Thinking about the Baby response by Melissa Monsalve

    Walzer's "Thinking about the Baby" article brings up very obvious and not so obvious aspects about the imbalance of responsibilities between men and women in terms of caring for a baby. The more obvious imbalance would be that of the physical tasks for the baby, which women perform most of. The less obvious imbalance is that of the worrying about the baby.
     One point that Walzer brings up in the article that I found quite interesting was about how women do not see their requirements as mothers and wives of a household as oppressive when compared to their oppressions outside the private setting. When you really think about it, the role of mother and wife is a highly oppressive role. The woman becomes dependent on their significant other because they are the ones expected to make sacrifices in their lives in order to be a good mother and wife. This then leads to make the man the boss, causing the woman to lose any sense of power. Women then may feel like they need to be a mother, a GOOD mother specifically, to reclaim some power lost in the private setting. In reality, motherhood acts in an opposite manner. Women are put down by the man of the house.
     Why is this oppression not more obvious? The answer, to me, seems to be in the fact that society suggests that it is natural for a women to just give herself up to motherhood and wife-hood. This is a ridiculous claim. It's like saying that because we as humans can, and are built to reproduce, that we all want to have kids, when in reality some people don't have any interest in doing so. And if motherhood is so "natural", why all the parenting books and why isn't there some natural tendency in men to be fathers? I mean, after all men and women are of the same biological templates, with only one chromosome and hormones determining main differences, so why not?
     The whole concept of worrying is the less obvious part to me. It's quite interesting really, because we don't immediately think of the burden that it is to have to worry about a child and how there is a lack of sharing of that burden. The general trend is that men worry about making the money and women worry about the baby and the house to make a happy home. Its also funny how the worrying is reinforced. For example, what happens when you know for a fact that the baby is in fact perfectly fine? It's healthy, full, sleeping well, with a clean diaper on. What's left to do? Does the mother continue to worry? If she doesn't worry, is that a bad reflection on her mothering? I mean, if the baby is fine, that should reflect well on her seeing as she has fulfilled the baby's needs. Also, in terms of the fathers, I find it difficult to believe that they do not worry about their kids. Sure, the child was not birthed by them, but there has to be something in them that instills some type of worry if it does the same in women. The problem is that women are pressured into being a good mother, whereas for men, if doesn't matter if they're good fathers or not. All that matters are the numbers and that's that.

“Thinking About the Baby” post by. Ryland Hormel

While reading “Thinking About the Baby” by Walzer, I couldn’t help but think about how it compares to my parents.  Beginning with the section of the article about worrying, I knew that this all too well applied to my parents.  My mom is constantly worrying about me when I am home, but I do not feel that she worries as much when I am at school.  I believe this is her ability to control when I am at home and knowing what I am doing.  When Walzer states that mothers feel that worrying is part of being a good mother I wonder if that is due to the fact that they have the ability to control.  For example, if my mom tells me to brush my teeth every night when I am younger, it shows that she always thinks about me doing that and worries about the health of my mouth.  Regardless of my own decision to brush my teeth every night, she would still tell me too.  So this leads me to believe that the ability to control and tell your child what to do reinforces the need to worry.  Aside from my own mother, this part of the article reminded me perfectly of my friend’s mom and dad.  I was in Barcelona with them two summers ago and one night before my buddy and I went out, his mom broke down crying.  She was crying because she was worried about letting us go out.  Meanwhile my friends dad was sitting in a chair just watching this all go on and looked completely un-phased with us going out.  

The second part Walzer explains is about “Managing the Divisions of Labor”.  I was most intrigued by this section.  From what Walzer shows, it sounds like the Mothers do most of the work, and the only times fathers do the work is when their partner asks them too.  Not saying the fathers do no work or do not want to do the work, they just simply do not do it until they are asked.  This is very surprising to me.  All of the quotes Walzer used shed a lot of light on this area.  The one quote that stood out to me was: “I do diapers. Joel can't handle it well. You know, he does diapers too, but not if there's poop in them.”  This seems funny to me.  Aren’t men supposed to be the ones that can handle the nasty stuff and not women?  Certainly it seems that way when society looks at it. So when it comes to changing poopy diapers why are the roles reversed? 

