Reviews for The Legal Regulation of Pregnancy and Parenting in the Labour Market

The average rating for The Legal Regulation of Pregnancy and Parenting in the Labour Market based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-02-12 00:00:00 Nichole Garratano Halley's overall premise is that the various parenting guidelines/ideologies that have been promoted to parents over the past century trace several different perspectives about touch. She also talks about the way each carries different power relationships, but that part wasn't as easy for me to follow (or as convincing -- but she did attribute it directly to Foucault, whom I completely fail to understand, so that may be why I had a predisposition to think I wouldn't "get" that part). I did appreciate, as I did with _The Paradox of Natural Mothering_ this scholarly treatment of parenting philosophy. While I appreciate much of attachment parenting, for instance, I sometimes get tired of what I perceive as the self-righteous tone of much of the writing from that camp, and Halley's work helps describe why I feel that way (it's because it _is_ self-righteous, in her analysis:)). Some of her more interesting quotes: p. 14 "In contrast to the behaviorists, who believe that children must be trained to become useful, modern, masculine adults, naturalists view human beings as already perfect in their most 'natural" state.' . . Naturalists believe in, and idealize "nature." They assume that human beings are born 'knowing how to live.'" p. 30 "In a susbsistence agrarian economy, even very young children supply valuable help in the family enterprise. People need not and cannot spend limited resources, including emotions and time, on their children. Rather, children 'spend' themselves on their families." . . . now modern children an expense, but not useless - - valuable instead for what they WILL become. As manufacturing increased, production left the home except for children: "the new domestic product was the intensively raised child." (30-31, quoting Crittenden.) Talking about Spock: "Middle-class women -- good mothers -- were to make their children the center of their lives. The ideal Spockean mother was fulfilled by doing all the small and, often, dull tasks of child care. Her satisfaction came 'naturally' from her maternal instinct. She had few interests outside her motherly realm, the home." (52). Quotes Spock: "'The important thing for a mother to realize is that the younger the child the more necessary it is for him to have steady, loving person taking care of him. In most cases, the mother is the best one to give him this feeling of belonging, safely and surely' . . . understandably, this thinking led second-wave feminists to critique Spock for his sexism, and feminists and others to critique him for his middle-class bias." (53). But as Anne Roiphe points out, uncomfortably for feminists, there does seem to be evidence that a consistent caregiver or small set of caregivers is important. 66: "There is something profoundly moving about Harlow's monkeys. It certainly seems that human infants, among other animals, do _need_ to be touched. But, to argue for this need with Harlow's monkey evidence is a far cry from arguing that they need to be touched nearly constantly or always by their _mother_, as later child-rearing experts would claim." In fact, Harlow himself used his evidence to argue that men could touch as well as women. She also talks about how some AP folks always talk about touch as something mothers do. This was interesting to me because I've always been annoyed by the "safe co-sleeping" guideline that fathers not be allowed to sleep next to the baby. When I mentioned once at a LLL meeting that Eric sleeps more lightly than I do and is much more conscious of where the baby is, one person immediately said "There's evidence that mothers are more biologically attunded to their babies in the book _Sleep with Your Baby_ and another said, "Well, of course, every person is different." Which are really conflicting pieces of advice. What I think was interesting about Halley's analysis is that my discomfort with the guideline is that I think it carries some hidden fear of sexual abuse by fathers, and Halley uncovers this. Grand statements that "[Sears and Ferber:] fits into and reinforces a larger mainstream heteronormative culture that shapes the discursive boundaries of thinking about touching children in terms of normative ideas regarding gender, sexuality, class, and race." (106). Nice grand statements, but harder to me to see specific examples in her work that add up to supporting evidence for those grand statements. Points out that none of the three reasons Ferber gives for children sleeping alone is grounded in scientific research (109): gives info about REM sleep. 1. child and parent will not sleep as well and that is unhealthy. "We know for a fact that people sleep better alone.' This is a fact that seems to have eluded many people, including the sharing-sleep proponents and much of the world. That so many people sleep better with someone else does not seem to Ferber to need explaining. He does not explain why untold numbers of people love to sleep with others nearby in bed or where he came up with this 'fact.' He gives no scientific or other reason he believes this to be true, no reference or footnote connecting this claim to research, and no indication as to whom the 'we' is that he refers." (110) 2. child who sleeps w/ parents will not b/c independent -- no evidence 3. overwhelmed by his or her feelings & confused by situation -seems to be referring to incest/sexual concern but does not elaborate. "This ties into mainstream middle-class thinking about close physical contact based on a fear that bodies in close proximity will inevitably run out of control into bad -- i.e., sexual -- behavior. Bodies must be kept apart from one another so that the rational mind can stay in control." Acknowledges that Ferber doesn't assume father at work/mother at home, and his work gives mothers more freedom to go to work for wages. 