Rather than breakfast in bed
For the last few weeks retailers have been urging us to show how much we love our mothers. Show it with flowers, show it with books, show it with irons, show it with cookwear, show it with anything that's for sale really.
Just as long as you don't show how much you love your mother by demanding that the work of raising children be valued in our society, rather than treated as a duty, or a hobby.
Every single person who reads this blog (and quite a few people who don't) have benefitted from other people putting the time and energy required to turn an embryo into an adult. Everyone who has ever made money off other people's backs, benefits from the fact that unless women give birth to children and then raise them, there aren't any children to exploit.
The vital work that women do is ignored, apart for a yearly call for breakfast in bed. Instead mother's are attacked simultaneously for not staying at home with their children and not being in the paid workforce. Women on the DPB are treated as if there's some huge crime to trying to raise a child without a man. The Prime Minister believes mother's aren't doing enough for our productivity, and the leader of the opposition believes that once you go on a benefit, any subsequent children you may have won't actually take any additional time or resources to raise.
The attitude that women's work isn't work benefits capitalism, and it benefits men.
The solution? The same old organising/resisting/overthrowing capitalism stuff. But today I'll just stick to paying tribute to my Mum - whose on the other side of the world right now. When I was born she was two years younger than I am now.
One of the things that scares me so much about being a parent is how individualised it is, and because it restricts your movement, parenting can also be really isolating. Mum says she didn't feel that isolated (she did feel as if what she was doing wasn't valued). I guess that's because most of the time my she had good support networks that she built with other women. But she had to build them twice, because when we moved to New Zealand she was pregnant with my little sister, I was 5 and my little brother was 2.
I'd write more about her, but it's not my story, and she's more than capable of writing it for herself. So I just want to say that I love her and I think she did a pretty good job.
