which puts pressure on them *to* have kids, and the end result is that no matter what you’re screwed. Men get only a tiny amount of this (there’s the whole “cat’s in the cradle” thing for men, where the social pressure *not* to be an involved parent works against the normal human parent’s desire to be involved with their children, making children think that men are distant and uncaring and making men think their children don’t love them, and making their lives emptier than they should be. But I’m not aware of any pressure on men *to* have kids.)

  14. Cowardly dog:

    Tell that* to my kids, now happy, productive adults with college degrees. Sheesh, I can’t believe people still espouse those views. How Victorian of you.

    *Not only was I a working mom, I was a SINGLE PARENT working mom.

  15. Chally, if you have the time, I would respectfully request that you take a heavy hand with the moderation in this thread.

    Breeding bigots? Really?

    (P.S. You know, I think Courage even got a Next Top Troll nomination.)

    1. Evil Fizz I know this isn’t at all what you were saying, but just so everyone else knows, it’s totally not Chally’s fault that Courage’s comment got through — he should have been sent directly to the trash heap, so I’m not sure how this one happened. I don’t even think his comment went to the mod queue, it just posted. I’ll re-add his info to the blacklist now.

  16. Argh. This is part of why I hate the use of the phrase “full-time mom” to mean “mom who doesn’t have outside employment” – it implies that mothers who work only count as part-time parents. Which is sexist, classist, heteronormative, etc etc. Garg.

    Alara Rogers – It’s certainly not as pervasive or intense as the pressure on women, but there is definitely some pressure on men to have kids. Any number of men who identify as Childfree can attest to that.

    Also – Didn’t Courage the Cowardly dog win a Feministe Top Troll contest a while back?

  17. “Seeing as most of these mothers are raising sexist, racist, and disablist children (as evidenced by the overwhelming numbers of sexist, racist, and disablist adults) I would be less apt to call what they are doing ”valuable work”.”

    Right. Because it’s entirely the mother’s fault if the child has sexist, racist, or other -ist views. It’s not like the father ever plays any responsibility in that role. It’s not like the rest of their family or society at large plays a part in that role. Because, you know, mothers are the only people children ever come in contact with or learn anything from.

    You can obviously tell this, btw, by the fact that I’m a dedicated feminist who does her damnedest to teach her children how to not carry harmful views but still has to fight the outside influence that my children encounter every damn day.

    What is it exactly about posts about mothers that make the sexist trolls come out in spades?

  18. The rate at which current bigots breed will always be greater than the rate at which anti-oppression activists can reach and change minds.

    This doesn’t actually appear to be true at all. The rate at which people exhibit bigotry toward various groups declines steadily over time.

    We have reached the point where almost no one cares whether you’re Catholic or Protestant (such a big issue during John F. Kennedy’s campaign that he actually had to disavow Vatican influence on his political decisions… come to think of it, I almost wish we had a little of that bigotry back), and while growing up I *never* experienced discrimination for being Irish, Italian or Catholic, all of which would have been serious problems for me earlier in American history.

    Rates of bigotry against black people have declined to the point where the open racism exhibited against President Obama has actually been *shocking*, not something normal and expected as it would have been in the 1960’s. Rates of bigotry against gays and lesbians have declined to the point where some states have actually passed marriage equality laws (others have passed laws against marriage equality, of course, showing how far we have to go, but what’s on the table is not whether or not gays and lesbians have the right to live, or the right to have sex without being arrested, but the right to marry and be treated the same as straights… a big change from even the 1980’s).

    I don’t want to sound all Pollyanna here, but things have been steadily getting better over time as far as bigotry is concerned. Americans are for the most part becoming less bigoted (it’s just that the bad ones, feeling under siege because they’re no longer validated by society, are becoming louder about it). So actually, the statement you made that I quoted is empirically untrue. (In part, because almost no one goes from being unbigoted to being bigoted, but people do go from being bigoted to unbigoted, so even if bigots *do* breed more — an unsupported statement in itself — time is not on their side.)

