Silences and Choice: The Legacies of White Second Wave Feminism in the New Professoriate

Abstract

Sociologist Sharon Hays coined the term intensive mothering and argues that it is an ideology of child rearing that not only large quantities of money but also professional-level skills and copious amounts of physical, moral, mental, and emotional energy on the part of the individual mother [and] is a relatively recent historical phenomenon (4). Feminist academics (Douglas and Michaels; Hays; O'Reilly) argue that it rests on at least three core beliefs: 1) children need and require constant and ongoing nurturing by their biological mothers who are single-handedly responsible for meeting these needs; 2) in meeting those needs, mothers must rely on experts to guide them; and 3) mothers must lavish enormous amounts of time and energy on their children. In short, mothers should always put their children's needs before their own. As a result, even though not all women practice intensive mothering, as Hays argues, it is the proper ideology of contemporary intensive mothering that all women are disciplined into, across race and class lines, even if not all women actually practice it. In this essay, I argue that the silences on motherhood and the focus on reproductive choice in 1960s and 1970s white, liberal second wave feminism (1) have the unintended consequence, today, of pushing women toward rather than away from the intensive mothering ideology. We already know that intensive mothering is problematic in terms of care and career. Indeed, feminist scholars (Douglas and Michaels; Hays; O'Brien Hallstein, Conceiving; O'Reilly) agree that, because it exhausts women and supports contemporary professional organizing systems that continue to arrange work-life structures around the ideal worker unencumbered by family commitments, intensive mothering plays a key ideological role in discouraging women's participation in the public, professional realm. Moreover, these same scholars suggest that intensive mothering is a backlash against white second wave feminist successes, particularly in terms of gains in education and the workplace. Finally, the work of contemporary Black feminist scholars (Collins; James; Thomas) makes it clear that the intensive ideology is based on a racial hierarchy that privileges white women and devalues and sanctions black women's other-mothering and community mothering practices. (2) What my argument suggests, however, is that understanding fully the problems of intensive mothering also requires understanding how white second wave feminism's silence on motherhood and the focus on choice now play a part in cutting off systematic responsibility and change and thus inadvertently support rather than challenge intensive mothering. (3) It is important for me to make clear, however, that I make these arguments as a woman who still primarily identifies with many second-wave sensibilities. I have this allegiance because I was raised a feminist. Indeed my family of origin into which I was born in 1963 is a feminist family: Both of my parents committed to feminism in the 1960s, but it was my mother who actively raised her children as feminists and saw doing so as one of her most important jobs as a mother. From the time we were old enough to lick League-of-Women-Voters-pass-the-ERA-N.O.W. envelopes, ride on the buses to ERA marches, and jointly carry signs in those marches, my twin sister and I were raised as card-carrying second wave feminists. Moreover, as an adult, I chose to get a PhD in communication with an emphasis on feminism and gender studies. Thus, everything about my upbringing in both my family of origin and my intellectual thinking is infused with second-wave sensibilities. Simultaneously, however, as a dedicated feminist scholar and mother, I am also committed to understanding both the positive and potentially problematic legacies of second wave feminism that are part and parcel of both contemporary motherhood and feminist maternal scholarship. In short, I concur with Dow's recent argument that feminist rhetoricians must understand more about the rhetorical history of the second wave if we hope to understand more fully the contemporary context. …