Feminism vs motherhood?
Unfortunately many feminist have not been able to reconcile motherhood and its demands and a full functioning human being. This is evident in the recent essay by Katie Rophie, a diehard feminist, regarding her shockingly loving relationship with her new baby. Some feminist are besides themselves of how to explain this lapse. It’s worth remembering that many, if not most feminist, are perfectly content being mothers and the implication of that relationship. They will also say that they do not want to be reduced to this as the defining relationship of their lives. The discomfort has been fed by liberal feminist’s love affair with the marketplace and the subsequent society’s denegration of value formally associated with women, cooperation, self-sacrifice and benevolence. Liberal feminism is married to the marketplace and its value. Interesting these are the values some radical feminist reject and associate with masculinist values of competition, individualism, and ruthless capitalism. Roiphe is discovering how women managed to survive in their subordinated position for centuries, the power of life giving love.
Why can’t we to get beyond is this dicodomy between motherhood and work? Women, like men, have been created for two God given purposes, relationships and creative work. They are NOT mutually exclusive. It is historical fact that women of excellent talent and potential have been systematically denied the opportunity by family, church, and state to give the world their best whether it’s in science, education, theology, art, music, you name it. That is why people can still ask, why are there no great women composers? It’s not natural, its prescribed.
Nevertheless, women have flourished in areas allowed to them including mothering, nursing, religious work, and some teaching. Let’s have more of everything and cut out this motherhood vs work vs feminism debate.
As far a prominent women composers in music, there is Clara Schumann, an accomplished pianist and composer, she is also the wife of Robert Schumann, a noted composer, however he suffered later from psychological disorders and insanity. His wife became friends with the notable Johannes Brahms. You are right to say that are a minority in women composers, however, musicology has begun to pay attention to works of Clara Schumann, but other women composers, some from both the Medieval and Romantic periods of music.