Motherhood: Power and Oppression

MOTHERHOOD: POWER AND OPPRESSION

Marie Porter Patricia Short Andrea O’Reilly Editors Women’s Press

MOTHERHOOD

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MOTHERHOOD POWER

AND

OPPRESSION

Edited by Marie Porter, Patricia Short, and Andrea O’Reilly

Women’s Press Toronto

Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. Motherhood: Power and Oppression Edited by Marie Porter, Patricia Short, and Andrea O’Reilly First published in 2005 by Women’s Press, an imprint of Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. 180 Bloor Street West, Suite 801 Toronto, Ontario M5S 2V6 www.womenspress.ca Copyright © 2005, Marie Porter, Patricia Short, Andrea O’Reilly, the contributing authors, and Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmi
ed, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the wri
en permission of Canadian Scholars’ Press, except for brief passages quoted for review purposes. In the case of photocopying, a licence may be obtained from Access Copyright: One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5, (416) 868-1620, fax (416) 868-1621, toll-free 1-800-893-5777, www.accesscopyright.ca. Every reasonable effort has been made to identify copyright holders. Canadian Scholars’ Press would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to its a
ention. Canadian Scholars’ Press/Women’s Press gratefully acknowledges financial support for our publishing activities from the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Australian International Academic Conference on Motherhood (1st : 2001 : University of Queensland) Motherhood : power and oppression / edited by Marie Porter, Patricia Short, Andrea O’Reilly. Papers originally presented at the Australian International Academic Conference on Motherhood held at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland in 2001. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-88961-454-7 1. Mothers--Social conditions--Congresses. 2. Motherhood--Congresses. I. Porter, Marie, 1938- II. Short, Patricia, 1950- III. O’Reilly, Andrea, 1961- IV. Title. HQ759.A97 2005

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Cover design by Susan Thomas/Digital Zone Cover photo © Tomaz Levstek Page design and layout by Brad Horning 05

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Dedication To our own mothers, and to all our foremothers who have shown strength and courage in confronting limitations and obstacles.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii 1

Introduction Andrea O’Reilly and Marie Porter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

EMBODIMENT 2 The Kindest Cut? The Caesarean Section as Turning Point, Australia 1880–1900 Lisa Featherstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3 Narrating Breasts: Constructions of Contemporary Motherhood(s) in Women’s Breastfeeding Stories Susanne Gannon and Babe
e Müller-Rockstroh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 4 Scandalous Practices and Political Performances: Breastfeeding in the City Alison Bartle
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 REPRESENTATION 5 “Pax Materna” or Mothers at War with the Empire? Canadian and Australian Perspectives on the Motherhood Debate in the British Empire during the Great War Karin Ikas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

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Mothering and Stress Discourses: A Deconstruction of the Interrelationship of Discourses on Mothering and Stress Erika Horwitz and Bonita C. Long . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

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A Lesser Woman? Fictional Representations of the Childless Woman Enza Gandolfo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

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(Mis)Conceptions: The Paradox of Maternal Power and Loss in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Paradise Andrea O’Reilly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

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Human and Divine Mothers in Hinduism Tamara Ditrich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

PRACTICES 10 Resistance Narratives from Mothers of Married Daughters in Singapore Hing Ai Yun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Survival Narratives of Ethiopian-Jewish Mothers and Daughters in Israel Ruby Newman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Down Under Power? Australian Mothering Experiences in the 1950s, 1960s Marie Porter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Mothers at Home: Oppressed or Oppressors or Victims of False Dichotomies? Elizabeth Reid Boyd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Mothers at the Margins: Singular Identities and Survival Patricia Short . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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195 205

SEPARATION 15 Naming Maternal Alienation Anne Morris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 16 Women of Courage: The Non-Custodial Mother Julie Thacker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 17 Abandoning Mothers and Their Children Anita Pavlovic, Audrey Mullender, and Rosemary Aris . . . . . . . . . 251

18 When Eve Le the Garden: A Modern Tale about Mothers Who Leave Their Families Petra Büskens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 19 Conclusion: Reflections on Motherhood Patricia Short . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .295

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

M

otherhood: Power and Oppression is the tangible outcome of the first Australian international academic conference on mothering held at the University of Queensland in 2001. As such, many people helped in the production of this volume. We would like to begin by thanking the organizing commi
ee for that conference, Julie Kelso, Judy Connolly, Bernardine Lane, and Marie Porter, who all worked voluntarily. We thank the academic and office staff at the University of Queensland who supported and encouraged the commi
ee: Philip Almond, Head of the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, for his unfailing support, his wise advice, and his willingness to support a new venture; Ed Conrad, for his continued encouragement, support, and belief in the need for research in the field of mothering; Tamara Ditrich and Lynne Hume, for their support and interest; and the office staff from the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics. Our sincere thanks to the contributors whose work forms Motherhood: Power and Oppression and who so passionately believe in the need for scholarly research on mothering. Because of their research, new areas for study have been identified. They have patiently wri
en and rewri
en, updated and reforma
ed their work, and believed in the importance of this book. We also recognize, and are grateful for, the patience and generosity our children (and their families), our husbands and partners, and our friends have shown as our involvement in this project limited our time with them. Our deepest gratitude to our research assistant, Judy Connolly, who has spent countless hours, many on a voluntary basis, assisting in the preparation of the manuscript and the search for a publisher—all carried out with a meticulous eye and good humour; and to Elspeth

Motherhood

Mead and Jenny Chesters for their intensive work in assisting us to meet our date for the submission of the manuscript. To Althea Prince and her co-workers at Women’s Press we express thanks for their patience and wise advice. We are indebted to the Association for Research on Mothering, and in particular Cheryl Dubinson, for practical advice and assistance, and encouragement on both the personal and professional levels; and we acknowledge, with thanks, the monetary and in-kind support of the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, the School of Social Science, and the Graduate School of the University of Queensland.

xii

FOREWORD

W

e all come into this world being born of woman and cloaked in a safe environment until our emergence. It is what happens aer this that will determine our lives forever and set us on the path of discovering who we are. One of the most complex relationships any of us has is that shared with our mother. Every one of us has a different story about motherhood. For those of us who become mothers ourselves, motherhood can prove to be an identical pa
ern inherited from our mothers and passed down to our own children. On the other hand, it can be a relationship that is quite opposite to the one shaped by our mothers. Examples here could be alcoholic and drug-addicted mothers whose children grow up to be sober and free of substance abuse, or religious mothers who produce atheists. Be it positive or negative, our earliest contact is with our mothers, who spend the majority of time caring, nurturing, and providing comfort. Some of us share a history of oppression that binds us closer to our mothers. Indigenous women and women of colour are particularly aware of the limits and boundaries that surround our world. How our mothers have fought the struggle that subjugated them primarily by their race is something to be commended. In certain cultures, grandmothers and mothers have been the backbone of society, quietly going about their business, neither seeking reward nor recognition. Their toil is seldom celebrated, while their power is all consuming. When one knows the love of only one parent, one is showered with every aspect of parental love. In the case of daughter–mother love, the relationship becomes intense and in many ways different to the daughter–father relationship. Women who have lost their mothers

Motherhood

in infanthood and puberty are vulnerable to the absence in their lives arising from being motherless. So many women tell of the pain of losing their mothers so young: “It stays with you forever,” they say. Then there are those mothers who never have good relationships with their children. Feelings of rejection and being cheated out of the experience can therefore linger and sometimes never be resolved. There are also those who never will know the love of their mothers. Adopted children and children who have been taken through forced removals tell of the pain and suffering they have had to endure throughout their lifetimes. While we all have mothers, a minority of women will never become mothers for various reasons, among them infertility and personal choice. However, it would be unusual for women to be so isolated as not to form nurturing relationships with other children in their families and friendship structures. Monitoring and role-modelling can occur naturally, mirroring mothering characteristics. In conclusion, mothering is a diverse phenomenon having its highs and lows as in any other profession. It is under-rated and undervalued; however, it is one thing none of us could ever be without. Jackie Huggins

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION Andrea O’Reilly and Marie Porter

The Genesis of Motherhood: Power and Oppression The development of Motherhood: Power and Oppression bears similarities to the motherhood experience of many women. As the idea for the book grew and changed, so too did all of us who worked on it. The specific content of the book is the result of the first Australian International Academic Conference on Motherhood, which was itself the unexpected outcome of a small planned conference on motherhood. When the call for papers for a conference with the theme of Motherhood: Power/Oppression was posted, the response amazed and inspired the commi
ee, and turned the event into a three-day international conference. Some of the papers were the work of early career scholars while others were presented by senior academics. During and aer the conference the commi
ee received a lot of feedback remarking on the high standard of the papers. As a result of this encouragement and the requests for copies of the papers, Marie Porter and Patricia Short decided to compile an edited collection of the best. Andrea O’Reilly joined as a third editor. The result is the book you are reading.

Why Feminism and Power/Oppression? Why did we decide on power/oppression as the theme of our conference?1 The reasons were varied. Power is an important concept for feminist and maternal scholars. In the early stages of second-wave feminism, consciousness-raising groups worked to make women aware

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Motherhood

of the influences of power, in the form of patriarchal domination and the resulting oppression, in their lives (Bartky; Frye; Friedan). Early feminist literature targeted the oppression of women by patriarchal structures (Bartky; Birke; Frye; Smith; Wearing). Frye’s description of oppression is appropriate: “The experience of oppressed people is that the living of one’s life is confined and shaped by forces and barriers which are not accidental or occasional and hence avoidable, but are systematically related to each other in such a way as to catch one between and among them and restrict or penalize motion in any direction” (4). Because women’s reproductive capacity historically had been used to define and confine them, motherhood was rightly seen as the paramount source of oppression (Badinter; Firestone). Once women became mothers and accepted the responsibility for bearing and rearing children, they became vulnerable. In highlighting the dangers of motherhood, a seemingly anti-motherhood perspective emerged in early feminism. Feminists argued, and still argue, about whether the early stages of feminism actually were anti-mother (Umansky; Freely). However, what is certain is that many women who were already mothers felt that feminism itself was not sympathetic to their experiences (Oakley 21). By the mid-1970s maternal scholars began to examine the positives of motherhood. While it was generally acknowledged that mothers were oppressed in a culture where men held power, these scholars began to draw a
ention to the positive dimensions of mothering as well as forms and dimensions of patriarchal power. Adrienne Rich’s landmark book Of Woman Born was one of the first examinations of maternal experiences and how the male-defined institution of motherhood affected such experiences (O’Reilly 2004b).2 Rich also claimed the positive aspects of her maternal experiences, making the distinction between motherhood and the experience of mothering. Her argument drew a
ention to the complex nature of motherhood. As the body of work on motherhood increased, theorizing on motherhood became more complex and contested (Abbey and O’Reilly; Bassin et al.; Brown et al.; Caplan; Collins; Di Quinzio; Freely; Glenn et al.; Harper and Richards). The work on motherhood was usually undertaken by feminist writers who drew on their personal experiences, and/or their research. These feminist academics came from many different disciplines. Scholarship on motherhood thus emerged as an

2

Introduction

interdisciplinary field in which particular themes are studied from a multitude of perspectives. Theories of power, like theories of motherhood, are problematic (Allen 1996, 1999; Bartky; Giddens; Go
lieb; Isaac; Janeway; Miller; Smith; Wartenberg 1990, 1992a, 1992b, 1992c). Allen acknowledges the diversity of power theories and suggests a theory of power useful for feminists. Her theoretical stance on a theory of power suitable for feminists consists of three expressions of power: power-over, power-to, and power-with. These concepts enable a clearer exploration of power pertinent to feminist investigations. The 1970s feminists focused on power as it was expressed in powerover, with the outcome of oppression. In their quest for equality they perpetuated an understanding of power that had its origin in older patriarchal definitions. In that era of feminism the second form of Allen’s theory, power-with, can also be observed. Feminists, working together, formalized groups to obtain greater privileges for women. Both concepts of power emerged from the perspective of a strong, or more specifically, an individuated or unencumbered subjectivity, because the feminists were often young women with no children. Janeway was one of the first theorists to claim power for “the weak.” She argued that the actual expressions of power by women (or by any oppressed group) were significant and produced a different kind of power. Janeway argued that the concept of power looked very different from the perspective of those who have experienced the consequences of power-over. Other feminist theorists agreed and began to argue that “motherwork” could be understood as a way in which women exercised power (Johnson). Psychologists Gilligan and Miller argue that power from women’s perspectives is quite distinct from patriarchal power. Their writings draw further a
ention to how men and women may differ in their perceptions of power, of identity, and of maturity. Gilligan argues that while a
achment/separation is a motif of human life, women’s voices are silenced in favour of the dominant patriarchal expression of power as separation. In her words: “A new psychological theory in which girls and women are seen and heard is an inevitable challenge to a patriarchal order that can remain in place only through the continuing eclipse of women’s experience” (Gilligan xxiv). She drew a
ention to the silencing of women’s voices, which results in the maintenance of theories based in men’s experiences.

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Motherhood

Miller claims that women’s experiences of the dominant patriarchal forms of power lead to feelings of inadequacy, fear of being destructive, fear of destroying relationships, and disempowerment. She also a
ests that the “traditional” use of the power that women have exercised is to foster the growth of others. This expression of power is not generally recognized: I believe this is a very powerful thing to do, and women have been doing it all the time, but no one is accustomed to including such effective action within the notions of power. It’s certainly not the kind of power we tend to think of; it involves a different content, mode of action, and goal. The one who exerts such power recognizes that she or he cannot possibly have total influence or control but has to find ways to interact with the other person’s constantly changing forces or powers. And all must be done with appropriate timing, phasing, and shiing of skills so that one helps to advance the movement of the less powerful person in a positive, stronger direction. (Miller 1992 242)

Her general definition of power, as “the capacity to produce a change” (Miller 241), understands power in terms of agency—the power to make a difference. As Miller acknowledges, this is not how “the ‘real world’ has defined power” (Miller). Nonetheless, when women act as they have acted in their nurturing, whether that is mothering or other forms of nurturing, they exercise power to alter present circumstances; they are active agents. The power Miller describes has similarities to Allen’s third expression of power, which she calls “power-to” (Allen). By this term Allen understands power to encompass resistance and to create empowerment, which is common in all nurturing. Allen contends that the feminist ideas of empowerment focus on presenting power as a positive force that enables an agent to do something creative, to have the capacity and ability to do (Allen 1999). Women’s use of their power to transform others and themselves, the exercise of empowerment, has been referred to as transformative power, although some theorists see this term as problematic (Wartenberg 1990 183–201). The diverse academic positions on power reflect the realization among maternal scholars that motherhood cannot be summed up as either oppression or power. Adding to the complexity of the academic representations of power is the realization on the part of some women, who were participants in the early phase of second-wave feminism, that

4

Introduction

they had fostered patriarchal values of independence, achievement, and success. Some feminists revealed that, in rejecting the negatives in the lives of their mothers, they sometimes also rejected their mothers. As older women, they acknowledge the context in which their mothers lived and appreciate their mothers as strong women who skilfully used what power they had (McFarland and Watson-Rouslin). Theories of power remain diverse (Wartenberg 1992a, 1992c). No agreement exists on what power is, what form it takes, how it is expressed, or what power can or cannot achieve. What is certain is that structures of power have been created and maintained, and, until recently, defined by men for the benefit of men. As Miller argues, concepts of power have been defined in traditional patriarchal terms, and new definitions of power are needed—definitions that arise from women’s experiences and perspectives. Since we cannot escape this historical context, we must acknowledge it and work with it. Allen makes a similar point and is critical of some definitions of power. In her feminist theory of power, Allen claims that power is far too complex to put into well-defined boxes. She points out that different expressions of power are intertwined, and she accepts this intermeshing (Allen 128). We contend that her assertion that it is be
er to understand power concepts as representing “analytically distinguishable features of a situation” than as different forms of power, is particularly valuable (Allen 129). Allen’s concepts of power are a more useful representation than are rigidly defined patriarchal forms of power. Also absent in patriarchal theories of power is the intense love that women who are mothering usually feel for their children. This intense love calls forth other intense feelings such as dislike, joy, ambivalence, wonder, resignation, happiness, rage, satisfaction, anxiety, pleasure, fear, and sometimes even a desire to be rid of this child forever, which is usually followed by remorse and guilt. As Ruddick argues, mothers can run the gamut of feelings from intense love to an intense desire to be rid of a child, but it is their actions that count and these actions are a result of their commitment to their relationship with their children—their “preservative love” (Ruddick 70–71). This commitment to preserve, grow, and train the child to take her/his place in society3 ensures that the nurturer thinks about her/his feelings and the child’s possible feelings, comes to a reasonable interpretation of the situation, and then bases his/her actions on her/his understanding of both feelings and reflective thought (70–1). Ruddick argues that: “It is not possible to understand preservative love ‘purely’ intellectually, nor can protective

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Motherhood

mothers understand themselves and their children without calling on and understanding feelings” (69). Feelings of love, responsibility, and altruism are as present in life as is power, and they inform mothers’ thoughts and actions. This power that mothers do have in nurturing the next generation and the strengths it displays were particularly evident to African-American scholars. In reacting against general theories of motherhood put forward by white, middle-class academics, several such scholars stress the power that African-American mothers have in their community and the necessity of taking context into account in any theorizing about motherhood.4 There can be no generalizable theories of motherhood because mothers come from all strata of society. Their socio-cultural position and their historical era, including their race, class, age, sexuality, economic position, family structure, and religion, affect both the mother as an individual and her mothering of her children. This concept of diversity within commonality is a central theme in this collection. The commonality in mothering is the commitment to the nurturing of children. This commitment does not have to be made by the biological mother, but someone must commit to it if the child is to survive and grow into an acceptable citizen. We contend that this expression of power as it is present in nurturing can be viewed as an analytically distinct expression of power and we refer to it as transformative power for the following reasons: • •

•

•

It is a positive expression of power that seeks its own obsolescence. It is a complex and diverse expression of power that cannot be represented wholly by any one expression of power as outlined by Allen. While influence, force, and coercive power are common both to “power-over” and to “transformative power,” as Wartenberg argues, influence, force, and coercion are focused and exercised differently in transformative power. Moreover, while power exercised in mothering is a particularistic power in that the expression of transformative power in the relationship is peculiar to that relationship, the commitment to care for the next generation is a constant feature of transformative power as it is expressed in mothering. We claim that transformative power is, in practice, a complex and qualified mix of power-over and power-to on a continuum

6

Introduction

that ranges from strong to weak. Hence the balance in transformative power is extremely fluid. This balance is in constant flux from hour to hour, day to day, and over the years. Transformative power is distinct because it must be in constant flux over the child’s life. The mother strives to nurture in a way that grows the child into an independent adult. Balancing the power mix is very important for both the nurturer and the nurtured. In sum, where a power relationship is marked by fluidity—by a need to understand and work with the dependent agent taking into account her/his position physically, intellectually, and emotionally; where power-over and power-to are both analytically observable; where the aim of the power relationship is supportive, seeking to nourish and create the “other” into an equal—this expression of power is what we refer to as transformative power. We draw on Miller’s description of a power that is commonly found amongst women, but is not recognized as such because its content and aim are different. This description of a power that does not totally control, that needs to be both interactive and constantly changing, with the changes being timed appropriately, and that is used for another’s good, applies to transformative power. Thus the first expression of power discussed in this book is power-over, which emerges in the form of constraints and limitations that usually lead to oppression. Dimensions of oppression as a result of power-over are present, to some degree, in every chapter in the book. For example, in Chapter 10, Hing Ai Yun argues that the status of Singaporean-Chinese mothers is still one of subordination. Despite be
er access to education, most young women still feel the need to marry and have children, and that path leads to increased oppression. Second, the expression of power apparent in power-to accounts for women’s own agency and resistance. Numerous examples can be found in the chapters that explore mothers striving to make life be
er for themselves and their families. Julie Thacker’s work is a good example of this power. Other examples of mothers using what power was available to them can be observed readily in every chapter of the section on Practices. Power-with, the third expression of power, enables women to act as a group. This mode of power is not so obvious in this book. Women in general, and mothers in particular, have historically been

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Motherhood

sequestered. Nonetheless, when mothers can congregate, informal examples of power-with emerge. The outstanding example of such power can be found in Chapter 11, in which Ruby Newman describes the incredible decision made by Ethiopian-Jewish mothers to trek to Israel. This research highlights the strength, resistance, and agency of a group of mothers who worked together to lessen oppression and to give their daughters a be
er life. In their very actions and a
itudes, the mothers empowered the daughters, who in turn recognize their mothers’ heroism. As well, evidence of this may be found in Toni Morrison’s fiction, most notably her novel Paradise, as examined by Andrea O’Reilly in Chapter 8. The fourth expression of power, transformative power, is present and observable in the nurturing relationships explored in this book. The amount of power over the child that the mother has in the mother/child relationship, and the timing and method of le
ing go of that power, will be different for every child. Nonetheless, the mother’s decisions in this area in the transformative power relationships is critical to the child’s growth into a responsible and acceptable citizen of the society in which she/he lives. Simultaneously, the mother must exercise her power to preserve and grow the life of her child (Ruddick). That transformative power is not adequately represented by power-over is observable in Thacker’s research. She demonstrates how the mothers continued to strive, and to succeed to some degree, to maintain their transformative power relationship even when their children were removed from the mother by the state. In Short’s research the mothers she interviewed, in their determination to keep their transformative power relationship with their children, “told how their qualities of self-reliance and endurance, and their preparedness to take risks, underpinned their capacities for control (over circumstances), resistance (to domination), and empowerment (to act).” Hence both oppression and power, in complex interrelationships, are found in mothering. Many questions emerge when mothering is examined from this perspective. Few academics have a
ended to the duality of power and oppression in the many positions of mothers. This book aims to expand academic knowledge of mothering from a feminist perspective, looking particularly at how mothering is simultaneously a site of power and oppression. It will examine the oppressive and empowering dimensions of motherhood as well as the complex relationship between the two. It provides a new perspective in that it

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Introduction

focuses on oppression and power in motherhood, and the selected papers develop this focus through the lenses of diversity and commonality. The contributors to this volume have wrestled with the complexity of different examples of power and oppression and have come to different conclusions. They bring to the reader’s a
ention the many ways in which mothers, even as they experience oppression, are not passive victims. Oppression does not equate to the absence of agency. As mothers, women are portrayed throughout this book as active agents creating the best conditions they can for themselves and their families in the variety of contexts. Lowinsky has argued that women need to connect to their motherline, and that the exposing and claiming of maternal power is important to document as part of our “motherline.” The papers included in this volume are all predicated upon the value of knowing the wisdom and agency that comes from the experiences of real mothers. Thus, the volume not only covers a wide range of subject ma
er but also illustrates ways of conducting feminist research and practice. The book is enriched by the cross-cultural diversity of contributors and of their work, and it examines four locations wherein motherhood is simultaneously experienced as a site of oppression and power: embodiment, representation, practices, and separation.

