“I was raised by a single mother who was also a part-time lawyer; it did me no harm whatsoever, and I fully intend to be one myself one day.”

Well no one ever got harmed by being born middle class! Generalising such instances might not produce the best prescriptions.

Apart from that, I am quite sympathetic to this argument, even though I also read Parker at the weekend with interest. I am fine with women having all the reproductive rights so long as they also hold all the reproductive responsibilities. Given that, men and women can approach partnership on an individual and equal footing and work out what sort of relationship and family they would both appreciate or, if appropriate, none at all. Of course, that is not how the law behaves right now.

As with so many of these article, I’m so close to being on board and then something like this is said…

“Sorry about your balls, guys, but these babies are ours, and they will remain ours whilst they are born from our bodies. We would be only too delighted for you to help us – genuinely help us – with the work of raising the next generation, but fatherhood is a privilege, not a right.”

Such a shame.

So prescriptive! How about you let different families sort out for themselves the arrangements which work best for them?

If my wife and I have children, they will be hers, and they will be mine. That is to say they will be ours, because that’s what the arrangement means for us: pooling our talents and sharing responsibilities. If that doesn’t chime with what you insist “we” want, then that’s your problem.

If fatherhood is a privilege and not a right, then so too is motherhood - by which logic IVF treatment should be discontinued to both homo and hetero women, single or attached.

But you don’t see it that way. You want to have their cake and eat it. But that’s not democratic is it - taxation without representation, I ask you! Just wait until the backlash starts - if you’ve ever read Aristophenes, you’ll understand that role reversal is quite possible.

I wonder if you’ve thought through quite how far-reaching the impact of this attitude would be on a widespread scale, eh?

How hateful.

If you’re truly man enough to be a wife and father, bring that to the table and we’ll talk.

Whatever. I’m busy looking after my two young children. Every day. On my own.

Oh, where to start Laurie?

Firstly I agree with you that Kathleen Parker is misguided and putting forward a proposition that only someone who raises children in a relatively comfortable environment. I have little sympathy for the emasculation of men whilst they have all the power and most of the money.

And certainly, I like you am pro-choice – I am in charge of what goes on with my own body. Fullstop!!

But, you go too far for me, and I would be careful what you wish for.

For example, with regards to male maintenance parents for children: I don’t believe that contraception is the sole responsibility of the woman, as you seem to. If you say…’oh, I have decided to carry a baby to full term so therefore I am solely responsible for its upbringing’ you remove any responsibility for a man to worry about whether you get pregnant or not. My view is that if a man does not want to have a child with a woman or shoulder the financial burden that he should jolly well use contraception and not devolve responsibility to a woman to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy or not and then suggest because she made that decision then he’s off the hook for the rest.

Secondly, I thoroughly disagree with your assertion that a child, once born, is yours and yours only. Once born a child is the product of both parents. Whilst it’s in your body, sure, you get to say what happens but after that you have to share it. I cannot understand why you think you can just annexe the whole procreation thing!!

I think having children is a privilege for us all, male or female. If I started thinking that, as a women, it is my right and a man’s privilege then I should also have to believe that all the boring, mundane messy stuff is my sole responsibility.

I haven’t got the headspace right at this moment to test this analogy right the way through to see if it fits (I’m running a videoconference in 30 mins and really ought to turn my attention to that) but the phrase ‘no taxation without representation’ keeps coming to mind. Now, I know you’re not asking for financial support and therefore feel able to dispense with the representation but I think if you divorce men from an equal responsibility and stake in rearing children, you should not be surprised if they either choose not to play or, bugger off and leave you holding the baby.

That’s not a world that I want to inhabit, particularly.

I am one of life’s optimists but not, I’d like to think, too much of a wishful thinker. Like you, I was brought up in a single parent family, with my Mum working full time and doing all the providing (often with 3 jobs going at the same time). In fact, she had to plead with the building society to let her pay the mortgage, it being the seventies when they didn’t let women take out mortgages, as my father had a habit of drinking the mortgage money.

But I think the way my Mum had to do it was a necessity and should not be seen as an optimal model even if she was relatively successful!

That would have been a much better article Jo, thanks for encapsulating my view on it so completely.

“Now, I know you’re not asking for financial support and therefore feel able to dispense with the representation but I think if you divorce men from an equal responsibility and stake in rearing children, you should not be surprised if they either choose not to play or, bugger off and leave you holding the baby.”

That is not necessarily how it would work though. Many men want to be fathers and, perhaps, they ought to be the only ones that actually become fathers. So long as the rights, the law, and the responsibilities are all aligned fairly then those men will find a way of accommodating with the mothers of their children, even if the woman starts by holding all the cards. Of course, a useful tool would be a more developed contract law so that responsibilities can be explicitly transferred or combined irrespective of marriage contracts or civil partnerships. But such a system would not exclude any particular family form. It would merely confirm the woman as the initial and default rights-holder.

Really nice reply Jo, thank you.

