Why are 'psychoneurotic' feminists who dress their kids in nappies making men so upset?
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Version 0 of 1. Why are successful women so often called out on the basis of things they do in public with their children – particularly young kids? Why are they so often judged? Why did David Campbell devote a whole column in the Daily Telegraph to the fact that TV and radio presenter Yumi Stynes took her baby to a film premiere wearing a nappy? Why did Mark Latham feel the need to write a column accusing inner-city feminists of hating children and having a “psychoneurotic disorder”? Why did the Australian Financial Review publish it? The reason lies in a deep-rooted and underexplored separation between the public and private spheres. We don’t need to go very far back in our legal and political institutions to see that the public sphere has been traditionally coded as male and the domestic sphere designated as the realm of women and children. The separation goes back at least to a formative phase of Western democracy in the shape of the Greek agora – a space where free adult male citizens could enter to debate matters of public interest – but which excluded women, foreigners and slaves. Women, even in first world democracies, have been excluded until very recently from the public sphere when it comes to many basic rights that some men have taken for granted. When my second son, Sam was six months old, my very supportive husband drove him to Sydney University, where I was in a senior role, so I could breastfeed in or between meetings. Sam had a lovely vocal way of expressing his appreciation for the milk I was producing. I think he may have been the loudest breastfeeding baby ever born. He gulped, he burped and – let’s be honest – he farted. A lot. He was a baby. Most people in the meetings were totally wonderful about me feeding him and wanted to hold him while I sorted papers. But someone put in an anonymous complaint about having to deal with a senior manager who was “lactating” and, therefore, apparently couldn’t think clearly. When I read the bizarre media attacks on Yumi Stynes for taking her baby on the red carpet in a nappy, I was reminded of breastfeeding Sam at work and how deeply entrenched the distinction between public and private remains. Yumi Stynes is a smart and accomplished woman who clearly juggles, as many women and men do, a rich family life and a career. And here’s the shocking news: she is also a parent with a young child. Perhaps she’s still breastfeeding. If so, I bet she is able to think and breastfeed at the same time. Perhaps she simply wanted to be with her child. The baby seemed fine. They got to cuddle while she did her job. And please don’t get me started on the idea that babies need to dress up for the red carpet. In what? A tiara? Second wave feminism – which is often discussed as if it is passé – is a relatively recent political movement and the work of that movement remains. There is still much to achieve. One of the big legacies of the second wave feminist agenda is answering the question of how we allow men and women to nurture children and still have meaningful careers. In the upper middle class, the solution often lies in hiring nannies. It’s not an option for the vast majority of Australians. Alternatively, it lies in one parent staying home, when economically feasible, while the kids are young. Yet, for many families that means patching up part-time work with expensive and hard to access childcare. So when are we going to stop pretending that the care – the love and nurturing of children – is something women should politely sort out without causing inconvenient public or corporate financial and “human resource” issues? We need to start by talking openly about what it’s really like to juggle having babies and young kids with the fact that, in most families, both parents work. We need to acknowledge how hard it is to hold it all together in our family lives while we pursue careers. If Yumi Stynes had walked her baby down her neighbourhood street in a nappy with no singlet no one would have blinked. As it happens, she took her baby to work with her. How we speak about her choices should be a crucible for reflecting honestly about the choices other women and men have to make on a daily basis about balancing work and family. The invisible work of giving birth to, feeding and raising children needs to be seen as a core part of our society and a part of our economy. The labour women have traditionally done when it comes to raising children has been invisible for far too long. There are women like me who are lucky enough to have a partner who has fully participated in raising young children. Those men are still rare. By holding her gorgeous baby while she walked down the red carpet Yumi Stynes reminded us that she has other work to do besides looking fab and contributing to public debates. She has a family to love. We all do. |