Section One: Embodiment In the first section, the chapters focus on the female body. The body and its many representations have come under increasing scrutiny by feminist scholars (Martin; Moltmann-Wendel; Reiger; Shildrick). Many feminists have pointed out that the female body has been represented in opposition to the mind, with woman associated with the body while man has occupied the higher plane of the mind (Ortner; Shildrick). Other feminists have highlighted how, in different cultural and historical contexts, women’s bodies have been seen as unclean (Kitzinger 45–60). This idea of the unclean female body has served as a way to control women (Griffin 83–95; Ranke-Heinemann). The medicalization of women’s bodies is another form of this control (Ehrenreich and English; Reiger). In all three chapters in Section One, the authors argue that there is evidence of the oppression of women in the bodily functions of motherhood. Lisa Featherstone focuses on the medical system in her chapter, “The Kindest Cut? The Caesarean Section as Turning Point, Australia

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Motherhood

1800–1900.“ While these caesareans were usually performed only in desperate cases where the mother was in a close-to-fatal situation, Featherstone argues that the practice of caesarean section was the turning point when the mother’s life no longer became the dominant concern. Moreover, in Australia, the caesarean was presented as evidence of the technology and skill of the surgeon in question and thus male control of the female body was implicated in the successful caesarean. It worked to enforce the male control of birthing, the emphasis on the child, and the mother being regarded as the conduit of reproduction. In Alison Bartle
’s, and Susanne Gannon’s and Babe
e MüllerRockstroh’s work contemporary connections between breastfeeding and oppressive social constructions of the female body reveal another facet of male definition of the female body. In both chapters the writers argue that, while breasts are overwhelmingly evident in the media, in texts, and advertisements in western society, talk about real breasts, especially the nurturing breast, is, by comparison, missing both in the public arena and in general discussion. The portrayed and discussed breast is the sexual object rather than the lactating breast. This oppression of the lactating breast results in a lack of knowledge about breastfeeding. As Bartle
argues, when mothers choose to breastfeed in public, it is regularly been depicted as a “scandal.” The response to this “scandal” has been outrage. Such “scandals” can be construed as a critical social moment when certain cultural values about what women do with their bodies in public might be considered political and feminist, and thus a challenge to the status quo. Whose values are promoted when the sexualized breast with its erotic messages is so commonly on display, while the real breast, feeding a baby, even in a discreet manner, is a “scandal”?

Section Two: Representation The second section looks at how mothers and motherhood are represented in various literary and cultural discourses. Looking at discourses as diverse as literary fiction, parenting magazines, and religious texts, the chapters examine how the dominant ideology of a “good” motherhood is both constructed by popular culture and contested by mothers in practices and representations. While the normative discourse of motherhood is unequivocally oppressive to mothers in that it creates an impossible ideal, mothers may, as

10

Introduction

documented in this section, reinterpret and re-script the patriarchal narrative of motherhood to make mothering a site of agency for women. The nurturance and peacefulness associated with “good” motherhood, for example, becomes the means by which mothers may empower themselves and resist. Central to this redefinition of motherhood is a dismantling of its most oppressive mandates: namely, to be a good woman, one must be a mother and to be a good mother one cannot be a woman—that is, have a self outside of motherhood. In other words, as the chapters document the oppression of patriarchal motherhood, they likewise make evident the possibility of empowered mothering. The chapter that opens the section, “Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in English Language Drama” by Karin Ikas, examines the theme of motherhood and peace in posters, poetry, and fictional works of Australian, American, and Canadian women writers between 1890 and 1920. In particular, she examines the writing of Canadian author Nellie McClung. Ikas argues that women’s association with peace is a highly contested theme; however, the ancient creed “Pax Materna,” mother’s peace, remains a dominant theme in public discourse. To this day, mothers are associated with pacifism and the negotiating of conflicts in times of war. Yet, not all women are inherently peaceful. She points out that there are many examples of women warriors in different historical, cultural, and geopolitical contexts. Women’s role in the war context needs to be discussed beyond the traditional scope of essentialist gender roles. Particularly insightful here is an analysis of women’s changing roles in the High Empire Period (1890–1920). Dominated by the Great War as the first war to be total in scope, but also by women’s struggle for suffrage and independence, this period is acknowledged as a major breakthrough for women’s emancipation. By focusing on the relationship between motherhood and war as illustrated in various texts of this period, Ikas examines the ways in which traditional motherhood and the demand for an independent female subjectivity intertwined with various war experiences of women in the High Empire. Erika Horwitz and Bonita C. Long, in their chapter, “Mothering and Stress Discourses: A Deconstruction of the Interrelationship of Discourses on Mothering and Stress,” explore the interrelationship of two dominant discourses—mothering and stress. These discourses, which have multiple social consequences, reflect forces that shape a mother’s sense of self and how she understands her own and others’ behaviours. The authors identify the dominant discourse on mothering

11

Motherhood

(for example, mothers are responsible for how their children develop; mothers “need” to seek expert advice) by reviewing several recent critiques of mothering. Next, to identify the stress discourse as it relates to mothering, Horwitz and Long selected three articles from popular parenting magazines and ten parenting articles found on three Internet sites. The analysis revealed four themes: (a) a mother’s stress can harm her child’s health, (b) stress is damaging to mothers’ health and well being, (c) stress can affect mothers’ personal relationships, and (d) mothers should be able to cope because there are many options. The researchers found that the stress discourse has similarities with the intensive mothering discourse and serves to reinforce the myths and messages in the mothering discourse. In particular, the socio-political context of women’s lives is absent from both the stress and mothering discourses; it is reduced to women’s biological and psychological experiences. In Chapter 7, “A Lesser Woman?: Representations of the Childless Woman,” Enza Gandolfo takes an interdisciplinary approach that combines literary theory, creative writing, and personal reflection to explore the ways that childless women are represented in Australian fiction, and how these representations both reflect and contribute to the construction of cultural and historical perceptions and experiences of childlessness. The first section of the chapter reviews the current psychological, sociological, cultural, and feminist literature on the “childless woman” to provide an outline of the dominant discourses of childlessness. The second section moves on to analyze the representation of the childless woman in fiction, with a specific focus on three wellknown Australian novels: Eleanor Dark’s Prelude to Christopher; Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story; and Elizabeth Jolley’s The Sugar Mother. The third section discusses the author’s own fiction writing, and the extent to which her experiences as a childless woman, and her commitment as a feminist to articulating the diversity of women’s experiences and to challenging the dominant discourses of childlessness, inform and shape her writing. This final section concludes with an extract of Gandolfo’s novel, Swimming, a work in progress. “(Mis)Conceptions: The Paradox of Maternal Power and Loss in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Paradise” by Andrea O’Reilly explores the theme of motherhood in Morrison’s two novels. Motherhood is a central theme in Morrison’s fiction and is a topic she returns to time and time again in her many interviews and articles. In her reflections on motherhood, both inside and outside her fiction, Morrison articulates a

12

Introduction

fully developed theory of African-American mothering that is central to her larger political and philosophical stance on black womanhood. Building upon black women’s experiences of, and perspectives on, motherhood Morrison develops a view of black motherhood that is, in terms of both maternal identity and role, radically different from the motherhood practised and prescribed in the dominant culture. Morrison defines maternal identity as a site of power for black women that has as its explicit goal the empowerment of children. Motherhood, in Morrison’s view, is fundamentally and profoundly an act of resistance; it is essential and integral to black people, and, in particular, black women’s fight against racism (and sexism) and their ability to achieve well being for themselves and their culture. In this chapter O’Reilly examines instances wherein motherhood, as a result of an individual or a community’s loss of African-American values, does not become a site of power for women or empowerment for children. In particular, the emphasis is upon how this inability or failure is signified metaphorically in images and experiences of failed reproduction and fractured relationships. This theme will be examined in Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, and her second-to-last novel, Paradise. In The Bluest Eye, reproduction, in particular birth, signifies a black mother’s inability to experience motherhood as a site of power and her subsequent failure to empower/nurture her daughter because of her assimilation into the values of the dominant culture—in particular its definitions of female beauty—and the resulting rejection of the black values that would empower her. In Paradise, reproduction signifies a black community’s failure to grant women power in motherhood and allow them to nurture/empower their children because of the town’s identification with the values of the dominant culture, wherein power and ownership are valued over those of community and care. The final chapter in this section, “Motherhood in Hinduism” by Tamara Ditrich, examines the position and role of motherhood in Hinduism, focusing on the interrelatedness between Hindu religion and Hindu society. The chapter outlines some of the prominent issues of power and oppression relating to motherhood and, as well, explores the status of mothers in Hindu society. Special a
ention is given to the ambiguous role of goddesses in Hinduism. Goddesses are presented either with a strong maternal nature or as completely devoid of it. As well, Ditrich draws a
ention to the importance of examining the position of motherhood within an historical framework, looking in particular at the oldest source of Hindu law, The Laws of Manu—the

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Motherhood

source of authority in orthodox Hinduism, prescribing social and religious duties of the Hindus.

Section Three: Practices We turn in this section from representations of mothers/mothering to the experiences of mothers. Research that is emergent from women’s experiences, that heeds the voices of women, is of basic importance in feminism (Belenky et al.; Brown et al.; DeVault 1991; Glenn et al.; Harding; Smith). As mothers, we must self-define and self-evaluate if we are to be freed from what mothers should be/ought to be—that is, the definitions and the ideologies of others. In the following five chapters, the research shows mothers who are subjected to varying degrees of oppression, and who find diverse ways to resist—how, when, and wherever this is possible. The mothers are thoughtful, strong agents within the context of their lives, and they find ways to help themselves and their daughters/sons. The voices are diverse and cross-cultural, but their commonality is that the mothers seek to empower themselves and, in some cases, other women, and to use their transformative power wisely, despite their oppression. The researchers have privileged the mothers’ voices. The first two chapters are intergenerational and reveal how mothers resist their oppression in any way they can while seeking to help their daughters cope with the context in which they will, in turn, mother. These chapters highlight the importance of the “motherline” to the empowerment of women (Lowinsky). Hing Ai Yan investigates three-generational families to note changes that have occurred across the generations. Despite the changes, most women are still faced with having to become the subservient homemaker or, if working, do the double shi. If the mother should have to move from the subservient role of wife/mother/housekeeper to the dominant role of breadwinner, she has great difficulties. Her experience of oppression in no way prepares her for this leadership role. In Chapter 11, Ruby Newman’s “Survival Narratives of EthiopianJewish Mothers and Daughters in Israel,” we again hear the voices of mothers and daughters talking about constraints and agency. The Ethiopian women Newman interviewed trekked by night to the Sudan and then to Israel, where they now live. Both mothers and daughters recalled their formidable journey, the hardships they endured, and

14

Introduction

their rese
lement. Here the importance of power emerges, as does the determination that results from the mothers’ collective desire to ensure their daughters benefit from the transformative power relationship. The women travelled with young children; some were pregnant; some gave birth on the way; some died. They had to journey by night and had to pretend they were not Jewish when they were in the Sudan. Upon arriving in Israel, they faced the difficult task of beginning life with few material goods, in a strange environment with different laws and culture. They now live—a black Jewish minority—on the margins of Israeli life with their children. These women refused to be viewed as victims or as refugees. Instead they see themselves as survivors who, by their own agency, completed this Herculean journey to bring their children and themselves to a relatively safe haven. Daughters spoke of their mothers’ strength and heroism in completing such a difficult, dangerous mission and of their admiration for the way their mothers continued to strive and adapt to the new way of life. In remembering and valuing their mothers’ stories, the daughters have a survival model of enormous power. Their motherline is strong. In the next three chapters, mothers’ agency and resistance to oppression is obvious in different historical and social contexts. These mothers have diverse problems, but a common desire to mother well. In her research, Marie Porter has examined constraints on Australian mothers in the 1950s and 1960s. This mothering style had helped to spawn feminism. Like the Singaporean women in Hing’s study, Australian women in this period were channelled to one subject position—that of wife/mother. All of Porter’s interviewees followed this path and stayed at home to care for their children. Analysis of the interview material confirmed that the women were oppressed in many ways, but in common with the outcome of the above chapters, the interviewees did not identify with the role of victim. They saw themselves as mothers who, by their transformative power, made a valuable contribution to society while also being aware that society did not share this assessment of their motherwork. In contrasting Elizabeth Reid Boyd’s contribution with Porter’s research, the change in context and expectations around Australian mothering in the last half of the 20th century is evident. Whereas the participants in Porter’s study expected to be the child-bearers and -rearers, staying at home to carry out these tasks, Reid Boyd found that some of the stay-at-home mothers she interviewed saw themselves as having to resist pressure to return to paid work. The debate about

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Motherhood

whether to be in the paid workforce or at home doing the motherwork (unpaid, of course) when children are young, is alive and well in Australia. In “Mothers at Home: Oppressed or oppressors or victims of false dichotomies?” Reid Boyd argues that the debate is falsely positioned between the different groups of mothers, when the problem is one that stems from the privileging of male norms of caring and in the paid work environment. Forms of oppression are unmistakable in contemporary society and mothers have to cope. In Patricia Short’s chapter, “Mothers at the Margins: Identities and Survival,” the themes of survival and strength again emerge. The mothers whose experiences are recounted in Short’s chapter are in extreme financial need, but have developed practices of endurance, self-reliance, and strength that enable them to cope. These practices are profoundly connected to the women’s identities. Although the participants are in a precarious situation, by identifying themselves as mothers who can cope, they strengthen their ability to survive. Unfortunately, through their responses to their situation, they seem to further marginalize themselves. While the degrees of oppression and of constraints vary, common in all five chapters are the different prescriptive conditions of mothering that the women have to face. In all cases these conditions result in oppression. The mothers recognize the oppression and the constraints upon them, but have responded with an agency that is based on resistance, strength, and endurance, and the value they place on their need to nurture their children as well as possible. Such a
itudes have been crucial to their ability to cope and, at times, to their survival. These mothers, by example, have passed on an empowered motherline. In the general sense all mothers can claim these women’s powers. We can read of their feats and, while not condoning the oppression, can draw courage from their agency.

Section Four: Separation The common theme of the final section is maternal separation. These chapters analyze situations where, for one reason or another, mothers and their children are separated for some or all of the time. As we noted above, one a
ribute of the “good” mother is that she is there for her children. Consequently, the mothers in these chapters are frequently branded “bad” mothers without consideration of the difficulties the

16

Introduction

individual mother may face or the context in which she does her motherwork. Such a response is not unusual, as mother blaming is a well-worn response to many social problems (Caplan; Eyer). Blaming the mother is an easy option for society; it is a way of constructing problems as personal and the responsibility of mothers, rather than as a societal responsibility. Anne Morris’s chapter, “Naming Maternal Alienation,” begins the section. Morris coined the term maternal alienation to describe the form of male abuse of women and children in which the father of the children deliberately sets out to alienate the children from their mother. On the basis of her research, Morris asserts that this form of abuse is a deliberate male strategy used to destroy the relationship between the mother and child, and build up the father as a heroic figure. As she points out, a broader discourse of mother blaming enables maternal alienation by making the practice one that is easily overlooked. This form of separation of mother and child can have lasting effects, and in some cases, completely destroys the maternal relationship. It gives lie to the popular image of the family as the safe haven. “Women of Courage: the Noncustodial Mother” by Julie Thacker takes the theme of maternal separation a step further in her exploring of the physical separation of the mother and child. Thacker observes that society treats non-custodial mothers as if they do not exist, as if their motherhood ceases when their child no longer lives with them. As she notes, these women are mothers in trouble, not non-mothers. They experience oppression at the hands of a society that allocates blame to the mother if she does not fit the “always available, able to cope with any situation mould.” Proper consideration of the context of her motherwork, of the problems she has, is missing. These mothers, in common with the mothers in the group of chapters in Section Three, learned to resist societal pressure in any way possible. Thacker outlines their resistance strategies, one of which is to find spaces where they can nurture their children, if only for a short time. Thacker, and many of the other authors in this book, in examining the situation of noncustodial mothers, sees these mothers as women of courage who were victimized, rather than seeing them as victims. Annie Pavlovic, Rosemary Aris, and Audrey Mullender are researching an area of maternal separation that is more associated with Victorian times than with the present. Their chapter, “Abandoning Mothers and Their Children,” sets out preliminary findings from their British research, which aims to explore the increasing rate of

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Motherhood

abandonment of children under the age of two. Here, as in the previous two studies, mothers are judged against the “good” mother ideal and so are found wanting. In common with the mothers who are the subjects of the previous chapter, societal judgement moves them from the category “mother” to that of “non-mother” without taking into account the circumstances of their motherwork. To use the author’s words, “[i]n apparently abandoning motherhood they become, by definition, ‘unnatural’ and, by implication, ‘immoral’ women who somehow stand a ‘world apart’ from ‘real’ mothers.” The problem, of course, is that the mothers are not judged against “real mothers,” but against an ideal that is impossible for any mother to maintain. In exploring the mother’s action and her circumstances, the researchers challenge this and suggest that “many social acts of abandonment might be experienced by women and more broadly understood as a reasonable response to unreasonable circumstances.” The mother may be expressing her transformative power in the only way she can envision. The final chapter in the section is Petra Büskens’s “When Eve Le the Garden: A Tale about Mothers Who Leave Their Families.” Büskens’s chapter focuses on maternal separation, but on a particular form of maternal separation: Büskens’s mother chooses to leave. She is in control. She exercises her “freedom and self-determination” and, in doing so, she “reinvents” motherhood by her action. The mother in Büskens’s research does not want to be in the confining role of mother as defined in western culture. She has no true freedom in that role, so she chooses freedom by leaving the role behind her. This leaving mother returns in some capacity to her children, because it is not the relationship with her children she finds stifling but the way the institution of motherhood defines and confines her. Büskens argues that it is this “free” mother who challenges the patriarchal dichotomies of male/female, public/private, and autonomy and care. This mother is unconventional in her approach to mothering and by her action exposes the falsity of the concept that mothering problems are personal, not social.

