when mother is not "mothering": the devaluation of motherhood

she is mother mother is mothering ladies and f that is the new compliment you want to hear long gone are the days when mother is a term reserved for soft women with a homely charm today mother is sexy Fierce Cy if we put our cultural critic hat on for a second this shift in language Falls in line with making every part of our Lives appealing marketable including parenting which was once A Private Matter spend the day with us y y y can walk [Music] first day [Music] postpartum but guy consequently this has led to an

increased surveillance of mothers now don't get it twisted throughout history mothers have already long been subject to scrutiny the patriarchal myth that those assigned female at Birth are naturally nurturing and caring has set such a high standard for mothers that they are constantly criticized for not mothering 24 seven then as pregnancy birth and child rearing became institutionalized decisions around how to conceive deliver and raise one's children fell out of the hands of mothers and largely into the hands of Corporations media and the general public a parent who is maintaining life that is entirely dependent on

her who should have society's greatest support and empathy are instead subject to intense scrutiny I should note here that I'm not referring to mothers who exploit their children for Content one well-known Mommy influencer that I also dislike is r and jacine who films her daughter in suggestive poses and refuses to acknowledge how this puts her child at risk of creeps I'm talking about mothers who are just sharing what their everyday responsibilities consist of such as cooking for her kids doing their babies hair swaddling tips Etc one of these mothers is Alexandra sabble on Tik Tok

who shares meals she cooks for her children she makes things like mac and cheese pork chops broccoli and sweet potato chicken alfredo meatloaf sounds delish but the most popular videos of hers are always the ones where she's giving her children something unhealthy like McDonald's fries or hamburger helper it's almost as if social media algorithms purposely push one-sided images of people to get more clicks and comments wouldn't that be crazy it is appalling to me to open the comments on her Tik toks and find that people have nicknamed her donut mom as if moms aren't allowed

to treat their children to unhealthy food or take breaks from cooking or as if it's cheap to even cook at all in this economy there are literally people online who mock her under this insulting name people even nitpick over the tiniest things like her glasses being crooked or her shirt being a bit frumpy or her air fryer being not cleaned like girl if this bothers you please don't step into the kitchen of an average college boy or please don't ask a graduate student what their diet consists of I wish 90% of students had meals remotely

close to what this mother makes on the one hand it amazes me how people consume mothers on their screen as pure products but on the other hand and when we live in this visual age of spectacle it's unsurprising that people expect even a working mother of three children to be in full [ __ ] clam at 8:00 a.m. on a Thursday morning perhaps the most worrying comments I see are the ones that say certain people don't deserve to be mothers let's situate this within the West's horrifying history of eugenics that led to sterilizations being performed

on racialized and Indigenous women of Social Services that took children away from single mothers because they weren't fit to have children and it's apparent that people today unfortunately still carry the same sentiment that motherhood is a special Club only some people should be allowed into the thought seems to be if I can watch mothers like all things Victoria and Nar Smith be completely dressed up with perfect hair and makeup need bread from scratch why can't all mothers be that way in this online World each mother's individual details are erased she becomes instead an instantiation of

the abstract mother part one the devaluation of motherhood creating life and then ensuring that this vulnerable ball of Life survives past the age of five is an extremely difficult job but this job is so often undervalued or even made invisible people always ask me for book recommendations so you're going to get one in this video can you throw this book to me we're talking about night [ __ ] by Rachel yder which recently got released as a film as well though I haven't seen that I think that's good in the book we get a detailed

look into the life of a stay-at-home mom raising a toddler I won't give any spoilers to the actual plot but what I I really appreciated about this book was it's drawing attention to how hard motherhood is it whisks away the patriarchal Veil that claims that women are just naturally suited for motherhood and will naturally know how to do it in order to justify a gender division of labor the culture must sell motherhood as a natural essential and desirable goal of Womanhood educational films like this one reflect society's belief that women could find fulfillment only as

