Motherhood and Parenting Styles
To understand the meaning of motherhood today and parenting styles in general, then understanding other currents and movements of our society is a good start. Feminism was an important movement for women in the last 150 years that evolved and influenced our understanding of motherhood and parenting styles greatly. The way we see motherhood and the way we are parents, behave as parents and apply our parenting styles is influenced by many factors. Movements of feminism is off course just one of them.
A coherent, all-encompassing feminist ideology
Any attempt to define a coherent, all-encompassing feminist ideology is doomed. Most feminists agree on the questions that needed to be asked, like for example the origins of gender differences or the roots of sexual violence, but feminists rarely agree on the answers or solutions. Feminists in general stay far away from motherhood or parenting styles or flavors.
There is not one feminism, but there are many types of feminisms.
- There were Anarcho-feminists who found a larger audience in Europe than in the United States, lead by Emma Goldman. Their Strategy: dismantling institutions like the family, private property, or state power.
- There were the Individualist feminists, who disagreed with other feminists over the issue of turning to government for solutions to women’s problems.
- Amazon feminists advocated liberation through physical strength.
- And there were off course the Separatist feminists and they included many lesbian feminists. Their Strategy: women need to liberate themselves with at least a period of separation from men.
- Another types of feminism, the Socialist feminists saw the problem as a combination of male domination and class exploitation because women in different class systems face different issues.
Three major types of feminism surfaced
Ultimately, three major streams or types of feminism surfaced.
- The first were Liberal feminists. They believed the problem is simply one of prejudice and so the system just needs to be corrected. Strategies: A group concentrated on lobbying governments for reforms and influencing decision makers. They were for more equal-rights legislation or protective legislation such as special workplace benefits for mothers which had then also an impact on parenting styles. They saw a great deal in the increase of positive role models, and improvement of confidence of girls.
- Then there were the Radical feminists, who wanted to reshape society and restructure its patriarchal institutions. They believed the role of a woman in society was too closely knot in our society. Strategies: Women campaigns and demonstrations, and the existence of a women’s space and a women’s culture. They also put heavy emphasis on the violence of men against women, such as rape and pornography.
- And then Cultural or Difference feminism, the last of the three movements, was against the idea that men and women are intrinsically the same and advocated celebrating the female qualities, such as their greater concern for affective relationships and their definition of care and nurture. For them it was denigrating to attempt to make women more like men.
End of the 20th century
European and American feminists began interacting with the similar movements of Asia, Africa, and Latin America by the end of the 20th century. But they had great difficulties learning about and dealing with the wear of veils in public, female infanticide, forced marriage, or female genital cutting. They believed saving was needed but they had little knowledge of the real lives and concerns of women in these regions. The role of women declined significantly only when Countries in Africa were actually faced with European colonialism.
“Third World women noted that they could not very well worry about other matters when their children were dying from thirst, hunger or war,”
wrote Azizah al-Hibri, a law professor and scholar of Muslim women’s rights about the on the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, in Cairo. Women from the Third World expected to talk about ways that underdevelopment was holding women back, when the focus of the Conference was abortion and contraception.
The third and current wave of feminism
All these types of feminism were part of the second wave, the first being the 1920’s suffragette’s movement. This third wave emerged in the second part of the 1990s and sought to question and mainly redefine the ideas, words, and media that transmitted ideas about womanhood, beauty, sexuality, motherhood and parenting styles. It was mainly about becoming conscious of one’s gender identity and sexuality have been shaped by society and then intentionally constructing one’s own identity.
They played on seemingly sexist images and symbols. The spirit of this wave is very present in the the anger of punk rock’s riot grrrls movement or the Guerrilla Girls, a group of women artists who use gorilla masks to fight discrimination against female artists. The stereotypical images of women (passive, weak and faithful, or domineering, demanding and slutty) were redefined as assertive, powerful and in control of their own sexuality.In popular culture this redefinition was evident: Disney heroines changed drastically and powerful media icons like Madonna, or Queen Latifah came to be just like series such as Sex and the City (1998–2004), and Girlfriends (2000–08).
This last or current movement has its criticism like all the others. But these types of feminism evolve with their societies. Feminist movement have indeed influenced greatly how a society views a women, and in point of fact Motherhood and parenting styles. And they will continue to do so.