Conclusion Although oppression takes different forms, it emerges as a commonality in the articles in this collection. Oppression takes different forms because it arises from the context of mothering, from the socio-cultural norms and values of the particular society in which the mother and her

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Introduction

children are embedded. It is possible to see that mothers are victimized and influenced by societal, and their own, expectations. There is a vast difference between being victimized and being a victim. The research in this book highlights mothers’ oppression, but also mothers’ agency, their power. It documents how, using what power they have and their ingenuity, strength, adaptability, and courage, mothers have looked for the spaces where they could achieve change, no ma
er how small, for themselves and their children, and where they could improve their transformative power relationship with their children. While in all instances forms of oppression are present, so are forms of creativity and resistance. Hill Collins (1994) argues that theories of motherhood are always partial perspectives because of the diversity that exists in mothering. She then goes on to claim that “shiing the center to accommodate this diversity promises to recontextualize motherhood and point us toward a feminist theorizing that embraces difference as an essential part of commonality” (62). This book is an example of “shiing the centre” so that many different forms of oppression and of power are manifested.

Endnotes 1. 2. 3.

4.

We thank Dr. Angela Coco for the suggestion of the actual form of the title. See Andrea O’Reilly, ed., From Motherhood to Mothering: The Legacy of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004b. This statement does not deny that some mothers train their children to be resistant to societal norms. That this training is not the dominant training is evidenced by the lack of sudden changes in the social system. For a discussion of this see Andrea O’Reilly’s Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004c.

References Abbey, S., and A. O’Reilly. Redefining Motherhood. Toronto: Second Story Press, 1998. Allen, A. “Foucault on Power: A Theory for Feminists.” Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault. Ed. S.J. Hekman. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University, 1996. 265–281.

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Allen, A. The Power of Feminist Theory. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999. Badinter, E. The Myth of Motherhood: An Historical View of the Maternal Instinct. Trans. R. DeGaris. London: Souvenir Press, 1981. Bartky, S.L. Femininity and Oppression. London: Routledge, 1990. Bassin, D., M. Honey and M. Kaplan, eds., Representations of Motherhood. London: Yale University Press, 1994. Belenky, M.F., M.C. Blythe, N.R. Goldberger, and T.J. Ma
uck. Women’s Ways of Knowing. New York: Basic Books, 1986. Birke, L. Women/Feminism and Biology. Brighton, Sussex: Wheatsheaf Books Ltd., 1986. Brown, S., J. Lumley, R. Small, and J. Astbury. Missing Voices: The Experience of Motherhood. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994. Caplan, P.J. “Take the Blame Off Mother.” Psychology Today 20 (Oct. 1986): 70–71. Collins, P.H. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 1990. Collins, P.H. “Shiing the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood.” Mothering: Ideology, Experience, Agency. Eds. E.N. Glenn, G. Change, and L.R. Forcey. London: Routledge, 1994. 45–65. DeVault, M.L. “Talking and Listening from Women’s Standpoint: Feminist Strategies for Interviewing and Analysis.” Social Problems 37.1 (Feb. 1990): 96–116. DeVault, M.L. Feeding the Family. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991. Di Quinzio, P. The Impossibility of Motherhood. London: Routledge, 1999. Ehrenreich, B., and D. English. For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1978 and 1979. Firestone, S. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. London: Paladin, 1970. Freely, M. What About Us? An Open Le
er to the Mothers Feminism Forgot. London: Bloomsbury, 1995. Friedan, B. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1963. Frye, M. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. New York: Crossing Press, 1983. Giddens, A. The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984. Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women‘s Development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993. Glenn, E.N., G. Chang, and L.R. Forcey, eds. Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency. New York: Routledge, 1994.

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Gottlieb, R.S. “Mothering and the Reproduction of Power: Chodorow, Dinnerstein, and Social Theory.” Socialist Review 14.5.77 (Sept.–Oct. 1984): 93–119. Griffin, S. Woman and Nature. London: The Women’s Press, 1978. Harding, S. “Subjectivity, Experience and Knowledge: An Epistemology from/for Rainbow Coalition Politics.” Development and Change 23.3 (July 1992): 175–193. Harper, J., and L. Richards. Mothers and Working Mothers. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1979. Isaac, J.C. “Beyond the Three Faces of Power: A Realist Critique.” Rethinking Power. Ed. T.E. Wartenberg. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. 32–55. Janeway, E. Powers of the Weak. New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1980. Johnson, M.H. Strong Mothers, Weak Wives: The Search for Gender Equality. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Kitzinger, S. Ourselves as Mothers. London: Transworld Publishers, 1992. Lowinsky, N.R. Stories from the Motherline. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc., 1992. Martin, E. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press, 1987. McFarland, B., and V. Watson-Rouslin. My Mother Was Right. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., 1997. Miller, J.B. “Women and Power.” Rethinking Power. Ed. T.E. Wartenberg. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. 240–248. Moltmann-Wendel, E. I Am My Body. Trans. J. Bowden. London: SCM Press, 1994. Oakley, A. From Here to Maternity: Becoming a Mother. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981. O’Brien, M. The Politics of Reproduction. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1981. O’Reilly, A., ed. Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Empowered Mothering. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2004a. _____, ed. From Motherhood to Mothering: The Legacy of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004b. _____. Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004c. Ortner, S. “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” Eds. M.Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1974. 67–88. Ranke-Heinemann, U. Eunuchs for Heaven: The Catholic Church and Sexuality. Trans. J. Brownjohn. London: Andre Deutsch, 1990.

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Reiger, K. Our Bodies, Our Babies. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001. Rich, A. Of Woman Born. London: Virago Press, 1977. Ruddick, S. Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. Shildrick, M. Leaky Bodies and Boundaries. London: Routledge, 1997. Smith, D. The Conceptual Practices of Power. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990. Umansky, L. Motherhood Reconceived. New York: NY University Press, 1996. Wartenberg, T.E. The Forms of Power. Ithaca: Cornell, 1990. _____. Introduction. Rethinking Power. By Wartenberg. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992a. xi–xxvi. _____. Rethinking Power. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992b. _____. “Situated Social Power.” Rethinking Power. Ed. T.E. Wartenberg. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992c. 79–101. Wearing, B. The Ideology of Motherhood. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984.

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EMBODIMENT

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CHAPTER TWO

THE KINDEST CUT? THE CAESAREAN SECTION AS TURNING POINT, AUSTRALIA 1880–19001 Lisa Featherstone

I

n September of 1883, MN, a small, fair woman of 21 years went to the Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, concerned by an abdominal enlargement. MN was single, but feared the rather prominent lump may have been a pregnancy, as she had been “indiscreet” on a number of occasions. For two years, she had suffered from pain in the pelvic region, especially over the right ovary, and for the past months she had noticed some swelling. The lump had rapidly grown, the pain had become more acute, and her periods had ceased. The Honorary Surgeon George Fortescue examined MN and diagnosed her as having an ovarian cyst. Pregnancy was deemed unlikely and the cyst was tapped, causing great pain and weakness to the patient. She was told to go home and convalesce. In January, she returned to the hospital to be operated upon for the cyst. Again, pregnancy was ruled out. During the abdominal section, however, it became clear that the cyst was not alone—there was a fetus of some size. The surgeons held a hurried consultation and together decided the best treatment was to remove both the child and the uterus, in an a
empt to prevent septicemia. The operation, lasting one and a half hours and performed without antiseptic spray, was deemed a success. While the fetus was too young to survive, the mother made a full and fairly speedy recovery (Fortescue). Fortescue’s operation was one of the first caesarean sections performed in Australia. The advent of the caesarean section was an important surgical milestone. Adopted at a time when medical dominance over childbirth and infant care was being established (Featherstone; Reiger), the caesarean marked a new stage of technical and clinical control over mothers. The caesarean section, however, can

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Motherhood

be read as much more than this. It is a powerful symbol of change and of the movement from medical interest centering on the life and health of the mother, to a more profound and sustained interest in the child. Caesarean sections were an effort to save the life of both the infant and the mother, but at a time when abdominal surgery was extremely dangerous, the risks to the mother were high. This chapter will examine early uses of the caesarean procedure, in Australia in the 1880s and 1890s, through case notes and doctors’ descriptions in contemporary medical journals. Using the caesarean section as a case study of medical attitudes and ideologies, this analysis will explore changing a
itudes towards mothers and babies in late 19th-century Australia, and the consequent repositioning of the woman/mother in the field of obstetric practice and the wider, moral order of society. In many ways, historical accounts of the caesarean are limited. Much of what is wri
en falls into the category of hagiography, with the caesarean uncritically rendered “the greatest operation” (Thoms). Those works wri
en from a medical viewpoint tend to remain within the scientific framework, offering a notion of progress from the horrors of the difficult and protracted labour to the clean and simple caesarean (Young; Forster). Such texts are rather uncritical of the role of the doctor and have sustained an unquestioned belief that the operation was both a necessity and an exciting and successful step in the history of medicine. Further, these texts have served to make gender invisible, considering the performance of obstetrics and gynecology without any understanding of how sex and gender may have shaped the disciplines. Although a more recent account (Churchill) shows more awareness of gender as a category of analysis, it presents a somewhat sketchy historical analysis, based largely on secondary sources. In this chapter, I will endeavour to add to and complicate these discussions. I begin by drawing on Irvine Loudon’s idea that the caesarean section was bound “not only [by] clinical, but also by moral and religious considerations” (Loudon 133). Stemming from the argument that medicine, science, and technology do not operate in a vacuum, this reading of the caesarean section enables an analysis of the procedure within both the field of medicine and the wider social world. Further, in situating the performance of this particular surgery in wider social and political contexts, I draw upon historiographical considerations of gender to offer a more complex interpretation of the relationship between female patients and male obstetricians.

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The Kindest Cut?

The Caesarean Section in the 19th Century The second half of the 19th century was the great era of exploratory surgery and saw a proliferation of operations involving both the genitals and the reproductive system of women. As Moscucci and McCalman have described, there was a range of surgical innovations including ovariotomy (the removal of cystic ovaries), hysterectomy, repair of vesico-vaginal fistulas, and operations for relief of both vaginal and uterine prolapse (Moscucci; McCalman; McGregor). While early abdominal surgery was treated with mistrust, by the mid-1870s surgery such as ovariotomy had been legitimized and even made routine (McGregor 301). The relative success of such surgery, and the availability of anaesthetics, encouraged the medical profession to continue to refine other less successful operations, including the caesarean section. In this period, caesarean sections took two forms. Initial operations were the classic section, the removal of the child from the uterus via a cut in the abdomen. Under chloroform, ether, or a combination of both, the surgeon made an incision, about five inches long, extending vertically from the umbilicus to the pubis. The peritoneum was opened and then a small incision was made in the uterine wall. This was torn into a hole of about five or six inches. The membranes could then be slit and the child extracted, generally quite easily. The uterine cavity was thoroughly cleansed and the area was then sutured and the woman bandaged with plaster and flannel (Garde). In 1882, the German surgeon Max Sanger (1853–1902) refined the operation by ensuring that the uterine cavity was fully closed, using a combination of deep and superficial stitches, which reduced the risk of infection and hemorrhage (Forster). Just as common as the classic section was Porro’s operation. Following the extraction of the fetus, the surgeon removed the uterus and its appendages, including the ovaries, leaving only the cervical portion of the uterus (Godson). Internationally, Porro’s operation was viewed as much safer than the classic caesarean, though evidence for this was spasmodic. The advantages to Porro’s operation were twofold. First, with the uterus removed there was less chance of bleeding and hemorrhage. Second, with the reproductive organs removed, there was no chance of a subsequent pregnancy. The caesarean section was oen perceived as an incomplete operation, for it “dealt only with the

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effects,” leaving the cause undisturbed and the woman vulnerable to future pregnancies (Godson; Chambers). This was the site of some contest. Many doctors disliked Porro’s operation for this very reason, believing it “unsexed” the woman (Chambers). The idea of “unsexing” is indicative that Victorian notions of maternity and femininity were intertwined with scientific and medical theories. The social and medical construction of woman tied her so firmly to reproduction and child bearing that it would be unthinkable to knowingly separate the two. The hysterectomy, by rendering her infertile, was an assault on her femininity and indeed her whole purpose and being. Porro’s operation was not opposed on the grounds that it was dangerous, but rather because it interfered with women’s perceived role in society. Other moral and cultural forces came into play within the medical discussion over the caesarean. In the doctors’ medical notes on caesarean section, there are echoes of notions of the passivity of women and the action of men, so central to Victorian constructions of gender. The caesarean, through its combination of anaesthesia and medical management, overrode the mother’s own body, leaving the practitioner as both performer and controller (Murphy-Lawless). The caesarean allowed the optimum amount of socially desirable passivity during childbirth, in effect, taking the labour out of labour for mothers. Thus cultural constructions of Victorian femininity were enhanced and reinforced by the new technology, with medical men as agents and mothers as inert receptors of doctors’ operative “skills.” Despite the seriousness of abdominal surgery, the operation was itself remarkably easy for the surgeon, especially when compared to the management of a difficult or protracted labour. By the 1890s, some operations were as quick as 20 minutes (Corbin), though very real risks to the mother remained (Godson). The pain and suffering of individual women is clear, even in the understated and technical discourses of the medical profession. Following the operation, most women were severely ill with vomiting and stomach disorders, probably due to shock, or infection, or as a reaction to the anaesthetic. Also, in these early days it was not unusual for women to be hospitalized for three months or more (Corbin; Godson; Garde; Haynes; Foreman). Despite this, in the medical journals, doctors a
empted to depict positive experiences. One woman was recorded as feeling “easy and delightful”—though perhaps this was the morphine (Haynes 371). Another claimed she felt

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The Kindest Cut?

“quite well” and asked for a chop to eat—although by the following day she was dead (Chambers 30). During this period, caesarean sections had a horrifying maternal mortality rate and it is sometimes difficult to understand the perseverance of the medical profession. Using Godson’s statistics, while Porro’s operation provided be
er results than the classic caesarean section, international success rates before 1884 were still relatively low (Godson). Italy, for example, where the majority of early operations took place, had a maternal survival rate of well under 50 percent: of 53 recorded operations, 23 women recovered, while the remaining 30 died; of the infants, 45 recovered (including one set of twins), while 9 were stillborn. In Great Britain, of the five operations performed by 1884, the mother died in four cases, while the child survived in four cases (Godson). The major causes of death were, in order, septic peritonitis, shock, peritonitis, and septicemia (Godson). Taken across the board, success rates recorded in Europe and Great Britain between 1750 and 1939 suggest a mortality rate of almost 80 percent (Young). Australian medics closely followed international debates and added their own statistics. Of 19 cases recorded in the Australasian Medical Gaze
e (AMG) and the Australian Medical Journal (AMJ) between 1875 and 1900, 13 mothers survived. It appears, however, that such a sample is inherently flawed, as doctors preferred to report successes rather than failures. In contrast, the eminent Melbourne gynecologist Walter Balls-Headley quoted that in 1877 the maternal mortality was 85.7 percent but that by 1881, mortality from the operation was 55.8 percent (Headley 1886). Other Australian contemporaries described maternal mortality rates as high as 85 percent (Hooper). Success rates of the various forms of caesarean sections depended in part on the condition of the mother when the operation was performed. If the operation was performed aer a long labour, when the mother was already exhausted, her chance of survival was much lower (Godson). Women were also be
er off when preoperative examinations were kept to a minimum, thus reducing the chance that infection had already been introduced. Some doctors performed caesarean sections without the use of antiseptic measures. Some relied on cleanliness rather than antiseptics, while others used antiseptic water, but not carbolic spray (Godson). There was no consensus on these ma
ers. Moreover, the operation was not without practical difficulties. Despite the claimed ease of the cu
ing operation, the most material of considerations could cause difficulties. Haynes, when operating on a woman in her home, complained that the operation began well, but “unfortunately the

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evening was very dark” (Haynes 370). Other doctors exhausted supplies of equipment such as sutures and thread with alarming regularity, reflecting both the emergency status of the operation and the state of surgery in the period (Garde). In Perth, Haynes found it difficult to get nurses to assist in the caesarean, so great was the “terror of such an operation” (Haynes 370). With the initial prognosis of the caesarean as risky for the mother, it was not immediately a popular operation. In the early years doctors almost universally performed it on women with a malformed pelvis who, without assistance, could die in labour, of shock, exhaustion, or a ruptured uterus (Godson; Loudon). The caesarean was also performed for suspected extra-uterine pregnancies, where the woman would most likely die either before or during labour (Hardie; Worrall; Rowan; Haynes; Corbin). Some women were operated upon when a cancerous growth or cyst was blocking the birth canal (Backhouse; Foreman; Barrington; Chambers). Although in Europe the reasons for the operation multiplied in the 1890s, in Australia, generally, it was used only when all other options had failed (Young).

The Alternatives to the Caesarean If the caesarean was usually a last resort, there was a range of other options that could be used to treat a contracted pelvis. Of these, perhaps the most favoured was the early induction of labour. When a woman knew she was to have a difficult or protracted labour, many doctors would perform either a therapeutic abortion or an induction to save the life of the mother. A consultation of obstetricians in London in 1756 had deemed the operation moral and ethical, and even into the early 20th century some British doctors stressed its superiority over alternative operations (Churchill). Such an operation depended on several factors. It required the mother’s knowledge that her birth was to be problematic. It needed a sympathetic doctor, and it demanded prenatal care. It also required co-operation from the patient—in some cases women refused to seek medical care, knowing it would end the pregnancy (Byrne). If it was too late for an induction, there were other surgical options. The first was symphysiotomy, the dividing of the symphysis bone, in order to gain additional room to deliver the head of the infant. Symphysiotomy, developed in France in the 1760s, underwent somewhat of a revival in the 1890s. It was a ghastly operation, resulting

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The Kindest Cut?

in a long convalescence period. It was achievable only when the pelvis was mildly or moderately contracted, not for the most serious of cases. Its a
raction was the low risk of death to the mother, with estimates of maternal mortality of from 7 to 10 percent. When it occurred, mortality resulted from hemorrhage or extensive laceration. Also, the risk to the child was considered to be “moderate.” comparing favourably with other options (Adam 1894; Smyly; Lewers). While the mortality rate arising from symphysiotomy was relatively low, there was a fairly high risk of some damage to the maternal body, particularly incontinence and infection of the joints, which could lead to long-term impediment to movement. The mother may well survive, only to suffer from a debilitating disability or deformity (Smyly). While symphysiotomy was seen as safer to the mother than the caesarean section, it does not appear to have been very popular in Australia, perhaps because of these risks. An incontinent or immobilized woman was not the heroic outcome desired. The more common alternative was craniotomy. During a craniotomy, which was done vaginally, a crochet was fixed into the head of the infant, crushing the infant’s skull, and the body was removed piece by piece. When this was done, the infant may have been dead or still alive. The popularity of craniotomy arose from its relative safety to the mother. While there was some chance of lacerations or tissue damage, maternal mortality was extremely low, and in some hospitals nil (Lewers; Obstetrical Society 1894). Craniotomy could also be performed repeatedly on the same woman, if she required assistance in future labours (Nyulasy; Pairman; Warren). Most likely for these reasons, in the late 1890s, caesarean section still had not entirely replaced craniotomy, particularly in cases where the woman had been in labour for some time and was considered too exhausted to undergo abdominal surgery. In other cases, the apparent simplicity of craniotomy, with less risk involved than in a “serious cutting operation,” appears to have been persuasive. There was much debate over the relative worth of the various operations for difficult labour. The medical profession was unable to agree, and within their debate we can see the changing emphasis of the scientific community in consideration of the risks for the mother and the infant. In symphysiotomy, there was a moderate risk to the infant and high risk of long-term complications for the mother, including an extensive convalescence. It was rarely the operation of choice. Craniotomy was a low-risk operation for the mother and, within the