Housewives and mothers now I let it come to a full rolling boil again because there's nothing better than cleaning up your child's puke and having to hear them wail for 2 hours while you try to put them to bed knowing you're probably only going to get 4 hours of sleep night [ __ ] walks The Reader through all the work both physical and mental that go into being a mother one of the scenes that has really stuck with me is when she tries to breastfeed while also working a job and loses one of the suction

cups in her breast pump always in a hurry hurry breasts hurry up and relax then let the milk come it's her fault if the milk doesn't come to too much coffee not enough food you need to figure out a way to minimize stress eat an energy bar eat these nuts take these special herbal pills eat lots of oatmeal figure out how to balance it all drink an entire liter of water in hopes of let down meditate breathe deeply you have eight more meetings today there was never enough milk for the baby he was getting so

big all he wanted was milk and there was not enough time or milk or hands the daycare closed at 6:00 so no late meetings must account for traffic the walk to the parking garage weather do not forget get the milk do not forget the milk she forgot the milk I think working mother is perhaps the most nonsensical concept ever concocted I mean who isn't a working mother and then you add a paid job to it so what are you then a working working mother imagine saying working father eventually the mother cannot handle a job and

raising an infant so she quits her job while her husband works instead but now she faces an existential crisis because she's confined to the home she has no passions no goals no energy left to be interested in anything else her only identity is being a mother but does the mother at least get recognition for all the labor she puts into being a mother no because mother is seen as intrinsic to her identity it's taken for granted there are some identities like being a swimmer or being an engineer where you have to put in constant work

to maintain that identity if you stopped swimming for 5 years it would be strange to still call yourself a swimmer you're an artist right I I used to be wowow but that feels like a lifetime ago definitely we get it similarly while identifying as a mother requires a complex set of activities mother is treated as a static essential identity as a result in night [ __ ] the mother's domestic labor is invisible to her husband for what it's worth I would K to stay home with him every day when he returns from work on the

weekends he critiques her for not taking the laundry out on time or not feeding their child properly and tells her oh God you're so lucky to just stay at home every day you're practically on vacation 24/7 in Housewives do you think they lead an exciting existence or a dll one well 50/50 I think it depends on their makeup don't you think well you know some of them seem to be out enjoying themselves all day others well they're just uh stuck in the old home but it's their fault the husband having never had to do any

of the house chores is alienated from the means of domestic production like you know when you move out for the first time and you only begin to realize all of the work that goes into maintaining a livable home how you actually have to buy toilet paper and it doesn't just magically refill itself how fast laundry detergent runs out how long it takes to vacuum a whole floor these labor processes used to be invisible and taken for granted when you lived at home because they were often handled by mothers I can assure you my wife doesn't

find life monotonous in the least noway once upon a time perhaps but now there's always something to do we have very many common interests music books and um other things monotony no the amount of cognitive load mothers have to deal with can be incredible and I'm talking about mothers without nannies without Maids without any assistance mothers who single-handedly remember their entire family's doctor and dentist appointments remembering the groceries they have in their fridge at any given moment and planning meals so that no grocery goes to waste remembering the names and faces of all their children's

friends and teachers the mental fortitude mothers have like damn I always be forgetting something the moment I leave the house in night [ __ ] motherhood sounds awful or at least unfulfilling and it is for a lot of people more moms on Tik Tok have been sharing The Not So Glamorous aspects of motherhood I was basically like sold the lie that if you just work hard enough you can get your pre-baby body back that doesn't exist that body is never coming back it's okay it's okay it's okay it's okay I'm right here I'm right right

here ballerina Farm recently broke the internet's heart a woman once an amazing ballerina at juliard gave up her dreams to be a mother sorry girl they're offering free gelato to the first 50 people who show up what I've been trying to tell you all motherhood is dog [ __ ] oh hi I'm a radical libertarian feminist now the way I see it biological motherhood drains women both physically and psychologically so mothers should be allowed to use whatever technology they want to prevent terminate or have pregnancies to reduce the negative effects of motherhood some of my

radical libertarian feminist friends even claim that in an Ideal World there would be no natural pregnancies instead fetuses grow outside of the human body so that people get to experience raising a child without suffering the Pains of pregnancy giving birth and taking months or years to recover from all that schula myth Firestone said that the joy of giving birth was a patriarchal myth that hindered the progress of gender equality and that it was actually like [ __ ] pumpkins women of Reddit what is a lie about your bodies that you later found wasn't true starcore

lady J of Reddit said and I quote pregnancy is disgusting I hated it the ugly truth is that it's awful I was literally just waddling around with Hideous indigestion looking for the nearest toilet to make sure that my sand grain size bladder didn't explode while constantly feeling nauseous and not being able to eat but starving half to death because I couldn't stomach more than a few bites at a time all while my most precious parasite was kicking the [ __ ] out of me and I couldn't sleep because I for the life of me couldn't

get comfortable and when sleep finally would come I would literally snore myself awake I know it's a gift and I wouldn't have changed it for the world but I loathed being pregnant with every single fiber of my being I just got here H talk about a downer she said motherhood is draining more like Society is the one that's draining motherhood let me tell you why motherhood can indeed be very fulfilling hi I'm a radical cultural feminist I believe biological motherhood is the ultimate source of a woman's power think about it since the human species depends

