How Mothers Unwittingly Perpetuate Patriarchal Gender Norms

And how we can interrupt these deeply ingrained assumptions and behaviors

Photo by fizkes from Getty Images

We often talk about The Patriarchy as though it’s its own self-contained entity that exists in its own self-contained space. Many of us would like to smash it, or at least methodically dismantle it. Sounds nice, but here’s the thing — the patriarchy is in the very air we breathe. It’s insidious. Conniving. Sly.

Even those of us, like me, who would very much like to destroy the patriarchy often end up perpetuating it. 

The Women’s Liberation Movement, for instance, did succeed in liberating college-educated women from their homes. But in the process, these newly minted career women merely transferred portions of their unpaid, undervalued domestic and caregiving labor to other women, then continued to take on most of the rest of it during their second shifts.

Yes, the Women’s Liberation Movement disrupted gender norms in some economic sectors, but career feminists continued, and continue, to perpetuate the patriarchy in more ways than one.

There was a time when I embraced the “lean in” approach, when I just wanted to see women kicking ass in superhero movies and board rooms alike. But like many of my fellow feminist mothers on Substack, I’ve realized the severe limitations of this approach. As feminists, we need to advocate for the value of what has long been considered “women’s work” and challenge society’s stubborn insistence that the domestic, emotional, and mental labor of caregiving is in fact “women’s work.”

I’m proud of my evolved feminist perspective — maybe sometimes I even catch myself feeling a bit smug. It accounts for the shades of nuance I’ve often found lacking in mainstream feminist conversations. It is a feminism that actually celebrates the difficult and complex work of nurturing children, while also recognizing that the patriarchy benefits when this labor is relegated to women.

Yet even as an “evolved” feminist mother who is quite outspoken online, I still struggle in my personal life to interrupt the reflexive assumptions and behaviors that only perpetuate patriarchal gender norms. I still unwittingly make these assumptions and engage in these behaviors, and I see other mothers unwittingly doing the same.

Three examples come immediately to mind:

When moms only text other moms

A few years ago, I enrolled my daughter in a delightfully eccentric after-school program that aimed to help children in their transition to adolescence. The teacher went by they/them pronouns, identified as a “queer mama,” and sported a half-shaved head. Their co-parent, who made occasional appearances, was bearded, dreadlocked, and often wore skirts. If anyone was bucking gender conventions, it was these two.

And yet. Despite the fact that the teacher had collected contact information for all parents, it was only the mothers who were looped into group text chats. My husband received the email updates, but was spared all the conversations about changing the next meeting time or who should bring what to the Friday potluck.

Scrolling through my phone contacts recently, I realized how many mothers are in my contact list. In fact, the few fathers I have contact info for are divorced, with the exception of my nearby cousin and one father whose contact information I’d gotten because he’d been put in charge of managing a playdate while his wife was out of town. The divorced fathers sometimes reach out during the weeks they have their children, but when it comes to cohabiting heterosexual parents, I correspond with mothers only.

The partnered fathers are not corresponding separately with my husband. They are simply not corresponding with other fathers at all. The mothers are arranging everything, occasionally with the input of a divorced father who no longer has a woman at hand to do all the arranging and planning for him.

My children pick up on this. When they want to have a friend over, they nearly always come to me and ask if I can text so-and-so’s mom. If my daughter isn’t sure what time her track meet starts, she comes to me and tells me so-and-so’s mom might know.

As much as I’ve resented being thrust into the role of “default parent” — and I know I’m not alone in this — we mothers instinctively treat one another as the default parents, too.

When moms hold other moms accountable for “women’s work”

Hey moms, have you ever walked into a somewhat gross or disorganized family home and silently judged the dad? Conversely, have you ever not apologized to unexpected company when your own home is somewhat gross or disorganized?

In her great post about acts of microfeminism,

Jo-Ann Finkelstein, PhD

, recommends, “If your friend apologizes for her messy house, say, ‘I guess [husband’s name] didn’t get to it yet.’ ”

As women, we still feel responsible, and hold other women responsible, for the cleanliness of our homes, even if household chores are (somewhat) equitably shared between two parents. Maybe we sometimes catch ourselves making silent judgments or resist the urge to apologize, but the impulses are deeply embedded, often involuntary.

What’s worse though, is when we very consciously hold other mothers responsible for “women’s work.” As a case in point, I recently received a not-so-kind text from my own mother-in-law because my son had failed to thank her for a birthday gift within 24 hours of receiving it, and I was apparently failing to teach my children the importance of gratitude.

Funny, isn’t it, that she texted me and not her son? And even funnier, that I had already made a mental note to ensure that my own son acknowledged the gift because as the resident kinkeeper of the home, I knew that following up to say thank you was not even on my husband’s radar?

Ok, maybe it’s not so funny.

I’ll freely admit that my children never write thank you cards. I have a personal aversion to thank you cards because my own mother saw to it that I wrote them after birthdays and holidays. I put pressure on myself to write something meaningful in each and every card, which made the task so onerous that I put it off as long as possible until I inevitably succumbed to my mother’s incessant nagging.

The actual writing of the notes may have been a good lesson in gratitude, but what I mostly took away from this dreaded assignment was that if I failed to do it, or if I put it off for too long, people would blame my mother. I knew this in part because my own mother told me so, and also because I’d heard her talk shit about other mothers whose children did not write thank you cards.

I now consider myself allergic to thank you cards (and besides, who has postage stamps on hand anyway?), but I still try to make sure my own children acknowledge gifts they receive, and I still worry about being judged if they don’t follow through.

Turns out, I’m right to worry about being judged. And it’s quite probable that the main lesson my kids are taking away is not that gratitude is important, but that women are responsible for it.