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moral strictures of the day, the death of the infant was perceived to be, not welcome, but acceptable, in return for the safety of the wife and mother. In 1892, William Byrne, an Honorary Physician at the Brisbane General Hospital, claimed the public favoured craniotomy over the section, and while they expected some maternal mortality during difficult births, they did not approve of the risks of the caesarean (Byrne). For those doctors advocating caesarean section, there were three main arguments in its favour. First, some claimed it held li
le more danger than a difficult birth, though this does not appear to be borne out by accounts in medical journals of the time or by other evidence, anecdotal or statistical. Second, it was maintained that, if Porro’s operation or the removal of the ovaries was performed at the same time, the mother would not be subject to the dangers of pregnancy again. Third, and most important, it was argued that the child’s life was saved. This is the crux of the ma
er. At this point in time, there appears to be an alteration in beliefs about the ideal relationship between the mother and child. This was not a purely Australian phenomenon. In Britain, disparate risks in the mother-child dyad had always been resolved on the basis of preserving maternal life at all costs (Hooper).2 In a period of high infant mortality such as the late 18th century, the loss of the child during labour was considered to be insignificant. In contrast, the death of the mother was “considerable,” and to those close to her, an “irreparable loss” (Osborn 42, 47). A century later, a
itudes towards the infant had soened, though the value of the mother remained primary. In a textbook of obstetric medicine wri
en in 1856, Francis Ramsbotham, the obstetric physician and lecturer on obstetric and forensic medicine at the London Hospital, wrote that craniotomy was “terrible,” “destructive,” and “heart-rending,” but nevertheless the life of the mother was “paramount.” In practical terms, if the mother died, the infant was likely to perish too, for this was a time before safe replacements for breast milk. But the reason why mother was chosen over baby was more than that. The mother had “social, moral, and religious ties” to the community, while the infant had “no affections, no dependents.” Further, Ramsbotham believed doctors were justified in political terms in preserving the “strong to the weak, the healthy to the diseased, and the mother of the family to the unborn foetus” (Ramsbotham 303–304). Other eminent doctors agreed. Robert Barnes, the obstetric physician to the St. Thomas Hospital, and an examiner on midwifery

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The Kindest Cut?

to the University of London, the Royal College of Physicians, and the Royal College of Surgeons, believed it was the mother’s “right” to have “precedence over her unborn child.” Replicating the words of Ramsbotham, Barnes claimed, “Our first and paramount duty is to preserve the mother, even if it involves the sacrifice of the child” (Barnes 289). Thomas Radford, the Consulting Physician to St. Mary’s Hospital, was more circumspect. In his examination of obstetric operations he claimed to dislike destructive ones, finding them difficult for men of “high moral feeling.” He was also concerned at the high wastage of infant life. Nevertheless, he believed the fetus to have no social, moral, or religious ties, and nor did it have a “distinct or separate life.” Thus it was “li
le more than a member of the mother.” Only in cases where the mother was terminally ill should the life of the infant be favoured over the mother (Radford). Such views continued to change over time. In Australia, the president of the Medical Society of Victoria, G. Rothwell Adam, claimed that in the mid-1870s medical doctrine suggested that fetal life must be absolutely “sacrificed to avoid all risk to the mother. In other words, maternal safety was paramount, and the life of the infant entirely secondary” (1894). By 1896, he noted this had changed, and the fetus had been accorded equal rights to the mother. He claimed that “since an improved technique has materially lessened the risks to the mother … the obstetrician is duty bound to become more conservative of foetal life” (Adam 1896 43). Adam’s reference, in this comment, to “improved technique”as justification for increased “duty” to the child, is problematic and, thus, a ma
er of interest. The initial operations were performed before the risk to the mother decreased and, if the maternal death rate was over 50 percent, this does not compare favourably to craniotomy, where even in the worst of cases the maternal death rate was well under 10 percent. Moreover, when it was suggested that the caesarean section was best performed before the fetus became too large, at, say, seven months, there was much protest. To a
empt the operation at seven months may have been preferable for the mother, but it defeated the ultimate purpose of the operation—to save the life of the child (Godson). This evidence indicates that a shi had occurred in the balancing of risks to the mother and the infant, with survival of the infant taking precedence over minimization of risks for the mother. An account provided by Thomas Chambers, a gynecologist from Sydney Hospital, of an operation he performed in 1886 is also

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instructive. Chambers had operated on Mrs. H, a 29-year-old woman whose entire vagina had been closed off by scar tissue from a previous forceps delivery. It was believed that even a mutilated child would not fit through the birth canal, and it was felt that only the caesarean section would save the mother’s life. Unfortunately, Mrs. H died within 32 hours of the operation, from shock, exhaustion, and perhaps septicemia (Chambers). Aer performing this operation, Chambers noted that caesarean sections had “not been a
ended with any great amount of success.” His justification of the use of the procedure was twofold. First, he believed the operation would more likely be successful if performed before the case was hopeless and the woman exhausted. He blamed many of the failures of the operation on its being “uniformly deferred until the patient’s vital powers have been so depressed by delay, exhausting and useless attempts to deliver, that all prospects of success were gone” (Chambers 32). Second, he felt it was worthwhile a
empting if the vaginal birth would be even more perilous. He wrote “our duty is clear enough, viz., to do the best we can for her and her offspring if it is still living” (Chambers 31). Chambers thus stayed within the standards of medical discourse, pointing to ways to improve the operation and justifying its practice. He moved the critique, and the terms of the critique, away from the operation itself and its lack of success, to ways of improving the procedure. Chambers claimed that if the operation were to be performed earlier, before the mother became exhausted, there would be be
er maternal outcomes. He was no doubt correct to suggest maternal exhaustion and infection did affect mortality, but his argument was, primarily, an a
empt to vindicate his practice and defend the new technology. Chambers and other doctors advocated more regular use of abdominal surgery, at an earlier stage of confinement. They a
empted to spread the technology to other cases that may well have been suited to destructive operations, though they continued to look for new and be
er ways to perform the operation and extend its usage to women early in labour.

Marriage and Maternity Perhaps not coincidentally, of the first three Australian cases of caesarean section recorded in journals, all were performed on

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The Kindest Cut?

unmarried women. Single women occupied a particular place in society, standing at the boundary of order and disorder (Swain; Swain and Howe; Reekie; Twomey). Having stepped outside the boundaries of acceptable (chaste) femininity, the single mother was both a practical outcast and a symbol of female degeneracy. The situation of the single mother was precarious, both in wider society and within the confines of the hospital, and their marginality appears to have impacted on their treatment by medical staff. In two of the three initial cases of early caesarean, the women sought medical assistance assuming they were pregnant. In both instances, the doctors dismissed pregnancy as the cause of the abdominal swelling (Hillas 33; Fortescue 167–172). It would seem that doctors naively believed the women’s single status le them immune to pregnancy. When pregnancy was dismissed as a factor, a more complicated diagnosis ensued, requiring abdominal surgery. The situation of these women indicates the reluctance of medical staff to believe and act upon the women’s understandings of their own body. Instead, all three single women were hindered with misdiagnosis and were then given emergency caesarean sections. A range of reasons explains this phenomenon. Most working-class and poor women received no official medical care until the birth was imminent, if at all. Single women were the predominant users of the public hospital system, for women who could afford it were confined at home (Coghlan 988). It may have been, also, that due to the social stigma of single motherhood, unmarried women were less likely to have any form of prenatal care, and only sought medical advice when the situation became serious. In large public and charity hospitals, doctors were be
er able to perform surgery, and this is likely to have increased the probability of such an operation. Although more difficult to prove, it is also possible that single women were seen as more appropriate models for experimental surgery. Those without responsibilities to a husband and family were perhaps seen as more expendable. In the American South, abdominal surgery was frequently trialed on slaves. As the historian John Duffy pointed out, “southern surgeons and physicians were far more willing to try new procedures upon slaves than upon other women” (McGregor 1998 77). In Australia there may have been a similar element of experimentation. As single women were less valued members of the community, they may have been the “natural” choice for such surgery; early experimentation with the procedure, necessary for later, wider spread adoption, may have been rendered more acceptable.

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The Kindest Cut? The caesarean section thus offers a complex reading of a
itudes towards women, mothers, and maternal bodies. The conventional feminist view has been that the caesarean section was a form of outrageous experimentation on the bodies of women. It appeared that medical men undertook these complex and dangerous operations as a site of both power and oppression. Just as the speculum had become an instrument of power, a device that enabled men to visualize, and hence control the interiors (and exteriors) of women, abdominal surgery was a means to an end. It would result in increased scientific knowledge and, in a society where knowledge was power, increased ownership or colonization of the female body. It would mean greater power to the medical profession, and limits to female ownership of their own bodies. Even birth, once a purely female initiative, had to be controlled by masculinist, scientific means. The caesarean section was viewed as simply another device in the history of male ownership of the female body (Murphy-Lawless). The situation is more complex than this. The women given caesarean sections in Australia were certainly in a desperate state. Natural childbirth, if such a thing exists, was not possible for these women, and generally other interventions such as forceps had been tried, and had proven unsuccessful. Oen these women were unsuitable candidates for craniotomy. Without intervention, death—and a slow and agonising death—would certainly occur. Thus the desire to perform caesarean section cannot be put down, simply, to experimentation and a thirst for knowledge/power, though this was evident. Women were dying, they were in pain, and the caesarean section was perhaps their only hope. Even so, the caesarean section can certainly be read as a turning point in a
itudes towards women and children. Both in ideological and practical terms, no longer was the mother’s life the only point of value to the obstetrician. In the rejection of craniotomy, which was gruesome but effective, we can see the increase in value of the life of the child, and the renegotiation of the importance of the mother. This occurred not only in cases that were unsuitable for craniotomy, but also became common in the wider medical discourse. The caesarean crossed a boundary, both the physical boundary of the uterus and the ideological boundary of what was possible and acceptable in terms of the bodies of women. The advent of the

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The Kindest Cut?

caesarean marks the end of the pre-eminence of the mother, and the increasing importance of the child. This change was fraught with difficulties, and there are certain tensions evident within the medical debates. Nevertheless, the caesarean offers a striking turning point: the increasing interest in the child as an individual body, an object of importance in his or her own right.

Endnotes 1.

2.

This chapter forms part of a more detailed discussion of caesarean sections which is included in my thesis Breeding and Feeding: A Social History of Mothers and Medicine in Australia, 1880 to 1925, Macquarie University, 2003. This was in contrast to Catholic nations, where abdominal section was preferred, as the life of the unbaptized child was seen as supremely important. Italy led the way in the development of the caesarean. In France, craniotomy was preformed only once in every 2,000 to 3,000 births, while in England it was used in 4 to 6 out of every 1,000 deliveries (Loudon). For a brief commentary on the religious debates over caesarean section in Australia, see Featherstone.

References Adam, G. Rothwell. “Symphysiotomy.” Australian Medical Journal 20 (May 1894): 213–219. _____. “Presidents Address Medical Society of Victoria.” Intercolonial Medical Journal of Australasia 1 (Jan. 1896): 45–51. Backhouse, J. Burder. “Case of Caesarean Section for Carcinoma of Vagina— Successful Removal of Child—Recovery of Mother.” Australian Medical Journal 15 (May 1885): 219–221. Barnes, Robert. Lectures on Obstetric Operations, Including the Treatment of Haemorrhage and Forming a Guide to the Management of Difficult Labour. London: J.A. Churchill, 1871. Barrington, Fourness. “Labor Obstructed by an Ovarian Tumor Incarcerated in the Pelvis—Caesarian Section—Recovery.” Australasian Medical Gaze
e 20 (Jan. 1900): 27–30. Byrne, William S. “Caesarean Section (Sanger-Leopold Operation).” Australasian Medical Gaze
e (Mar 1892): 147–149.

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Chambers, Thomas. “A Case of Caesarean Section—Plus Oophorectomy—Death in 32 Hours.” Australasian Medical Gaze
e (Oct. 1886): 29–32. Churchill, Helen. Caesarean Birth: Experience, Practice and History. Cheshire England: Books for Midwives Press, 1997. Coghlan, T.A. The Wealth and Progress of New South Wales, 1900–01. Sydney: Government Printer, 1902. Corbin, Thos W. “Case of Ectopic Gestation.” Australasian Medical Gaze
e (Dec. 1891): 81–82. Featherstone, L. Breeding and Feeding: A Social History of Mothers and Medicine in Australia, 1880 to 1925. PhD thesis. Macquarie University, 2003. Foreman, J. “Notes on Two Cases of Caesarean Section.” Australian Medical Journal 20 (Sept. 1900): 401–402. Forster, Frank M.C. “Caesarean Section and Its Early Australian History.” The Medical Journal of Australia 4 (July 1970): 33–38. Fortescue, George. “Case of Ovarian Disease, Complicated with Pregnancy— Ovariotomy—Accidental Puncture of the Uterus—Removal of Uterus by Porro’s Operation—Recovery.” Australasian Medical Gaze
e (Apr. 1884): 169–172. Garde, H.C. “A Case of Porro’s Operation for Rachitis of the Pelvis.” Australasian Medical Gaze
e (Mar. 1888): 139. Godson, Clement. “Porro’s Operation.” British Medical Journal 26 (Jan. 1884): 142–160. Hardie, David. “Case of Extra-uterine Pregnancy—Operation at Eight Months—Child Lived Six Hours—Placenta Removed During Sixth and Seventh Week—No Haemorrhage—Recovery.” Australasian Medical Gaze
e 20 (June 1896): 263–267. Haynes, E.J.A. “Abdominal Extra-Uterine Foetation of Eight Months Duration— Operation.” Australasian Medical Gaze
e (Oct. 1892): 369–372. Headley, W. Balls. “Case of Porro’s Operation on a Ricke
y Dwarf—Recovery.” Australian Medical Journal 15 (Dec. 1886): 547–552. Hillas, Thomas. “A Case of Ovariotomy, Complicated with Pregnancy. Caesarean Operation. Cure.” The Australian Medical Journal (Feb. 1875): 33–34. Hooper, J.W. Dunbar. “Case of Pregnancy with Carcinoma of Cervix, Involving Question of Caesarean Section.” Australian Medical Journal 15 (Sept. 1889). Lewers, Arthur H.N. “A Case of Symphysiotomy.” The Lancet 5 (Aug. 1893): 300–301. Loudon, Irvine. Death in Childbirth: An International Study of Maternal Care and Maternal Mortality 1800–1950. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. McCalman, Janet. Sex and Suffering: Women’s Health and a Women’s Hospital. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1998.

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McGregor, Deborah Kuhn. Sexual Surgery and the Origins of Gynaecology: J. Marion Sims, His Hospital and His Patients. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1989. McGregor, Deborah Kuhn. From Midwives to Medicine: The Birth of American Gynaecology. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998. Moscucci, Ornella. The Science of Woman: Gynaecology and Gender in England, 1800–1929. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Murphy-Lawless, Jo. On Reading Birth and Death. A History of Obstetric Thinking. Cork: Cork University Press, 1998. Nyulasy, Frank A. “Notes on a Case of Craniotomy; Subsequent Successful Induction of Premature Labour—Child Incubated.” Australasian Medical Gaze
e (1898): 347. Obstretrical Society of London. “Report of the Obstretrical Society of London.” The Lancet (March 17, 1894). Osborn, William. An Essay on Laborious Parturition in Which the Division of the Symphysis Pubis is Particularly Considered. London: T Cadell in the Strand, 1783. Pairman, Thomas Wyld. “Decapitation by a Primitive Method.” Australasian Medical Gaze
e 20 (Sept. 1898). Radford, Thomas. Observations on the Caesarean Section, Craniology, and Other Obstetric Operations with Cases. 2nd ed. London: J.A. Churchill, 1880. Ramsbotham, Francis H. The Principles and Practice of Obstetric Medicine and Surgery in Reference to the Process of Parturition. London: John Churchill, 1856. Reekie, Gail. Measuring Immorality: Social Inquiry and the Problem of Illegitimacy. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Reiger, K. The Disenchantment of the Home: Modernizing the Australian Family, 1880–1940. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985. Rowan, Thomas. “A Case of Extra-uterine Pregnancy.” Australian Medical Journal 15 (June 1887): 307–312. Smyly, W.J. “A Case of Symphysiotomy.” The British Medical Journal 29 (Apr. 1893). Swain, Shurlee. “The Concealment of Birth in Nineteenth Century Victoria.” Lilith 5 (1988): 139–147. Swain, Shurlee, with Renate Howe. Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Thoms, Herbert. Our Obstetric Heritage: The Story of Safe Childbirth. Hamden: The Shoe String Press Inc., 1960. Twomey, Christina. Deserted and Destitute: Motherhood, Wife Desertion and Colonial Welfare. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd., 2002.

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Warren, W. Edward. “Notes Upon Three Successful Craniotomy Operations, All in the Case of the Same Patient.” Australasian Medical Gaze
e (Aug. 1884): 245–246. Worrall, Ralph. “Ectopic Pregnancy Complicating Normal Pregnancy— Abdominal Section—Recovery.” Australasian Medical Gaze
e (Jan. 1893): 3–5. Young, J.H. Caesarean Section: The History and Development of the Operation from Earliest Times. London: H.K. Lewis and Co. Ltd., 1944.

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CHAPTER THREE

NARRATING BREASTS CONSTRUCTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY MOTHERHOOD(S) IN WOMEN’S BREASTFEEDING STORIES Susanne Gannon and Babe
e Müller-Rockstroh

Introduction Breasts as the sine qua non of female a
ractiveness are central to women’s feelings about their bodies and also influence women’s and girls’ selfpositioning in a given society. Breasts, however, are not just part of each individual woman’s body. Not only do we have a relationship with our breasts but also, it seems, does everybody else: our partners, our children, friends, work colleagues, and casual acquaintances, as well as institutions such as biomedicine and the media. In many parts of the world, for example, women’s breasts are part of the urban landscape—so ubiquitous are they in billboard advertising. Revealed or concealed, large or small, bound or free, women’s breasts, more oen than any other part of the human body, seem to be public property. This means that alongside the lived somatic “truth” of each individual woman’s experience of her own flesh, a number of diverse, competing, or similar discursively produced meanings of breasts co-exist. Yet, the origins and sometimes even the very existence of these discourses that construct breasts—and women—in culturally specific ways, are so deeply embedded in knowledge and language systems that they have become naturalized and therefore invisible.

Researching Breasts Confronted by visual representations of multiple breasts in our everyday lives, we nevertheless experience a conspiracy of silence around literal breasts. We all have them and every day we make decisions about them:

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whether to reveal them, hide them, incarcerate them within the item of clothing deliberately designed for this purpose—the bra, whether to enlarge or reduce them, even whether to have them cut off. We hate them or we love them—oen simultaneously—but we rarely talk about them amongst ourselves. Meanwhile we leave their representation to popular culture and other institutions where consequently, because of their physical and symbolic visibility, breasts easily serve as the “bodily focus for the policing of women” (Carter 154). As breasts operate as a “microcosm of the wider world” (Maher 2000), nurturing breasts and, associated with these, the topic of breastfeeding, are ideal subjects to foreground a study of social and cultural reconstruction of the (m)other body in society. Untangling the complex discourses around nurturing enables us to begin to explore the contemporary policing of women and mothers, mothering, motherhood. Our interest in extending a broader study of women and breasts into the complex field of mothering and women’s lives and bodies was reinforced by two phenomena that coincided with our data-gathering in Hanover.1 One was a billboard advertisement in railway stations for a local radio station. The advertisement depicted a bare breast directed at the face of a grinning baby, mouth open, ready to feed. This advertisement clearly generates associations with nurturing in breastfeeding, further enhanced by the slogan reading “For breakfast, the latest mega hits!” Yet, the breast shown in profile not only was young and firm and clearly did not belong to a breastfeeding woman, but also was completely disembodied and decontextualized from the woman herself. Of course, this is only an advertisement and breastfeeding is meant metaphorically, yet the memories of women in our study oen emphasized disembodiment and objectification as characteristic of our memories of nurturing breasts. Additionally, one of the greatest issues for the women a
ending the Internationale Frauenuniversität was the problem faced by the mothers. Although women with children had been encouraged to bring them to Hanover, no adequate child care had been arranged and even tiny babies were explicitly excluded from the lecture theatres. An ambivalence towards motherhood as a legitimate subject position for academic women was evident right at the heart of this feminist experiment. Concerned, in particular, with valuing women’s embodied experiences as a prerequisite for women’s health and well being, we worked with a group of diverse women, including ourselves. We were a

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geographically heterogeneous group of 10 women from Brazil, Russia, the United States, Australia, Germany, Canada, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea. Among us were five mothers with children of different ages who all had breastfed, and five non-mothers. Regardless of our nationalities and other differences, we found surprising commonalities with regard to issues such as what we believed was “natural” or what might be “best” for baby or how we felt about the convergence of sexuality and breastfeeding. Using collective memory work (Haug et al.) as our research methodology, we began to collectively map through our memories the processes by which women’s nurturing breasts become significant sites of cultural inscription. We hoped to make more transparent the body policing associated with mothering/motherhood that was remembered by women in our study.

In/visible Breasts Recent research on “nurturing breasts” in the public domain traces their potential for scandal and disruption of the social order of patriarchy (Bartle
2002b), yet silence and invisibility were the red threads that ran through our stories and were referred to by women in different ways as the layers of contradictory readings of breasts became evident in our memories. One woman who had breastfed asked about the reasons for this cultural silence when she had experienced the bodily changes she was undergoing as something to be proud of: The coming of milk was impressive as my breasts became the size of medium-sized watermelons or is this my memory exaggerating? But they fi
ed into a half-round-box for melons—how they sell them at the supermarket. My boyfriend brought home a box as a joke before we knew that my breasts would actually fit in there. They were so big and hard and full of milk. How come nobody talks about such an impressive thing in our culture?

