How feminism creates deficient mothers

I have two treasured dolls from my childhood. These aren't collector's items meant to sit on a shelf and look pretty. Instead, they're battered and worn from many years of loving as I put them through every mock trial of motherhood when I was a kid.

In a neat twist of fate, my husband and I ended up having two daughters, so each girl received one of my dolls as their own when they were toddlers. These dolls then taught another generation how to change diapers, carry babies in slings and tuck infants into bed. I cherish a photo of our older daughter "breastfeeding" her doll as I nursed her newborn sister.

This training, and the subsequent guidance our girls received over the next 15 years or so, is now tucked aside while our adult daughters concentrate on their careers. But that training is waiting, poised and ready, until our girls marry and start families of their own. At that point they can take the lessons they learned, dust them off and use them to nurture their own children. This, I feel, has contributed to the mental health of two well-balanced young women making their way in the world.

But what happens when girls are not encouraged to practice mothering when they're children? What happens when dolls are discouraged or outright banned? Even further, what happens when girls are told motherhood is an inferior vocation, a poor life choice and most certainly something that should be subordinate to a career?

What you get, apparently, are women who are completely unprepared when they actually reproduce.

Consider this poignant essay from a couple years ago on the Huffington Post entitled "When I became a mother, feminism let me down."

In this opinion piece, the author (Samantha Johnson) writes: "From the beginning, we tell young girls they can do anything they want to do, they can be anyone they want to be. They are given access to great education, encouraged to further their studies and attain higher degrees. We push them to push themselves, to break boundaries, to achieve what seems impossible, to break through corporate glass ceilings and professional roadblocks. We tell them they can have it all. And they can. Until they have a baby."

Johnson observes how feminism prepares women for every challenge they could ever possibly face, while pretending women don't ever become mothers. "We are teaching our young people that there is no value in motherhood and that homemaking is an outdated, misogynistic concept. We do this through the promotion of professional progression as a marker of success, while completely devaluing the contribution of parents in the home. … We are so driven by the focus that women can do the same and be the same as men, that we completely fail to provide them with education or understanding of what may be ahead for them, as future homemakers and those who raise children. How can we ensure equality for all women, when we place so little value on the role of the mother?"

The skill involved in being a mother is often underrated and underappreciated. While much of it can only be learned on the job, training traditionally starts with dolls as children and graduating to babysitting as teens.

But hardcore feminists often attempt to deny women should ever aspire to motherhood. They discourage their own daughters from playing with baby dolls or practicing any other domestic skills. When these girls grow up and have children of their own, they're often desperately unprepared to psychologically accept their new role. New moms used to have a support structure ranging from their own mothers and grandmothers to other mothers in the neighborhood. This built-in support network is often frayed beyond repair. The "village" Hillary Clinton made famous has been razed to the ground and we've "salted the earth" to boot.

"We need to stop acting as though when we provide women with these traditional skills, we are taking away their power," laments Johnson.

Instead, we get raging feminists who think children are an impediment to womanhood. Helen Gurley Brown, of Cosmopolitan fame, could merely offer this advice to women who betrayed the sisterhood by becoming mothers: "Never waste time feeling guilt, never agonize too much, and have a lot of paid help at home, and never, ever, let [children] interfere with the long climb to the top." (By the way, Helen Gurley Brown never had kids. Maybe that's good.)

I suspect this attitude happens because, deep down, many feminists think there's nothing to motherhood. It's a snap, a breeze, a no-brainer. When feminists DO have children, they're often depressed, anxious or lose their sense of identity – not a happy combination for raising mentally healthy, well-balanced children.

In short, feminism makes it a lot harder to be a mom than it has to be.

This lack of skill and preparation leads to women experiencing an emotion so shocking, so horrifying, that it's spoken in whispers and only confessed under aliases: women who regret having kids.

In another HuffPo column entitled "When did feminism become so anti-motherhood?" writer Joanna Hyatt acknowledges this. "Mothers who regret their children having ever been born and genuinely think they might be living better, more meaningful, possibly more exciting lives without these extra humans dragging them down," she writes. "They're just sure their lives would be marked by career accolades and fancy travel destinations rather than midnight bed wettings and worn-thin yoga pants. But we're blaming the wrong group for the disappointment and the frustration. It's not the kids who are at fault for 'ruining' their mother's lives. You can instead thank a feminist movement that has failed women." (Emphasis added.)

The children often suffer right along with the mother. Children know when mothers hate their job.

Is it too late for feminism to recapture the art of motherhood? I don't know. But I do know baby dolls have a place in every little girl's childhood, and skilled mothering is a talent that should be cultivated, not disparaged.

Meanwhile I have a couple of cherished dolls in storage if any young feminist needs a little practice.