What is New Momism?

A little note on culture

We walk through our lives performing actions that have meaning to  ourselves, meaning to others, as we are self-directed by the meaning  that we have internalized — which we then act out, in a constant cycle  of action and interpretation and reinterpretation and reaction. This  cycle is one theory about how culture functions in our lives. Culture is  what provides meaning to those actions and reactions.

Some people take this cycle completely for granted. They live an  unexamined life, they take the meaning that is demonstrated to them and  perpetuate it. They continue to use these symbols and meanings until  something stops them, until the meaning that they’ve been using isn’t  enough to explain a situation or a symbol — in other words, sometimes common sense  isn’t enough. Some people walk through life examining the meaning of  everything, or they become cynical to every meaning — both of these  stances, which might be categorized as being “unsettled” — are both  rather exhausting.

Culture defines the world so that we can act with confidence within  it. Cultural systems both teach and express orientations to the world —  they teach moods and motivations. We each have our own cultural repertoire, a mental catalog of symbols, rules, and rituals. Only, the  meanings of these don’t work for all people at all times in the same  way.

Take this one for example:

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the  baby carriage!

What is this rhyme but a set of instructions — or a rule — for how  to conduct your adult romantic life? Of course, the rhyme says nothing  about boy-meets-girl or pregnancy and delivery, but because our society  assumes hetero-normativity and because the law prohibits (for the most  part) legal union between same-gender couples… you can see how this  common sense rhyme might not be a culture took that is comfortable for  everyone.

It isn’t a cultural rule that I’m completely comfortable with myself.  Maybe if it were first comes education and career, then comes love,  then comes legal recognition of a relationship, and then comes a  community possibly including a younger generation.

But that’s not nearly as snappy.

Somehow, the cultural rules about motherhood didn’t seem all that  contradictory to the reality I knew from caring for other people’s  children. The two were never side by side in my mind. I don’t think I  realized how insidious these “rules” of motherhood were until I read the  definition of New Momism that Douglas and Michaels propose:

[It Is] the insistence that no woman is truly complete or  fulfilled unless she has kids, that women remain the best primary  caretakers of children, and that to be a remotely decent mother, a woman  has to devote her entire physical, psychological, emotional, and  intellectual being, 24/7, to her children. The new momism is a highly  romanticized and yet demanding view of motherhood in which the standards  for success are impossible to meet (4). The ‘new momism’ is a set of  ideals, norms, and practices, most frequently and powerfully represented  in the media,  that seem on the surface to celebrate motherhood, but  which in reality promulgate standards of perfection that are beyond your  reach (5).

But I have a choice, right? I can choose not to have children. Or I  can choose to parent differently. Not so fast, says The Mommy Myth:

Central to the new momism, in fact, is the feminist  insistence that woman have choices, that they are active agents in  control of their own destiny, that they have autonomy. But here’s where  the distortion of feminism occurs. The only truly enlightened choice to  make as a woman, the one that proves, first, that you are a ‘real’  woman, and second, that you are a decent, worthy one, is to become a  ‘mom’ and to bring to child rearing a combination of selflessness and  professionalism that would involve the cross cloning of Mother Teresa  with Donna Shalala. Thus the new momism is deeply contradictory: It both  draws from and repudiates feminism (5).

And the nail on the coffin: “The new momism involves more than just  impossible ideals about child rearing. It redefines all women, first and  foremost, through their relationships to children (22).”

How this effects me

I remember this playing out, in high school and in college. I  remember talking to other young women and asking them their opinions of  children, of kids, of growing up and becoming a mother. The ones who  said that they never wanted to have kids were the weird ones, were the  ones whose opinions and assertions were belittled by others (“Oh, you’ll  change your mind!”). Liking children, or not liking children, separate  women into ideological camps long before we ever ready to have children  (at least amongst my middle class, college bound cohort).

I was always on the side of liking children. And now, as a twenty-something,  the cultural script says that now that I have love, and marriage, I should be making babies.

However, there is a counter-cultural script out there, at least one I encountered as a middle-class white girl. Perhaps it’s more tied into a denial of sexuality in teenagers, and a abstinence-only mindset, but there is the idea that children are absolutely counter-productive to life goals, such as graduating high school, college, and developing a career. It’s a mindset that makes children a drag, that puts sex and children in opposition to any sort of ambition. Tim often jokes, “But we’ll never graduate!” when I suggest we have a kid — even though we both have very expensive pieces of paper, he jokes that somehow we won’t become productive members of society if we have children.

I think that this is a cultural script that is often taken for granted with high-achieving young women in many different contexts. I know that when I consult my former professors about potential career choices, they often encourage me to take risks — at least because I have yet to “start a family.” These are men (and sometimes women) who know that I am very capable often treat children as an anathema, as something that should be avoided for as long as possible in order to develop myself into a productive citizen.

I think that this is a direct reaction to the New Momism — my mentors “know” that children require my entire “physical, psychological, emotional, and  intellectual being,” and so being a mother is something that should not be perused lest I lose the momentum that I have towards whatever my goals might be.

But the problem is that my goals being torn in two directions: New Momism states that I cannot be a “real” adult woman until I have children, my own expectations for myself and my education say that I should not have children, because children are incompatible with a career. It causes a kind of ambivalence where myself as a woman has to choose between two equally tempting, two potentially fulfilling paths. But, as we know, the only good, real choice according to popular culture is to be a mommy, to be a woman who is wholly involved with her children.

And this is what I mean by invoking cultural analysis. New Momism is a cultural script, insidious though it may be, but it is highly unsettling, because it does not fully explain how I can both a career person, and a parent. To the point where my mentors try to minimize the impact of family on my potential career.

There is one thing more thing that I think is really important to talk about from the book: how are these cultural rules developed?