John Gallagher - Thinking About the Baby

I found this article to be an interesting look inside parenting dynamics and how mothers and fathers each have a different and particular role.  Nothing too out of the ordinary jumped out at me as I read this, as I agreed with most of the facts and statements throughout.  The first section, which discussed the worrying factor in parents, shed an interesting light on why mothers worry.  I thought it was interesting that Walzer thought that mothers worried only because fathers do not.  This section then went on to mention that mothers will go the entire day without letting their baby leave their mind, while fathers do not necessarily think about their children their entire work day.  Like I said above, this doesn’t jump out at me as ridiculous and far fetched, but it was interesting to see some of the quotes on display by Walzer, and facts to back it up.  It doesn’t seem to me like there is a problem in our society in terms of father’s not caring/worrying enough.  In most households fathers are expected to put food on the table and do the bulk of the work outside the home. 

Another part of the article that I found interesting was the concept of whether or not parents thought they were doing a poor job or good job raising their kid.  One mother said that she always is worrying about what everyone else is going to think.  I have definitely noticed this with some of my friends’ mothers growing up as a kid.   The sense of self-consciousness in mothers can be very visible I have noticed as I have gotten older.  One of my neighbors who is now a single mother with a younger boy around age thirteen, is always making sure she comes off as a “good parent.”  I have noticed this the past three years.  This mom will try to make it apparent to other parents in the neighborhood that she is up to par with her parenting obligations, and will even express her “good parenting” towards me and my sister by bragging about what she allows her son to do. (etc…) I find it funny, and as I read this article I was able to see a real life connection.  Walzer’s article helped put parenting into perspective for me.

"Thinking about the Baby" Response by Emily Hunter

“Thinking about the Baby: Gender and Divisions of Infant Care” by Walzer Response by Emily Hunter

 During the final class before spring break we discussed Hollingworth’s article exploring the devices used to impel women to have and raise children. One theme that arose out of this discussion was the idea that a woman’s self-worth can be determined based on whether or not she is a mother, and if she is, whether or not she is a good mother. This same theme can be seen numerous times in Walzer’s article. The worth of a woman being defined through motherhood is first noted when Walzer explained that many mothers worry because they believe they are supposed to be worrying, and that worrying about their child means they are good mothers. This “need” for worrying leads many women to feel they are not fulfilling their role as mothers because they are not constantly thinking about their children. This constant worrying about being a “good” mother begins even before a woman has a child. Personally, I have had numerous discussions with friends regarding who will make a “good” mother and who will not. I (and many of my friends) have already begun to question whether we have what it takes to be successful as mothers. I now wonder whether these questions begin to arise at this age because women move into a new stage of life in which the defining factors of femininity are changing. Yet the worrying mothers experience is not simply based around the child’s health and wellness, but also around how the child’s actions reflect upon the parenting of the mother. Again, this “mother worry” (as Walzer describes it) indicates that women are extremely self-aware as to how they are seen as mothers, and gain or lose self-worth based on how successful they are as mothers.

 One aspect that Walzer did not explore in great detail involves looking at the worries of fathers. Throughout the article Walzer explained that the fathers do not experience the same type of worries that mothers do and the fathers actually take a more laid back role in the family. Yet, Walzer also explains that this may be because society demands that fathers be the primary financial support for the family and for this reason fathers must dedicate more time to work than to the family. I feel that fathers most likely worry about bringing in money as much as mothers worry about the children, but because the two parents worry about different things, tensions may arise within the marriage.

 I also found the section on division of labor within the household to be both humorous and thought provoking. For years I have listened as my mother asked my father why he can’t seem to do any housework unless he is told to. While my parents split many of the household tasks, cleaning has been something that my father does not choose to do without being ordered. The more I thought about this, the more I realized that my mother has always been the one who decided who and what needed to be done in the house while my father and I simply waited for orders. Thinking about this division of labor in the context of the article, I can now understand my mother’s frustration arises from the pressure she feels to keep the house clean with little to no help from other members of the family. Not only does the lack of help frustrate her, but numerous times she has hinted at the fact that my father gets to participate in many physical activities he loves, while she cannot because after her day job she is responsible for cooking dinner and straightening up the house. I always tell her to simply make time for herself, but now I see it may not be as easy as I believe. It is possible that my mother feels the pressure from society to conform to proper household roles and thus does not have as much freedom as my father or me. I therefore believe it is extremely likely that these feelings of oppression mothers experience based on family dynamics have the possibility to create frustration and tension within a marriage.