‘My view is that if a man does not want to have a child with a woman or shoulder the financial burden that he should jolly well use contraception and not devolve responsibility to a woman to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy or not and then suggest because she made that decision then he’s off the hook for the rest.’

And wouldn’t it be wonderful if that was the way it worked?

Unfortunately, many decades since the pill, male attitudes to contraception are still a long way from perfect. Part of the reason I’m advocating greater responsibility for women is the simple fact that women are born and raised knowing what’s at stake and, in this culture, men aren’t. If you can tell me any feasible way for getting men to take responsibility for contraception, conception and, indeed, for children, then I’m all ears; without that I’d argue that we’re better off without them.

Otherwise, nice response. I hope you guys understand that I’m trying to get a rise out of people by asking cheeky questions. :)

“It would merely confirm the woman as the initial and default rights-holder.”

Doesn’t this just assume though that because the woman has given birth to their child that they are somehow the perfect mother? In fact a lot of this article, and a lot like it (there seems to be a very repetitive theme), appears to take the assumption that women are always going to be good mothers…or at least if it doesn’t suggest this it suggests if women are going to be crap mothers then they have a right to that infliction upon their young because of the 9 months they’ve gone through. Men on the other hand, don’t have any rights to be crap fathers? Why does anyone “have a right” to be a poor parent; in relation to this argument, just because they allowed a baby to grow inside them?

I just really dislike prescriptive attitudes over who has “more power” in the upbringing of a child *purely* based on gender when the reality could easily be that the mother is not good for the child while the father would be. The mother could not get along with the father and under Laurie’s attitude would be perfectly in her rights to completely deny the better parent the opportunity to affect their offspring. How, in any world, is this fair on the children or liberal?

Lee - you know what’s a shame? What’s a shame is that when young women theorise about feminism and women’s rights in any way at all that isn’t utterly polite and respectful to men, readers like you feel justified in writing it off.

Why shouldn’t feminist writing be provocative? Why shouldn’t it be belligerent, ask pointed questions, try to get a rise out of people? Why shouldn’t the language commentators on this blog use to talk about the Tories be similar to the language feminists on this blog use to talk about the patriarchy?

Jo -

‘ I thoroughly disagree with your assertion that a child, once born, is yours and yours only. Once born a child is the product of both parents. Whilst it’s in your body, sure, you get to say what happens but after that you have to share it. I cannot understand why you think you can just annexe the whole procreation thing!!’

In fairness, it’s probably safer to dismiss the whole question of who owns a child. A child owns itself, although legal and emotional guardians have, of course to take that ownership in trust until the child knows how to handle itself.

Why annexe procreation? Because I want to challenge a host of conservative notions that hold that fathers are an absolute necessity, that lack of fathers is what’s wrong with this society.

When fatherhood is discussed, too often the rhetoric is one of ‘rights’ and ‘ownership’. I think we need to stop taking it on faith that a child is better off with a father. I’m still doing my own research into the topic and hoping to come back with concrete data to back up these opinion-pieces pretty damn soon. What I want to see is a system that provides properly for single mothers, without the necessary assumption that fathers are what’s needed. What I want to see is a system that values parenthood properly.

What Jo said.

“Why shouldn’t feminist writing be provocative? Why shouldn’t it be belligerent, ask pointed questions, try to get a rise out of people? Why shouldn’t the language commentators on this blog use to talk about the Tories be similar to the language feminists on this blog use to talk about the patriarchy?”

This site is not aimed at Tories and I suspect that very few Tories read it, so provocative language about Tories is playing to a crowd who probably already feel the same way. It’s not actually provocative, in other words, it’s crowd-pleasing. Whereas your post has clearly offended or provoked quite a few male posters here, and not in a good way, and it doesn’t seem to have done much to convince them that you’re right.

anyone has a right to be as provocative as they like, but if it’s not an effective means of communicating with your audience, you’re not going to achieve much other than self-gratification.

I don’t know if you’ve read much of my thoughts, Laurie, but I’m not a fan of over-sensationalising issues nor being provocative for the sake of being provocative. I like to live in the reality of the matter, and so when I read things like yours that completely ignore a whole legitimate side of the argument I can’t take it seriously.

Perhaps if feminists were more respectful to those men that aren’t exactly disrespectful to them, and if hardcore Labour/Lib Dem bloggers were a bit more respectful to the Tories they would in turn be listened too more without noses being turned up. And indeed if the public and media were more respectful to the unheard party in the majority of the scandalous issues of the day, maybe we wouldn’t be living in a country where government’s can pull shit that is fostered by unbalanced reporting and hypothesising of subjects.

It’s just a poor technique of trying to get a point across as far as I’m concerned.

And, Aaron -

Not hateful, iconoclastic. I don’t think there’s hatespeech in this article, just frank questioning of stated norms. You’re one of a minority of men who earns the privilege of parenthood every day, and more so, and I can only admire that and hope that I meet more of your ilk in my life. We need a lot more.

