What is Collective Mothering?
“Collective mothering” describes the idea that children can or should be raised by multiple adults rather than just a biological parent or parents. The use of the word “mothering” illustrates why this was important as a feminist concept.
The process of caring for, nurturing and raising a child has long been thought of as mothering. This language reflects the fact that many women were relegated to the traditionally accepted roles of wife/mother/homemaker, rather than a career outside of home and family. Even though the term “parenting” became more popular in the late 20th century, “mothering” continues to mean raising the child, while “fathering” usually refers only to the biological act at conception.
Alternatives to the “Traditional” Family?
Several feminist theorists advocated collective arrangements in which multiple families would live communally and share in child care responsibilities. During the 1960s and 1970s, there were many experiments with communal living. Some sociologists who compared various cultures said it is beneficial for extended family and even non-relatives to assume some responsibility for the children in a community.
Child Care
Feminists in the United States also argued for universal child care, to be provided either by private employers or by the government. This would eliminate the excuse that “someone has to stay home with the children” as a way of preventing women from having meaningful careers. However, it does not resolve the question of why men are not asked to choose between having children and working outside the home.
Government funding of child care would also be a recognition of the monetary value of child care. Second-wave feminists argued that the unpaid work women did in raising children and maintaining households was not valued by society.
Resistance
The idea of government-run childcare met with resistance. Even though a national child care bill passed the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, President Richard Nixon vetoed the bill in 1971 and famously called it the “Sovietization of American children.”
Communal living, on the other hand, is often recalled as a hippie ideal and is usually not taken seriously as a viable alternative to the nuclear family. However, the so-called traditional family, with a household consisting of only two parents and their children, is actually a relatively new concept in human history. It was more a reflection of and benefit to the industrial revolution than a historically necessary system.
Feminist Novels
Feminist literature has explored collective mothering. While some novels involve realistic communal child rearing, there is an entire genre of feminist utopia/dystopia fiction that describes extreme variations of society. These novels often imagine worlds with complete separation of the sexes, new ways of reproduction, or elimination of one sex’s function entirely. Collective mothering is explored in Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1911), Motherlines by Suzy McKee Charnas, Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy (1976) and The Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart (1979).