Other women remembered this enlargement of the breasts and their filling with milk with more ambivalence, especially as it is oen unclear whether visibly becoming “mother” means a reduction or an enlargement of womanhood. The consequences of the normative silencing of breasts for some women caused complete surprise, almost shock, when the nurturing breast suddenly gave a clue of its existence

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by spraying of milk. In one of the memories, this “misbehaving breast” is given a subject position—the leaking breast, like ink on a sheet of paper, publicly writes with milk the new state of being “mother” on the clothes, thus transgressing the boundaries between the private and the public body. My just newborn nurturing breasts tended to embarrass me. Wet Tshirts, wet sweatshirts, soaking blouses. No pads could prevent me feeling out of control, in a constant flow of bodily liquids that turned my inside to the outside. In this perpetual leaking they exposed me in public, pointing out clearly the new position I now inhabited and which I was not yet fully prepared to fill out: no more just me, a woman, but this vague subject, … [a] “mother.”

Lactating, full-of-milk breasts, physiologically well-functioning breasts, seem to be erased by other cultural functions breasts (and women) have, due to the sexual fetishization of large breasts in popular culture. Thus, what has historically been regarded as the natural function of the female breast, distinguishing women from men and classifying human beings as mammals (Schiebinger), seems now to be something unknown, something a woman, even in her reproductive years, can experience as apartheid: My mother’s own breasts that suckled me 28 years ago … I have grown too detached from them and lost contact with this memory … I have difficulties remembering about “the breasts,” any breasts, as nurturing as the image becomes eclipsed by the others: the problematic baggage, the normative construction, the fetishized object.

These memories reflect the tension between individual memories and collective recognition of the discursive frameworks—relating to the reproductive capacities of women and, thus, gender—in which these stories make sense. The lactating breast can be located within a theoretical framework of corporeal feminism, where women’s leaking bodies disrupt the neat—and quite literally man-made—binaries of solid-liquid, interior-exterior, inside-outside (Grosz; Young). Whereas the general reproductive capacity of a woman manifested in the nurturing ability of the uterus is hidden inside a woman’s body, nurturing breasts are visible marks of fulfilled fertility and maternity. As discourses of sexuality and fertility became increasingly visual

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Narrating Breasts

through the 20th century, the construction of femininity became more about managing the body as an object to be looked at (Young). Exposing and performing gender by displaying the nurturing capacity in public might be perceived as polluting and, thus, shameful and problematic, and/or subversively scandalous (Bartle
2002b). Breasts signal the conflict of the feminine extremes: the “good” maternal body and the “bad” sexual body (Young). The breasts’ appearance stands in for this complexity of bodily practices and the necessity of disciplining oneself into proper behaviour. Our memories demonstrate the difficulties women face in terms of a private yet informed adaptation to the new, still undefined, “vague” identity of motherhood in times and cultures where feminine bodies are sexualized (Carter 108). One woman remembered how as a child she was at one point able to break through the silence around reproduction and by observing her cat nurturing its newborn ki
ens get a sense of what “mothering” might mean: Eventually, she herself sneaks into that dark corner. The cat looks at her cautiously, meowing, saying without words: “Can I trust you? You are not going to do us any harm, are you?” … She sits down in front of the basket watching her friend, the cat, feeding her ki
ens. Susi’s nipples are tiny and bright pink and there are so many of them!… She is lying on her side exposing her nipples so the ki
ens can easily reach them. She looks exhausted but also majestic … there is an atmosphere of peace and magic in the kitchen, in that quiet shady corner, … of awareness and sensitivity. She feels that now, she is learning about the basic facts of life, about motherhood, about the connection between mother and their kids, about the way mothers sustain and protect their children.

In this memory we hear a number of emotions that the girl/woman experiences—such as surprise concerning the perceived naturalness of the process (“there are so many of them”)—but we also hear about trust, friendship, and sympathy and—in contrast to the objectifying gaze of the first memories where the breast seems to be working on its own—a cautious awareness of a connection between several parties that all seem to have an embodied knowledge of how to act. However, while the story is initially indeed a memory, the last sentence (re)presents the wish of the woman:

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This is the way a mother and her children—be they animals or humans—have to be related, this acting in a relational context fulfils best and “naturally” the need of mothers and babies for an intimate physical and social relationship, and to know about this means to have knowledge about the basic fact of life.

Breast Expertise This basic fact of life, though, was not always so basic, at least not for human beings. Other women, in narrating their breasts, stressed the loss of this natural connection and the longing for this feeling not only for the individual but for an entire generation denied this embodied knowledge by being introduced to the most common substitute for the female breast, the bo
le: I have a memory of my childhood … when I had a strange feeling for which I didn’t know any name. So I called it: wanting to lie down on my bed and drink something.… This feeling came back during breastfeeding my daughter. I was very surprised because I didn’t have it for a long time and yet, it was so familiar to me. I wonder if it is a memory of my wish to be breastfed. I was a bo
le-fed child, as were 95 percent of our generation in the early 1970s in Germany.

The story of this woman points to a break in practice in nurturing culture. What had seemed natural suddenly disappeared when the nurturing breast was replaced by a culturally invented artifact. The 1970s were a turning point in the history of breastfeeding in Germany, as well as in the general history of child bearing in which birth was transformed into a program and a birthing woman into an institutionalized patient-body to be managed by doctors rather than midwives. By then it had become “normal” to go to hospital to give birth. In Australia, where hospital births had been the norm for longer, the 1960s saw the explosion of bo
le-feeding as the hygienic, modern alternative to the leaking unruliness of breastfeeding. During the 1970s, breastfeeding gradually increased again in popularity in Australia (Nursing Mother’s Association of Australia, now the Breastfeeding Association of Australia). The memories of the women also emphasize the time and effort spent enhancing the breast’s nurturing capacity. Yet, while one woman

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Narrating Breasts

observing her cat talked about intimacy and privacy as prerequisites of bonding, memories of hospitals as the sites where human women and their children are initiated into the physical and emotional relationship of nurturing recall exposure to cold and sterile surroundings. Here, emphasis is laid upon a disembodied product—the breast milk—and a disembodied labourer, the producer—the mother. As a real woman can be disturbing and contaminating, she therefore requires external regulation of labour control: She is around 16 when she is doing an internship in the maternity ward of a small health care centre in a small village in Espirito Santo, Brazil. It’s her first day and the parteira, the lay midwife, shows her around. The ward consists of one large room with about ten beds, each of them covered with a single clean but shabby blanket.… Four of the beds are occupied: on each of them sits a woman, all of them apparently in the same condition she can name as mothers … because each of them sits there with exposed breasts, milking.… When going outside, she asks the midwife about this procedure and is told that it is “be
er” for the baby not to drink the early milk and that in order for the “right milk” a mother would have to squeeze and then throw the milk away.… Her next stopping point is the room of the newborns: five beds are filled with crying babies: red heads, cramped fists and moving mouths which can’t even be bo
le-fed because of the midwife having to lead the girl around.

A situation such as this might seem to be most likely where women are disadvantaged by location, poverty, class, education, and access to information as was the case in the remote Brazilian village. However, another memory shows that the power structures that might reduce women’s agency in the face of medical expertise about what is best and how things should be done also operate under our so-called modern circumstances. One of the women in training to become an expert remembers lending an authoritative helping hand, while disregarding the value of embodied knowledge of the mother she was caring for: My hand on a milking breast that doesn’t belong to me. Instead it belongs to a young mother, one that in contrast to me has experienced what it means to give birth to a child.… However, we both as well as the nurses, doctors, etc., consider me to be the “knowing” among us, “the expert,” the one who has learned to squeeze out the milk in the

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“correct” way to make milking most effective, to nurture a sterilized bo
le handed out by my expert hand.

The status of an expert, the one with brain—rather than body— knowledge, legitimizes the violation of the border of intimacy, making this transgression acceptable to the configuration of “breastfeeding in hospital.” Nevertheless, the “voluntary” submission of women to the culturally constructed orders that are made natural comes as a surprise to the woman recalling this moment. Women become docile, even animal-like, bodies in these contexts. Actually, I have no memories about a nurturing breast until I became a midwifery student.… My first introduction to nurturing breasts then is that I opened the door to the children’s ward: right opposite the door I saw a young woman si
ing on a chair to whose breast is a
ached one of these automatic pumping machines that extract flows of milk right out of her breasts. “Similar to a cow,” is the thought I remember—a “milking machine.”

”Natural” Nurturing Retrospectively, it was interesting for us to observe that all these rather horrifying stories about the “caring” situation in hospitals were memories of non-mothers. Despite pain, unease, and difficulties in dealing with the new duties of being mother, all of the participating mothers had actually breastfed their children. What threads through their stories, and what is given as the explanation as to why nurturing at the breast is aer all the only option against all odds, is the notion of the natural. This is best summarized by the memory of one participant who began her text with the familiar slogan propagated throughout the western world by the World Health Organization. Meant to empower women to claim their own bodies and improve their wellbeing and health as well as that of their children, this slogan has been readily taken up by women’s movements and other feminist and self-help organizations such as the La Leche League and the Nursing Mother’s Association of Australia (now the Breastfeeding Association of Australia): “Breast is best.” Nurturing breasts for me meant to fulfill nature’s course of a woman’s life: conception in love, being born, being held in

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arms, giving birth myself, caring for a child, consoling, protecting and educating him with everything I could give him with this milk, that ran out of me forming a bond between us two. How could a plastic bo
le ever replace this living, moving, smelling, piece of a woman’s and a mother’s flesh?

Anthropologist Vanessa Maher suggests that “day-to-day decisions are made by women themselves” who may sometimes even “turn breastfeeding to their own advantage” (551). Yet, their memories also reveal that it is oen still medical institutions—highly hierarchical and imbued with the value of science as their legitimization—that structure cultural practices and, thus, individual decisions around breastfeeding. Some of our stories (for example, the cat story and the one above) demonstrate the fact that, since the 1970s, the medical model of breastfeeding that had previously propagated the bo
le re-incorporated psychological ideas and imperatives such as bonding of mother and child. It thereby integrated breastfeeding into the reproductive assembly line, consistent with metaphors of industrialization pervading medical ideas and language in the la
er part of the 20th century (Martin). Women were pressured to produce the right quantities of breastmilk, otherwise they could be replaced. From the emphasis on bonding, a new image emerged—that of the nearly body-less woman without her own needs and desires. Medical experts use authoritative voices to define what is “right” and what is “wrong.” By stigmatizing any signs of deviance, for example, with regard to “the child’s good” or health, they exert a moral discourse of what it means to be a “good” or a “bad” mother (Murphy). In doing this, they do not work alone but are helped by other actors, among them the woman herself, who incorporates the proper behaviour into the rituals of her everyday pregnant life: Early in pregnancy I start with my nurturing tasks: I expose my breasts to the sun To ‘harden’ the nipples, As my midwife told me … I put lemon juice on the areolas To learn early enough how painful a nurturing relationship can be As my neighbour has told me … I buy special bras

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To support the shape of my breasts As my doctor has told me When my baby is born I restrict my eating to a carefully balanced diet of vitamins and calories, I don’t drink alcohol Nor do I expose my nurturing sources to the smoke of public places “For the best for our baby” As my husband, the caring father, has told me. I select my clothing to fit the needs of my baby’s hunger: Every shirt is chosen in terms of the amount of time needed to unzip, unravel or pull it up To be ready as soon as demand is u
ered Wherever I am Whatever I do While no one asks me about my needs And no one nurtures me.

Thus nurturing often gave the sense that a woman no longer owned her body; rather, it became the realm of the baby and its (culturally constructed) needs as perceived and policed by society. Breastfeeding norms, however, are more than about children’s physical or psychological health; they are part of political and symbolic systems organizing gender relations and, thus, sexuality (Maher 4–5). Mothers are denied their autonomy (and oen deny it themselves) because only sacrifice counts as evidence of “goodness.” Resistance within this complex of roles, rights, and plights is difficult and sometimes only partially possible. The following memory shows how the mother’s wishes and needs are carefully balanced against the claims of babies and grandmothers in order that she not appear deviant. The mother who chooses not to breastfeed risks becoming perceived as the emblematic anti-mother: I knew that breastfeeding is very necessary for the child, that it is the best way to feed it, so I tried to breastfeed him from the first day. It became a long procedure, in the first month I felt I was most of the time breastfeeding or squeezing milk…. I was also influenced by the situation that my mother was always close to me and she also knew that breastfeeding is very important and was saying that I should feed him well.… Aer one month, I started to give my son additional food but continued breastfeeding. This combination was be
er—my child

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was receiving protection through my milk and some food also and I had some time for myself. In Russian there is a metaphor—when you want to say that somebody is completely neglecting her appearance and clothing and when she is paying no a
ention to anybody we say “You are looking like a breastfeeding mother.”… Maybe it was good when the baby was close to me but I was too tired to see it.

The need to regain freedom and mobility was also referred to in another story suggesting the complications of functioning in the complex roles that women inhabit in their contemporary lives. The necessity to perform as the “modern woman,” connected to the outer world, has to be (and can be, however painfully) learned while at the same time the woman is constrained by the cord of maternal responsibility, the inner world that obliges her to meet the needs of the baby: I was surprised to find out that it took some time, learning and practice to get used to breastfeeding so that you could breastfeed and talk on the phone for instance. I expected it to come naturally.

Appropriating “Nurturing Breasts” To enjoyably breastfeed can be a subversive act in the sense that Maher and others have suggested—as a route to a more self-determined sense of the body, and as an alternative to patriarchal medical and public representations. One of the women remembers visiting a friend in hospital. At first glance, she seemed to have succeeded in re-embodying herself despite being fully exposed to medical surroundings and practices that contribute to the separation of the (hetero)sexual body from the maternal body despite their continual collision in daily life: She had a small room to herself in the maternity wing and kept the door and the window open to try to catch whatever breeze there was. It was incredibly hot … and there was only the fan that was pre
y ineffective. I’d seen my friend’s body growing bigger over the months and she had made jokes about at last having a cleavage as her breast grew larger.… Now she sat up on top of the bedsheets—huge breasts and belly, naked except for knickers that sat just below her caesarean section.… It was a problem for the hospital that my friend refused to clothe herself “properly” in her bed in a nightgown like other new

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mothers. The nurses were angry with her and the ward sister kept coming in and pulling the curtains so no one could see her from the corridor, but that blocked any breeze through the room, so she would demand that we pull it open again. Her partner was embarrassed when she swore at the nurses. He would tell her to “shoosh” or to “be reasonable” and then she would swear at him too. The whole time my friend was in hospital she demanded she should be able to be how she liked with her own body and her baby.

One strategy used by women to free themselves from restrictions laid upon them is to extend motherly caring and nurturing tasks to a wider social net, thus creating “milk-kinships.” Milk is the manifestation of this corporeal bonding, then, rather than the “suspect female substance” (Maher) identified by medical experts. The source of the milk, the nurturing breast, becomes a metaphor and symbol for love, life, and mothering in a more general sense. In one of the stories, for example, a woman remembered being able to nurture her friend’s baby son aer his mother died during labour. Another woman deployed milk-kinship in her relationship with her sister, allowing both mothers more freedom and increased mobility while at the same time guaranteeing their children’s needs for bonding. My niece was born when my daughter was seven months old. My sister and I lived six blocks apart and we exchanged children at least once a week. It was a relief to know that my daughter would have a breast [at which] to feed from someone who loved her when I was away. I no longer needed to be as concerned with pumping my own milk. At the same time, it was wonderful to connect [with] my niece in this way.… I felt I was not only feeding her, but giving her the warmth, affection and security which comes from this close and intimate physical contact that ordinarily only her mother gave her.… Later, when she was 16 months, I took care of her during an entire weekend while her parents travelled. It was my breast, she “held on to” to help her deal with the separation of her mother.

Conclusion We began by asking questions about the contemporary meanings of breastfeeding and the moral politics of motherhood as they are

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mentioned in these women’s stories about nurturing breasts. We cannot, of course, claim that our data represent all women’s experiences. Neither was our study intended to be comparative or anthropological, so we did not engage here in specific discussion about cultural or other differences. Yet, we believe that the complementary qualities of the memories generated and discussed at the International Women’s University enabled us all to come a li
le closer to a collective understanding of how we live as breasted women and mothers. Conversation about nurturing breasts and breastfeeding opens up much larger conversations about femininity, maternal bodies, and sexual bodies, about the body’s public obligation, body politics, processes of medicalization, and women’s private wants and needs. These conversations take place where historically and culturally specific interests and discipling practices collide with ideas of the “natural” and with the recalcitrant bodies of individual women. Because feminists have struggled to free women to determine their own embodied destinies, any argument in favour of corporeal motherhood may seem reactionary—and that is a danger of which we have to be aware. To suggest that breastfeeding might be in a woman’s interest as a uniquely relational experience—an argument that might arise from such a perspective—risks ignoring the cultural construction and mediation of embodied experience. While a positive experience is oen read as an almost inevitable outcome of nursing at the breast, the memories of the women in this study show the ambiguities raised by the power relations in which nurturing breasts are positioned (Carter). Nurturing babies at the breast may offer possibilities for revaluing our bodies and thus re-embodying ourselves, but at the same time, it represents acquiescence to dominant regimes of surveillance that may lead a woman to self-objectification (Cussins). The nurturing breast thus remains a contested area, a “social drama,” or, using the words of Alison Bartle
, breastfeeding is a never ending series of intricate and dynamic interactions that involve at the very least: hormones, nerve impulses, babies, milk, texts, other people, feelings, thoughts, histories, social conditions and relations and cultural pressures between both mother and baby at the interface of their internal and external environment. (Bartle
2002a 380)

Our goal as feminist researchers is to regain interpretive power about our embodied experiences. To do this we have to disrupt

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dominant metaphors and aim at disentangling the interwoven net of actors involved in breastfeeding as practice. Although here we have only scratched the surface of the complexity of contemporary motherhood, narrating breasts, collectively, provides us with a collective “weapon of defence” against the (self-)objectification of women’s bodies and social roles.

Endnotes 1.

This chapter reports on research undertaken during the Internationale Frauenuniversität in Hanover, Germany, a well-funded, post-graduate, feminist program involving a diverse group of women of different cultural and geographic locations.

References Bartlett, Alison. “Breastfeeding as Headwork: Corporeal Feminism and Meanings for Breastfeeding.” Women’s Studies International Forum 25 (2002a): 373–382. _____. “Scandalous Practices and Political Performances: Breastfeeding in the City.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 16.1 (2002b): 111–121. Carter, Pam. Feminism, Breasts and Breastfeeding. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Cussins, Charis. “Ontological Choreography: Agency for Women Patients in an Infertility Clinic.” Differences in Medicine: Unraveling Practices, Techniques and Bodies. Eds. Marc Berg and Annemarie Mol. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998. 166–201. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1994. Haug, Frigga, et al. Female Sexualization: A Collective Work of Memory. Trans. Erica Carter. London: Verso, 1987. Maher, Vanessa, ed. The Anthropology of Breastfeeding. Oxford: Berg Publisher, 1992. _____. “Breastfeeding and Maternal Depletion.” Lecture at International Women’s University, Hanover, Germany, 26 Sept. 2000. Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body. Boston: Beacon Press, 1987. Murphy, Elizabeth. “Breast is Best: Infant Feeding Decision and Maternal Deviance.” Sociology of Health and Illness 21.2 (1999): 187–208.