“I’m still doing my own research into the topic and hoping to come back with concrete data to back up these opinion-pieces pretty damn soon.”

That’s backwards. Data ought to come first and opinion should follow. The problem of course is that data doesn’t always go the way we want it too. The data on fatherhood and children’s development is pretty complex if I recall. I don’t think you’re going to find it easy to prove that fathers are irrelevant. Although equally I’m not aware of any knock-down data that prove they’re vital. It’s a mess.

Nick -’Your post has clearly offended or provoked quite a few male posters here, and not in a good way, and it doesn’t seem to have done much to convince them that you’re right.’

What should the liberal attitude to offence be? It should be to question why we find ourselves offended. What I want to do here is to ask questions, to generate discussion. But as soon as women post articles that are disrespectful in any way to the gender which still has, as Jo puts it, all of the power and most of the money, there’s an instant pile-on. Is it really just because you guys disagree? Or are you ever so slightly worried that I might have a point?

“Why annexe procreation? Because I want to challenge a host of conservative notions that hold that fathers are an absolute necessity, that lack of fathers is what’s wrong with this society.”

Yet you only end up falling in to a second hole by arguing the way you do. You’ve gone from the Tory argument of “everyone should be married” to this feminist “argument” that women are the only people worthy of raising a child and making decisions on who else should contribute to parenthood.

While the Tories ignore that married families aren’t necessarily any better at raising a child than any other loving parent(s) when removing the financial situation, you ignore that on the flip side it is not just the existence of poor fathers that is a problem, but also that of poor mothers. All for one and one for all, I understand the mantra, but surely feminism shouldn’t be about essentially lying about just how good all women are at raising a child?

“I think we need to stop taking it on faith that a child is better off with a father.”

We need to stop taking it on your faith that a child is better off with the mother it was born from. But you see this is the extension of your attitude and while I believe there are bad parents that we need to come up with solutions as to aiding to raise their child, the extension of your belief must be logically that if the child is also better off without the mother then someone (the state?) should redistribute that child to some people that can take care of it properly. You can’t sit here and say a woman has rights over a child regardless of parental performance while saying that if a child is better off without a father that father has no ability or chance to be that father.

Woobegone -

You misunderstand me. Concrete data proving that fathers are irrelevant is not what I’m hoping for from the bout of research I’m planning. What I want is simply a more measured extension of what this piece sets out to do, which is to ask if the gospel that fathers are vital is sound.
I’m not denying that there are man competent fathers out there, like Aaron, for example. But at the same time parenthood continues to be driven by mothers, and instead of bewailing some perceived loss of sacred paternalism, maybe we should be looking to provide more support for mothers - indeed, for any single parent. If a consequence of feminist liberation is that the traditional nuclear family model, complete with male breadwinner, no longer works, then why are we trying to turn back the clock? Don’t you think, instead, that we should be talking about fatherhood in a completely new and radical way?

I want to see fathers who understand parenting to be more than a financial responsibility. I want to see fathers who want to be ‘good dads’ where that doesn’t just mean seeing their kids on the weekends and at convenient times. What I want to see, fundamentally, is fathers who want to be more like how we’ve conceptualised mothers.

I know a number of men who would make wonderful parents, given the opportunity. But the traditional model of ‘father’ no longer works. What we need is something new.

Larry -
‘If my wife and I have children, they will be hers, and they will be mine. That is to say they will be ours, because that’s what the arrangement means for us: pooling our talents and sharing responsibilities. If that doesn’t chime with what you insist “we” want, then that’s your problem’

Well, of course, any happiness that doesn’t chime with a minority hardline socialist-feminist viewpoint is fundamentally invalid, however marvellously functional it may sound. I’d better break it to you now that you, your wife, your future children and, indeed, your future children’s children will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Laurie, I think your stream of sudden responses show that there is some flaw in your journalistic style.

I think it is fine to be controversial and propose radical positions which are not actually or precisely what you’d fight for, but to then to make such a swift turnaround and provide your own answers with an activists hat on you immediately raise suspicions about your intentions and whether you’d not just prefer to talk to yourself and have a sounding board to provide some ego-boosting self-affirmation - that’s disrespecting your audience.

I wonder what trade-off your partner makes to accomodate you if you treat him in the same fashion.

“Nick -’Your post has clearly offended or provoked quite a few male posters here, and not in a good way, and it doesn’t seem to have done much to convince them that you’re right.’

What should the liberal attitude to offence be?”

Just to note, I wasn’t the one that said that. And I believe in the right to offend.

Thomas,

who’s talking to herself? I’m talking to everyone on here. If I’m going to throw out statements that might offend people, I’d be an idiot if I shouted and stamped when people got offended. People have a right to respond in any way they see fit; I’ll respond to that however I can. That’s what this blog is for; that, in fact, is what the liberal blogosphere is for. It’s journalism as dialogue (or, occasionally, as screaming match) - not as monologue.

