the bad dominicana

witchsistah:

From WW about that photo of the slave woman, both breasts exposed, nursing a White child has got me thinking about WW especially middle class WW’s view on motherhood and how they’ve changed in the past 50 or so years.  This was prompted by the response to that photo and to how we spoke about how White people try and complicate the simplest things including motherhood.

I find it interesting that this White complication of all aspects of motherhood corresponded with BW, especially American BW, having more choices in earning a living outside of housekeeping and tending children for WW.  Suddenly all the mechanisms of performing motherhood became elevated, much discussed and damn near fetishized in White Western society.  Everything White women did for motherhood was suddenly interesting and societally important.  When BW were doing the same things for them for little pay and much humiliating and abusive treatment, that wasn’t shit, not worthy of comment or study.

Suddenly the work/home divide became a big deal because not only did WW now have to increasingly work outside the home in order to maintain the facade of middle-classness but they could no longer count on a large pool of BW whom they could employ for peanuts to cook and clean and basically do their housewife job for them.  Basically WW were now stuck having to take care of their OWN kids.

This is due to two things. One is that wages and costs of living have gone up to the point where only the rich can afford live-in child care.  Even married WW have to work a job in order to keep up their middle class appearances.  The second is due to the increased opportunities afforded to BW regarding education and employment since the 60s that allowed us to choose other ways of earning a living outside of housekeeping in some WW’s house.  In fact, I and many other BW my age and a little older remember our parents stressing the importance of our educations so that we “wouldn’t have to work in some WW’s kitchen.”  Suddenly, the pool of available house labor dried up as BW took any job outside of domestic work.  So now, WW were essentially stuck with having to raise their own kids and keep their own homes.

So, in their usually conceited, self-centered, attention-whoring way, they made a big deal of them finally raising their own children instead of a BW.  Look at them! They’re actually raising their own kids!  They’re even breastfeeding their own kids! They’re giving birth naturally the way that most women in the WORLD do it!  They even took CLASSES for it because you don’t have the right to natural childbirth without a certificate, diploma or class.  

And they have to make it all waaaaaaaaaay more complicated than it is or else how else are they going to show they can do motherhood better than all the women they made to it for them up until 20-50 years ago (and for upper-class women, they still employ WoC to do that job for them), especially since they JUST started doing it.  Suddenly there are all these rules for nurturing, educating, feeding your children that somehow weren’t necessary when BW were doing that for them. Now these arbitrary rules are all-important AND the mark of REAL motherhood now that middle-class WW are stuck doing the job.

this ties into how they act like attachment parenting, baby wearing and the *montessori* method of letting your kids be independent as they grow into it instead of teaching them to be useless dependent fucks as “revolutionary” new and special coz whitey wrote it down,  when its simply what WOC have done for fucking ever. but white women are *gasp* mothering now—- so lets throw a motherfucking party and applaud them for their grandiosity of spirit and dedication. :|