The title of this post is a composite of quite a few deeply-felt statements that showed up in the data my writing students gathered in a recent semester. The class designed an interview-based project exploring fellow college students’ perceptions of pregnant women’s and mother’s bodies. (The course was on women’s bodies in our culture, and they chose the specific research topic themselves–much to my delight!) They came up with lots of interesting findings and analysis: for instance, on the idea of the MILF (Mom I’d Like to Fuck, for those of you who are too sweet to know already), perceptions of sex during pregnancy as unhealthy and/or just plain revolting, super-specific standards of ‘appropriateness’ for pregnant women’s and mothers’ clothing, and all sorts of related issues. But I want to reflect on just one general finding a bit in this post: essentially, that ‘Once she gets pregnant she shouldn’t try to be attractive ever again–her child(ren) should come first now (and forever! bwahahaha!)!‘ (Oh, crap, I missed the memo again. I so suck at this game.)
Several of my students wrote research reports focused on this one pattern in the data: over and over, students at our college insisted–as though of course everyone would agree, but why do these inappropriate mommies keep acting wrong???–that pregnant women and mothers shouldn’t try to be sexy or attractive because our priority ought to shift to taking care of our fetuses and then our children. And of course most parents put the wellbeing of our children pretty darned high on our lists. But, like, okay–three things:
- The claim is that a mother’s priorities should shift instantly and completely such that her child is the center of her universe. Putting aside how troublesome we may find that requirement, this claim begs the question shift from what? It sounds as though, before parenthood, a women’s top priority should be … being sexy/attractive. Great. Screw happiness, self-knowledge, emotional/spiritual/physical well-being, friends and family, intellectual growth, academic and/or career success, and all that–just make your body appealing to men until you manage to get knocked up. Then stop. What’s particularly intriguing about this logical conclusion is that virtually no students at this college would ever in a million years say that–I am surrounded here by intelligent and ambitious young women–and yet a widespread assumption about motherhood (so few years away for many of them) is based in precisely that narrative.
- Why are these goals in conflict, anyway? How are being sexually attractive and taking care of one’s children somehow at odds? When the logic behind this apparently-obvious assumption is articulated, it generally follows one or both of two routes: the ‘a mother should spend her time and energy on her kids, not selfishly on her appearance’ route and/or the ‘don’t set a bad example for your daughters!’ route. Which leads me to …
- As a couple of my students noticed and mentioned in their analyses, this stance doesn’t even make any sense in the larger context of our data (or of our culture). You’re neglectful if you spend time trying to look/be sexy: but you’re also neglectful if you look messy or frumpy or (heaven forbid) fat, because ‘if you can’t even take care of yourself and look put together, how can you possibly be responsible for a child?’ You’re setting a bad example for your preteen or teenage daughters … by ‘dressing like a teenager’ (aka wearing clothes that are considered appropriate for your daughters anyway). If you’re a partnered parent, you’re already ‘taken,’ so it’s inappropriate/wrongheaded/mean to be ‘too attractive’ to other men: but A) you are a disappointment and failure as a wife/partner/woman if you become any less conventionally attractive to and sexual toward your partner after you become parents and B) somehow the you’re-’taken’-so-stop-being-sexy rule only takes effect upon pregnancy, not upon marriage/partnering. Weird, huh? In other words, unsurprisingly, the ‘what about the children?’ thing (along with all these other explanations) appears to be rationalization rather than actual reasoning.
Perhaps instead we’re seeing the effects of all-too-familiar cultural ambivalences regarding women’s bodies, sexuality, pregnancy, and ‘the mother’? And young adults who either imagine themselves as unaffected by those ambivalences or feel they’re not supposed to admit to them–but carry out their troublesome logic anyway?
What do you make of these conflicting demands on mothers in our society?
[image credit: photo by flickr user PinoyParis, made available under Creative Commons license]
16 Comments
Molly,
This is fascinating data, and something I really haven’t thought much about … did your students (or do you) have any thoughts on what the post-facto rationalization is for?
