Constant Supervision & Feminism
It was early 2000s and I was watching some serial or other when I saw the following for the umpteenth time: a sympathetically portrayed mother loses her child because she “just looked away for 1 second!” Whether the child was ultimately recovered for not, the implicit message was clear. Children need constant, vigilant, 24/7 supervision. Regardless of the show, it was nearly always a working mom shown in this predicament. Occasionally a stay at home mom would be similarly afflicted, never a dad.
I was a woman in my 20s and the target audience for the shows. I may have been swayed if I hadn’t grown up latch key in the crime ridden NYC of the 1980s and reaped the awards. I spent entire summer days at playgrounds on the wrong side of Prospect Park. I rode the subway alone at 8 y.o. Before reaching middle school, my cousin and I had ventured off to Coney Island with nothing but our swimsuits and a $5.00 bill for emergencies. By high school, I had library cards for Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan and was intoxicated at the thought that NYC belonged to me.
Instead of being swayed by the message, I recognized it as a backlash against feminism. As women poured entered the workforce, the standards for mothering ratcheted higher and higher until they became impossible to meet unless a woman devotes her entire self to parenting or can pay others to do it. The trap now has the sharp teeth of the criminal justice system. And, men are being caught too.