Okay, so this is, and isn’t related to The Second Sex. It isn’t because it is not a direct engagement with chapter 2, which is next in line, but it is, because these issues are generated by reading the text, in particular the biological context chapter.
I am currently reading Kathleen Canning’s Gender History in Practice, the chapter on feminist history after the linguistic turn. There are a couple of pages on the Social Democratic textile union, working class women and pregnancy, which recount the demands by female workers in Gera in October 1926 for restoration of the eight-hour day, expanded maternity leave, access to birth control, repeal of the law banning abortion and liberation of women from housework (p. 94-5). This got me thinking about childbirth and care as labour today and reproductive politics in e.g. Denmark, where I was born and spent my teens and young adult life.
My thoughts are a bit jumbled, so I think I will begin on a containership, which left Melbourne in late June 2010 bound for Europe. I was on the ship as a paying passenger with my partner Roland. The crew and first and second officer were Pilipino, and the captain and chief engineer and electrician were from the former Yugoslavian Republic. The crew talked about their families and children and how difficult it was to be away from them for so long (the Philipino crew’s rights were notably different from European crew members, with contracts that ran from 6-12 months at sea, over against the European 3 months – don’t get me started). They were also very curious as to why I did not have children, and the chief concern was, who was going to take care of me, when I got old. While this particular situation made me feel excessively privileged, bourgeois and white, it also set different economies and societal practices and expectations into relief.
I am assuming that the situation in which one is dependent on one’s children in old age, means a social situation that does not have a welfare system with pension, guaranteeing you some sort of income, when you are too old to work. Your children will have grown up, and work, and thus provide for you. In Denmark, you pay someone else to do this, through for example an ‘old people’s home’ perhaps with selfcontained units, like the one my grandmother lives in. She pays rent in return for a small apartment, with visits from a carer once a day, with lunch supplied. Other than that, she manages herself. Now, my grandmother is not quite as old as to belong to the generation of workers in Canning’s analysis. But she does belong to the generation, which built the welfare state, and was a working woman. She began as most young women did, by working as a maid, but from there began sewing, in particular brassieres and girdles. She did this during the war in Copenhagen, and after her son was born, she shifted to another sewing workshop closer to Lyngby, where she lived, because they provided day-care for her son. At some point in the 50s, available work became more and more difficult, due to the shifts of many production facilities to Poland, and what was available in Denmark, became, she said, more and more like working in a factory. And so she stopped working (you know, the paid work), and they lived off my grandfather’s income, until their children were old enough to work and assist.
What I am getting at here is childbirth and rearing as labour and as a contribution to society. Because what I was thinking is that the discourses surrounding childbirth have dramatically changed, while the social function, i.e. reproduction of society is unchanged.
Two things sparked this thought. First of all, a discussion with Jess Cadwallader about the banning of breastfeeding in public places, which she pointed out is a denial of women’s labour. Second, it turns out that in Germany, where I am employed at the moment, I am subject to an extra tax, because I don’t have children, and thus will be in need of extra support when the time comes.
In response to Jess I thought, ‘My god I hadn’t seen this. Must. Think. More.
And in response to the tax I thought ‘Hey! That’s not fair. What happened to my right as a woman NOT to have kids?’ Again feeling extremely bourgeois and pc.
After thinking about this on and off, and then reading about the women in Gera I came to this presumably very banal observation, noted above about the discourses of childbirth have changed and that having children today (in Denmark) is regarded as a basic human right. And this way of speaking about children individualises, personalises and I think, veils a profoundly social interest. So much so that the state invests in reproduction in terms of heavily subsidised and healthcare covered IVF treatment as well as tests for Down’s syndrome and other ‘abnormalities’ in every foetus. The IVF treatments are extended to include lesbians and single women, to maximise productivity. All of which contributes towards producing ‘normal’ and white babies, who will ensure the existence of the nation, especially in light of increased immigration. I think that this is one of the reasons that I do not think of breastfeeding over a latte in Copenhagen in terms of labour. I should have, of course, but I didn’t.
Until I was faced with the tax, I had not thought about my ‘choice’ not to have children as having social and nationalistic ramifications. Selfish? Indeed. Privileged? Undeniably. But the only people I have met who raised the social issues were the crewmembers on the ship. People in Denmark see it as a strange decision, and as passing by a wonderful opportunity (and a couple of fundas as going against nature), and so on. But no one has mentioned the state. And I wonder, if men and women in Denmark think of having children as a means of providing for themselves when they are old?
Does this make sense? In case you were wondering, I am now quite happy to cough up with the extra tax. After a few thoughts and detours, that does make sense to me. 