Nick - sorry about that, and thanks for the backup. More tea and cigarettes needed, I think. Excellent future mother here…..

I did say it, and I believe in the right to offend. I also believe in the right to piss into the wind. I think these two things are about equally productive, 99% of the time.

I also think it is valid to question your value judgement about what a ‘perfect’ culture is and why you appear inconsistent by concluding the pragmatic solution to irresponsibility on behalf of some men is withdrawl of all need or claim to responsibility.

Furthermore your definitions surrounding the basis for responsibility are fluid. You state variously that a child owns itself and neither of the parents do, that the parents share it and that the mother has the duty/right imposed by biology.

My feeling is that the caring role is one that is agreed in practice between the couple and then transferred to the child as he/she matures into an independent adult.

Woobegone -

Given my genital arrangement, it’s biologically impossible for me to piss into the wind. Your point, however, is duly noted. :)

Well, if you’ve already got all the answers why bother opening a discussion?

I find it condescending for you to polemicise in order to draw a reaction which confirms your preconceptions and it is clear from your active defence that you are unable to allow the tone of debate to develop independently in case it doesn’t conform to your expectations.

It would be less dishonest to open up with a statement of your true feelings and move on to some practical or policy prescriptions and have discussion on those, or if you are trying to open it up to new ideas and fresh thinking then you should have asked a question.

Which way is the wind blowing?

The answer is blowin’ in the wind, thomas.

I’m sorry but this is absolute piffle. How, in anyway, does the attitude ‘…these babies are ours, and they will remain ours whilst they are born from our bodies’ improve the situation between men and women as it now stands? Such aggressive nonsense does no one any good. This is just badly thought out adolescent ranting and only screws over those feminists who actually care about improving gender relations right now, in reality, rather than posing as a ‘theorist’ and trying to shock for the sake of it. Stuff like this just gives more ammo to those who think feminist = manhater and there is no point to this piece whatsoever.

Far be it from me to oppose gratuitous offence-causing, but I am puzzled what sort of reaction you expect if you tell people that their children aren’t their own…

More seriously, you talk about fatherhood needing to be “re-negotiated”. Maybe. But the only place for that to happen is within individual families. We can demand that society forms a fair back-drop, so that negotiations are on equitable and non-exploitative terms… But ultimately, it’s a private matter, and people will come up with different answers and balances to suit their individual circumstances. You can’t boss everyone about, and impose a one-size-fits-all solution.

Cheers anyway, and I’ll see you at the wall.

“Where have all the real dads gone to?”

Buggered off to the pub, because the mothers reckon they don’t need them.

‘You can’t boss everyone about, and impose a one-size-fits-all solution.’

But…but…but….what am I going to do with all these flying monkeys?

In all seriousness, though, I find it interesting that people are denouncing me for saying that ‘fathers are irrelevant.’ I haven’t. What I’ve said is that the traditional model of fatherhood is no longer relevant, which is quite a different matter. Male parents? Bring it on.

What I suspect, privately, is that this re-negotiation is already happening, in private, as you say, in individual families. However, lack of public acknowledgement that this is happening makes it ten times harder for families to carry out this re-negotiation - british working culture, which still stigmatises not only women but men, too, who prioritise childcare, is just one arena where this is happening.

So, may I ask Larry, Aaron and anyone else: how are you re-negotiating traditional roles in private? And what difficulties have you faced?

three ‘this is happenings’ in one paragraph….right, that’s it, I’m going out for milk, I can’t do without tea for a minute longer.

“What I’ve said is that the traditional model of fatherhood is no longer relevant, which is quite a different matter.”

Welcome to the 90’s, glad you could get on board.

Hello all,

I’m just on a quick tea break, so I can’t say as much about this as I’d like. Interesting post Laurie, your piece might be at one extreme, but as such is certainly a good counterbalance to Kathleen Parker’s remarks. No, you don’t have equal ownership of someone else’s body, or future, because you slept with them once. I don’t really see how this is any less extreme than the view you express in your post. Having said that, I do think that it’s perhaps a little self-defeating to be *deliberatley* provocative, not because you might offend people, but because any argument, when taken to it’s most extreme conclusion, becomes absurd.

I am not a parent, so it isn’t really my area of expertise to debate the validity of the post itself. All I would ask is; to what end? The original poster talks of revolutionising attitudes and breaking barriers, but (as far as I can see), makes no concrete proposals nor furthers any aims. Shocking people out of their comfortable prejudices is all very well, but presumably the idea is to open their eyes to something useful.

For example, I could write a little essay about how “rich = evil”. Knowing some of the minds around here, it would probably go down quite well. But without “let’s tax them more” or “let’s encourage more philanthropy” or “let’s remove a few loopholes”, I would simply be a polemical windbag.

It is impossible, irrelevant and damaging all at once to try to acknowledge any renegotiation of parenting roles in the private sphere because it has always gone on and it has always done so in private.