on people who can give birth it is an extremely special power that deserves far more appreciation people who could give birth and sustain vulnerable life used to be revered throughout history as Divine beings the fact that you could literally create life what's more magical than that if we give up this reproductive power men will have even less respect for us in fact we are already handing part of our reproductive power to Men Who control reproductive Technologies look at how male Obstetricians replaced female midwives and so now Men set the rules for what pregnant persons and

people giving birth should do as if they know our body better than we do men used to claim that women should not be educated because women need to dedicate their energy to our ovaries and womb and if we study our brain will steal all our energy our reproductive organs will die out and eventually the entire human race is doomed male doctors also said lower class and racialized women who had too many children proved their lower class status because they were naturally breeding like animals if mothers were allowed to be in tune with their own bodies

and not have villainized or subject to sexist beliefs motherhood would be so much more enjoyable but as it stands pregnant people are alienated from their own bodies and the process of producing life this bodily alienation is why motherhood sucks so bad not because of motherhood itself the increase of Technology allows external actors to micromanage a mother's experiences and make choices for her as if they view mothers like scientists who must create the perfect child why are men focusing all this technology on women's generative organs the source of her procreative power why are they collecting our

eggs why do they seek to freeze them why do men want to control the production of human beings why do they talk so often about producing perfect babies why are they splitting the functions of motherhood into smaller parts does that reduce the power of the mother and her claim to the child I only gave the egg I am not the real mother I only loan my uterus I am not the real mother I only raise the child I am not the real mother now the social feminists couldn't be here today but some of them would

agree with me in the positive potential of motherhood because social feminists see patriarchy and capitalism as intertwined some of them see a positive potential in motherhood a lot of mothers genuinely love their child and only hate motherhood and why is that in Frederick angles the origin of the family private property and the state he speculates that early societies were matriarchal but it is capitalism that has degraded motherhood Engles notes that during the tribal period of human history when a man and a woman became a pairing the man would live in the woman's house indicating that

the women held economic power after all women were the ones who cooked and crafted material tools that were crucial to the survival of tribes and produce the very living members of the tribe it's only when men began to domesticate animals in the land that economic power shifted to passing down private property through one's family hence the Central site of production shifted from the home to the private property economy domestic work of raising children became undervalued children and women became property to possess rather than full-fledged human beings can I please have my channel back I want

to finish my video can you please bring me back gelato the answer is no if you don't like pistachio or hazelnut gelato something's wrong with you okay now where were we H well she just finished talking about socialist feminism so I'm going to assume talking about capitalism is a safe bet part two I know better than you Western liberalism and capitalism are kind of like this right now they only see paid labor as real labor as a result liberalism has worked pretty hard to alleviate gender inequality in the economics sphere by fighting for women's rights

to do the same jobs as men and to earn the same wages as men but until more recently the liberal tradition has really neglected gender inequality in the private sphere take for example John RS who was a huge influence on Modern liberalism he wrote in his seminal book theory of justice that it is theoretically possible to be sexist or racist in private but still treat everyone equally in politics so you can order your family in a traditional gendered hierarchy and make women do all the domestic labor but in public still view women as equal citizens

with the same voting rights proposing such a clean distinction between private and public life has often LED liberal feminism to be blind to how private and public life are intertwined as early as the 1850s feminists like Harriet Taylor who was married to the famous utilitarian John Stewart Mill declared that all women should work Progressive right since women were barred from basically every form of employment in one sense yes but a comment like this also revealed Taylor's class blindness she said that working women with children would need a panoply of domestic servants to help take care

of domestic work but never thought about the many women who could not afford to hire servants or who the servants would be which often were working class racialized Women quote Taylor a product of class privilege offered rich women a way to have it all without offering poor women the same if we jump a 100 years forward to the 1960s a similar message still rang true in Betty freeden's popular book The Feminine Mystique she writes about how women must work to find meaning in their lives because motherhood was just a role that women uncritically played if

we realized how motherhood included meaningless tasks like cleaning the house and spoiling our children we would let it go but like Taylor freden reveals her class in race bias upper class educated white women may have felt this way but many women did not quote just because college educated Homemakers in Suburbia May seek release from their domestic duties so they can get jobs in Corporate America does not mean that female assembly line workers do not yearn to be stay-at-home wives and mothers even if if every woman did Find meaning in paid labor many could not unless