125: "Interestingly, Sears and his opponent Ferber use _identical_ "scientific" information about sleep to argue that children should (Sears) or should not (Ferber) be allowed to sleep with parents in the parents' bed. Points out that (126): "In the end, Sears seems to argue that if you trust your 'instincts,' you will parent in the manner proposed by Sears. In other words, good parenting is Sears's method of parenting. You can listen to Sears and 'trust your instincts.' Or, just in case your instincts let you down, you can circumvent 'nature' and simply listen to Sears, parenting in the manner he proposes. Either way, the end result is Sears -- Sears the advocate for parental intuition, Sears the pediatric expert." She argues that claims Sears, as the male guru of the AP movement, perpetuates dualism of instinctive mothers, rational father/doctors. I guess I haven't necessarily felt this, but have been surprised at how few resources there seem to be for fathers or interest by fathers in parenting. Eric seems to be an anomaly in this regard. 158: "Child-rearing advice functions like advertising. It urges us to focus on ourselves as the locus of solutions to most child-rearing problems. Thinking in terms of individual solutions is born from a larger tradition in American political thought that advocates individual answers to most problems, including social problems. If only the individiual mother parents well, the children will grow up right, even though she may not have access to the resources necessary to feed and house her children or to protect them from violence. Instead of demanding a different social order, with subsidized child care, pay for women's domestic labor, and so on, the advice calls upon us to try a different child-rearing method, much like using a new toothpaste was offered as the individual solution to social dissatisfaction [by the advertising industry:]. "The real problems women and children face -- poverty, overwork, lack of social or financial support, lack of child care, and violence -- are outside the experts' focus. " (158). "Women do most of our child care and pay for it in money, time, and endless anxiety. But instead of agitating, resisting, and demanding pay and recognition for their labor, many women spend a lot of time and energy worrying over child-rearing advice and methods. Child-rearing advice is a kind of mirage that disappears when we get close to it. It keeps us busy looking in the wrong direction. It keeps us focused on ourselves and our individual child-rearing situation and choices rather than on the social world within which we rear our children." 160 Here again, a broad statement to which I would say: yes and no. Yes, we do need the kinds of social change she argues (correctly) are ignored by the parenting advice manuals. No, social change alone is not enough: even if there is subsidized child care and pay for work, I'm still going to have questions about how to interact with my child on a day to day basis when he screams in a restaurant, kicks me while I try to change his diaper, and says "no" to everything I request. As additional evidence, I submit that my friend Eleanor, who lives in England with much social support for mothers, still appreciates Dr. Sears because it gave her permission to parent the way she wanted to. In the conclusion, she gives brief (a few paragraphs) attention to someone called Oxenhandler and her idea of "attuned" parenting that would move us to attention to the child in the moment versus some preordained idea of how much to touch (a lot or not at all). She writes, "our thinking about touching is never finished. It is never not a problem; it is always dangerous. For Foucault, 'the undefined work of freedom' would mean, in this case, being aware of how both our desire for touch and our fear of it are historically generated, ridden with politics, ridden with power, and must be subject, always, to our own criticism. "We want to be free of ambiguities and to touch our children 'correctly,' without danger. And this is not possible. Touch is indeed dangerous, as much as it is deeply necessary and potentially life-giving . . . . If a mother fears the impact of extended breastfeeding on her child, but thinks she 'should' breastfeed later than most of her contemporary culture, I challenge both the belief in a clear 'should,' a perfect solution, _and_ the anxiety surrounding that belief. Thus, we experience the danger and joy of touch simultaneously. There is no way around ambiguity" (165). I appreciated this book for its analysis of parenting philosophy and ideology. That alone brings me a breath of fresh air, as I am all-too-easily sucked in to ideological "shoulds" when it comes to parenting, and this provides me the space to step back. I thought her focus on this through the lens of touch was interesting, though perhaps a bit limiting.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-02-10 00:00:00 Jessica Falotico Read for my abnormal psychology class.