Having children, their care, their education, their upbringing continues to be associated with a single figure: the woman. It is true that in recent decades a great change has been brought about in the conception of motherhood and parenting. Now more and more parents are involved in the education of the kids.
This incorporation of the father in family life is a fact to be celebrated, only in this way the co-responsibility of parenting can be effective. But it also introduces a new element into this equation: the bias of admiration towards the father who takes care of the minimum care of the children and the naturalization of the role of caretaker that the mother must fulfill.
This bias has become more acute in recent decades due to the total incorporation of women into working life. Now women are not only asked to be mothers perfectThey want us to be the perfect workers and also the perfect housewives. In other words, they want superwomans every day. Esther Vivas, journalist and author of the book ‘Mamá disobediente’ explains this idea. “The myth of the perfect mother, in fact, only serves to blame and stigmatize women who distance themselves from it. Mothers are considered the source of creation, those who give life, but also scapegoats for the evils of the world when they do not respond to the established canons. They are held responsible for the happiness and failures of their daughters and sons, when neither one nor the other is often in their hands, and it depends more on a series of social conditioning factors”.
The idea of a perfect mother collides with the idea of a father who requires minimal care to call him a perfect father. This double yardstick of motherhood and fatherhood has been perfectly illustrated by artist Mary Catherine Starr on her Instagram account.
With these illustrations, the artist denounces how we praise men involved in the education of their children and, however, we look down on women when they are not fulfilling their role as perfect mothers or we directly call them bad mothers.
Let’s stop to reflect: What do we think when we see a father spending time with his children? That he is a father who is present in the education of his children. And when do we see a woman? We take it for granted, we believe that it is the most normal thing for a woman to take care of her children. Vivas points out in her book that “the maternal role has been naturalized”, while the paternal role boasts of doing minimal care, of assuming, after all, her paternity.
We can think of many other examples: What comes to mind if we see a mother arrive with fast food? That she’s a bad mother who doesn’t have time to cook dinner. But what if that’s what the father does? She is a cool dad. What is our reaction if we see a mother looking at her mobile while she is with her children? She is a mother who is not attentive and does not care about her children. What if the father does? He is a father who is present, but who has to attend to his mobile for a moment.
What do we think of when we see a woman go to work and come home late? In that she does not take care of her children. What if she makes him a man? He is a father who has to work for his family. This is how Vivas tells how, in the case of work, they continue to blame us for not becoming the perfect workers and the perfect mothers: “They condemn us to be branded as unsuccessful professionals by not being 100% available at work, or of bad mothers for not taking care of and dedicating enough time to the little ones. the fault is always ours“.
A question of co-responsibility
If we stop to think, at home, who takes care of taking the children to the park, taking them to the pediatrician, keeping up with things at school or bathing them? Who does the shopping, the food or the laundry? What changes have you had to make in your professional career or in your working day since you have children? How often do you read, go to the movies or go out with friends?
It will come to many of us that women perform all these tasks. And it is that, although men begin to carry out basic care in the upbringing and education of children, there is still a lot of work to be done as a society so that there is co-responsibility actual at home. According to a study by the Club de Malasmadres carried out in 2017, 54% of women are primarily responsible for invisible household chores, compared to 17% of men. “All these demands are in the woman’s backpack. Healthy recipes, marrying the school menu with dinner at home, we make them. They are the rules that we assume in that desire for perfectionism that we have to do everything well. Wanting to delegate responsibility”, Sonsoles Onega told us in this presentation.
Without effective co-responsibility, both socially and at home, the education of children will continue to be carried on the backs of women, and illustrations such as those of Mary Catherine Starr will continue to be necessary to denounce the double standard with which we judge motherhood and The paternity.