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NMAA (Nursing Mother’s Association of Australia; since Aug. 2001 called the Australian Breastfeeding Association). 1 June 2001 <www.nmaa.asn.au>. Schiebinger, Londa. Nature’s Body. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. Young, Iris. Throwing Like a Girl. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

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CHAPTER FOUR

SCANDALOUS PRACTICES AND POLITICAL PERFORMANCES BREASTFEEDING

IN THE

CITY

Alison Bartle


Scene I Picture this: 388 babies in one room breastfeeding, all at the same time. Imagine the quantities of milk being produced and consumed. Imagine all those breasts in the one space. The room is in a new multi-cinema complex, Marion Megaplex at a shopping centre in Adelaide, South Australia. Is this a coincidence, that such a surreal event takes place in a cinema complex? The event has been dubbed a “Breastfest” and is organized by the South Australian College of Lactation Consultants, the Nursing Mothers Association of Australia (NMAA; now the Breastfeeding Association of Australia), and midwives from the nearby Flinders Medical Centre. It is intended to be a world record for the most babies being breastfed at any one time, aiming for inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records. Once the baby has latched on, the mother puts up her hand to be counted. It is a stunt, a media event. It is also World Breastfeeding Week. But in August 1999 when it takes place, it comes amid almost two years of media “scandals” about breastfeeding in public. I am interested in recent media “events” involving breastfeeding because they generate particular narratives about breastfeeding and most are infused with “scandal.” “Breasts are a scandal for patriarchy,” writes Iris Young, “because they disrupt the border between motherhood and sexuality” (190). As if that were not enough, I want to show how lactating breasts when they are taken outside the home are capable of disrupting the borders of morality, discretion, taste, and politics; in short, breasts are capable of transforming legislation, citizenship, and cities themselves. Lactating breasts are particularly scandalous,

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and I want to read the scandals they have recently provoked as crucial elements in cultural change. The “scandals” I have chosen to read are events between 1998 and 2000 that were given national coverage in the print media in Australia and that provoked a divided response through letters to the editors to those newspapers about women’s breastfeeding practices in public. These events and the scandalizing rhetoric used to debate women’s public breastfeeding practices can be read as marking a critical cultural moment in the contestation and renegotiation of social values. The examples of breastfeeding in public that reach the newspapers are always to do with white, middle-class urban dwellers. It is significant that indigenous, ethnic, rural, and lower socio-economic groups are not the subject of these scandals. White, middle-class women like myself are the women with the most available power in a western colonized nation like Australia. We are the ones in a position to publicly contest social values. We are usually assumed to be “average,” or normative, and so do not usually have to negotiate discourses of race or class or sexuality, which are rendered invisible. While acknowledging that we all inhabit specific social, historical, and discursive contexts, I argue that the narratives produced about these women breastfeeding in public can be read symptomatically as an historical moment when particular social values are threatened, and that this has much broader implications about the politics of women’s sexuality, use of public space, and citizenship. Public Space Breastfeeding’s “coming out” into public space is perhaps what marks these narratives as particular to a late 20th-century urban landscape. “In Australia, mothers with small babies are often seen in public places such as shopping centres and restaurants, indicating that they spend considerable time outside of the home” (McIntyre et al. 1999b 132). Women’s use of and claim to public space has certainly been on the increase. The statistics of women in paid work, for example, peaked in Australia in December 1999 at 66.1 percent (OSW). Women are increasingly delaying having children until their thirties and beyond, at which time they have already established their careers and have spent more time frequenting public space than staying at home. Literally staying “at home” with a baby now seems unusual. Part of the contestation and scandal, I argue, is to do with women’s shiing use

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of urban public space, which has, until the late 20th century, been the domain of business and a particular understanding of public citizenry. As Johnson notes, the design of modern cities and houses in the early 20th century assumed a normative heterosexuality where the man would leave the house for paid work in the inner city while the woman stayed at home in the clean, green, suburbs (94). In late capitalism, or postmodernity, cities have been identified as shiing into a post-Fordist economy in which consumption and service industries dominate in a disorganized, flexible form different from the clearly defined separation of public and private spheres that prevailed when the manufacturing sector dominated (Johnson 115). This conflation of “public” and “private” spheres contributes to the current contestations about breastfeeding “in public.” In addition, consumption is now integral to meanings of contemporary motherhood (see Cuthbert and Grossman; Sofalis), so it is no surprise to find mothers and babies frequenting conspicuous sites of consumption such as cafés and shopping centres. While these oen provide competitively equipped and homely parents’ rooms (McIntyre et al. 1999c), which keep the bodily flows of mothers and babies out of sight, it is from places without such facilities that women are being expelled. Performance In an effort to untangle breastfeeding from the usual rhetorical manoeuvres, I want to delineate a sense of performance inherent in the events and their discussion. I use the term performance following Judith Butler in her essay “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” where she suggests that “the acts by which gender is constituted bear similarities to performative acts within theatrical contexts” (272). Gender, she argues, is “an act that one does” (277). It is “what is put on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and pleasure.” In conceptualizing gender as performance, Butler insists that “gender is a basically innovative affair.” She adds, however, that “it is quite clear that there are strict punishments for contesting the script by performing out of turn or through unwarranted improvisations” (282). While Butler’s theories of gender as performance are qualified and revised in her later work, Bodies That Ma
er, I find the performance metaphor very useful at this stage for thinking through the issues of breastfeeding in public. It has several critical advantages. As breasts are “transformed” into much more active, functional, and generative

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organs with the onset of maternity, the active notion of performativity seems appropriate. It also renders breastfeeding as quite specific to each act, rather than assuming homogeneous experiences between women or even for one woman over time and place. It assumes an understanding at the representational level, rather than being restricted to women’s (oen inarticulate) experience. It also disables the particularly problematic discourse of breastfeeding as “natural,” and so enables me to consider women as having agency. Specific acts of breastfeeding can therefore be read as challenging and resisting dominant discourses—of changing the cultural scripts available. Applying a performative element also to my writing, I focus this chapter on key “scenes” that play out the links among scandal, sexuality, space, and implicitly, therefore, citizenship.

Scene II: Legal Acts and Political Theatre This scene takes place on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House. It is April 2000, and State Community Services minister Christine Campbell stands on the steps surrounded by women breastfeeding their babies. She announces a new piece of legislation to be presented in Parliament, which she expects to be enacted during the next fortnight—by Mother’s Day she claims—which will “enshrine” in the state’s Equal Opportunity Act that discriminating against a breastfeeding woman is illegal (Kelly 7). It is a potent image of breastfeeding entering the corridors of power (unlike occupying the movie theatre), but it marks a much more ambivalent outcome than the minister’s optimistic claim that it “would eliminate the community’s ‘double standard’ towards breasts” (Mitchell 7). The breastfeeding sit-in on the steps of Parliament House marks a triumphant performance of a previous rehearsal two years earlier. In April 1998 the Herald Sun reported that “a group of breastfeeding mothers gathered on parliament’s steps” and “babies suckled at their mothers’ breasts in parliament yesterday” (Owen and Williams). This act drew a
ention to the legislative Act that Christine Campbell, then Opposition spokesperson for women and family services, introduced as a private member’s Bill to amend the state’s Equal Opportunity legislation to prevent discrimination on the basis of breastfeeding. The Bill had the public support of the powerful Australian Medical Association (AMA) and lobby group Nursing Mothers Association

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of Australia (NMAA), but the Premier of Victoria, Jeff Kenne
, had already foreshadowed that the Bill did not have his (and therefore his government’s) support. He is reported as saying, “Some people do find it offensive to have babies being breastfed in very obvious public places.… There are in many cases, facilities available for people to breastfeed elsewhere and it’s a ma
er of choice, a ma
er of taste—it’s also a ma
er of just common decency and I don’t think that is best covered by legislation” (Owen1998a 11). Performance The acts of the women and the comments of the male premier are instructive. By gathering on the steps of Parliament House and inside Parliament, the women are making a point about performing in public. They are performing their maternity and their gender in a space that is dominated not only by actual men, but also by patriarchal authority and symbolism. While Christine Campbell is frequently quoted by the media, she occupies a privileged position as a publicly elected member and as a woman in that Parliament. The women who perform on its steps and public gallery are rarely represented as speaking. In this particular act, their visual presence as breastfeeding mothers appears be much more disruptive symbolically: they are performing “out of turn” and the premier censures them for doing so. I would therefore read their performance as much more powerful than Campbell’s speech or, indeed, legislation. Gender Scripts The premier certainly sensed this and responded in a way that sought to separate mothers from the public sphere and certainly from the political sphere. In response to the parliamentary sit-in, Kenne
suggests that the women were “force-feeding” their babies “just to offend” (Owen and Williams), drawing on an easily engineered rhetoric of women as bad mothers, stifling their babies. He also draws on a discourse of (inevitably gendered) morality, reaffirming his position as arbiter of “common decency” and “taste” above, when he says, “It’s a question of how you go about personally conducting yourself” (Owen and Williams). “If you had a group of women who, to try to prove a point, occupied all the public spaces in Parliament … and they breastfeed, I think that is

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distasteful” (Reading). Not only do the women fail as mothers (forcefeeding their babies) but they fail to achieve a “common” standard of conduct in the premier’s estimation, and are thereby unfit for either mothering or public roles. Kenne
discursively disenfranchises the performing women—as mothers, as public citizens, and as mothers in public—authorized by his role as premier of the state. Politics Commenting on Christine Campbell aer his government defeated her initial request to introduce the legislation, Kenne
accuses her of “just trying to gain a political point” (Baske
and Owen 3), while effectively positioning himself as if he is not, through his recourse to “common sense” and moral imperatives. In this case it is the practice of breastfeeding that Kenne
objects to being a political issue, as indeed does the Victorian president of the AMA, Dr. Gerald Segal, who is quoted as saying “It’s an apolitical issue” while urging the government to pass the Bill (Baske
and Owen 3). This point might be supported by some critics of liberal feminism who see legislation as an inadequate means of addressing discrimination. By characterizing breastfeeding as being devoid of politics and not appropriate for legislation, however, these arguments serve to sever the practice of breastfeeding from an intricate web of social values, government policies, economic conditions, educational resources, and community support, let alone personal ideology, health, and emotional well being, all of which are well documented as impacting on a woman’s choice to (continue to) breastfeed (see McIntyre et al. 1999a; Kitzinger; Silverton). The public response of the premier clearly establishes that breastfeeding in public is political in its widest sense. Faced with women breastfeeding on the steps and in the public gallery of Parliament House, the premier’s a
empt to rearticulate symbolic order brought forth traditional patriarchal discourses on good/bad mothering, “decent” conduct and morality, as well as the separation of the spheres into public/male versus private/female. The premier’s sense that breastfeeding in public is a political act is confirmed by a Perth study of a
itudes to breastfeeding. In one particular focus group—of male university students—breastfeeding in public is explicitly associated “with le-wing radicals, greenies, and feminists” (Sco
et al. 246). In its association with women who hold particular ideological views, breastfeeding in public can be considered political.

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Citizenship Kerreen Reiger in fact argues that mothers raising questions in the media about state policies on birthing and lactation “pose the most explicit threat to the hegemonic understandings of what is acceptably ‘political’ and fit for public debate,” as they also breach the split between what is public and private (311). Others stress that it is women’s embodied activities that pose a more powerful threat. Beasley and Bacchi take the examples of breastfeeding women and persons with disabilities in order to “loosen citizenship from its almost exclusively public location and make bodies (for example, birth, breasts, breast milk, and spinal cord damage) part of the participating subject” (347). By lactating in Parliament House—the “house” in which public values are officially codified—these women are bringing a
ention to the way they want to “do” citizenship, to how citizenship is embodied for them. Wendy Parkins argues that embodied protests are a particular form of feminist agency, citing suffrage
e dissent and the women of Greenham Common as examples of women acting out their citizenship through embodiment (rather than an assumed authority). Parkins’s observations could also apply to breastfeeding in public when she argues that: Where the specificities of female embodiment have been grounds for exclusion or diminished participation, deliberately drawing a
ention to their bodies has been an important strategy for women engaged in dissident citizenship. Such dissidents have understood their embodiment not as a limitation but as a means by which the parameters of the political domain could be contested. (Parkins 73)

In this case, then, the performance of breastfeeding in public might be read as successful in drawing a
ention to the politics of breastfeeding, as well as to its new legal status. It is worth noting, however, that the social contestation generated by collective street scenes are usually experienced very differently to individual daily practices. Personal Scenes The Victorian legislation was prompted by an unintended scene in which a woman was asked to leave the food court of Melbourne’s Crown Casino on New Year’s Eve in 1997 while having lunch with a friend. A security guard told her that there had been complaints

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about her breastfeeding her four-month-old baby—that some people considered it “offensive and distasteful” (Bowler)—and asked her to move to the baby-changing vestibule. He said it was Crown Casino policy that “women were not allowed to breastfeed in the food court,” although Crown Casino later refuted this policy (Ruben). The friend with whom she was lunching took the issue to the media and to then Opposition MP Christine Campbell. This was not an isolated incident, as media reports mention other incidents involving women being asked to leave restaurants, cafés, theatres, a racetrack, a law court, and public transport (Brammall; Owen 1998b; Shaw). The legal consequences of this particular case in Victoria will therefore be helpful to individuals whose daily practices have the potential to become unwanted public scenes. Turning such scenes into scandals might now be illegal in Victoria (and other states in Australia), but its potency to “offend” some viewers still remains. The performance of breastfeeding in public still has political potency, whether collectively organized or not. More Political Theatre: Queensland Research into public a
itudes to breastfeeding reveals that women are influenced in their choice to breastfeed or not by their perception that breastfeeding in public is not acceptable (McIntyre et al., 1999a)1. In some states of the United States it is illegal (Stearns). Legislation therefore is an unpredictable machinery that can work for or against women wanting to breastfeed outside the home. This potential in Australia was brought home in 1999 when a member of the Queensland Young Liberals prepared a motion for the State Convention proposing “on-the-spot fines for women caught breastfeeding in public areas other than designated parenting rooms” (Saunders 3). This was apparently a strategy designed to provoke media scandal in order to draw a
ention to the Convention, along with other proposals for G (for geriatric) plates for drivers over age 65, the death penalty for dangerous escapees, the banning of foreign-language signs, and increased mandatory sentences for pedophiles. One newspaper report mentions the similarity of the motions to the notorious Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party policy (Saunders 3), whose electoral power had been exercised only months before in state and federal elections. In these circumstances, the possibility that such policies could be adopted was clearly taken seriously by the press and those asked to comment. That both Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party and the Queensland Young Liberals were

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operating from Queensland, where social control and government corruption is part of its political history and reputation, was also a contributing factor to the reportage and the impassioned responses to the Young Liberals’ proposals.2 That such a possibility of fines for breastfeeding can be entertained (even as a hoax in a maverick state) reasserts the deeply ambivalent public a
itudes to breastfeeding that clearly exist in Australia still, and which are provoked by such public scandalizing.

Contesting Scripts? Such media scandals as the Queensland Young Liberals’ proposal and the Victorian legislation process brought forth a host of divided opinion in le
ers to the editor and readers’ surveys, which are instructive in the kinds of values perceived as being threatened by public breastfeeding. Those who objected to women breastfeeding in public most often cited personal taste, declaring the sight to be offensive, distasteful, and unpleasant. By far the biggest response, though, was from those defending breastfeeding in public. They utilized several narratives: of liberal democratic and God-given rights (as in Reading’s headline: “A mother’s right to breastfeed should be enshrined in legislation”); of naturalism, whereby breastfeeding is deemed to be the “natural” function of breasts (as opposed to its “unnatural” sexual objectification); and of science, espousing the proven medical benefits of breastfeeding to both mother and child. To suggestions that mothers should breastfeed in toilets, defenders drew parallels to eating lunch in a toilet; and to those who found breastfeeding offensive, it was suggested they turn the other way. One opponent contested the “natural” argument by asking, “Going to the toilet is a natural act and so is making love to create a baby. Would these women advocate that they should be performed in public?” (Sullivan). Another asks, “[W]ith so many degenerates and sex fiends on our planet is it worse to tempt them with a half-naked breast innocently feeding a baby?” (Connors). This correspondent also finds the media partly reprehensible for sexualizing breastfeeding, as “now it is in the media ad nauseam and raising more than just eyebrows” (Connors). While the readers opposing and defending breastfeeding in public might conceivably occupy dichotomous positions, surprisingly there was one point at which they met. An overwhelmingly dominant motif

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in le
ers to the editor from both sides of the debate—especially in readers’ views in women’s magazines such as New Idea and Practical Parenting—was the idea of discretion. As long as a woman was “discreet” or found a “discreet” place to sit, le
er-writers considered breastfeeding in public acceptable. This allowed a diluting of the issue into a more moderate and mainstream view, whereby women drew on the traditional performance of feminine modesty in order to maintain their claim to use public space for breastfeeding. Discretion is also a particularly middle-class concern, perhaps explaining its prominent role in these debates. It is a discourse frequently mobilized in Nursing Mothers Association of Australia (now the Breastfeeding Association of Australia) literature, and the qualitative analysis of a
itudes to breastfeeding in Perth categorized both “discreet breastfeeding” and “breastfeeding etique
e” as two of the issues arising from their focus group discussions (Scott et al.). I suspect that this rhetorical strategy may well be enabling to individual women breastfeeding in a potentially hostile climate, even if that hostility now contravenes the law. Discreetly breastfeeding in public can be seen as a warranted improvisation of the feminine script and so not subject to censure. The alternative to discretion, however, in the view of some respondents to the editor, is “exhibitionism,” suggesting more deeply held concerns about women’s sexuality.

Sexual Politics The issue of breastfeeding in public is, aer all, about women doing things with their breasts in public places. The entire debate seems covertly embedded in concerns over women’s sexuality, and sometimes reporters raise the issue frankly. Writing in the Life Magazine of the Sunday Age in 1998, Jane Freeman satirizes the west’s fetishization of breasts, implicitly suggesting (as do Judith Butler and others) that sexuality is socially constructed and subject to change over time and place. She argues that breasts should be forgo
en and another erogenous zone consciously selected to take their place, like the nape of the neck: “Pamela Anderson Lee could shi her implants around to the back of her neck, so men could gawp and slaver over her voluptuously curving nape. The fashion industry could come up with erotic garments which fla
er or even push up the nape” (8).

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Freeman’s comment employs comedy, but it also engages with the sexual mores that are being contested in this issue. Writing at about the same time in The Age, Amy Forrest provocatively suggests that “breastfeeding in public remains an issue because it is a sensuous activity.” Responding to the debate between discretion and exhibitionism, she asks herself where the difference lies, and declares that breastfeeding involves “voyeurism, pleasure, desire. We cannot insist there is nothing sensuous about it” (Forrest). This has much stronger implications than the usual arguments about breastfeeding being “natural” or medically beneficial or even a right. It is sensual. I like doing it. Forrest even admits that she likes watching it: “I have to acknowledge a voyeuristic interest in the sight of naked breasts, their soness and plenitude, and the baby’s frank guzzling delight.” What difference does it make if women like to watch breastfeeding as well as do it? Not only does this disrupt the border between sexuality and motherhood, as Young claims, it also asks us to acknowledge the oen silent sexual/sensual pleasures women experience in relation to (their) breasts and infants. Barbara Sichtermann comments that since today it is no longer a problem to rear babies on artificial food, we can quite happily forget the “duty” which breastfeeding was always made out to be for women.… I say breastfeeding means satisfying the child’s need (and the mother’s) to become one again with another body in a “physical act of love.” (62)

There may be reasons for keeping such pleasures silent, however, as Stearns reminds us in referring to the sobering case of Karen Carter, who rang a crisis line in the US when she became concerned about feeling sexually aroused while breastfeeding her two-year-old; as a result her child was removed from her care by Social Services for over a year (Stearns 309). Stearns concludes that “the construction of the good maternal body as being at all costs not sexual is taken very seriously by both the culture and the law” (309). Maternal sexual pleasure is therefore a volatile issue subject to close social regulation (see Traina), and it covertly informs debates around breastfeeding in public. Forrest also suggests that “perhaps breastfeeding presents people with the alarming evidence of our bodies’ juices and flows around which various taboos and customs have flourished.” Feminist theory has flourished in describing this aspect of women’s bodies and the symbolic threat it poses (see Douglas; Kristeva; Irigaray). There has

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also been ample critique of the ways in which social institutions and discourses act to limit, dry up, hide, pathologize, remove, and stem the flow of women’s wet, juicy, bleeding, lactating bodies, which profoundly disturbs the dichotomous biomedical logic of bodies’ inside/outside surface/depth (see Shildrick; Grosz 1994, 1995). Breastfeeding in public is surely an example of women contesting those binary divisions on an everyday basis, of claiming public space in which to leak, spill, and overflow with a baby hungry to suck it up, to ingest what comes out of our bodies. This is one of the reasons it is so scandalous, so distasteful and unpleasant to some. It means rethinking bodies, sexuality, and the changing but specific uses we make of particular urban spaces.

