Dear Daughter,

My parenting methods apparently oppress me and render me a servant much to the undoing of all the decades of feminism. You see, I cannot possibly choose to breastfeed you, to hold you, to use cloth diapers instead of disposables. I cannot choose to carry you instead of adopt you, I cannot choose to birth you without pain medications. I cannot choose you over myself. Because to make a choice to do these things is to be oppressed.

I will now raise my eyebrow a little bit, and make a very skeptical face.

You are five months old and the world is a crazy place where one faction of women is attempting to recover the ability of women to choose to breastfeed after decades of sabotaged efforts. Another faction of women really doesn’t want to breastfeed and wants to be free to make their own choice. Annoyingly enough both sides seem to think that the other side is horribly oppressed by some sort of whackadoo notion that makes them choose.. *gasp* something different from what they personally would choose.

Let me summarize my feelings: I am not oppressed by my choices which are freely made. I am oppressed by those who attempt to decide what my choices and role in society should be.

There’s a movement in feminism that suggests that “natural parenting” is sexism dressed up as something else. That says that breastfeeding, elimination communication, responsive parenting, home cooked meals, stay at home mothering, and many other things are designed to destroy feminism and you can’t be a feminist and be all of those things or make the choice to put your children first.

If you are breastfeeding because someone told you that you have to because otherwise you are not a woman… Yes, that is an incredibly anti-feminist notion. But if you’re going back to work and giving up breastfeeding and using formula instead because someone told you that you have to because otherwise you are oppressed, wasting your potential and not a feminist… That is a ridiculously anti-feminist notion as well.

Feminism is about freedom of choices, and about choosing what is important to you rather than having your choices be dictated by someone else.

Is it anti-feminist for a woman to sacrifice her lucrative career to go to a disease ridden part of Africa and help build wells and teach communities how to sanitize their water? She is putting others ahead of herself and her career. Clearly she is oppressed and the whole notion of putting anyone else ahead of yourself is so anti-feminist.

And teachers? They are anti-feminist as well. Making the choice to teach school in impoverished districts rather than holding out for the highest bidding private school or choosing a better career. The idea of wanting to help other people is so anti-feminist. Clearly they are oppressed.

If you choose to be a mother, if you choose to breastfeed, if you choose to co-sleep, if you choose to WIO instead of CIO.. I will support your choices. If you choose to never have children, if you choose to formula feed, if you choose to use CIO instead of WIO, I will support your choices.

This is your life. The idea that it belongs to anyone else is ridiculous. The idea that anyone gets to choose your place in life is what is “anti-feminist”, not whatever form of life you choose to craft for yourself.

Breastfeeding isn’t anti-feminist unless you DO NOT WANT TO DO IT.

Stay at home parenting is not anti-feminist unless you DO NOT WANT TO DO IT.

Elimination communication is not anti-feminist unless you DO NOT WANT TO DO IT.

And if you do not want to do it, don’t do it. The idea that you need to trample all over the choices made freely by another woman and call her “oppressed” because her choices are different than yours.. That is what kills feminism. Not choices that are made freely by other women.

The thing that kills feminism is the idea that you have to do something that you really don’t want to do.

For some, that thing is breastfeeding and natural parenting. For me, it would be using bottles and parenting in a way different from the way that I choose.  I parent you the way that I do because I love the choices that I make. They feel right. They feel good. They make my heart happy.

Sadly, the feminists screaming that natural parenting is anti-feminist don’t realize something simple: Their attempting to do something that they really did not want to do and then feeling guilty about it means that they are not quite as confident in their feminism as they might wish to be. They still feel as though they have to live by the choices of someone else and then if they discover those choices are not for them.. Instead of seeing that “this was not for me”, they feel that they were once again oppressed and it is clearly the fault of the choice. Even as other women make that very same choice freely.

As a woman you must remember this: The choices you make freely are always compatible with feminism. Because you are a female and they are your choices not the choices of a “man” and certainly not the choices of some other woman who is a ‘better’ feminist than you.

Feminism is about owning choices. Own yours. And please remember to always let everyone else own their choices as well.

❤ Mama