This one is about gratitude. But from a pesky feministic point of view. I noticed, looking back over the two years of writing this blog (yes, midwifemotherme.com is turning two in a few days!) that I was often qualifiying my arguments with a reference to how grateful I am for the privilege of having choices that my grandmothers didn’t.  And it’s true, I am grateful. But.  For everything that a woman can genuinely be grateful for today, there are an equal number of reasons for her to feel, well, a little bit miffed.

We understand that we’ve come a helluva long way in the last century and we are grateful. But we haven’t reached parity. That’s upsetting. Women are paid less, do more unpaid work, and bear the brunt of the mental load. But what really sucks is that we’re not supposed to complain because, well, gratitude. Worse still, should we fail to display sufficient gratitude for recently acquired rights (which could be revoked any time), we risk being labelled feminazis and held responsible for all of society’s ills. After all, if holding down a job and running a gorgeous home with a brood of cherubic kids is too much, we are invited to check out what the tradwives are doing and join right in. Thanks, but hell no!

We are grateful for education and the job opportunities we now have.  But angry because, although taught that we can have it all, we realise (only after we have kids) that it is conditional on us doing it all if we don’t want to live in a filthy disorganised mess. Not only will we be shamed for our slutty housekeeping skills, our partners will not. They get sympathy for having chosen a wrong’n (too smart, too ambitious, too successful). And if they do step up to run the house, they are given the Nobel Prize for Going Above and Beyond. Even though it’s their home too!

We are still taught from birth to aspire to the low/no paid caring jobs. Apparently we are suckers for flattery (it works, it has always worked) as we keep hearing that women are just so much better at caring than men, it’s innate, we couldn’t help it if we tried. It isn’t, it’s just that we get more (enforced) practice.

Just the other day, for example, a third time mother came to her antenatal appointment with her two children. A 4-year-old girl, who tells me she wants to be a nurse like me (to her, I’m clearly dressed as a nurse,  she probably has her own cheap polyester version of my cheap polyester tunic in her dressing up box, so I don’t correct her) and her 6 year old brother wants to be a doctor. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a little girl wanting to be a nurse (or a midwife). Nothing wrong with a little boy wanting to be a doctor.  But the girl, at four years old, knows her limits. The boy is already aiming higher. I realise that’s just an anecdote, but many studies back this up.

We can now control our fertility, and we are truly grateful for that. This has revolutionised women’s lives. But women will always bear the brunt of contraception failure. I had a detailed rant about this in my last post (https://midwifemotherme.com/2025/08/29/caught-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place/). Basically, the men face zero consequences. They can just walk away, convinced that is neither their responsibility nor their fault. Even though they caused conception. Look, even for Mary, there was a man, even if hers was a god. FYI there was precedence: Zeus was always getting pretty young virgins up the duff. Don’t get me started on consent, and DO NOT let me go on a side rant about the unplanned pregnancy consequences that these innocent young girls faced. Contraception is a nuisance, it’s not without risks to our health, but we do our best, and we are grateful, because the alternative (not so long ago) was the nunnery or the Magdalen Laundries. Or being married.

We are raised to desire marriage. We dream from a young age of the dress, the Prince Charming, the happy ever after. There’s nothing wrong with marriage. Especially as it’s supposed to be today, a union of two equals with a built in get-out clause. We are grateful for that. Truly, one of the happiest day of my life was my wedding day. Sure, I was fulfilling my patriarchal duty, but on my terms: wearing a pink dress, writing my own vows, keeping my name, and with the evidence of my well-lived life walking ahead of me with the flowers… and, not gonna lie, I ended up needing the exit clause.  I was grateful for that. Here’s the thing: I wouldn’t have needed it if my ex hadn’t had patriarchy baked into him from the cradle.  His idea of housework was to lift his legs to let me pass with the hoover. He’d (occasionally) babysit his children. He performed many household chores with a degree of weaponised incompetence that was way ahead of its time. I wish I were joking. 

We adore the kids that we are lucky enough to have. But we bemoan the fact that, despite sharing only 50% of our DNA with them, we are often 100% responsible for them. The purveyor of the other 50% gets to keep his career, his hobbies, his sleep and he is mostly unmolested by the mound of life admin that a child’s life entails. He might make a few half-arsed efforts and then quit because he can’t handle being gently rebuked for failing to engage his ordinarily competent brain to do it right first time. It must be irksome for the guys, to be saddled with these high domestic expectations when they are already doing far more than their dads ever did. We know that, and we are grateful. It’s just that we’ll be even more grateful when there’s parity.

Look. I’m a midwife. I love my job. It’s an honour to welcome babies into the world.  It’s a privilege being able to help women get through the ordeal that is childbirth. Sure, it’s a low paid caring job, but it’s what I wanted to do. Perhaps that makes me a victim of social conditioning, but I can live with that. Women, even feministic ones, are complex individuals who are influenced by the world they inhabit. We can recognise an imperfect situation and also consider different scenarios which might be more beneficial. After all, why are midwives mostly women? A man can be a midwife just as easily as a woman can be an obstetrician. But men, too, are products of their upbringing and most blokes don’t want to be any kind of wife. I don’t blame them.