Hi Elisa,

I see how the stats ended up confusing.

Here's a clarification:

Across all US women 53.5% are mothers
At age 40 specifically, 80% of US women are mothers

So the first stat is broad, and the second very narrow and specific about women aged 40.

Yes, i see the way labels draw people who self-identify specifically, but obviously I agree that they can be really alienating, as well I think that's the key.

Its a whole other article...but I think it's important to discuss how we relate to people even with whom we differ on key issues.

I hint around this with my idea of conditioned to believe that feminism is mutually exclusive from many roles.

I cut from this article some ideas about living in a very conservative area with many women who verbally disassociate from politics and feminism, but whom I see incorporating many of these ideas into rearing their chilldren.

That's because I want to develop my thoughts on this more fully, which means asking and considering the questions and points you pose.

Thanks so much for your comment.

I have to admit I'm coming dangerously close to disavowing the f word.  Not because I don't agree with the idea of equal rights for women, but because over and over I perceive the so-called "women's movement" as trying to make us men.  As in, there is a specific set of abilities, privileges, and behaviors which mainstream society overwhelmingly labels as "male" attributes, and I perceive that feminism is trying to force all us women into possessing/performing those attributes/privileges/behaviors because that's supposedly what "equality" means.

The end result being that I as a SAHM am looked down upon both by the mainstream (especially antifeminists) AND by the feminist movement.  Like I didn't feel beleaguered enough.

The thing is, I *like* my daughter as well as loving her.  I don't *want* to relegate her rearing to someone else.  I like home-centered living, I like homeschooling, I like family-centered life.  Feminism tells me I am wrong to like those things because it means I'm not "ambitious" enough.  Ambitious enough for what?  Is it just me or has anyone on the Left outside of the environmental movement bothered to figure out that this ambition crap is exactly what got the planet messed up to begin with?  We as a species weren't happy with the way things were and had to "improve" them when we didn't know what the hell we were doing.  We're still behaving that way.  And now women have to do it just as much as men do, or we're not "good enough."

And I am not imagining this.  I see it over and over again.  It is not my interpretation.  I don't actually believe it's the whole movement doing it;  I say "feminism tells me this" and "feminism says that" to simplify the discussion.  There ARE feminisms that let me do what I do and appreciate me for what I do.  But they don't speak for the whole movement and they aren't the most visible.  And it's so stupid.  If I were getting paid nine bucks an hour for just the housework I do, I would be called a maid or a custodian, and NOW and various labor unions would fight for me.  If I were getting paid whatever the restaurants pay for cooking three squares a day, I'd be called a cook.  If I got the minimum wage for looking after a child and providing her education I'd be a preschool teacher.  I don't get paid for any of these things--but I still do them.  Who says I'm not working?  Where is my respect?

Wasn't this what started the modern feminist movement (20c and later), anyway?  That anything a woman does is automatically considered "less," and that as a result women don't get pay and benefits for the work we most often do?

My teeth even set on edge when I see childfrees talk about this stuff because nowadays they're part of the problem.  I work my a$$ off daily and they call me a "lazy fat moo" and complain about my child (in generic, abstract terms, not us specifically) because she's four and doesn't act like an adult yet and that kind of crap just piles on to the prejudice we already face.

On top of that if you're a poor woman or a woman still in college or a single woman, feminism's answer to pregnancy under those circumstances is to declare that we're facing an "unwanted" or "unintended" pregnancy, that said pregnancy will "ruin" our lives, and that clearly we need an abortion now and better access to contraception later.  Regardless of how we feel about it.  Clearly we're martyrs and deluded and fundamentalists otherwise.

These are the messages getting out there from YOUR ideological camp.  Like it or not.  This is what I see when I read feminist blogs and "reproductive rights" websites.

I'm not about to run to the conservative camp, I just don't know where I belong anymore.  I have to depend on a man I don't even particularly like, because the alternatives aren't any better.  I'm not subjecting my daughter to a so-called "educational system" that will do its level best to turn her into an unquestioning, consumerist idiot.  I'm not fit to find employment anywhere that wouldn't exploit me and then dump me at the first sign of a bad economy (not that we aren't in one already).  Welfare is insufficient and soul-killing.  Medicaid is a joke, and good docs usually don't accept it.  Food stamps are often insufficient and I don't feel like having someone in the line behind me criticizing everything I put up on the conveyor belt at the grocery store.  You know?  What is there?  When you've even gotta find a sitter for your kids before you can attend a NGO meeting of any kind because God forbid the childfrees feel alienated when it's not even a normal human experience to have nothing but adults around you at all times... I don't know.  I don't feel like I really have a place in any of this.

And don't even get me started about adoption issues, adoption being the other "solution" we're offered.  Just.  don't.  because... I will yell a lot.

So.  There you go.  I can't be the only one feeling this way.