It used to be that sex was tightly culturally regulated and mothering had no oversight. In 2019, in industrialized countries mothering is tightly culturally regulated and sex has no oversight.
What happened?
For most of recorded history, there were regulations about who could have sex with whom, who pursued and who was expected to resist. From the Bible to the Puritans, the regulations were particularly rigid for women.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Natural mothering is the missionary position of contemporary motherhood.[/pullquote]
Men could have sex with any woman (but no men); men could have more than one wife; and men could — indeed were expected — to have sex outside of marriage. None of these practices were thought to have any effect on a man’s virtue. In contrast, a woman’s virtue was situated firmly in her vagina. She was allowed to have sex only after marriage and only with her husband at his whim; she had no right to refuse. Rape was routinely blamed on women and even if they were not blamed, they were “ruined,” condemned to live outside the circle of polite society.
Even within marriage, women’s sexuality was tightly regulated. Certain behaviors were considered the province of courtesans and prostitutes and proscribed for wives. The “good” wife settled for the missionary position when and only when her husband wished to meet his sexual needs; her needs were irrelevant.
In contrast, how she mothered her children was not regulated at all. There were no choices to be made in childbirth, but when it came to infant feeding women could breastfeed, supplemented by or replaced with a wide variety of (generally unsuitable) alternatives like animal milks, or — if wealthy — could hire a wet nurse. For those with means, day to day childrearing was outsourced to hired help or slaves; for those without means, children were often put to work on the farm and, later, in the factories. Your children were your husband’s property. He might care how you treated them; certainly no one else would. No one would have even looked askance if you beat your children regularly. Some even thought regular beating improved their character.
Today, in contrast, sexual license prevails. Have sex with anyone and everyone, inside marriage and outside it; most people don’t care. Sexuality is ascribed to women as well as men; everyone is believed to be entitled to sexual satisfaction as a matter of health and wellbeing. We have utterly rejected the rules that guided sexual relationships for most of recorded history. Instead — at almost precisely the same time — we have created elaborate rules for mothering.
There are rules for what constitutes the “best” birth; there is only one acceptable way to feed a baby; and we have become deeply censorious of mothers spending time apart from their children. So-called “natural mothering” is the missionary position of contemporary motherhood. The “good” mother embraces it. She has no higher purpose than to meet her children’s needs; certainly her own needs are irrelevant.
We have constricted motherhood as tightly as we used to constrict women’s sexuality and for the same reason — to control women.
You don’t have to have a sociology degree to understand that the myriad historical regulations around women and sex were created to protect men’s prerogatives. Every respectable woman was owned by a man and was forced to stay home to meet his needs, raise his children and preserve her virtue. While there were always women who rebelled at such strictures, by and large most women didn’t merely support this view of women, they defended it by shunning women who wouldn’t comply. For a woman, being excluded from polite society meant being excluded from and by other women.
It’s harder to see that the modern prescriptions around mothering — in particular the ideology of natural mothering, also known as attachment parenting or intensive mothering — have been promoted primarily to protect men’s prerogatives. A “good” mother has unmedicated vaginal births, breastfeeds exclusively and for an extended period of time, and literally wears her babies. With the advent of women’s legal and economic emancipation, women have thrown off traditional strictures so they must be forced back into the home. The primary enforcers, as in the case with sexual restrictions, is other women.
But in contrast to sexual restrictions, enforcing mothering restrictions has been professionalized: midwives, doulas, lactation consultants and attachment parenting “experts” profit only when they force women to comply with their priorities. Not surprisingly, they spend a great deal of time pressuring women. In addition to the shaming and shunning that were formerly applied to sex, they have hit upon an even more powerful motivator. They have claimed — with no evidence of any kind — that if women don’t knuckle under to natural childbirth, breastfeeding and attachment parenting, their will children won’t bond; in other words, their children won’t love them. That fate is far crueler than being shunned by one’s peers.
Make no mistake, I am not referring to women who make affirmative choices:
Some women are affirmatively heterosexual and monogamous. They have husbands and they are faithful to them. They might prefer the missionary position, feel uncomfortable initiating sex, or might not enjoy sex but submit because they love their husbands. I applaud them for living the lives they choose.
That’s very different from women who are forced to appear heterosexual and monogamous on pain of condemnation and shunning. They might want more from a sexual relationship than merely meeting a spouse’s needs and they should not be pressured into believing they are “bad” wives when they won’t submit to their husbands.
Similarly, there are some women who are affirmatively domestic. There is no place they would rather be than home with their children; there is nothing they would rather do than breastfeed a child; they glory in unmedicated vaginal birth. I don’t merely applaud them for living the lives they choose; in many respects I have emulated them.
But that’s very different from women who are pressured into unmedicated vaginal births they don’t want, breastfeeding they don’t enjoy, and enforced isolation with small children instead of a job or career they prefer.
Our society has gone from sexually puritanical and unrestrictive about motherhood, to sexually licentious and rigidly restrictive about motherhood. That’s not an advance. It’s just a different way to do the same thing: domesticating women by convincing them that they exist for the benefit of others, while their needs and desires are ignored.