City Politics One of the implications of this rethinking involves the ways in which women’s sexuality is mapped onto cities. It is no coincidence that such scandals as I have read are enacted in the streets and public domains of Australia’s cities. In her analysis of urban life over time and place, Elizabeth Wilson posits that women’s presence in cities has always been problematic due to our sexuality, which is in need of either protection or control: [W]oman is present in cities as temptress, as whore, as fallen woman, as lesbian, but also as virtuous womanhood in danger, as heroic womanhood who triumphs over temptation and tribulation. (6)

As long as women are seen to represent such potential disorder, irruption, and chaos in the city, as Wilson argues, it is no wonder that women breastfeeding in public trigger such deep cultural suspicions that are inevitably concerned with female sexuality. But simultaneously, it is no wonder that the city is seen as a suitable place in which to breastfeed. While women have historically come to personify a masculinized fear of and desire for uncontrolled sexuality in the city, women’s own experience has been much more ambiguous. While some areas do pose danger (cf works in Johnson), the city has also offered anonymity, excitement, and potentially subversive activities (like sexuality and protest), which women have found liberating. New readings of modernist women writers are increasingly interpreting

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their fictional cities as embodying both danger and freedom particular to gender (see Kaplan). If the city is a place represented historically as hostile to women, then postmodern cities are being understood as more accommodating and plastic: as subject to flows, movements, and energies (Grosz 1995), as linking aspects of fantasy, desire, pleasure, entertainment, and display (see Johnson), and with the capacity to refashion/construct subjectivities. In her thoughtful essay, “Bodies—Cities,” Elizabeth Grosz suggests that we need to see the city as being both shaped by those who use it and active in shaping them: that cities and bodies are “mutually defining” (108). If the city “in its particular geographical, architectural, and municipal arrangements is one particular ingredient in the social constitution of the body,” as Grosz argues (108), then the increased presence of breastfeeding bodies might also mean that one of its flows, products, and circulations is breast milk. The city’s pollutants have already been shown to contaminate breast milk, but in what ways might we consider lactation to affect the city? How might those earlier collective scenes of breastfeeding women and babies impact on the city? If, as Grosz maintains, “the city must be seen as the most immediate locus for the production and circulation of power” (109), then it is significant that such scandals as I have read are enacted in Australia’s cities. Both individual and collective acts of breastfeeding in public still have the potential to draw deeply divided reactions, indicating its unse
led meanings in contemporary, white, middle-class Australian culture. While the media acts as a vehicle for such scandals, deeply held cultural values about women’s sexuality and public status as citizens are being contested and re-narrativized. Perhaps even more crucially, such contestations depend on a confrontation of modernist and postmodernist subjectivies and thinking about cities and their citizens. If, as Grosz argues, the city is “the site for the body’s cultural saturation, its takeover and transformation by images, representational systems, the mass media, and the arts—the place where the body is representationally reexplored, transformed, contested, reinscribed” (108) then it is the site par excellence for “indiscreet” breastfeeding “exhibitions” and the ensuing scandal. Such a cultural saturation of breastfeeding in public and the resulting legislation are only available in a city, Grosz would argue, and are a product of particular bodies’ inhabitation of that urban space:

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As a hinge between the population and the individual, the body, its distribution, habits, alignments, pleasures, norms, and ideals are the ostensive object of governmental regulation, and the city is both a mode for the regulation and administration of subjects but also an urban space in turn reinscribed by the particularities of its occupation and use. (1995 109)

The performance of women breastfeeding, whether collectively on the steps of Parliament House or individually, can be read as an act of citizenship being actively and corporeally claimed, of using urban space for political purpose.

Back to the Movies The “Breastfest” scene that I began with now seems a little less spectacular, and hardly scandalous at all, promoting breastfeeding discreetly from inside and surrounded by the more powerful visual and commercial apparatus of Hollywood cinema. But it is still a very potent image in my imagination (all those breasts, all that milk), which does have something to do with desire and visual pleasure, if not with confirmation of my own practices (see Bartle
). The sheer fecundity of such a sight—all those spurts, flows, messes, and the disruption to Marion Megaplex—is delicious to ponder. Since the first Breastfest in Adelaide, other cities and provincial towns all over Australia have contested the record during World Breastfeeding Week. In 2001, at the Tuggerah Greater Union Cinemas near provincial Gosford, 536 breastfeeding mothers reportedly “smashed” the existing record to claim their place in the Guinness Book of Records (Hartigan). The following year the contest was taken up internationally when over 1,000 women and babies in Berkely, California, set the next record.

Endnotes 1.

2.

“The possibility of a mother being asked to leave a public place (including public transport) because she was breastfeeding was a real concern to many participants” (McIntyre et al., 1999a). The site of the convention, at Queensland’s Gold Coast, was used synecdochically to signal vice and corruption, even in the title of Tame’s Breast Beating in Cuckoo Land and Smith’s Nearly Choked on Her Toast.

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References Bartle
, Alison. “Thinking Through Breasts: Writing Maternity.” Feminist Theory 1.2 (2000): 173–188. Baske
, Sasha, and Kristin Owen. “No to Breastfeed Laws.” Herald Sun 6 Apr. 1998: 3. Beasley, Chris, and Carol Bacchi. “Citizen Bodies: Embodying Citizens—a Feminist Analysis.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 2.3 (2000): 337–358. Bowler, Wendy. “Nursing a Victorian View.” Age 10 (Feb. 1998). Brammall, Bruce. “Baby Pays $32 to Nap.” Herald Sun 13 Apr. 2000. Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Performing Feminisms. Ed. Sue-Ellen Case. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1990. 270–282. _____. Bodies That Ma
er: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993. Connors, Mrs. P. “Breastfeeding Concern.” News Review Messenger (SA) 24 Jun 1998: 2. Cuthbert, Denise, and Michele Grossman. “Mamatoto: Consuming Difference.” Motherlode. Eds. Stephanie Holt and Maryanne Lynch. Melbourne: Sybylla Feminist Press, 1996. 156–162. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966. Forrest, Amy. “Defending the Right to Bare the Breast.” Age 16 (Jan. 1998). Freeman, Jane. “Breast Intentions.” Sunday Age Life Magazine 8 Feb. 1998. Grosz, Elizabeth. “Bodies—Cities.” Space, Time and Perversion: the Politics of Bodies. Ed. E. Grosz. St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1995. 103–110. _____. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1994. Hartigan, Julie. “Babies Pucker Up to Help Mums Set Record.” Central Coast Express 3 (August): 6. Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. (Ce sexe 1977) Johnson, Louise. Placebound: Australian Feminist Geographies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Kaplan, Sydney Janet. “A Gigantic Mother: Mansfield and the City.” Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernist Fiction. Ed. S.J. Kaplan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Kelly, Jen. “New Laws on Breastfeeding.” Herald Sun 3 Mar. 2000: 7; Australian 3 Mar. 2000: 7.

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Kitzinger, Sheila. The Experience of Breastfeeding. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979. Kristeva, Julia. The Powers of Horror: An Essay In Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. McIntyre, Ellen, Janet E. Hiller, and Deborah Turnbull. “Determinants of Infant Feeding Practices in a Low Socio-Economic Area: Identifying Environmental Barriers to Breastfeeding.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 23.2 (1999a): 207–209. _____. “Breastfeeding in Public Places.” Journal of Human Lactation 15.2 (1999b): 131–135. _____. “Suitability of Breastfeeding Facilities Outside the Home: An Audit of Baby Change Rooms in Shopping Centres.” Breastfeeding Review 7.1 (1999c): 17–20. Mitchell, Ben. “Minister Steps in to Answer Call of Nurture.” Australian 3 Apr. 2000: 7. Office for the Status of Women (OSW). 12 Mar. 2001. <www.osw.dpmc.gov. au/content/resources/women_aus.html#employment>. Owen, Kristin. “Kenne
No to Law for Mums.” Herald Sun 7 Apr. 1998: 11. _____. “Bid to Ban Mums Bias.” Herald Sun 6 Apr. 1998a: 3. Owen, Kristin, and Vanessa Williams. “Breast Ba
le in Vain.” Herald Sun 9 Apr. 1998b. Parkins, Wendy. “Protesting Like a Girl: Embodiment, Dissent and Feminist Agency.” Feminist Theory 1.1 (2000): 59–78. Reading, Lyndal. “Call to Protect Mothers’ Rights.” Courier Ballarat 13 Apr 1998. Reiger, Kerreen. “Reconceiving Citizenship: The Challenge of Mothers as Political Activists.” Feminist Theory 1.3 (2000): 309–27. Ruben, Amanda. “Crown States Policy.” Herald Sun 9 Jan 1998. Saunders, Megan. “Young Libs Abreast of Convention.” Australian 15 Jan. 1999: 3. Scott, Jane A., Colin W. Binns, and Ruth V. Arnold. “Attitudes toward Breastfeeding in Perth, Australia: Qualitative Analysis.” Journal of Nutrition Education 29.5 (1997): 244–249. Shaw, Megan. “Offensive? Who Me? I’m Just Trying to Have My Lunch.” Age 9 Jan. 1998: A3. Shildrick, Margrit. Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)ethics. London: Routledge, 1997. Sichtermann, Barbara. Femininity: The Politics of the Personal. Trans. John Whitlam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Silverton, Louise. The Art and Science of Midwifery. London: Prentice Hall, 1993.

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Sofalis, Zoe. “Spacing Out in the Mother Shop.” Motherlode. Eds. Stephanie Holt and Maryanne Lynch. Melbourne: Sybylla Feminist Press, 1996. 120–128. Stearns, Cindy. “Breastfeeding and the Good Maternal Body.” Gender & Society 13.3 (1999): 308–326. Sullivan, John R. Le
er to the editor. Advertiser 24 Jun. 1996: 12. Traina, Cristina L.H. “Maternal Experience and the Boundaries of Christian Sexual Ethics.” Signs 25.2 (2000): 369–405. Wilson, Elizabeth. The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Young, Iris Marion. Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

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REPRESENTATION

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CHAPTER FIVE

“PAX MATERNA” OR MOTHERS AT WAR WITH THE EMPIRE? AUSTRALIAN PERSPECTIVES ON THE MOTHERHOOD DEBATE IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE DURING THE GREAT WAR

CANADIAN

AND

Karin Ikas

Introduction In Womankind Beyond the Stereotypes, Reeves describes the mythologizing of women in wartime as follows: “Women are praised as the peaceful sex and invited to become Golden Star mothers, to offer their sons in sacrifice upon the altars of the Tribal Gods” (76). And that is it—women remain far outside the arenas of decision. The poster advertising the Red Cross in the Great War (Figure 5.1) vividly a
ests to this mythic role ascribed to women during warfare. Additionally, it illustrates how maternity along with the nurturing and peaceful role of women is elevated to the realm of heroism. Leading on from this we can also note Shute’s (1995) comment that, with the outbreak of this “imperialist war the womanhood of Australia, and indeed the womanhood of the entire Western civilisation, were plunged into the age-old mythic role of saintly and peace-loving mothers” (23). In part, this can be traced back to the traditional belief that “war cultures must invest in an image of a peace worth fighting for, a peace which is imagined through images of an idealized and nostalgic pre-war Golden Age” (Cooper 16), and women are generally acknowledged as a major pillar of that idealized and romanticized imagery. The post-war poem “A Dream in Luxembourg” (1930) by British novelist and poet Richard Aldington stands as a striking and well-known literary example here: … Must fair women die? I’ll not believe it, Death is masculine. Death, like a war-lord, wants more man-power,

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Image not available

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And, by God, he gets it, I’ve seen him get it. How many yellow dead men have I seen? … Reported how many casualties? But one gets used to it, quite used to it, And it seems nothing for men to die, Nothing for one to die oneself. But for a fair woman to die, And that a woman one loves or has love— No, it is incredible, they don’t die … (5)

This connects closely to similar analyses by April Carter, Elise Boulding, Be
y Reardon, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Susan R. Grayzel, and other feminist critics (cf Oldfield; Turpin; York).1 They concede further that women’s association with peace and maternal imagery is not only an ancient theme but also a very modern one that dominates public discourse even into the 21st century. The modern version of the wellknown creed of Pax Materna—that is, mother’s peace—has its origin in the United States, created during the Vietnam War by a group of women who called themselves “Another Mother for Peace” and sent a Mother’s Day card to members of the United States Congress with the following inscription: For my Mother’s Day gi this year I don’t want candy or flowers I want an end to killing. We who have given life Must be dedicated to preserving it. Please, talk peace! (Alfonso 218)

Put simply, any case being made for war and also for peace invokes traditional gender imagery. Moreover, to this day especially mothers are associated with pacifism and se
ling of conflict in times of war (cf Ruddick). Lorentzen and Turpin’s critical anthology provides some interesting case studies from various wars and nations that support this argument. As Jennifer Turpin aptly points out, … governments a
empt to educate women as to what constitutes a “good mother” during wartime; their propaganda strategies are remarkably similar, drawing on representations of the good (patriotic) mother as one who is willing to sacrifice her sons to war. (11)

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Needless to say, not all women conform to this pa
ern of “sending, supporting, and reproducing men” (11) as it has been engendered by patriotic war propaganda—merging motherhood, nationalism, and militarism. Similarly, not all women are inherently peaceful or strong advocates of peace, as examples of women warriors in various historical, cultural, and geopolitical contexts reveal (cf Bethke-Elshtain). Subsequently, women’s role in the war context needs to be discussed beyond the scope of essentialist gender roles and “the traditional dichotomy whereby women are seen as the life givers, men as the life takers”(xiii). Particularly instructive here is an analysis of women’s changing roles in the High Empire Period (1890–1920) (Boehmer). Dominated by the Great War as the first war to be total in scope, but also by women’s struggle for suffrage and independence, this period is generally acknowledged as a major breakthrough for women’s emancipation. Focusing on this time span, I will look at the contested relationship between motherhood, and peace and war as displayed in propaganda material—such as posters and magazines—as well as literary works from Australia, England, and Canada during this period. While particular a
ention will be given to Canadian feminist writer Nellie McClung’s novel The Next of Kin, some renowned literary works of men and non-literary texts such as pamphlets, posters, and newspaper advertisements, in a period generally acknowledged as the age of the press and print media, will also be considered. I am especially interested in the ways in which motherhood and the demand for an independent female subjectivity intertwine with the experience of war and warfare for women at the home-front at the beginning of the 20th century. Some central questions to be pursued here are these: How are notions of nationalism, motherhood, pacifism, and war displayed in the documentary, propagandistic, and literary works analyzed here? Is the war considered to be a catalytic moment for women to redefine gender categories and construct femininity beyond the traditional notions of motherhood?

Contested Gender Roles in the High British Empire and the Impact of the Great War The whole time span—between the 1890s and 1920s, this so-called High Empire period—is generally acknowledged as a turning point for women in history; yet, it also figures as an historical and cultural

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paradox for most women (Fountain). While this period saw women’s foremost international campaigns for suffrage and equal rights, it was also dominated by two major international wars, the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa and the First World War, which impeded women’s striving for independence and equality. What is more, the very notion of the home-front was an invention of the First World War and, for the first time, “home” and “domestic” became adjectives that modified the military term “front.” Though suffrage had not yet been granted to women, for the first time they were asked to act as legally independent citizens. Elaborating on this issue, Tate and Rai
have convincingly illustrated that in the heyday of women’s agitation to win the vote the “war only intensified the pressure on women to inhabit a cultural, social, and sexual paradox” (5), and Gilbert goes so far as to identify the Great War as a form of sex warfare, or, as she puts it: “[The Great War is] a war between the front and the home front” and thus “a climatic episode in a ba
le of sexes” (422–450). By and large, Grayzel agrees and aptly summarizes the deep impact of the Great War period on women as follows: … the First World War looms as a historical conundrum. On the one hand, women in many participant nations gained basic voting rights in its immediate aermath that they had never possessed before. On the other hand, their overall economic and social status showed few, if any, notable transformations. (5)

Not too surprisingly, traditional constructions of women’s roles are particularly visible in propaganda material of the time. The following striking example from the Imperial War Museum in London illustrates this. Figure 5.2 refers to a painting that was reproduced for a poster design in 1916 and testifies to the fact that various nations participating in the Great War depicted women as saintly mothers, nurturers, and protectors. It is precisely due to such expectations entailed in traditional understandings of women’s roles that women came to function as the pillar within the reconstructed war-family model where the father/ husband is a wounded soldier and the child a frightened youngster— both desperate for the (overwhelming) maternal figure’s protection, comfort, and help. All warring parties used all forms of media available at the time, such as books, photos, films, postcards, posters, and poems, to shape the viewer’s and reader’s war a
itude.

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In Australia, the only country in the British Empire aside from New Zealand where women had gained the vote at that time,2 we see another interesting and quite contradictory invocation of traditional gender imagery, in particular maternity, that supports but also potentially undermines political war propaganda. While the “mother of war” on British war posters appeals to men’s notion of duty with slogans such as “Go! It’s your duty, Lad. Join to-Day” (IWM: PST 6540) or “Women of Britain Say—Go” (IWM, British propaganda poster by E. Kealy), Australian and New Zealand women were urged to vote “yes” or “no” in a referendum on conscription (Figures 5.3 and 5.4). This stimulated a provocative debate and led to contradictions in communicating the role of mothers within the nation at war. The force of this wartime mythology was such that the possession of the vote for women inflicted a new responsibility upon them in that they were asked to “defend and justify that vote by good performance” (Brisbane Courier), that is, in the context of the national war effort. In general, then, as Shute has noted, the conscription debate went hand in hand with a reassertion of the traditional dualism of women’s role in wartime—both patriotic war supporters and war-resisters engaged

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women, as mothers, in their respective propaganda (Shute; Damousi). Some accused women of forge
ing the soldiers at the front altogether. Others stereotyped them as naive, tokenized helpmates of the state, or merely as ignorant women, worshipping heroism. Figure 5.5, another poster of the conscription debate, clearly ascribes maternal imagery to suggest that female ignorance and evil are to blame for the tragic loss of male lives in the war. The title, Blood Vote, is revealing in this respect.

Maternal Imagery in Traditional War Writing In male-dominated Great War literature, renowned writers of the First World War period such as May O’Rouke and Siegfried Sassoon used these images to hold women accountable for the state of war as well as for war atrocities.3 Sassoon’s poem “Glory of Women” expresses these feelings as follows: You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave, Or wounded in a mentionable place. You worship decorations; you believe That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace. You make us shells. You listen with delight, By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled. You crown our distant ardors while we fight, And mourn our laurelled memories when we’re killed. You can’t believe that British troops “retire” When hell’s last horror breaks them, and they run, Trampling the terrible corpses—blind with blood. O German mother dreaming by the fire, While you are kni
ing socks to send your son His face is trodden deeper in the mud. (22)

Not surprisingly, in Sassoon’s poem women are once again merely acknowledged as mothers, full of patriotic vigour. This implies that women are defined only through their strong, patriotic affiliation to the nation, and their male children. Moreover, the poem illustrates how “the male sexual urge was understood to be active, aggressive and spontaneous whilst female sexuality was believed to be weak, passive and responsive” (Nead 6). As Bethke-Elshtain and others have

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illustrated in their respective critical treatises, it is plausible to suggest that “the various explanations which have been given for women’s existence can be narrowed down to two—her husband and her child.”4 Nevertheless, it is also important to acknowledge that the lives of women and the wri
en realistic and fictional accounts of many women of the time prove these representations to be too limiting, distorted, and falsified.5 In the following, I turn to some literary texts of Canadian author Nellie L. McClung, a well-known woman writer of the High Empire period, to examine the ways in which she intertwines motherhood and the demand for an independent female subjectivity with women’s experiences of war and warfare at the beginning of the 20th century. The texts of interest are McClung’s novel The Next of Kin: Those Who Wait and Wonder (1917) and her critical treatise and feminist manifesto In Times Like These.

