"And then fate decided that I had a mission as important as being the feminist mother of a girl: being the feminist mother of a boy. My first thought was “okay, Lívia, the world will tell your son that he has the right to be an oppressor and your role is to tell him no.”
When I started writing this text, I had no idea of the size of my privilege in terms of domestic relationships. In my revisions, I stopped and wondered if my account wasn't less important precisely because it was privileged. I even thought about not posting it. Talking to friends, I concluded that the text is important precisely because it portrays what is unfortunately not expected from these relationships in our society. Writing it made me see clearly this aspect of my life and how important it is in my feminist motherhood.
When I found out that the baby I was expecting was a boy, I shuddered. Not that I had anything against having a boy. Never. But I always imagined my motherhood with a little girl.
When I decided to become a mother, I fantasized about a feminist mothering, from mother to daughter. I would be responsible for raising a warrior, a little girl who wouldn't put her head down for anyone. That she would do judo if she wanted to, or ballet, that she would wear bow ties if she wanted to, or not wear them if she didn't want to. I would be the guide of a girl who, from the beginning, would learn that the world could be hostile. But that she would have choices and freedom to be whoever she wanted to be.
And then, as fate would have it, I had a mission as important as being the feminist mother of a girl: being the feminist mother of a boy. My first thought was “OK, Lívia, the world is going to tell your son that he has the right to be an oppressor and your role is to tell him not to.” Toughness, right? Along with this reasoning came an almost irrational fear of not being able to handle it. And I didn't even know what.
And my boy was born. And I understood that my mission with him is not to break his spirit, but to embrace and embrace his sweetness. A sweetness that in boys is repressed by patriarchy. And answer tough questions as truthfully as I can for your age. And give lap and patience for your crying. And let him do judo or ballet, try my mascara and buy the blue lipstick, which according to him is for a boy, even though I told him a thousand times that colors don't belong to anyone.
Of course, I raise a child in the real world. And the real world has these things. I don't like pink and Otto made it his mission to convince me that I like pink because I'm a girl. And every time this subject comes up, there I am explaining for the thousandth time that colors don't have a gender.
Lately he's been talking about girls being smarter than boys. I don't know where he got that from. It certainly wasn't something I, or his father, said. And there I am explaining to him that all people have different intelligences that have nothing to do with gender.
At the same time, he never cheers for me when I play video games against his dad and he gets a lot angrier when he loses to me than his dad. I confess that I still don't know how to deal with this, because I couldn't identify the root of this preference/annoyance.
"I conclude that my mothering would be practically the same regardless of my baby's gender. Because, in the end, raising someone has much more to do with example than with discourse .
So, are there issues to deconstruct? There always is. However, I conclude that my mothering would be practically the same regardless of my baby's gender. Because, at the end of the day, raising someone has much more to do with example than with discourse. And I know that an important part of my feminism as a mother is the equity of my relationship with his father. And that, of course, does not depend only on me.
It takes a feminist family for deconstruction to be less discursive and more on the basis of example. I'm not saying that a male-dominated family won't bear feminist fruit. There are several generations of feminists raised in the worst values of patriarchy to prove this. But I believe that an environment where there is an intention for equality and where there is no fear of dialogue about the thorny issues of patriarchy is where small feminists can flourish without fear to face the hostile world that awaits them.
Thinking about this equity makes it impossible for me not to think about one of the things I think about most in my life: housework. This one, I believe, has a fundamental role in raising children.
In my process of raising a child, it is impossible not to revisit my childhood. Repeat what I like. Change what I disagree with what was done to me. And the relationship with domestic service is one of the things that I make the most effort to be a different example from what my parents gave me.
Both coming from “well-to-do” families, they had no relationship with domestic service. Apart from cooking, my parents did absolutely nothing around the house. They never even learned. Everything was outsourced. And they didn't realize how much they had been deprived and were depriving their children of two basic things: autonomy and responsibility.
It's a super privilege to always be able to pay someone to clean up after you. But have you ever thought about how generations of privileged people who don't know how to mop the floor negatively impact our society?
I grew up watching my parents relate to housework as if it were some kind of punishment. And a kind of punishment that had a total connection with the so-called meritocracy . I grew up being told that I had to do well in school to go to college and have a career, because only with a career could I pay someone to do my housework.
When I left my mother's house to live with my partner I was 24 years old and, with the exception of cooking and washing dishes, I had never done absolutely anything in a house. My partner taught me how to wash clothes, clean the bathroom, iron, sweep. I was lucky enough to come across a man who didn't perform uselessness (thanks mother-in-law). But for many years I carried the burden of doing housework with a sense of personal failure. After all, I learned from an early age that if I didn't pay someone to do that for me it was because I didn't succeed in life.
When I became a mother (and with a lot of therapy), I started to make the connection between my relationship with housework and the feeling of personal dissatisfaction that was my trigger for depression. And I decided that I didn't want my son to have this bad relationship with something that, after all, is the basis of every family's daily life.
Of course I don't love washing floors, it's clear that domestic service is the scene of power struggles in my house. It is obvious that my son does not pick up a toy from the bedroom floor without being told and with many complaints and excuses like “my arms are tired”. But the relationship we create with domestic service is completely different from the one I experienced in childhood. It is a relationship of responsibility. Not punishment.
My son has always seen his father cooking and cleaning, just as he sees me cooking and cleaning. He sees me and his dad leaving for work. Working at home. And, what I consider the most revolutionary and simple measure: understand that housework is indeed a job, and it is one of the most important.
Whoever is cleaning a bathroom cannot be interrupted, just as he cannot interrupt an online meeting. He interrupts both equally, of course, but at least he knows it's wrong in both cases.
It was about feminism and motherhood, it became a treatise on domestic service and meritocracy. Sorry, I can't separate these subjects. Because in my maternal feminism, equity is at the core. And unfortunately, in the field of domestic service, we are a long way from fair when it comes to the real world outside our privileged bubbles.
Part of my work in raising a man for the world goes through his relationship with domestic service. If he were a girl I would also teach her to do the same things, but not to do it for others, as demanded by the values on which our society is based, but for herself. After all, autonomy is freedom. And that autonomy was denied me for many years.
"Lívia's mother understood something that Lívia, a mother, didn't know: we have to educate ourselves and educate those who live in our routine to educate our little ones."
And I'm not afraid of raising a boy anymore. Of course, there is always something to deconstruct, adjust, dialogue with, welcome and change. But Lívia's mother understood something that Lívia, a mother, didn't know: we have to educate ourselves and educate those who live in our routine to educate our little ones. I'm not saying that it's an easy task (nothing in feminism and motherhood is), but if we don't correct our behavior and the behavior of those who are in the children's day-to-day life, the speech is of little use to them.
So, yes, I am bothered by the “pink is for girls and blue is for boys” speech, but when I see my boy going to get a floor cloth to clean something he dropped on the floor without even thinking about it could call me for that, I feel proud. Proud to know that I am raising someone autonomous and that this service does not associate with the gender of the people in the house, but with responsibility (oh, what a drooling mother).
No speech that our children encounter in the world will be stronger than what they experience in their daily lives with those who love them. My feminist motherhood lives there. I don't need to break my boy's desire to be oppressive because of his gender, because he doesn't even know (yet) what that is. And maybe he never knows. Because there is nothing better for the world than a feminist future.
( • )
Lívia Farah is a woman who fights, cares and cries, who learns every day to face the world with a thousand demands on her mind and a child in tow.
( • )
chest.me
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