Why does mainstream feminism still devalue motherhood?

Original illustration by Emilia Tortorella.

A woman’s biology has always been a fatal flaw in dominant feminist theory. The way a baby craves its mother’s milk, the way a mother’s body searches for the baby it birthed. The menstrual cycles, hormones and menopause. It’s all quite inconvenient if one is trying to work like a man. The things a female body can do have been buried and ignored to preserve the structural integrity of an otherwise compelling ideology of equality that has transformed the lives of women around the world.

The protests against University of Melbourne associate professor in political philosophy Holly Lawford-Smith are a continuation of liberal feminism’s decades-old denial of biology. Women have spent the better part of a century convincing everyone that our biology is no biggie. Lawford-Smith’s teachings about the salience of biology don’t just threaten the trans community, they threaten the foundations of mainstream feminism as we know it.

I’m not interested in critiquing gender-diverse groups but mainstream feminism is fair game. Branches of “career” and “liberal” feminism have become outdated and irrelevant. The minimisation of female bodies and the devaluation of the female contribution is archaic – it has got to stop. We must recognise the absurdity of equality that is conditional on women acting like men.

Holly Lawford-Smith. Picture: David Geraghty

The erasure of femininity was a central tactic in the initial struggle for women to enter a predominantly male workplace. I accept that it was necessary for women to pose as unaffected by pregnancy and childbirth to be accepted into male-dominated power structures and places of work. We had to prove to the wider community that our reproductive labour would not hamper us.

But more than a half-century later, is this minimisation of womanhood still progressive or does it disempower women in ways the earliest feminists could not have foreseen?

An example of this disempowerment can be observed in recent changes to the paid parental leave scheme that means it is now completely gender neutral and can be split equally between parents. The onus is on a woman to donate weeks of parental leave to her partner, presumably in the name of equality.

I’m all for equality but I will not be sharing my 18 weeks’ paid parental leave with my husband under any circumstances. That leave is my time to let my pelvic organs heal after birth, rehabilitate my pelvic floor, ride out the hormonal rollercoaster of the post-partum period and establish a breastfeeding relationship with my baby.

The changes to paid parental leave offer no real extension to either parent and present a gross denial of just how taxing the process of pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and post-partum recovery is on the female body. Men and non-birthing partners simply are not physically invested in the process in the same way.

It seems unreasonable that a woman who has given birth would be expected to share her leave during an experience that is far from equal. Increasing paternity leave by robbing from maternity leave is not empowering for women. Paternity leave should be increased in addition to the maternity leave that already exists.

Instead, the government has made it more difficult for dads to be involved – the recent changes also mean a father in full-time work can no longer access his two weeks’ parental leave if the mother does not meet the work test. Equality means assigning true value to a woman’s body, her contribution and her time, not minimising the experience of birth so a woman can get back to racing men up the corporate ladder.

The idea that women can be equal to men only by eschewing their womanliness in favour of male traits now seems painfully basic and quite insulting. This level of self-abandonment was warranted in an environment where women didn’t have the right to vote or to enter gainful employment after marriage, but it’s no longer appropriate. The freedoms that were achieved at the time were worth the sacrifice, and I am grateful for that, but the ultimate liberation for women in 2023 is to no longer have to minimise their own bodies. To truly be free of oppression, we must have genuine choice to care for our babies or enter paid work. Women must now be valued in all our glory – our professions, our skills and our reproductive labour. It might seem unrealistic, but not so long ago it seemed impossible for a woman to go to medical school. We must make this happen in the same way the suffragettes made the vote happen.

Women infiltrated the power structure but, having adopted many masculine traits and a particular mindset to be “successful”, seem to have lost sight of the second part of the mission – to dismantle the power structure that oppressed them in the first place. To use their power and influence to assign true value to a woman’s body and her time.