Or are you suggesting varying tax and benefits according to a national register of relationship status? Perhaps the most that could be said for this is that the transfer of child benefits between parents could be made easier and employment regulation could be introduced to increase paternal leave and to vary general leave according to size of family or special needs (such as incapacity or disability, perhaps even cultural or religious heritage).

Laurie (in the comments:

In all seriousness, though, I find it interesting that people are denouncing me for saying that ‘fathers are irrelevant.’ I haven’t. What I’ve said is that the traditional model of fatherhood is no longer relevant, which is quite a different matter. Male parents? Bring it on.

Laurie (in the original article)

The plain fact is that now that women are allowed to financially provide for themselves, we no longer need husbands to raise children effectively, if, indeed, we ever did.

Of course, this does leave the way forward for new models of child-rearing - male au pairs/wet nurses, communal/collective child-rearing, female breadwinners with stay-at-home husbands - or reliance on more traditional female networks (grandmas, baby-sitters, neighbours and child minders [yes, the gendered subtext of this list is deliberate - given the premise of the article, do children need any kind of 'male' input?]). Still, if full pay equality is ever achieved, Laurie’s proposal would mean the mother’s money could go on childcare while the man’s could go on…whatever he liked really: men say Ferraris are nice cars.

Incidentally, I’m less provoked by this article than left feeling: ‘Gee, I didn’t realise biological determinism had made a comeback when it comes to having and raising kids’.

redpesto:
I maintain that we don’t need *husbands*. Bring on the male parents, but bring them on in a different model to the one we’ve had. Does that make things clearer?

Lee:
where is this mythical land called the 90s? If it includes a massive re-working of what parenthood means, please, let’s go back. All together now…wow, it’s all going to be great when Labour gets in! That Tony Blair, he’ll sort the country out, no problem! Blair’s babes! Girl power! We can be anything we wannabe!

‘Still, if full pay equality is ever achieved, Laurie’s proposal would mean the mother’s money could go on childcare while the man’s could go on…whatever he liked really: men say Ferraris are nice cars.’

This is presuming, of course, that by the time we’ve acheived equal pay childcare isn’t what it should have been thirty years ago - a salaried profession in its own right.

LP writes I was raised by a single mother who was also a part-time lawyer; it did me no harm whatsoever, and I fully intend to be one myself one day. Does she mean she intends to be a mother, a single mother and/or a part-time lawyer?

Presumably not the second because she goes on to say I love my partner deeply and would be thrilled to bear a child who carried half of his genetic material. If we are still together at the time my child is born I will be only too happy for him to help me raise it, for him to share legal guardianship and for my child to call him ‘dad’.
Well, you don’t really have a lot of choice about the first of those… but I think expecting a man to “help” raise “your” child is exactly how to get a man to behave - well, as men traditionally have behaved…

I’m sorry, but I don’t think that childless people, whether women or men, have a lot of insight into parenthood. From my experience (my kids are now adults) what happens is that we either repeat our parents’ behaviour all unkowingly or we over-correct for it all too consciously. The only valid reason for having children is for them to teach us the things our parents forgot to.

Laurie: You’re talking about all of this as if it’s a brand new concept, and that’s what I find interesting. Given just how much single parenthood rose in the 90’s, and indeed how I believe parenting took place in the home, I fail to see how we’re in a situation where we require an epiphany on fathers not acting just like the dominant owner of the family due to being the breadwinner…subtly and very quietly normal rational people realised this decades ago and don’t really need telling.

“I maintain that we don’t need *husbands*. Bring on the male parents, but bring them on in a different model to the one we’ve had. Does that make things clearer?”

I’m not quite following this. A “husband” is a male spouse, with no specific reference to child-rearing. So, you want male parents, “dads” in colloquial language, but not husbands. Presumably, therefore, this entire thread is more about the status of marriage (should women get married) than children (should kids have dads). Which, while a valid question to ask, really has very little to do with your original post.

Laurie:

I maintain that we don’t need *husbands*. Bring on the male parents, but bring them on in a different model to the one we’ve had. Does that make things clearer?

Not really, because that was precisely the distinction I thought you would make in response to my point - i.e. the separation of ‘husband’ (which you seem to restrict to the financial aspect) and ‘father’ (as in the biological parent). Using ‘male parent’ of course opens up male roles to adoptive parents, stepfathers and gay male co-parents (and male au pairs and childminders), but the point I was making was that your piece held out the idea that women didn’t need such men in a child’s life for financial or developmental reasons, if only as proof of female autonomy and independence (the ‘Are Men Necessary?’ school of feminism). On the other hand, your article also wanted to rethink the role of the ‘male parent’, which is more of an equality argument, and which does require some kind of male input (and not just a toleration of his presence as long as he does what he’s told).