Jae's Post on Miss Representation

It was interesting to see how the media influences women.The media “teaches women or rather tells women how to use their bodies, how to look, and how to act. Young women see music videos and how the women in them are portrayed and then you have various magazines showing women bodies. Further more those bodies are skinny and “sexy”. The media creates the image of how women are suppose to be and then girls and later on young women try to make themselves into that image and it is very stressful. Women have to be beautiful and skinny and everything that they see all around them in order to in a sense fit into society.

It was also interesting to see the message of how women are not equal to men. It always interest me some women and men think they are equal to each other because they can both vote and work in the same companies. However we see that they are still not paid as much as men even in the same positions as them. Women are inferior to men in societies eyes. Most individuals would think that in this society pressure is put on men but in reality it is on women because men are expected to succeed and born with “privilege” that women are not.

Miss Representation Response - Brooke Dinsmore

Of all the documentaries about media I have watched, MissRepresentation is by far the most powerful. What the movie manages to do, and to do really well, is not just articulate the problem with representations of women in media but to also articulate the why and the why it matters. I thought one of the reasons the movie was so powerful movie was the juxtaposition of real, strong women with media images. This begins in the intro with beautiful black and white images of women like Barbra Steinem and Hillary Clinton with color images of horrible images from the media. Throughout the movie the story is narrated by women, real women of all ages and races, from all walks of life. And their realness, their strength, their flesh and bones and humanity is to me what made this movie so powerful. To switch from Rachel Maddow to images of Playboy models, from Nancy Pelosi to Desperate Housewives, is to understand the real tragedy of media images of women. As the movie shows these images are not real and they fall so horribly, tragically short of what real women are, of all their strength and beauty. These images are women minus their humanity and it is so much more apparent when you see so many representations of women who are fully human.

The consequences of these media images are made drastically clear. They are the internal, the pain and suffering women go through, the eating disorders, the self-harming, the feelings of inadequacy. And they are the external, the struggles faced by women politicians to be taken seriously. These things are made so beautifully clear, and so painfully meaningful. The movie makes you really feel the consequences of the toxic nature of media images. And it forces you to understand the complexity of the why. To face the systematic nature of the problem – the government’s role, the role of corporations and capitalism. The complexity is made clear. The movie also makes it clear there are no easy answers. But it does provide one answer, and that is empowerment and community among women. When at the end of the movie, a female politician told a group of aspiring young women that we must come together, say Hallelujah  sister, whatever gets you through, it resonated in a way that was almost painful. If we as women must recognize each other’s humanity and create a community, then I believe that we do have a chance at changing the culture. 

Jenn Hyslip Miss. Representation Post

            The premise of the documentary Miss. Representation is to provide the viewer with the perspective on how the media depicts woman, particularly the lack of positive representations of women. Right off the bat, I was sucked into the documentary because it was produced in 2011, meaning it truly was about my generation. Even though the documentary’s we watch in class are informative and eye opening, they also appear to be outdated.  There is an extreme underrepresentation of women in the media and this documentary looks to start a movement in the right direction. To be honest, I was not familiar with many of the women interviewed other than Katie Couric and a few other actresses. I guess this goes to speak to the fact that media does not provide us with images, but also many of the female leaders are well known in the world of U.S. government and politics – something that I do not keep up with or know much about. It’s always been a “guy” major to me, so it’s sad to say that I am one of the people that conform to the media images.

            One of the things that struck me was how the media is both the message and the messenger. Through television shows, the media provides us with images of woman’s confining role in society by what they depict and how often it airs on TV. Miss. Representation gives me a new perspective and source to delve into for my research paper topic on the message reality TV sends to men and women. Such shows as I Want A Famous Face and Extreme Makeover, force images of what is acceptable and unacceptable to society. Other ideas that stood out for me and made me think was the idea that when girls are little they always aspire to be the President of the United States. While I don’t think I was one of those girls (I did want to be the President of my Beanie Baby club though), I knew plenty of girls who wanted to be. However, when asked during middle school years, girls are reluctant to say they want to be President. The gap is outstanding. Lastly, there was one interview with a high school student who explained her opinion on why women compete. Her answer was that when one girls looks at the girl sitting next to her and she is getting good grades or succeeding in some other way, the girl gets frustrated and wants to beat her and in turn does not support her competitors success. While I think this is completely true, I also believe that this exists in the world of masculinity as well. However, the way our society is constructed, men are just given more opportunities to succeed in numbers. Overall, I think this documentary is pretty amazing and can be utilized in a positive way during our generation.