I’m wondering if it’s the (to my mind weirdly exaggerated) aversion some people seem to have to thinking about their parents as sexual beings … if they don’t want to think about their own parents as sexually-active beings, then by extension seeing ANY parent (particularly a mother?) as a sexually-active being seems gross? So one is supposed to be attractive in a feminine way (which in our culture means inherently sexualized) but not “slutty” — that is, pregnant women and mothers should fit the norms well enough that someone could sexualize them, yet not appear to be seeking that sort of attention AT ALL.
I feel like that’s a really wandering comment … but your data has me thinking in new directions! Thanks to you and your students for this food for thought
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Anna: I hadn’t actually thought about interviewees’ possible aversion to their own parents’ sexuality. I’ve always been a little baffled by that, actually–as Meghan’s comment suggests, where the hell do they think they came from? Why is that so icky? But I do suspect you’re identifying one of the factors here; it makes sense that young adults (many of whom are just now figuring out how to be their own sexual selves and relate sexually with other people) may be seeking/imagining some absolute distinction between ‘us’ (not-our-parents) and ‘them’ (all-parents), such that a mother who’s still a woman transgresses their boundaries. Hmm …
Anna, I think you’ve identified it! It is so funny, because I was thinking about this the other day… how sad it will be that one day my boys will be completely freaked out that their father and I were ever “sexy” enough to shag, especially each other!
How exactly do families have more than one child if Mom isn’t supposed to be sexy/sexual?
My new little one is only 4 weeks old. My husband and I would love to have sex with each other, but due to exhaustion (and my recovery) we have not. He very much still views me as a sexual being, stretch marks and all. Actually, I don’t think there is anything wrong with my stretch marks (reminds me of your cellulite post).
Yeah. The idea that you’re ‘not supposed to’ have (or want) sex during the third trimester and for some obscene amount of time after birth appears to be holding strong in our culture, as though it were the standard, current medical advice–and sit coms and movies often function as though sex during late pregnancy is somehow physically impossible and/or awkward to the point of comic absurdity (?!?). Not my experience!
I’m with you on the stretch marks, by the way–why are they ‘obviously’ ugly? I suppose that idea’s also tied up with this narrative of the unsexy mother? And/or fat phobia (OMG part of you used to be fatter!)?
I’m gonna go with fat phobia on the stretch marks thing. My partner thinks the growth marks on her hips, etc., are ugly because (she believes) they’re connected to her body weight which she thinks is too heavy.
I know a LOT of women who’ve been afraid of being perceived as “fat” when they were pregnant … and there’s all the hype in the media about women who lose their “baby fat” after gestation … I imagine the stretch marks thing is tied in with the shame of feeling one’s body is no longer acceptable.
Stretch marks don’t fit into the media’s definition of beauty. When was the last time you saw a TV/movie scene or photo where a woman had stretch marks. Add in all the creams/lasers/etc. marketed towards women to remove them and it’s easy to see why many women think stretch marks are ugly.
As a side note the building my daughter’s pediatrician’s office is in has a skin and breast “rejuvenation” centers (separate offices) that you have to walk past. The peds. office was there first. I’m surprised the “rejuvenation” centers don’t offer discounts to the pediatric patients moms – it their obvious target.
Meghan: Yuck for the idea of “breast rejuvenation”! Nice work with the creepy euphemisms, marketing people.
argh..
My hubby had (protected) intercourse 10 days after each birth. He finds the new texture of my belly fascinating. As such, he has encouraged our son to ask questions, to look at my belly (pregnant or not), help put lotion on, etc etc
Its so sad that we don’t encourage this more in both our sons and daughters. For too many of us the first time we see a postpartum belly is on ourselves.
Great post, Molly, as always. All issues of social norms aside, I wonder how many of your students would be surprised to hear of the surge of hormones that some women experience in the third trimester, which – for this mom, anyway – makes late pregnancy way more fun than anyone ever mentions. Honestly, it was as if somebody turned the libido switch on high. Very high. Maybe it’s nature’s way of compensating for the discomforts of the third trimester and the exhaustion – right there with you, Meghan! – of early motherhood.