As for your other reply - This is presuming, of course, that by the time we’ve acheived equal pay childcare isn’t what it should have been thirty years ago - a salaried profession in its own right. - are you suggesting a salary for being a full-time mum, or a salary for women looking after someone else’s kid (while someone else looks after theirs)? Free universal state childcare would solve some of that, I suppose - but it still would leave any woman going private to pay for it (and all the other costs of raising a child) from her salary while the man goes cruising in his Ferrari.

“This is presuming, of course, that by the time we’ve acheived equal pay childcare isn’t what it should have been thirty years ago - a salaried profession in its own right.”

Are you suggesting that others should pay for your lifestyle choice through taxation ? Theres no other way that people are going to pay you to raise your own child. Sounds to me like you still need money from men, its just that you want to get it in a less personal fasion…

As for the rest of your argument - I personally find it sickeningly self centered and mind bendingly unhelpful, but given that its just a description of your personal lifestyle choices also utterly irrelevent.

PS As soon as artificial wombs are invented you’ll be sorry…

It seems to me that we do need to reassess how we do parenting.

Part of this is about examining and often challenging traditional gender roles - like parenting being the mother’s prime responsibility. I actually find the argument that parenting is primarily owned by women to be far from socially progressive.

For the mother to “own” the child rearing with the possibility of receiving help from their partner - who is subordinate in this area - cuts against much of the feminist thought of the last forty years, and I don’t think we should discard it so easily.

The ghettoisation of women into domestic life has been far from eradicated and I think progressive people should be advancing the cause of equality rather than arguing that men have no responsibility to raise their children - that’s a woman’s place!

Another part of this reassessment is the concept of children’s welfare and independence. A child is their own person not an extension of either parent - as far as I’m concerned it is not just fatherhood that is a privelege not a right, but motherhood too.

What’s all this ‘we’ business? No two sets of parents are alike and none conform to any single definition of gender roles, so there seems to be a bit of stereotyping and prejudice projection going on here.

There are still huge numbers of women who CAN’T financially support their children or who would prefer to have a nice easy lifestyle at the expense of a wealthy man. Women still marry money.

Laurie

I freelance. I’m an accountant, a writer, and I also teach English. I look after the kids.

My partner works in the UK. Long hours in manufacturing as a manager. I live in the apartment in Tallinn - although I’m probably moving back soon.

My partner is a great mother and an excellent and well-paid manager. I cover the child care because it makes sense. I can work around the kids. Being based in Tallinn is tough, but I wanted the kids to experience life here for a while and my boy to pick up some of the language.

Yeah it’s tough. I do feel that I should be the one who works the long-hours and brings in the biggest salary. I rarely do earn more. In fact I am mulling over a large contract back in the UK because I do have feelings regarding my place in the family. I know child-raring is important, but it’s also fucking hard and non-stop. Going back to full-time would be a relief - like a holiday.

And yeah, it’s also rewarding and a privilege. But don’t ever think it’s not the hardest thing you’ll ever do.

thomas: I find it condescending for you to polemicise in order to draw a reaction which confirms your preconceptions and it is clear from your active defence that you are unable to allow the tone of debate to develop independently in case it doesn’t conform to your expectations.

I think this is very unfair. Laurie’s comments subsequently have been very engaging and not arrogant at all. Its a polemical article, I do understand that people get defensive about parenthood because there are strong emotions involved (I can’t get that worked up yet since kids are still far away) but so what if its a bit strong-minded. Is there anything that you actually agree with?

And don’t tell me you’ve never been polemical in your comments in the past!

“Why shouldn’t feminist writing be provocative? Why shouldn’t it be belligerent, ask pointed questions, try to get a rise out of people? Why shouldn’t the language commentators on this blog use to talk about the Tories be similar to the language feminists on this blog use to talk about the patriarchy?”

Because you seem to make no attempt to separate men and patriarchy (I hate this word and use it grudgingly). Tories actively advocate and advance the concepts that people on this board find hateful and criticise.

By attacking my rights and my ability to be a parent and claiming that as your sole territory you are attacking me. Yet, I really do not know what I am doing to actively advocate and advance ‘patriarchy’.

Unless I’m mistaken, the author seems to want the state to introduce legislation to make her particular lifestyle easier. Yet if the Tories advocated policies to encourage marriage they are attacked for favouring one arrangement over the other. Surely the best system is for the state to get out of family policy full-stop and allow individuals to decide how they want their relationships to work out. This would mean no tax breaks for marriage but no subsidies for single parents.

[...] Red is doing some empire-building for her own particular variety of Feminism at Liberal Conspiracy. I usually don’t get into this, but this one is completely off the wall … sorry … [...]

Laurie, what do you mean by “pro-choice to the wire”?

Okay, here’s a response I wrote on a blog which linked to this post. Hope some of you lot find it helpful:

Matt,

What this comes down to is rights versus responsibilities. I’m working from a fundamental basis of absolute reproductive rights for women: women get to decide what happens to their bodies, full stop.

Given those primary terms, I find it unfair to suggest that men, who may have had no say in the matter up until the time of a child’s birth, should be forced to pay child support or give financial care.