  19. @Joe: And none of those children ever, ever recognize exactly how screwed-up their parents’ views are and modify their own accordingly. I suppose my GLBT and ally friends with homophobic parents are all lying. Huh.

    Everybody has their own privileges and prejudices- it’s a condition of growing up in our society. Everybody needs to learn how to recognize and fight against them. Some people will, some people won’t. Parenting styles might HELP them do that, but maybe not. Don’t blame the parents for the sins of society.

  20. This is ridiculous. Were they just being offensive for the sake of being offensive? What next–“Hitler was right”? “Let’s nuke the Third World”?

    “Controversy” is the easiest, cheapest effect in the world to achieve. Any ass can be offensive.

  21. evil_fizz: I can only moderate while awake, which I am now, and I’ll be here through the day as often as I can be, as ever. 🙂

    Joe: You know what, I think raising human beings is valuable work in and of itself, and people are no less valuable for having views I don’t agree with.

    Everyone, I asked you to leave courage’s comment alone. Please respect that. And thanks for your comments.

  22. I think the idea that children suffer when their mothers work outside the home should be nipped in the bud once and for all.

    There is an entire body of sociological evidence that has found, conclusively, that the children of mothers who work at paid employment have substantially the same social outcomes as children of SAHMs, after controlling for SES factors of the parents, which include income, occupation, and educational attainment. This evidence has been on the books for well over a decade, some of it collected as early as the 1970s.

    There is no room for debate on this issue. The question has already been answered by social scientists, and published in peer-reviewed journals (Journal of Marriage and the Family). The idea of making an inflamatory statement in order to “spark a debate” has been addressed in the common law, and is tantamount to falsely shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater.

    Whomever is responsible for the ad campaign should be sued for libel (publishing false statements) and inciting to riot (See Brandenburg v. Ohio, re “imminent lawless action”), and we would see a higher standard in advertising. Publishing lies doesn’t make them true. It just makes them written down.

  24. I’m sure the World Court could help them with that, and explain corollary legal interpretations to allow for certain legal doctrines to be cross-culturally applied.

    After some further research on the ad agency responsible for this rubbish, I found out that they are, in fact, a market research firm. They gather opinions, and are not responsible for reporting actual verified facts.

    It appears that they used the inflammatory statement to encourage people to respond and contact the agency with their opinions, never mind that the “question” wasn’t valid to begin with. I suppose they could just as easily poll people with something like: “Newton had it wrong. Gravity is all in your head.”

    It’d make about the same amount of sense.

  25. I think Bill Hicks said it best: “By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising…kill yourself. Thank you. Just planting seeds, planting seeds is all I’m doing. No joke here, really. Seriously, kill yourself, you have no rationalisation for what you do, you are Satan’s little helpers. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show.”

  27. @groggette

    Well, as you can see, it’s clearly not my joke, it’s Bill Hicks’. I’d never take credit for another comic’s genius. And perhaps your obvious lack of not only a sense of humour, but any understanding of humour’s place in political discourse is contributing to your depression. Or perhaps it’s a symptom thereof. Either way, I wish you the best of mental and physical health.

    1. Hannah, this isn’t my thread, but that is totally inappropriate. You told a joke that people have now said feels harmful to them; the respectful and humane thing to do is to apologize and move on. You’re refusing to do that, and have instead rubbed salt in the wounds by suggesting that someone not thinking suicide is funny contributes to their depression — that’s really fucked up, and I’m unclear what you have to gain from it. I’m asking respectfully that further comments from you (and anyone else thinking about commenting in the same vein) do not repeat what has been said here. Another comment like this one will get you banned.

  28. Hannah, as someone who doesn’t and has never suffered from any sort of depression, I can say your decision to quote a suicide joke here callous and indicative of your complete lack of understanding of the difference between humor which contributes to political discourse, and cruel humor which cuts people down.

    And your non-apology just proves you not only lack understanding, but you refuse to learn, either.