feminists also called upon men to pick up the slack around the house very few women would be privileged enough to work a full-time job and raise children at the same time this also LED conservative feminists to critique liberal feminists for being out of touch with a lot of women who enjoyed motherhood and family life after seeing women become exhausted and unhappy with trying to be a successful career woman and also a good mother freden revised her opinion in a later book 1980s super women were no less oppressed albeit for different reasons than their 1960s stay-at-home

mothers had been but the damage of liberal feminism on motherhood has been done and its effects still linger today Jean Beth key ilhan claims that liberal feminism has reduced motherhood to just another role women can fulfill or not quote mothering is not a role on par with being a file clerk a scientist or a member of the Air Force mothering is a complicated Rich ambivalent vexing joyous activity which is biological natural social symbolic and emotional I'm inclined to think she's right though to be fair I've never been a mother but I think a lot of

people don't appreciate how uniquely special of an experienced motherhood can be and how many complex responsibilities it involves this leads people to be overly critical of mothers like the people I talked about in the beginning of this video they treat mothers as if they're employees that got hired for this job called motherhood and there's some standardized way of assessing their performance I think this is is shown in the entitlement people assume to have to a pregnant person's body touching their stomach without consent telling them when and how they should move even if they've never been

pregnant themselves her body and her child are never fully hers for a long time men have convinced women that they are not real women unless they also become mothers and that motherhood is their primary job I think it is you the women who have had the most diabolical lies told to you how many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promo and titles you are going to get in your career some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world but I would

venture to Guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world quote good mothers are not supposed to have any personal friends or plans unrelated to those of their families they are supposed to be on the job 24 hours a day and love every minute of it ironically these unrealistic expectations are what cause many women to act out in unmother ways mothers lash out they become bitter I only cook enough food for three people now I have to cook more maybe they get too invested

in their children's lives because of all these demands they face so you guys what is the 411 in response to mothers not meeting this patriarchal standard states have Justified breaking families apart taking children away from mothers under the guise of social welfare and many families are still dealing with the generational repercussions of having their families broken up in Canada residential school have a haunting Legacy where children were taken from indigenous families and raised properly AKA according to Colonial Christian practices in the 1927 case known as Buck V Bell the US Supreme Court decided to maintain

a state's right to forcibly sterilized people considered unfit to procreate this led to at least 70,000 people being sterilized against their will and they were often poor racialized and or disabled even though this is no longer legal Force sterilized ation still take place all the time in secrecy for instance in women's prisons the doctor's response when she questioned him I'm not going to use Verbatim what he said cuz I don't think I can say this on TV but he said I'm tired of you pretty native girls you pretty Mexican girls and you pretty africanamerican girls

you guys come up in here and you get all hot and bothered then you go home and you do the Wild Thing you get pregnant again you come back to prison your children end up out there in foster care or where they end up and us taxpayers are forced to have to pay to take care of your children am I saying we shouldn't have standards for mothers absolutely not there are duties a mother should still try to fulfill loving their child being emotionally and physically present doing their best to provide basic necessities but many of

the barriers mothers face to being a good mother is not an individual problem there are historical legacies we have yet to outlive and structural failings that make raising a child hard we should be more careful about what expectations We Lay upon mothers or else we can feed into racist classist and ableist discourse also mothers are allowed to have bad days just as any other human being is I know damn well many of you don't know how to cook or are a college student eating instant Ramen far too often should we have the public nitpick you

over your poor eating habits or should we understand that in a busy tiring life having something to eat is still better than not eating at all patriarchal capitalist Norms have dictated what counts as doing a good job of motherhood for children a good job of motherhood entails raising children to be economically efficient for society or that they can be competitive on the social and economic Market a child is like a product that should improve the lives of parents and this can stop parents from seeing their children as a person but many mothers write about how

they find the most joy out of motherhood when they break those rules and are truly in tune with their child's relationship giving them treats at the wrong times playing unproductive activities sleeping at the wrong time these end up making motherhood energizing rather than draining in this interesting article by a sociologist and a mother she explains how she stopped raising her child in line with parenting Norms that emphasize Control Authority and discipline instead she focuses on encouraging her child's autonomy and listening to their opinions I conveniently found this article through ground news the sponsor of today's

video ground news is an app and website that gathers related articles from more than 50,000 sources across the world and political Spectrum in one place so you can compare how different Outlets cover the same story look the article I just mentioned was originally in German but the app automatically translated it for me I just appreciate how any information you'd want about an article is accessible within the ground news app or website you want to compare how different news articles with different political affiliations approach the same story ground news gives you that comparison you want to