I’d also speculate that there’s a certain amount of wishful thinking here–because the expectation that women be “sexy”–as you said to the exclusion of almost everything else–is so over-the-top that maybe people are secretly looking forward to the moment when it stops. And if being “sexy”–probably my least favorite word in the world– requires all the high-maintenance, expensive things (blow-outs, manicures, waxing, gym workouts etc.) that seem to be part of the package, then yeah, it probably is incompatible with at least early motherhood for the majority of women.
@Leora
Your “wishful thinking” idea is an interesting aspect of these findings … I like the subversiveness of it! I like the idea of all these young women growing into adulthood and (potential) parenthood thinking that perhaps there’s a way to circumvent/escape the 25/8 pressure to be “sexy” in a plastic sort of “girls gone wild” way … once they’re in a family unit.
Of course, marriage and pregnancy shouldn’t be sold AS an escape … but perhaps it does provide some people with shelter of a sort, if they’re in the right kind of relationship.
I should have mentioned in the original post that, by and large, young men in our sample tended to be much more appalled at the idea of a sexual pregnant woman than did young women. Young women were sometime snarkier about mothers who dress ‘inappropriately’ and had much more specific ideas about what constituted appropriate appearance / clothes (including particular brand names!) / hair styles / etc. for mothers. If I’m remembering correctly, young men were more often the ‘her kids should come first now’ and ‘she’s taken’ folks. Of course, our sample size was way too small for generalization, and qualitative research isn’t aimed at identifying correlations like these. But for these young women, it sounds like a lot of work to look like ‘a good mother’ (or even a passable one!).
I know some women of my mom’s generation who enjoyed pregnancy because it provided a sort of safe harbor from a lot of the body policing and sexualization that came with being women. I wonder whether that’s going away. If so, it seems to me potentially both positive and negative: we need to acknowledge pregnant people’s and parents’ sexuality and ongoing individual humanity, but at the same time, policing pregnant women’s bodies and enforcing super-specific and unrealistic standards of beauty every moment is not helping anybody.
Actually I think it goes further then that, what is not addressed is that being a reproductive parent is the ultimate in sexy! Sexy is all about reproduction in the end, to be a mother is to achieved that meaning a woman who encompasses the whole route of being attractive, fertile and productive – she has dipped into, immersed herself and emerged from the most potent part of sexuality and the dance of life and death (giving birth). She has become Shiva, she is more powerful then ever.
Of course I also believe that it is in the interest of children to assure their parents put all their energy and resources into them and not into any new child, so it is self interest that drives them to try to deny motherhood’s inherent sexuality. It is a childish view, while adults most often do acknowledge the power of a fully adult woman (yes, biologically and in terms of evolution, society, etc… you are not complete until you have a child no matter how we try to say otherwise).
Ethel – Thanks for commenting. You’re right to bring up the idea that being pregnant, birthing, breastfeeding, and parenting can themselves be powerfully sexy and sensual experiences/states (but I think you mean the goddess Shakti rather than the god Shiva, who’s associated with male fertility amongst many other aspects/realities?). I have major problems with that second paragraph, though, partly because I have major problems with pop evolutionary psychology–I really doubt my young adult students think all mothers should dress without ‘trying to look sexy’ (but still have sexual pleasure with and be attractive to their partners) because they’re deep down trying to keep all their own mothers’ resources directed at them. But mostly, I absolutely and completely disagree with the idea that a woman cannot be “fully adult” or “complete” before she has produced a biological child–it seems to me both factually unsupported and an extraordinarily cruel thing to say to the real live (mature, responsible, engaged, loving, and utterly grown-up) people who read this blog and are struggling with infertility or have chosen not to have children because it’s the right thing for them.
“If I’m remembering correctly, young men were more often the ‘her kids should come first now’ and ‘she’s taken’ folks.”
This sounds like common, garden-variety masculine control of female sexuality.