For me, parental rights are predicated on a duty of care. Most mothers, willing or unwilling, don’t have much of a choice about that duty of care, but if they forfeit that duty they may also forfeit the contingent rights. For non-birth-parents - fathers, grandparents, partners of mothers, adoptive parents, other legal guardians - parental obligation has to come first in precisely the same way. Parental rights come second.

It might be helpful to consider the case of adoptive parents. Someone who has voluntarily taken on legal guardianship of a child is expected to provide a certain standard of care. If they forfeit that duty for any reason, is it reasonable for a former adoptive parent to demand access to his or her ‘offspring’? Clearly, not unless the child and current caregiveers are okay with it! I think talking about fathers in the same way as we currently talk about adoptive parents and other legal guardians is much healthier than clinging to an outdated notion of ‘husband and breadwinner.’

The point is that fathers have much more of a choice over how much parental support to put in. And that’s fine. Fathers who genuinely make that choice to be involved in their child’s life in a positive way should be commended - but that’s the starting point. That has to be the starting point, and it can’t be any other way.

pro-choice to the wire=

a belief that women deserve absolute legal, personal and emotional control over their reproductive potential, as far as medical technology allows.

/nitpick.

Sunny,

it is arrogant for Laurie to provoke and be leading the discussion simultaneously (having not written any articles here myself that’s not something I can be accused of, so I think you’re being unfair and inaccurate in trying to make the comparison).

I also haven’t noticed any engagement with the issues being raised other than to impose her own preconcieved idea of what ‘traditional’ means - if ‘traditional’ means ‘bad’ then she’s just restating the obvious, but nobody would accept that the two are synonymous without condemning things we cannot know. On the basis of probablity alone the traditional experience of fatherhood varies widely from a formalised interpretation made from an extreme political standpoint.

If Laurie is unable to take the heat for making provocative views she shouldn’t make them in the first place, because they will be attributed to her whether she likes it or not and she will be held responsible for the reaction she has caused - so if it isn’t a question of her original style (and I didn’t originally complain about that, I thought I was careful to engage with the issues and consequences and provide the counterpoint) then it is a matter of her subsequent inconsistency and inability to debate from her starting position whether she actually holds it or not.

The confusion between her stated beliefs and actions are certain to give rise to an angry response and a measure of judgement about her personally, particularly on an issue where she demonstrates her own irresponsibility while criticising and demonising those she opposes for the same thing.

I don’t want to discourage the girl because she clearly cares and has some talent, but I suggest she would be more successful when she matures and starts to express a fully-formed political view. Her own allusion to parenthood couldn’t be more apt in this respect.

Thomas,

Thanks for the constructive criticism, but I think I can take the heat that provocative arguing leads to perfectly well, ta.

But cheers for not discouraging me. You know how fragile we young things can be. Especially when we’ve got our periods. Very big of you, there. :)

Penny,
Why is it preferable for me to support other mens children through taxation, than for us all to just take care of our own?
While we’re at it, why not just take all children from their mothers at birth and raise them in a state brain washing clinic. Then I suppose we’d all be fee to send our time doing all those important things that we’re supposed to be doing. Like working in offices and… totally having sex with lots of people, like.

Laurie,

continually responding to attacks by saying “that’s not what I really think” is not ‘taking the heat’, it is trying to put an icepack on it.

It’s amusing that you project your own insecurities quite so obviously but you’ll eventually to unlearn the bad habit. In the meantime your need to intervene to defend your belief in interventionism will expose it’s own flaws as you stop living up to your own high standards.

Laurie,

Looking after other people’s children is already a series salaried of professions in their own right. Looking after your own children is not and cannot be in any sense of the words “salaried” or “profession” that I can think of.

At best, I imagine that you would be talking about a state benefit equivalent to a full salary for raising your own children.

This would be a staggeringly bad idea for any number of reasons. None of which need pointing out here - surely?

Laurie, you’re backtracking in comments, but it’s obvious you argue in the initial post that fathers are superfluous. You don’t even think your assertion that when fathers were once essential it was only ever in a financial sense needs to be defended, so clearly you think they have nothing vital to contribute to a child’s upbringing in terms of emotional and parenting roles.

Yes, you grant that if they humbly submit to the scrutiny of the woman they (want to) have children with, that woman might be able to find something that they offer of interest. But that’s the point - it’s entirely take it or leave it, and fathers reading this should take from this piece that they can at best hope to be a welcome extra pair of hands when it comes to the raising of their own children. But when it comes to the core necessities of raising a healthy, happy human being, they are superfluous.

These aren’t convictions easy to square with normal human experience, or empirical data (do keep us posted on your conclusions, by the way - you wouldn’t by any means be the first impeccably liberal sociologist or academic to discover to her horror that the data in support of the nuclear family is overwhelming) but they are convictions you were happy to state in your initial post. So you should be willing either to stick by them when upset fathers call you out on them, or at least acknowledge a change of mind.

