HOW THE MOTHER-CHILD BOND SHAPES OUR WORLD & WHY FEMINISM NEEDS TO EMBRACE IT

 
     I've never been one to shy away from difficult subjects. At this blog alone I've spoken about a lot of difficult and painful things that I've gone through and I certainly don't do it because it's fun. It's often very hard for me to do not just because of the nature of the subjects, but I'm honestly a very private person and I like the idea of keeping my private life private. So why do I do it? To be quite honest, because there are a lot of messed up things in our world that we need to talk about, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes all of us, if we want to free ourselves from them, and the vicious cycles that are created because of these things being allowed to exist.

    In all my years of really intense healing, I have yet to find anything as difficult to heal as the Mother-Child relationship. This isn't because women aren't good mothers, or children aren't appreciative of everything their moms have done, it's because our society has damaged this relationship so much that the wounds are almost impossible to heal. I think it's one of the last rights of our society that hasn't even been mentioned. I'm still somewhat surprised by the fact that the feminist community hasn't been more vocal about this issue.

    I made a video not too long ago talking about my own relationship with my mom and everything that happened to me at a very early age which severely damaged this relationship. My mom never did anything to me, but there were a lot of factors outside of her and mine control that were doing everything in their power to destroy this bond. It should come as no surprise that abusive men tend to like to go after this relationship and try to destroy it in order to destroy both the child and the mother, but especially in order to get at the mother. It's a way for these men to "punish" her for leaving them or filing for divorce. Unfortunately we as a society have gotten to a point where we don't see moms as being important and we don't recognize the fact that children have an inherent right to their mom. We have however, glorified fatherhood and the importance of fathers so much that they are often seen as victims in cases where they lose custody of their children to the child's mom, or that it's seen as a tragedy if a child doesn't have their father in their life. I can assure everyone that as a child I could've given a flying fuck about my dad. I just wanted to be with my mom. It wasn't just because he was abusive it goes way beyond that.

     Babies are able to identify their moms at birth, largely through their senses like smell. Babies are not able to identify their fathers at birth, and any emotional bond they develop with him comes later on, and is something that takes years and years to develop. However, babies are born bonded to their moms and for good reason. A baby needs it's mother to survive, it doesn't need it's father to survive. With that being said a child's relationship to it's father is going to be determined by the father's relationship to his mom. For instance when the child is developing in the womb, they are learning about the outside world through their mom's consciousness, her emotions, and her reactions. If a woman is madly in love with the man who impregnated her, everytime she sees him or hears his voice, she will most likely get butterflies. The developing baby will obviously experience that as well, and will begin to associate the sound of his father's voice with a state of happiness and euphoria. Once that baby is born they will continue to feel that way. However, if they mom is being abused or neglected or otherwise treated poorly by the child's father, that will also be fed to the baby. They will associate their "dad" or more accurately this man who seems to always be around their mom with negativity and they will most likely not want anything to do with him when they're born. I imagine that in the cases in which a woman is having a child with a man she doesn't love, but isn't abusive towards her, the child will most likely be indifferent towards the dad. The saying that the best thing a father can do for his child is to love the child's mother couldn't be more accurate.

    How is our society destroying this bond, and why do feminists need to start fighting for the rights of Mothers and Children? I was reading that approximately 58,000 children in the U.S. are forced to see their abusive dads every year through him getting either sole or partial custody of them. In most of these cases the abuse the dads are committing towards the children have been well documented, but most of these men are in positions of power in our society, like judges, doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc. and because of their money and power it's easy for them to get custody of children, even when there is a lot of evidence of abuse. This has led to a lot of children being killed, being beaten, raped and abused in a variety of other ways. People think that mother's only lose custody in cases in which she is extremely abusive, but that's not true at all. Our judicial system functions on money and power, the two things men have always had more of. This isn't the only way abusive men get their hands on children in our society. In approximately 32 states a man can sue for full custody of a child that was created through rape. A man can rape a woman, and then be granted full legal rights to that child. Resulting in a potentially very dangerous situation for both the mother and the child. I was recently reading about a case involving a 19 year old man who impregnated a 14 year-old girl who was supposedly his gf. Instead of him being in jail on (at the very least) statutory rape charges, he was instead in the court room suing for full custody of that child.

