Lactation Room

I was filling my water bottle before class at my Mid-Atlantic Public University, when I suddenly became aware of this:

A Lactation Room!

Here is how my reaction unfolded:

1. A lactation room?! Do we really need this? What's next, a meditation space?? Oh wait, this building already has one of those. . . 
2. Of course we need this!  Mothers shouldn't be hiding in bathrooms or other semi-public spaces to pump their breast milk!
3. I didn't know this was here.  How long has this been here?  Does anyone else know this is here??  If I was a lactating mother would I even think to ask if the building had one of these?  Who would I ask?
4. That sign seems really hostile . . . was it preemptive or did someone have a really bad experience?
5. Yay! Feminist progress points for lactation rooms!  But, errrrr, no one knows about it and we're already yelling at people. Not sure how to feel!!!!
6. I should write a blog post about this!  But will people think I'm weird for taking a photo of this door?  I'll come back later . . .

I was going to leave things there, but then I felt guilty.  Who arranged for the lactation room?  Was it an epic struggle?  What feminist heroine should I be contacting to say thank you?

More Work for Mother: Part 2

Welcome to the second installment in our 4-part blog series on Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s seminal book More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave.  Today we will discuss how modern utilities and automotive transportation helped keep “women’s work” in the home.

As discussed in Part 1, the industrial revolution moved traditionally men’s work into the commercial and industrial sectors while leaving women’s work in the private sphere.  According to Cowan, modern utility access supported this break.  According to her research, access to water, gas, and electric service removed men’s role in collecting and hauling water and fuel, and made it possible for cleaning and cooking tasks to remain inside the home (rather than be outsourced).  For example, with a water hookup and electricity, women could clean their laundry at home rather than sending it to a commercial laundry.

The development of automotive transportation also influenced the work done by married women.  Before the car came into widespread use, goods and services came to your door.  The local grocery's delivery boys would deliver your order.  Doctors made house calls.  Peddlers would make their rounds.  As the car took over and the depression put pressure on businesses, delivery services vanished and women started driving to do their shopping, take the kids to school or the doctor, etc.   Transportation service became a large part of a women’s daily route.

Cowan’s book was written in the early 1980s, so recent developments in internet shopping piqued my interest.  Has the internet made things easier for women or harder?  At first, I thought it’s probably helping.  With the rise of online shopping and reliable delivery, women don’t have to drive all over town for many items.  On the other hand, most day-to-day items like groceries still aren’t available for delivery at a price most people are willing to pay.  In addition, internet access has placed the burden of research on the consumer.  Whereas once you paid a travel agent to book your flights, now you spend several hours researching and comparing prices.  The variety of products available also means you spend a lot more time researching the perfect backpack for your child or the best rice cooker.  All this research time seems like an added burden on working mothers that we take for granted.

More Work for Mother: Part 1

As a PhD student interested in technology and its role in society, professors are always suggesting interesting reading material.  Of course, I never read most of it, but this blog gave me a good excuse to finally read Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s seminal book More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave.

The book covers a lot of ground, so I’m going to get four posts out of it.  This “Part 1” will discuss Cowan’s basic thesis: industrialization eliminated “housework” for men and children but preserved “women’s work” and in some ways made it worse.

For most of human history, basic survival required a lot of work from every person in the household.  Men made leather goods, whittled tools, ground grain into meal (or hauled it to the mill), chopped and stacked wood, tended animals, and worked the fields.  Women cooked, tended children, made soap and candles, sewed, and wove.  Even children worked, tending smaller children, mending, stirring pots, and cleaning vegetables.  If the family needed help during the harvest/slaughtering season, or if someone was ill, they would hire help or foster a young family member.  In this dynamic, everyone had work to do and each person developed specialized skills to complete this work.

Then the industrial revolution changed the balance.  Children went to school and men’s work became industrialized: flour was milled commercially, tools and leather goods were made in factories, coal and gas replaced wood.  However, traditionally women’s work remained in the home and new technologies often created more work for married women.

• The production of industrial clothing reduced women’s sewing and weaving tasks, but now the family has more clothing that is expected to be washed more frequently.
• Coal and gas stoves meant that women didn’t tend the fire anymore, but they are expected to provide more diverse and more time consuming meals.
• Vacuum cleaners simplified carpet cleaning, but now women are expected to clean the carpets weekly rather than yearly.

In addition, with the boom in factory jobs, domestic workers could find better pay for less work outside the home, so married women are expected to do all of this by themselves.

This got me thinking.  Aren’t  there “labor-saving” devices today that only make more work for women?  Here are some examples I thought up and I’d love to hear others: 

• We now have McMansions where each kid has his/her own room with a bathroom and Dad has his man-cave, but now Mom needs to clean more rooms.
• How many kitchen devices promise to grill a stuffed pepper, infuse a steak, or puree something exotic?  Guess who usually makes all these specialized meals and then cleans the contraptions.
• How many laundry steaming and sanitizing machines are on the market, raising the sanitation standard yet again?

In Re: [Mother's Name]

By Jen

In September I began working for the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) in Texas. I was probably a little too excited to be starting a state job. I was very enthusiastic about the training process, but I'm sure the overburdened bureaucracy will get to me sooner rather than later. For a few months now I've been imagining writing a piece about how child protection policies here in Texas treat mothers in cases of abuse and neglect.

One of the most striking pieces of the training was in the seemingly most mundane aspect of the job: documentation and record creation.  For today, I'll focus on one bit policy which is assigning a "case name" for a case of abuse or neglect on a child.

The DFPS rule on giving a case a name is that the mother's name is the default name assigned to the case. To be clear, having a case named "Jett, Joan," for example, does not mean that the "alleged perpetrator" of the abuse in the case is going to be Ms. Jett. Using the mother's name is one way the state attempts to distinguish one case from other cases.

During training I tried to swallow this little bit of departmental policy and chase it with a tall glass of water. Still the idea continues to nag at me as I ask the question over and over again everyday: What is the name of the mother of the child? The mother's name may be made the official name of a case even if she is incarcerated and some other family member is caring for the child(ren).

It's not that there aren't exceptions to this rule. For example, the name of a case would change to a foster parent's name if a child had been removed from a home and adopted by a new family. However, even in this case, the name of the case would Foster mother's name. The name used to identify the case of abuse or neglect will also change if some other relative or person has gone through the process of legally obtaining guardianship of the child.

I've tried to see the logical side of this policy decision: the overwhelming statistical evidence of female headed, single parent households or all of the fraught history of preference of the mother in child custody warfare. And, certainly, those examples work to create the context in which the decision was made to stamp every TX Child protective Services case with "MOTHER." But I cannot help but be bothered by the decision to take the mother's name the distinguishing mark of the case. Shouldn't a case number suffice?

In any case, I hope to continue to explore social and protective policy issues in future posts. I hope there's an audience for it here!