“I love my partner deeply and would be thrilled to bear a child who carried half of his genetic material. If we are still together at the time my child is born I will be only too happy for him to help me raise it, for him to share legal guardianship and for my child to call him ‘dad’.

And this is not because it’s his moral or genetic right, but because I’m lucky enough to have met an emotionally and domestically literate man who I think would make a wonderful parent. But my baby will be just that – mine. It will come from my body and carry my surname, and my money will pay for its school shoes and birthday presents.

Sorry about your balls, guys, but these babies are ours, and they will remain ours whilst they are born from our bodies. We would be only too delighted for you to help us – genuinely help us – with the work of raising the next generation, but fatherhood is a privilege, not a right. If you’re truly man enough to be a wife and father, bring that to the table and we’ll talk.”

I have to ask if you really think there are many men who would accept these terms? I’d have thought even the most feeble and PC-whipped of ‘new men’ wouldn’t be as daft as to have children under these arrangements.

That aside, plainly this sort of subordinate, supplicate relationship is not a remotely equal one. This may be obvious, but I state it explicitly because at the core of so many feminist arguments is the notion that the law should allow and ensure men and women are treated as equals. By contrast, when it comes to their children, you don’t believe men should have any rights at all, except what is granted by women.

Let’s just assume for the sake of argument all young women self-interestedly agree to this. You don’t attempt to explain why men (you know, half of voters) should consider this fair to them, or agree with you. You don’t even explain why a grandmother who loves her son’s children, and gets the chance to see them only because the law doesn’t (always) let mothers deny fathers some custody rights at her whim, would want to see your ideas, prevail. Ditto aunts etc.

For me, parental rights are predicated on a duty of care. Most mothers, willing or unwilling, don’t have much of a choice about that duty of care, but if they forfeit that duty they may also forfeit the contingent rights. For non-birth-parents - fathers, grandparents, partners of mothers, adoptive parents, other legal guardians - parental obligation has to come first in precisely the same way. Parental rights come second. (emphasis added)

Laurie - how do you think a woman manages to get pregnant without some kind of male biological input? (Any [ex-]Catholics reading this blog needn’t answer that question) Also, I’d question whether the ‘duty of care’ of the expectant mother is the same as the duty of care once the child is born, especially if the ability to ‘parent ‘ is not innate, biologically determined or a given based on the fact that the birth mother has been carrying the child around for nine months. (As Bertolt Brecht explains)

It might be helpful to consider the case of adoptive parents. Someone who has voluntarily taken on legal guardianship of a child is expected to provide a certain standard of care. If they forfeit that duty for any reason, is it reasonable for a former adoptive parent to demand access to his or her ‘offspring’? Clearly, not unless the child and current caregiveers are okay with it! I think talking about fathers in the same way as we currently talk about adoptive parents and other legal guardians is much healthier than clinging to an outdated notion of ‘husband and breadwinner.’

I’m willing to be corrected, but I can’t see how the birth mother would be in a position to ask for the child back if she gave it up for adoption: in your adoptive parents’ scenario, the child would either revert to the care of the state or to another adoptive/foster family. In addition, to suggest equating biological fathers with adoptive parents might in fact sever the genetic (or emotional or moral) link and make all males equally interchangeable (or irrelevant) as parents - the (ideally) joint responsibility to conceive is severed from the (ideally) man’s responsibility to contribute to caring for and raising his/their child, so one suitably approved and vetted male is as good as another.

In fact, if you were to rethink and separate the roles of father/husband/breadwinner, the husband (as in the woman’s emotional/sexual partner) and breadwinner (as in a male contributing to the household income) wouldn’t actually be necessary if: (a) hubby was just there for the sex, and (b) a woman had a combination of her own income and, say, a male lodger to help cover the mortgage. Neither would have any childcare responsibilities, as that’s ‘her’ job or that of a male whose ‘fatherhood’ skills the woman approved of. Even though these roles need rethinking (even if it is on a family-by-family basis), somehow I don’t see a ‘real dad’ emerging from what you’re suggesting; men would be better off brandishing an NVQ in childcare and their CV to prove their worth.

Just two weeks ago, you expressed bafflement that so many people can be so confused - you also mention ‘terror’ and ‘delusion’ - as to associate feminism with people who advocate policies and ideas harmful to men.*

But clearly you are in this post advocating policies that would be far from victimless: some men who currently get to see their children and play a role in raising them would be denied these rights; some children of both sexes who currently stay in contact with their fathers would see that contact end; some paternal grandparents of both sexes who currently stay in contact with their grandchildren would see that contact end.

By all means “be belligerent, ask pointed questions, try to get a rise out of people”, but don’t be complain if your belligerent brand of feminism is treated by others as a controversial and dubious set of views. If your sister’s arguments were anything like yours, of course, that’s how they will be received.

* http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2008/07/misandry-and-miscommunication.html

(Sorry for the misplaced commas - I keep rewriting sentences and wrongly leaving bits in.)