Women only want to be mothers anyway, aren’t good at negotiating and it’s their own fault if they don’t get much of a pension later on. Isn’t that what nobody says anymore? Unfortunately. BRIGITTE editor Alexandra Zykunov has collected phrases that women still have to listen to – and breaks them down once and for all. Here she tells why mothers are still seen as the main people responsible for the children.
Let’s start with an absolute classic. Calm down, pay attention to the signs of your body – I can do all these things very carefully on a free weekend. Any mindfulness guru would celebrate me for it. But not when I’m a mother. Because let’s be honest – as a mother you have forfeited your right to time off. Why? Because our beliefs think they’re in 2022, but they’re actually stuck in the 60’s.
“Holiday without family? Don’t you miss your child when you go away alone?” Every mother I know has heard this question before. Every! Followed closely by “Where’s your child tonight?” if she dared to go out alone in the evening. I don’t know any father who has to answer these questions. The man is on the road, the woman with the children – logical, we know. But the woman is away and the man with the children? Or even worse: The woman has booked a holiday trip just for herself? Or worst of all: she left her husband, moved out and only sees the children every other weekend?! Reign times, how can she?!
So let’s do the analysis: Where does this double standard come from? The answer is: Because even in 2022, the narrative “A child belongs to the mother” will still apply in this country, and even today girls, and practically only girls, are encouraged from a very early age to tidy up, to carry their dolls around and to feel responsible for the needs of a family.
Doll and dolls – that’s a difference
“No,” many now want to protest, “but my son also has a doll!” Okay, maybe he has one, maybe two. But girls have dolls (clear majority), doll houses, doll cutlery, doll diapers, doll brushes, doll carriers, doll buggies, doll beds, doll bottles, doll pacifiers, doll cushions, doll blankets, doll plasters, doll thermometers, doll leg wraps, doll bathtubs and, and, and.
The children’s books keep going: The popular children’s character “Conni” starts daycare at the age of three, and who is at home with her before then? That’s right: mom. Little “Leo Lausemaus” has a whole attack when his mother starts a part-time(!) job because he thinks Mama doesn’t love him anymore – this causality alone! And when “Bobo’s” dad goes to work, mom goes shopping and to the playground with Bobo. am I exaggerating? Unfortunately, no – all stories on the current children’s book market.
And I’m not even into the sticker books (girls: princesses, mommies, dress-up dolls; boys: robots, dinosaurs, and explorers) or Disney movies (Arielle votes to be with a guy she barely knows; total strangers princes, who kiss unconscious women awake) arrived. This is the socialization that our children will still be growing up with in 2022. Or as the journalist and feminist Teresa Bücker put it so aptly: “Girls are not born to be interested in small kitchens and dolls, they just learn from an early age that this behavior makes them a woman.”
Can parents be new role models?
“But what about us parents?” Many might now think, “Couldn’t we be other role models?” We could, yes, but unfortunately we still aren’t: Only four out of ten fathers in this country take parental leave at all, six out of ten still don’t do it at all. And of those who take parental leave, three quarters only take the mandatory two months.
77 percent of all people in Germany think that a mother should have time for her child in the afternoon. There is the word “mother” but not “father”. A 34-year-old mother does an average of 5 hours and 18 minutes of so-called care work every day, while the 34-year-old father only manages 2 hours and 31 minutes. Conversely, for boys, these numbers mean that today they are still not being educated to care. They lack role models in the broad masseswho, across all social classes, naturally meet three days a week in the afternoons at playgrounds or in toddler groups. And so our children today mostly still grow up in households in which mothers take care of them emotionally and physically – and fathers take care of them financially.
So if our children are shown that by us; when the fairy tales, children’s books, films and series tell us the same story; when in advertising mothers wrap diapers, apply sunscreen and stick the band-aid on the wound; when drugstores put “Mama’s Darling” stickers on baby products – how are you supposed to escape from this role model? As a woman, how can you not feel responsible 24/7 and consequently get silly looks if you don’t want to feel responsible for a weekend?
How do we get out of this misery?
Now what the hell am I going to say to another mom when she smacks that “don’t you miss your kid when you’re alone for the weekend?” line in my head? First, we should understand that the woman does not mean it against us. Basically she has no other choice, she MUST ask us this question, because it is also her natural reaction to her socialization – and breaking through this is a mammoth task, which we absolutely have to face.
Second, we should kindly ask her the counter-question: “Would you ask my husband that too?” And thirdly, add: “If I answer this question in the affirmative, I’m handing down an image that is centuries old and will survive for hundreds of more years through my ‘yes’. So no, I don’t miss my child if I go away alone for one damn weekend !”
©PR
Want more from wannabe Equality Hell? With a lot of anger and precision, Alexandra Zykunov breaks down 20 more such “bullshit” sentences in her new book “We’ve all been equal for a long time now”. (288 p., 11 euros, Ullstein)