know which news stories are being under reported on by the left or right ground news has a blind spot feed for that exact purpose you want to tailor your news feed to have more specific topics than just economy or Sports well in ground news you can follow topics like Halloween taxis Swiss national bank and then get even more specific recommendations like Tesla cybertruck you can also follow specific individuals so visit ground. news/ Allis sunva or scan my QR code to subscribe today you can sign up to get 40% off the same Vantage plan I use

that ground. news/ allvia or scan the QR code here so patriarchal capitals Norms dictating what counts as a good job of motherhood for mothers doing a good job of motherhood requires losing herself in her children she must give up her personal dreams and desires for her child she must also mimic the pure innocence of her child but this relegates her to a contradictory existence she has to embody a pure virginal innocence a nurturing homely woman but at the same time the reproduction of Life necessarily involves nakedness sensuality and erotic contact mothers get criticized all the

time for being sexy as if they didn't literally have sex to birth a child moreover because liberal feminism has viewed motherhood as just another role or job there's a tendency to view mothers as having chosen the wrong role in life because it's unpaid labor and now they're economically reliant on a partner this contributes to the idea that stay-at-home mothers are not as intelligent as child child less liberated women therefore I must tell this mom online who I have zero connection to that doesn't she know sugar and oil is bad for her kids well let me

just say thank God my mom did not post videos of how she raised me cuz while she did make me eat pretty healthy she also did treat me to pancakes ice cream fried food cake and I'm not sure the internet could have handled all that let's use our imagination for a second picture going up to someone who has invested years and years of physical and emotional energy into being a mother and you tell them don't you know that being just a mother is not contributing to women's Liberation you know you could have done something like

significant with your life right I doubt that mother is going to be like oh my God thank you you are so right I'm going to reenroll in University now and and work for Google no instead she's probably going to have an existential crisis and feel deeply ashamed about a lifestyle that she's now too invested in to leave quote it is one thing to tell a person he or she should try a new hairstyle it is quite another to advise a person to get a more meaningful Destiny we interrupt this broadcast to bring you an important

message we require your answers to a short quiz do you know how much it costs to raise a child in their first year let's test your knowledge on Guess that cost First up we have diapers can you guess how much diapers cost in the first year of raising a child the answer is $500 to $1,000 an infant uses about 8 to 12 diapers per day that's a lot of poop experts say you should expect a change between 2,000 to 3,000 diapers in the first year all right next up we have baby wipes now that you

know how much those little things are pooping every day you know baby wipes can't be cheap either how much do people spend on baby wipes in the first year of raising a child if you guessed $500 to over $1,000 you'd be correct now parents want to bring their baby out and about so how much is a stroller going to cost them there's going to be a big range here depending on the quality and brand of the stroller it can be between $250 to $3,000 to buy a stroller gosh just make them learn how to walk

at this point now if you're a single mother with a job and you can't get maternity leave you'll need full-time child care care which will cost how much place your guesses folks the correct answer is on average $10,000 here's a chart detailing the average cost of child care per month in each Canadian province there's a lot more that we could test you on but that would take ages so I'll just leave it there for today but in total the first year of raising a child in Canada averages around $25,000 and that stat is from 2018

so it's definitely even more more expensive now boy do I need a raise well thank you for participating on gu that costs we will now return you to your scheduled programming mothers all over the world are trying their best and I hate that I have to clarify this but it's the internet so of course I don't mean all mothers there are absolutely mothers out there who are far from doing their best and I don't condone staying in abusive or neglectful situations familial relationships are also so complicated it's totally possible to both love and resent your

mother but overall mothers deserve far more credit than they currently receive and if we want to criticize mothers social media is not the place to do it what you see mothers post on Tik Tok or Instagram are only small Snippets into their much larger life you do not actually know people you see on social media you only know a tiny digital representation of them in the current state of the world is motherhood oppressive probably in some ways but that doesn't make it inherently worse than other Life Choices a person assigned female at Birth makes you

also face sexism when you're girl bossing you get [ __ ] by capitalism in paid labor there are tons of women who can be financially independent but because of sexist internalized teachings are super emotionally dependent on a male partner let's just try to have a world where motherhood can be fulfilling and energizing for those who want it if you found this video interesting feel free to comment down below you know you can share your thoughts about motherhood you can praise your own mother who I'm sure would appreciate the Gratitude and shout out to my mom

who has worked so hard to raise me and my sister and who continues to care for us all sources are linked Down Below in the description box as usual thank you so much for watching let's keep talking and I hope to hear from you soon bye