No “Mommy Wars” in Brazil

In Brazil there are no mommy wars, generally speaking.

(Disclaimer: I know this is a very blunt statement, and the analysis below perhaps a bit superficial. This is a beginning, though, and I’m hoping to talk to other Brazilian mothers and get back to this topic here. And, last but not least – why should I worry? This is just a blog, anyway, not an academic paper!)

In Brazil, everybody has a “maid” (yes, I will use the PI term, I’m talking about Brazil, not the US), even stay at home moms. It is common for families to have a live-in-maid/nanny/cook (the rich ones do have all these different positions, of course). Of course I’m talking about middle class people, but even the “domestic helpers” themselves (OK, sometimes I can’t resist the PC terms because I think they sound so weird and funny to my foreign ears) – if they have children – have to rely on childcare of some sort, and some of them do have “maids”! Brazil has very deep social inequality, and informal labor, which is quite cheap, is widely available – besides having been relied upon for years and years by the “less poor” and the elite until it became a pressing need.

Some other key-differences that have to do with mothering/parenting: not many mothers breastfeed in Brazil, the percentage is tiny. It’s getting better with many public awareness campaigns and policy making (e.g. formula cans, bottles, pacifiers come with a printed warning saying that breastfeeding is best and is recommended at least until the child is 2, and I’m not totally sure about this one, but I think these items cannot be advertised in magazines geared towards parents – wow!), but I’d say for now that it’s mostly the poorer moms who breastfeed, and in the more affluent families, breastfeeding is usually given up before the baby’s one, or much earlier (regardless of whether the mother stays at home or not – even though I should note that there are no good breast pumps available for the working moms). Well, backtracking a bit, Brazil is the country with record rates of Cesarean sections (90% in some private clinics/ hospitals)! In Brazil, home schooling is extremely rare, almost outlawed, and anybody who can sends their kids to private schools, starting in kindergarten or earlier, because public schools have very poor quality (conversely, with a few exceptions, the public universities, which are FREE – yes! – are excellent and private higher education institutions tend to be much worse).

I’m sure there are several things I’ve forgotten to mention and may even post about in the future, but the bottom line is that many of the issues that worry so many of the mothers here in the US are not even discussed or questioned there. That’s one of the reasons I usually have a hard time relating to how some of my friends there live and parent in Brazil. Even before I had kids, when I went there I found funny that one of the main topics of conversation among my married female friends would involve concerns with their hired domestic helpers, and I would feel completely left out of the conversation. Of course I grew up with people helping in my parents’ household, but in our case, they were mostly student girls, who lived in our house, helped out, and my parents helped to pay their studies, and since I got married, I’ve never had any help (excluding my mom and dad when the boys were born). Well, I did live only a year and a half in Brazil after we were married, and have lived here ever since (we’ve been married for 10 years), so it’s only natural I have a hard time identifying with my friends’ “domestic lives” in Brazil. Oh, yes, and I’ve never “mothered” there either, except for the past 2 months.

Like I said in the “disclaimer”, I do want to go into this further, but I feel that even though I haven’t mothered yet while living Brazil I am still very much a Brazilian, and can think and write about these things. Another thing, I wouldn’t say that being a Brazilian makes me completely immune to the mommy wars being waged around me (at least the way I experience it second-hand in blogosphere, the internet and the media, since I’d say we live fairly isolated lives, having almost no friends, except Brazilian expatriates, etc…), but I do feel very “free” to mother, being a foreign, and having many other life perspectives. Maybe I do have something to contribute, let’s see!