June is an eventful month! It’s the start of peak wedding season, the commencement of summer, and it’s also Kindergarten graduation Season.
If you don’t believe me that June is associated with “graduations” for five year-olds, allow me, the parent of a Kindergarten student, to explain: in recent decades, parenting norms have gotten effing ridiculous (that’s the technical term), and parents of little ones are expected to book vacation time to watch people who are too young to ride a bike without supervision “graduate” from one year of elementary school to another year of elementary school.
When I received the invitation to my first-ever Kindergarten graduation ceremony, it made me wonder, who is all this pomp and circumstance benefitting (they literally play “Pomp and Circumstance” at some of these events, FYI)? At their heart, these ceremonies aren’t really for our kids, who do not know what a graduation is and weren’t expecting one in the first place. Nor are such events for parents, who are constantly leaving work early for newly invented milestones. So, here’s the question: why are we creating more and more artificial milestones that serve primarily to inconvenience the adults in a kid’s life? And of course, that begs a second question: why is modern parenting so profoundly anti-parent? Because it’s currently set up to make burnout inevitable, especially for moms…
The 21st century intensification of parenting norms is well documented in academia. In fact, sociologists like Sharon Hays have been speaking about what she refers to as “intensive mothering” since the 90s. For the uninitiated, intensive mothering is an approach to childrearing that emerged in North America around the same time neoconservatives destroyed The Welfare State.
Dr. Melinda Vandenbeld Giles is a scholar of modern motherhood who teaches at Lakehead University. According to her, “intensive mothering is the neoliberal demand for increased free labour as state supports diminish, leaving mothers with evermore pressure to perform perfectly while simultaneously receiving no support to do the work of mothering.”
The ideology suggested mothers should treat their parenting responsibilities as a job, spending more time and money with their kids than ever before, tending to everything from coaching them with their homework to making organic meals each night for dinner. And yes, the sociologists who study intensive mothering realize this is a very heteronormative ideology rooted in both patriarchy and the gender binary.
For the last few decades, intensive mothering coerced my fellow moms into doing more and more parental labour. Sure, some dads were and are very involved and participate in rigorous parenting practices; however, the well-documented phenomenon of daddy privilege means they aren’t expected to do much and are praised by society when they do something as simple as take their kids to the park. Just look at the average Kindergarten graduation, where each and every mom clears her schedule to be there, while dads are more likely to show up only if “it’s a light day at the office.”
When intensive parenting is the norm, moms are expected to fill in the gaps created by cuts to services like education and healthcare, coaching their kids on literacy and monitoring their developmental milestones with the rigor of a pediatrician. And the most infuriating part is you can never keep up with the demands, because the bar is constantly being raised. After all, I can remember my own parents complaining about having to attend my Grade 6 Graduation in 1998. The idea of a Kindergarten Graduation would have scandalized them!
Perhaps the most interesting fact about intensive mothering is that raising kids didn’t used to be this much work. Don’t believe me? Research shows that stay-at-home moms in the 1950s and 1960s spent fewer hours with their kids than mothers who work outside the home do today. The world has (perhaps literally?) conspired to punish moms for working outside of the home by raising expectations for them. No wonder so many mothers on social media say they’re feeling burnt out! We never get a moment to rest!
I am not a complete curmudgeon. I appreciate that kindergarten graduations can be adorable to watch. But I am a firm believer that rites of passage need to be more than cute to justify their existence. When it comes to the constant made-up milestones, from soccer badge ceremonies my daughter has EVERY SIX WEEKS to increasingly elaborate children’s birthday parties, raising kids has become too hard. And unlike the quality time spent reading bedtime stories to our children or a loving parent holding their hand at the dentist’s office, I truly don’t think these new milestones are events our kids will look back on with appreciation.
So here’s my pitch: Let’s cancel intensive mothering practices. We can start with the Kindergarten Graduation Ceremonies and go from there…
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