  29. Are you fucking kidding me?!?
    For fuck’s sake, yes, my inability to see the humor in repeatedly telling people to kill themselves means I’m fucking humorless. So much thanks for the spot on diagnosis too! Hooray! maybe now I don’t need to waste my money on therapy and medicine anymore!!!

  31. Hannah, not my thread either, but you’re not just being an ass, you’re also being an ableist ass. As someone else whose lack of humor also clearly contributes to her depression, and should therefore just lighten the fuck up and get over her mental health issues, already — and as someone who knows how to read our comment policy — I welcome you to our mod queue. Enjoy your stay.

  32. I’d like to take a moment here and say that when someone says, “CLEARLY, you are ENTIRELY lacking in a sense of humour!” what they mean is the listener/objector doesn’t have the SAME sense of humour as the speaker/writer. This statement is usually pulled out when someone has said something bigoted, generally obnoxious, or otherwise purposefully hurtful, to which someone else has objected.

    I’m glad to say that you’re right, I DON’T have that same sense of humour. And proud of it.

  33. So humour is appropriate when it’s victim is someone you don’t agree with, and inappropriate when it’s someone for whom you have sympathy? Got it. Thanks.

  34. Right, through some unforeseen circumstances this is the first time I’ve had Internet access in over 24 hours, I am very sorry for the delay and thank Jill and Cara for getting here. Hannah, that’s not on at all.

  35. Using humor in political settings actually requires the ability to understand nuances of language. To actually be able to communicate with others effectively. You, Hannah, have neither attribute.

    I hear award you a class A “Missing the point” medal.

  36. Good post but I think exclusively focusing on all the -isms misses an important point: Some mothers want to engage in paid work and be part of a workforce. They want to build and maintain careers or don’t see their work as moving up a career ladder and move to different jobs and whatever other permutation.

    I think to not mention this desire work – and yes ambition – feeds into the shame that paid working mothers are supposed to feel. I.e. the only reason a paid working mother works is because she has to economically do so.

  37. Seeing as most of these mothers are raising sexist, racist, and disablist children (as evidenced by the overwhelming numbers of sexist, racist, and disablist adults) I would be less apt to call what they are doing ”valuable work”.

    You’re an asshole.

  38. I’d also like to point out that marketers do some good stuff, and we are not evil, thank you. Clearly, if there were more working women marketers, and if advertising weren’t so male-dominated (although that’s rapidly changing), we wouldn’t see so many of these bullshit ads.

  39. if advertising weren’t so male-dominated (although that’s rapidly changing), we wouldn’t see so many of these bullshit ads.

    Sara, that’s a very illogical statement.

    1) Unrationalized sexism

    2) Unsupported by historical and current sociological data – usually, women pay the most attention to female behavior, and historically women have been the means of enforcing cultural norms (“Real ladies don’t do that”, “No better than she should be”, “What did your mother tell you”, etc). A well-known modern example is wearing nice makeup/shoes/designer-something and having mostly women notice it.

    Overall, the only reason that I can see for supposing that women would make less offensive ads than men would be a culturally-inculcated desire to not offend and a tendency towards cooperation. But that’s not necessarily true, just a supposition, and you didn’t provide any reason why you think women would be less offensive than men in your post.

  40. Yes, H, I suppose I should have provided empirical evidence in a random blog comment. How silly of me. It’s just that getting this Masters in Marketing is taking up so much of my time….

    Just because women enforce some cultural norms doesn’t make my comment illogical. Most marketers (if they have the resources), take their ideas through a sniff test with groups that they are targeting in order to avoid brand dilution through offenses that could have otherwise been avoided. And in my experience as a marketer, when a group of men get together to market on women’s issues, they tend to miss things just because they don’t have that perspective. Same with any other group. Marketing has traditionally been defined in terms of white, heterosexual males, which is why you still hear terms like “price rape” being bandied about, and men thinking that their version of clever is the same as a woman’s. I see it happen all the time.

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