When moms tell my daughter she’s beautiful

My mother’s cousin and his wife, who have three grown children, recently met my 12-year-old daughter for the first time. The first question his wife asked my daughter was whether or not she’d ever considered modeling. “You could be a supermodel,” she said.

I get a lot of comments like this. Believe me, I’m not the biased mom who thinks my kids are uniquely precious. OK, I’m definitely biased when it comes to the preciousness of my children, but as far as their looks go, studies have shown that multiracial people, like my daughter and nine-year-old son, are generally perceived as more attractive.

What these studies don’t explain is why far more people comment on my daughter’s beauty than my son’s. Sure, some people said he was a beautiful baby — that is, after he shed the grumpy grandpa look he was born with — and throughout his ensuing nine years, people here and there have told him he’s a “handsome young man.”

But people tell my daughter, or tell me in front of my daughter, that she’s beautiful all the friggin’ time. I know these people mean well. With one notable exception, they are not creepy older men with sinister intentions — in fact, most of them are fellow moms.

If I’m being honest, my gut reaction to these comments is pride ,  as though birthing and raising a beautiful daughter is an accomplishment in its own right. If the comment is directed at me, I sometimes say, “Thank you,” because I am used to thanking people when they pay me a compliment.

Then I feel disgusted with myself and disgusted with a society in which the value of female beauty is so deeply ingrained that even feminists, like me, still experience a Pavlovian reaction of pride when someone tells them that their daughter is beautiful.

My daughter, I can’t help but notice, also takes pride in being “beautiful.” Even though I’ve tried to be highly intentional about her access to the entertainment and advertising industries — which, with some exceptions, still promote and subscribe to narrow definitions of female beauty — their influence remains pervasive. What she doesn’t consume at home she watches at a friend’s house, or hears about on the playground, or sees plastered to a billboard on I-84.

Still, I have to wonder, would my daughter value her beauty so much if adults around her had never praised her for it? Throughout her life, adults — mostly women with kids of their own — have made it quite clear that female beauty is cultural currency, that females who are beautiful are valued, praised, adored. Who doesn’t want to be valued, praised, and adored?

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None of this is to blame or shame mothers — we certainly don’t need any more guilt to contend with.

Patriarchy is our native tongue. We can be highly intentional about learning a new language and speaking in that language, but we’re still most likely to think, dream, and swear in our native tongue. 

Many of us picked up on these intractable assumptions and behaviors from the adults who raised us and are inadvertently passing them down to our kids — even those of us who are making a conscious effort to raise confident girls and emotionally attuned boys.

During an era in which parts of the world are literally on fire and the rest of it is metaphorically on fire, it may seem trite to focus on text threads, thank you cards, and offhand compliments about my daughter. These “small things” seem inconsequential when considered one by one, but they add up to the perpetuation of a system — even by those committed to its destruction — that is actively wreaking havoc on all our lives.

As

Zawn Villines

puts it in her recent story, The sexist relationship myths even 'feminist' coaches and experts believe, “Society thinks household labor inequity is a minor inconvenience rather than a key driver of women’s inequity.”

I have absolutely no desire to put the onus of solving this inequity on mothers’ shoulders. We have enough on our plates as is. But we can start to be aware of our conditioned behaviors and find ways to interrupt them. Just as the accumulation of “small” inequities add up, the accumulation of “small” interruptions can add up, too. 

When communicating with the one cohabiting heterosexual couple for whom I have both mother and father’s contact information, I started texting both of them — and looping my husband in, too. Mostly, it was still just the mothers communicating, but I was glad that at least the fathers could see our invisible labor. In recent weeks, the father has also started texting me about logistics related to our children. WIN!

When my mother-in-law lectured me about gratitude, I politely let her know that I hold my husband responsible for ensuring that his side of the family is properly thanked and that maybe she should speak with him. She graciously responded that she appreciated the boundaries I was trying to set to create a more equitable relationship. WIN!

When my cousin’s wife told my daughter she should be a supermodel, I told her that I hoped to see my daughter pursue a path that enabled her to hone in on her skills and interests. She’s learning how to blend colors beautifully when she draws, I said, and she’s a beast on the basketball court and track field. WIN!

There are Big Things we can do to challenge the patriarchy, like pass federal paid leave, or recommit to women’s reproductive rights, or jail prominent sex offenders, or (please oh please oh please) elect the first female President.

These are all important, but I’d also argue that smaller ongoing interruptions are equally important. Even when states pass paid leave laws and protect abortion rights, even when the Harvey Weinsteins are found guilty and women claim prominent political positions, millions of mothers across the country are still contending with daily inequities that are largely swept under the rug. 

And I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being interrupted. I’m ready to do some interrupting of my own. 

What I’m reading:

I’m currently spending time with extended family by a lake, and I’m limiting my reading to actual books. That means my Substack inbox is filling up at an alarming rate. I’ll do my best to catch up when I return! But in the meantime, I wanted to share my first Substack interview, After Achievement, with

Michelle Andrade

.

Michelle’s newsletter,

Ever After

, features stories of “stories of endings that were only beginnings.” She and I talked about what happened after my husband completed his doctorate degree, a goal we had both been working toward for the better part of 16 years. When we started dating, he didn’t have a high school diploma.

We finally “arrived,” and there was an unspoken feeling of, “This is it?” We were lucky (are lucky) to have jobs we mostly enjoyed, but life was still needlessly stressful and the economy was still intent on extracting our labor at the expense of our family and health. Perhaps even more importantly, we’d lost our North Star.

Check out the interview for my reflections on everything that has ensued since.