Women in unpaid caregiving roles must be afforded financial independence and the agency that comes with that. Instead, powerful women simply have become part of the existing power structure that oppresses women who still engage in reproductive labour. While ever a woman’s value is contingent on her presence in the paid workplace, our biology will remain a weakness that must be hidden. I’m tired of hiding. I walked into the delivery ward a disciple of Simone de Beauvoir – a quintessential career woman. I walked out of the hospital as someone who was capable of frenetically milking her own colostrum. I was utterly fixated on the baby. I wanted him to live more than I wanted my own life. My feminist flame appeared to have been snuffed out by an incredibly successful evolutionary adaptation.

It was a rude shock to discover my baby’s cry would set off my adrenal glands or trigger the milk to pour out. That I would compulsively check the baby in the early months. Millions of years of evolution, the neurobiological systems driving complex hormonal responses that shape a sophisticated and lasting bond between a birth mother and her newborn: I was flabbergasted that these were all things I was expected to ignore.

As a new mother who remained in a caregiving role long after my peers returned to paid work, I remember the distinct feeling of having been lied to. I realised none of us could not have it all, neither I nor my peers who made different choices. I found myself isolated from the community and conflicted by engaging in work I had been conditioned to consider of little real value. I was unable to access my well-established reward systems based on work performance, completion of tasks, individual achievements and external validation. The work was never done with a baby. It was hard, lonely, invisible, and I didn’t get paid. The promotions and the key performance indicators and the awards were no use to me now.

I eventually clawed my way back to the only thing that made sense – paid work – only to find that giving my son to strangers to look after was something I could never get used to. The tightening in my chest and throat. The sadness in his eyes when I left. The look of desperation when I returned. The senselessness of bringing a child into the world only to pay something else to look after him.

Finally, I realised the problem was not my biology but an ideology that treated my biology as the problem. The legacy of biological denial is so well entrenched and immovable that mainstream feminism has failed to adapt, even as sophisticated technologies uncover scientific evidence that explains a woman’s desire to look after her baby. Even as the neuroscience clearly establishes the critical role of a child’s parents in the early years, mainstream feminism remains wilfully ignorant. Dominant feminist rhetoric continues to cast reproductive work as less valuable and something to be avoided. It continues to subscribe to a patriarchal value system that assigns no value to our work inside the home.

It was a great relief to realise I was in fact still a feminist of sorts – a “care” feminist. I think it is appropriate to assign value to women’s work, rather than simply enabling some women to do different work, because I acknowledge that not all women will be able to leverage the power structure to their advantage. And not all women want to. That any woman who gives birth will be, at the very least, still disadvantaged by pregnancy, birth and the immediate post-partum period.

We have been more inclined to invest billions in researching glass wombs and egg-freezing technology than simply valuing a woman’s body for the unique and vital contribution it makes.

It wasn’t that people didn’t foresee the flaws in dominant feminist ideologies and the new forms of oppression that would arise if women were to “do it all”.

It’s just that alternative movements that sought to address these failings had a publicity problem – care work isn’t sexy. Many find the idea of wages for parental caregiving repugnant. Women in blazers and high heels smashing glass ceilings is exciting and seductive. Who doesn’t love a female astronaut? Arguing that care work is critical to the healthy functioning of society and should be valued is a nuanced conversation.

Many people also lack the creativity to imagine a future where motherhood is no longer a “harmful stereotype” but a valid choice women should be supported in. If we set our sights on erasing the motherhood penalty, rather than erasing motherhood, it would be transformative for all women. We seem to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater and ignored the vital and important work tied up in the caregiver stereotype. If we accept that it is impossible to completely equalise the unpaid care responsibility and the disadvantage that it entails, since men can’t give birth and breastfeed, then we must get serious about counteracting the unavoidable disadvantage.

It is crucial that women are valued equally for their contribution, whether that is in unpaid or paid work, rather than having to contort themselves to fit an image worthy of equality.

Without this, we risk perpetuating the vast inequalities, the minimisation of women and devaluation of care that feminism inadvertently has produced. We risk undermining the care systems our economies and our communities rely on. We risk imposing an unworkable and unfair system on our sons and daughters.