       Then we have other issues of things like Maternity leave. The U.S. consistently ranks the lowest in the developing world (& most of the world for that matter) when it comes to this issue. We also have the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the developing world. This is a combination of women not being able to access prenatal care, as well as medical care during childbirth or soon after due to poverty or possibly fear of being deported if she isn't in this country legally. It's also the end result of unnecessary medical interventions being done on women in labor. The majority of c-sections are unnecessary and increase the chance of the baby not surviving long after birth. The cocktail of drugs that doctors give women to induce labor can cause the woman's body to panic and the child to have difficulty breathing, which has led to a lot of problems for both the mom and the baby. Then we have to factor in the fertility industry which is boastful about the fact that now women in their 50s or 60s are able to give birth, as well as them being able to get a woman pregnant with up to 8 babies all at once! All of this is incredibly risky, having a pregnancy of multiples greatly increases the chance of death for both the mom and the baby. In the past month I've read two different stories in which women carrying quads died shortly after giving birth. I also read another story about a woman who gave birth to 4 babies all of whom barely survived and have been in the nicu for months. It's also dangerous having women get pregnant who are too old to do so naturally it isn't safe or healthy for either the mom or the child. We also have the dangers of egg donation which has cost more than one woman her life, it's really easy to have a heart attack as a result of the procedure, because it's so dangerous. It's also dangerous for a woman to get pregnant with another woman's egg. A woman who uses egg donation during pregnancy increases her risk of hypertension by three times. They think this is due to the strain it puts on her body, trying to develop another woman's genetic material. We also have to factor in the risks that other fertility treatments like IVF have on both mom and baby. Which include everything from increasing her chances of getting cancers due to the drugs they use on her, as well as the baby being at a much higher risk of developing disabilities or other problems.

    We also have all the other ways that moms and babies are being separated in our society. In almost every case of adoption it's due to poverty, the fact the mother is very young or that she has little to no support in her life. It's not due to unwanted children, or as a result of children who are actual orphans meaning that they don't have any family at all. Instead of us addressing these issues as a society and helping these women, we encourage people who are at a higher economic class to take advantage of them and to take their children. We then celebrate this. Then we have the case of surrogacy in which almost every woman does so as a result of poverty, and in a lot of cases is a single mom who is just trying to survive. In the cases where these women have husbands, it seems like the husbands are okay with "prostituting" out their wives in order to make some extra money. I feel like in almost every single one these cases in which the woman is married, it isn't just poverty but also domestic violence that is factoring into it. Like how a man might prostitute out his wife or girlfriend to make money off of her. It isn't just the moms who suffer as a result of adoption and surrogacy, not only does this result in the mother-child bond being severed for both individuals, but has also led to a lot of cases of children being raped, beaten, and killed at the hands of the "parents" who took them away from their moms. Keep in mind taking a baby or child away from it's mother is by far the most abusive thing you could ever do to a child. So the only people who would do something like that are those who want to further abuse that child. No one who's a good person would ever take a baby away from it's mother, they just wouldn't.

    As we can see with all these examples the lack of children's rights in our society is directly due to the lack of women's rights. The lack of respect for not just women, but for mother's in our society. This hurts children. It has led to children in our society having no rights, no voices, and having very little support to develop a healthy bond with their mothers. In the eyes of a child their mother is god, and her being treated as though she is less than that, is going to directly affect the way they see themselves. To a child, their mother is the most important person on this planet, and if their mom is allowed to be abused, to be homeless, to struggle in poverty, and to have her body be violated, how do you think that child will feel about themselves? What kind of world does that create?

     It's time that we start seeing women as being important, and we start seeing mothers as being important. I would love to see the feminist community really start talking about all of this, and start focusing on fighting to change the dynamics of our country to make it super friendly and supportive for mothers and children. Lets empower the Mother-Child bond, instead of just destroying it.

***I came across this great podcast the other day which is about the exploitation of surrogacy and women's bodies. I would strongly recommend listening to it.

http://feministcurrent.com/9627/surrogacy-is-child-trafficking-an-interview-with-kajsa-ekis-ekman/