A Literary Response from Canada: Nellie McClung’s The Next of Kin (1917) The First World War has been an important topic for many renowned women novelists in Canada during the High Empire period.6 In various fictional accounts of the war, writers such as Francis Marion Beynon, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Evah McKowan, as well as Nellie McClung, challenge the common assumption of the time, namely that war stories have to be about male heroes and should focus on male soldiers’ experiences at the front. Depicting the catastrophic impact of war on those back at the Canadian home-front, these writers not only rewrite the notion of the total war but also inscribe women into war history by pointing to women’s active role in war and also their significant pleas for peace. Coates has wri
en repeatedly about this issue and aptly points out that “these women writers are unified in protesting the social marginalization of women’s voices and values, and in forcefully reiterating that women deserve a place alongside men, not as their subalterns” (1190). Nellie McClung is generally acknowledged as Canada’s most outstanding and popular feminist author of the time. Born on a small pioneer farm in Gray County, Ontario, in 1873, as the last of six children, of Methodist, Sco
ish-Irish parentage, she grew up in Ontario and Manitoba. Later she worked as a teacher at various Canadian colleges

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and had her first commercial success as a writer with her best-selling novel Sowing Seeds in Danny. Among her various successful fictive books are The Purple Springs and her last full-scale novel, Painted Fires. Together with Sowing Seeds in Danny, these novels make up the Pearlie Watson trilogy, in which McClung tells the life of a reformist heroine in rural Canada. McClung is particularly interested in the situation of the unfortunate, downtrodden, and voiceless people of society and it seems legitimate to identify her as a “voice for the voiceless” (Macpherson). It is not too surprising, then, that McClung was fascinated by Charles Dickens’s novels and soon became very involved in various suffrage organizations and the political campaigns for enfranchisement and prohibition in Manitoba and Alberta. In 1915 she published the feminist critical treatise In Times Like These, by far the most outspoken classical statement on Canadian feminism of the High Empire period. Altogether Nellie McClung published more than 16 books, among which are two autobiographies, the war novel The Next of Kin: Those Who Wait and Wonder, four books of short stories, and numerous articles and stories in newspapers and magazines all over North America. Throughout Canada and the United States she received further praise for her brilliant and wi
y speeches, lectures, and readings.7 Her role within the Canadian cultural and literary context might best be summarized in Davis’s words: “Nellie Letitia (Mooney) McClung would have been a remarkable woman in any age, but in the repressive, patriarchal society of her day she was the leading women’s rights activist and social reformer, and she changed the face of Canada” (17). McClung is an interesting writer to consider in the war context because of her varying a
itude towards peace and war. Before the Great War she was an outspoken pacifist, yet she became a fervent supporter of Canadian enlistment during the war when her son enlisted. Her prowar stance can be traced in various of her writings such as “Men and Money” and also “Three Times and Out: A Canadian Boy’s Experiences in Germany,” a story she ghost wrote for a Canadian private who had been imprisoned in Germany during the war. McClung’s war novel The Next of Kin, however, is particularly insightful. Here, she works out in fiction some of the critical thoughts she develops in her theoretical treatise In Times Like These, her so-called “wartime a
ack upon female parasitism and what is now called male chauvinism” (Strong-Boag xvi). Throughout the novel McClung depicts mothers as having a major impact on the nation’s future, a future she believes will be more pacifist

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once women, and most of all mothers, have a say in politics. Most parts of the novel are set in rural Alberta at the early stages of the war and the pre-eminent concern of the story is with the women in the Canadian countryside and their families. Throughout the book the city is viewed through the eyes of the rural female spectator. The story opens on “a bleak day in November” in northern Alberta where “a thick, gray sky, and a great, noisy, blustering wind” hints at the tough life of women in the Canadian countryside in the early days of the war and sets the mood for the subsequent Municipal Hall Meeting of the local Red Cross Group. Due to the men having gone to the Great War to fight for the Empire it is a female-only group that gathers to listen to the speech of a suffragist about women’s social and political role and their a
itude towards the war. The meeting reveals the difficult situation Canadian women face on the Canadian home-front, torn between pacifism and support for the nationalist war efforts through essentialist gender behaviour on the one hand, and rebellious thoughts, politicized actions, and a claim for liberty and independence in the context of female suffrage on the other hand. Subsequently, the discussion moves towards the central question “What do the women of the world think of war?” as one participant aptly puts it. With recourse to the traditional essentialist track of thought regarding the supposedly pacifist nature of women, the participant continues, “No woman wanted war, did she? No woman could bring a child into the world, suffering for it, caring for it, loving it, without learning the value of human life, could she?” (9). Nonetheless, the invocation of traditional gender imagery in this opening scene is contested in the following statement, when a more politicized woman, a mother, states: Well-kept homes and hand-knit socks will never save the world. Look at Germany! The German women are kind, patient, industrious, frugal, hard-working, everything that a woman ought to be, but it did not save them, or their country, and it will not save us. (9–10)

At first, this concept might appear to be adopted from In Times Like These, where other critical lines like these appear; closer examination reveals that McClung develops more progressive and international ideas in The Next of Kin. The juxtaposition of the respective parts from both works makes this difference in Nellie McClung’s track of thought quite obvious. In Times Like These reads:

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The German woman’s ways have been ways of pleasantness, but her paths have not been paths of peace; and now, women everywhere are thinking of her, rather bi
erly.… It is not a woman’s duty to bring children into the world, as to see what sort of a world she is bringing them into, and what their contribution will be to it. (24)

In The Next of Kin, this is developed into a more placatory, intercultural notion of a cross-cultural female politics that goes beyond the dichotomies of enemies and friends through its implicit call for an alliance of women to oppose the militant and martial male war instinct: My nearest neighbour is a German, and she and I have talked these [war] things over. She feels just the same as we do, and she sews for our Red Cross. She says she could not knit socks for our soldiers, for they are enemies, but she makes bandages, for she says wounded men are not enemies, and she is willing to do anything for them. (10)

Thus, in the course of the novel, alongside subservient and traditionally minded mothers, defiant mothers, tired of having “to se
le down to kni
ing a dull grey sock or [to do] the easy task of collecting Red Cross funds from perfectly willing people who ask me to come in while they make me a cup of tea” (164), also prevail where, due to a shortage of men at the home-front, women’s involvement in public life is required. The following scene depicts this: Going over a hill, we came upon a woman driving a mower. It was the first reminder of the war. She was a fine-looking woman, with a tanned face, brown, but handsome, and she swung her team around the edge of the meadow with a grace and skill that called forth our admiration.… “Did you know I’ve lost my husband?”… It was a smashing blow … but I am all right now, and have thought things out.… I am ge
ing on well. The children are at school now, both of them… —the crops are in good shape—did you ever see a finer stand of wild hay? I can manage the farm, with one extra hired man in harvest–time.… This is a great country, is n’t [sic] it? Where you find such abundance, and such a climate, with its sunshine and its cool nights, and such a chance to make good? I suppose freedom has to be paid for. (253–254)

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In the end, the male-dominant war becomes the trigger for a more moderate and peaceful feminine future. As most of the men died in the war it is ultimately in the hands of the women to do be
er, not only to keep the home-front going but also to rebuild the country in a more feminine manner, that is, in the sense of a pacifist politics (of women) to end all wars. Thus, the Pax Materna is redefined as a Politeia Pax Feminina to replace the past and present Martial Politeia Masculina. The unnamed war widow quoted above further states: “Freedom … is worth something to have a chance to work and bring up my children—in peace—so I am living on from day to day … not grieving … not moping … not thinking too much,—it hurts to think too hard,--just living.” [The narrator adds:] Then we shook hands, and I told her that she had found something far greater than happiness, for she had achieved power. (254)

This process of “conscious-raising” about the war and women’s role at the home-front dominates the novel. The sense that maternity is always linked to patriotism and nationalism in times of war thus is disrupted and replaced by a realization that although female boundaries are not always elastic enough to accommodate alternative notions of maternal imagery, at least within one generation cultural boundaries can be successfully overcome and alternative notions of a war developed as soon as one’s individual identity is privileged to national collectivism (cf Hunter et al.). Subsequently, “the great gi that Canada [and, one might add, Australia and other colonies] had given to the Empire” is no longer understood as “the gi of men and wheat, bread and blood—the sacrament of empire” as an enthusiastic proimperial women speaker in a later suffrage meeting in the novel puts it (McClung 165). Rather, it is the “freedom kept up” by a woman who “had found something far greater than happiness, for she had achieved power,” as McClung puts it in the closing paragraph of The Next of Kin (254). The dawning of a new and rather feminine era is reinforced through the closing and rather pastoral imagery of “a western sky [which] is red now, giving promise of a good day to-morrow” (165) and as such replaces the gloomy and grey scenery that marked the patriarchal society that was dominant in the novel’s opening image.

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Conclusion As various other female authors such as Adela Pankhurst and Miles Franklin from Australia, Francis Marion Beynon, Georgina Sime, and of course the aforementioned Nellie McClung have revealed through their impressive body of war works, writing enables women to touch upon provocative subjects, here namely suffrage and a wearing away of the traditional maternal imagery of women as nurturers of the race—and erode essentialist gender-imagery perpetuated by a patriarchal nation at war. As Canadian activist Flora McD. Dennison aptly put it in the pamphlet “War and Women” (1914), wri
en for the Canadian Suffrage Association in 1914: The male human, and especially the male has thought in terms of combat and of dominance through force.... When we study history, what was the keynote of it all? Ba
les, ba
les, ba
les.… Women’s thought and action have always been constructive.… In writing this another pen than that held by Mars will have to be used. Venus must be the star in the ascendant and the monsters of the race must assist in tracing out a new code of ethics.

Thus, these works should not be read as efforts of accommodation, if by accommodation we mean simple integration into an existing social and political structure. They are grim portrayals of women’s life in times of various wars in the early 20th century in the western world, but also indicate women’s power and potential to fight for their own beliefs, their freedom, and their personalities. As a body they are a condemnation of 20th-century patriotic and patriarchal war and a challenge to construct feminist alternatives and ascertain female power and legal status, if necessary by female means of war. As Elizabeth Robins puts it: … intelligent women know that the sum of feminine achievement is for the first time a factor in that Welt politik which is the shaping of public opinion. We see clearly that, working shoulder to shoulder as we have never worked before, women are laying the foundation of a power which is to change the course of history. (73–74)

Writing serves as a key component to exert this new Female World Politics and shapes this new or alternative notion of a Feminist Pax Discursiva that replaces the prior, essentialist Pax Materna.

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Endnotes 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

Cf. Be
y Reardon, Women and Peace (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993); Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995 1987); Susan R. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France During the First World War (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Jennifer Turpin, “Many Faces: Women Confronting War” in The Women and War Reader, ed. Lois Ann Lorentzen et al. (New York: New York UP, 1998), 3–18; April Carter, “Should Women Be Soldiers or Pacifists?” in Lorentzen 1998, 33–37; Jodi York, “The Truth about Women and Peace” in Lorentzen 1998, 19–25; see also Elise Boulding, “Feminist Inventions in the Art of Peacemaking: A Century Overview” in Peace and Change (1995), 20.4: 408–439 and Sybil Oldfield, Women Against the Iron Fist: Alternatives to Militarism, 1900–1989 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). In New Zealand women had been granted suffrage in 1893 and in Australia in 1902. For a closer analysis of this aspect cf among others P. Quinn et al. (eds.), The Literature of the Great War Reconsidered: Beyond Modern Memory (New York: Palgrave, 2001); B. Korte et al. (eds.), War and the Cultural Construction of Identities in Britain (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002); D. Novak Dubious Glory: The Two World Wars and the Canadian Novel (New York and Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000); and L.T. Hergenhan, Australian Literature and War—Special Issue of Australian Literary Studies, vol. 12, no. 2 (October 1985). Consult in particular Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995 11987) and Susan R. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999). See also Endnote 1 for further references. Cf Gail Braybon, “Women and the War” in Stephen Constantine et al. (eds.), The First World War in British History (London: 1995), 145. See also Denise Riley, Am I that Name? Feminism and the Category of ‘Women’ in History (London, 1988), 96–97, and Helen M. Cooper et al. (ed.), Arms and the Woman: War, Gender and Literary Representation (Chapel Hill, NC, 1989) For an insightful critical study on the Canadian war novel and the impact of female authors cf in particular D. Novak, Dubious Glory. The Two World Wars and the Canadian Novel (New York and Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000). See also Donna Coates, “The Best Soldiers of All. Unsung Heroines in Canadian Women’s Great War Fictions.” In Canadian Literature, 151 (Winter 1996): 66–99.

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7.

For further information on the life and works of Nellie McClung, see among others Randi R. Warne, Literature as Pulpit: The Christian Social Activism of Nellie L. McClung (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 1992). Also Mary Hallet and Marilyn Davis, Firing the Heather: The Life and Times of Nellie McClung (Saskatoon: Fih House Publishers, 1993).

References Aldington, Richard. A Dream in the Luxembourg. London: Cha
o and Windus 1930. Alfonso, Harriet Hyman. Peace as a Women’s Issue. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1993. Bethke-Elshtain, Jean. Women and War. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987, 1995. Boehmer, Elleke. Colonial & Postcolonial Literature. Oxford, New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Boulding, Elise. “Feminist Inventions in the Art of Peacemaking: A Century Overview.” Peace and Change 20.4 (1995): 408–439. Braybon, Gail. “Women and the War.” The First World War in British History. Eds. Stephen Constantine, Maurice W. Kirby, and Mary B. Rose. London: Edward Arnold, 1995. Brisbane Courier. Brisbane 1 Oct. 1918. Carter, April. “Should Women Be Soldiers or Pacifists?” The Women and War Reader. Eds. Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin. New York: New York UP, 1998. 33–37. Coates, Donna. “The Best Soldiers of All. Unsung Heroines in Canadian Women’s Great War Fictions.” Canadian Literature 151 (Winter 1996): 66–99. _____. “War”. Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. Ed. W.H. New. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. 1186–1196. Cooper, Helen, Adrienne A. Munich, and Susan M. Squier, eds. Arms and the Woman: War, Gender and Literary Representation. Chapel Hill: N.C., 1989. Damousi, Joy. “Socialist Women and Gendered Space: Anti-conscription and Anti-war Campaigns 1914–18.” Labour History 60 (May 1991). Davis, Marilyn L. Stories Subversive. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1996. Dennison, Flora MacDonald. War and Women. Toronto: SI, 1918. Fountain, Nigel. Women at War. London: Michael O’Mara Books, 2002. Gilbert, Sandra. “Soldier’s Heart: Literary Men, Literary Women, and the Great War.” Signs 8.3 (1983): 422–450.

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Grayzel, Susan R. Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France During the First World War. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Grayzel, Susan R. Women and the First World War. London: Longman, 2002. Hallet, Mary, and Marilyn Davis. Firing the Heather: The Life and Times of Nellie McClung. Saskatoon: Fih House Publishers, 1993. Hergenhan, L.T., ed. Australian Literature and War—Special Issue of Australian Literary Studies 12.2 (October 1985). Hunter, Anne E., Catherine M. Flauenbaum, and Suzanne R. Sunday, eds. On Peace, War, and Gender: A Challenge to Genetic Explanations. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1991. Korte, Barbara, and Ralf Schneider, eds. War and the Cultural Construction of Identities in Britain. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. Macpherson, Margaret. Nellie McClung: Voice for the Voiceless. Montreal: XYZ Publishing, 2003. McClung, Nellie. In Times Like These. New York and Toronto: D. Appleton / McLeod & Allen, 1915. _____. “Men and Money.” Maclean’s (September 1919): 15–17, 99–100. _____.The Next of Kin: Those Who Wait and Wonder. Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1917. Nead, Lynda. Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian Britain. Oxford and New York: B. Blackwell, 1988. Novak, D. Dubious Glory. The Two World Wars and the Canadian Novel. New York and Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000. Oldfield, Sybil. Women Against the Iron Fist: Alternatives to Militarism, 1900–1989. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Quinn, Patrick, and Steven Trout, eds. The Literature of the Great War Reconsidered: Beyond Modern Memory. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Reardon, Be
y. Women and Peace. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993. Reeves, N. Womankind Beyond the Stereotypes. Chicago: Aldine, 1971. Riley, Denise. Am I That Name? Feminism and the Category of “Women” in History. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1988. Robins, Elizabeth. Way Stations. New York: Dodd and Mead, 1913. Ruddick, Sara. Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace. London: Women’s Press, 1990. Sassoon, Siegfried. “Glory of Women.” The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon. Ed. Rupert Hart-Davis. London: Faber and Faber, reprint, 1983. Shute, Carmel. “Heroines and Heroes: Sexual Mythology in Australia 1914– 18.” Gender and War. Eds. Joy Damousi and Marilyn Lake. Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 1995. 23–42.

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_____. “Sexual Mythology in Australia 1914–18.” Hecate 1.1 (1975). Strong-Boag, Veronica. “Introduction.” The Next of Kin: Those Who Wait and Wonder. By Nellie McClung. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1972. vii-xxii. Tate, Trudi. “Introduction.” Women’s Fiction and the Great War. Eds. Trudi Tate, and Suzanne Rai
. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. 5. Turpin, Jennifer. “Many Faces: Women Confronting War.” The Women and War Reader. Eds. Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin. New York: New York UP, 1998. 3–18. Warne, Randi R. Literature as Pulpit: The Christian Social Activism of Nellie L. McClung. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 1992. York, Jodi. “The Truth about Women and Peace” The Women and War Reader. Eds. Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin. New York: New York UP, 1998. 19–25.

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CHAPTER SIX

MOTHERING AND STRESS DISCOURSES A DECONSTRUCTION OF THE INTERRELATIONSHIP OF DISCOURSES ON MOTHERING AND STRESS Erika Horwitz and Bonita C. Long

D

iscourses manifest themselves as beliefs and values that people hold as truths and influence individuals’ subjective experiences and behaviours (Weingarten). The poststructuralist concept of discourse is defined as a “historically, socially, and institutionally specific structure of statements, terms, categories, and beliefs that are embedded in institutions, social relationships, and texts” (Sco
135–136). Thus, discourses are reflected in the established and accepted stories of society, they determine how one’s experiences are conceptualized, and they are associated with profound consequences, constraints, sanctions, or possibilities (Sho
er). Some discourses hold a dominant place in our society, whereas others are less salient or marginalized. Importantly, discourses do not occur in isolation from one another. Therefore, our goal was to examine the interrelationship of two dominant discourses that profoundly affect women and their parenting experiences—mothering and stress discourses (Bernard; Coontz 1992; Hays). Although the discourse of mothering is inextricably linked to other discourses, such as gender, women, workers, wives, children, marriage, and relationships (Rice), we refer briefly to these discourses only when they are relevant to the present discussion.

Discourse on Mothering In recent years, a number of authors have identified the dominant sociocultural beliefs and values, and their consequences that are inherent in the discourse on mothering (Badinter; Contra
o; Coontz 1992, 1997; Gordon; Hays; Thurer; Weingarten). For example, Coontz (1992, 1997)

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has wri
en about the North American family, the myths that are held about families, and how these myths function. In addition, Hays has explored the cultural definitions and contradictions of motherhood, and several other authors have dealt with the topic of motherhood from historical, social, or feminist perspectives (Baber and Allen; Bernard; Thurer). The results of this work have revealed that within the dominant discourse, mothers are held responsible for the physical, spiritual, and psychological well being of their children; that is, mothers are responsible for how their children turn out (Weingarten). The myth that mother is “all powerful” can even be seen in the 1897 National Congress on Mothers’ Program, which organizers metaphorically adorned with phrases such as “Mother is the name of God in the hearts and lips of li
le children” (Contra
o 230). This legacy continues today, as mothers are viewed as the primary agents in their children’s development, as well as the primary obstacles (Thurer). Thus, mothers are under considerable pressure to be “good” mothers (Contra
o; Croghan and Miell) and those who believe they are not living up to these expectations may experience feelings of inadequacy and guilt (Bernard; Thurer). The dominant discourse also portrays mothers as sacrificial and all loving, a portrayal that carries with it the expectation that mothers will be giving, selfless beings. Moreover, Thurer suggests that ever since the idealization of the Virgin Mary, mothers have been expected to be saintly and sacrifice their needs for their children. By implication, this message suggests that if mothers forgo their personal needs, they will be able to raise healthy, well-adjusted children. There are also contradictory messages implied in the “mother as powerful agent” discourse. Because mothers are viewed as responsible for their children’s fate, they need to learn how to parent competently (Hays). In order to satisfy this “need,” mothers turn to an endless list of available experts. Although expert information is oen conflicting and overwhelming, it has one overall message—it is up to mothers to nurture, love, care, and stimulate their children or the children will be greatly damaged (Contra
o; Thurer). Because of the vast amount of expert yet conflicting information about parenting (Brazelton; Leach; Spock and Rothanberg), mothers do not trust their instincts, because if they do, they may harm their children. An example of expert parenting advice is reflected in the tenets of a
achment theory, which posits that mothers must bond with their children (Bowlby 1991). Bowlby posited that mothers should spend copious amounts of time developing this

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bond through “constant a
ention day and night, seven days a week and 365 in the year” (Bowlby 1996 67) because when the bond fails to form children are at risk of developing serious psychological problems. Moreover, Bowlby (1991) implied that full-time employment of a mother outside the home results in maternal deprivation for the child. Thus, mothers are pressured to dedicate time and energy to the formation of this bond (Contra
o). Although Bowlby’s theory places the onus on mothers to be the main source of attachment in their children’s lives (Karen), Coontz (1992) suggests that an a
achment to a series of adults may be healthy for children and may ease some of the social responsibility on mothers. According to Ratner, a consequence of expecting mothers to be the sole source of a
achment for children may be the easing of social responsibility and the promotion of an individualistic society. Another example of expert advice given to mothers stems from the work of the cognitive developmentalist Jean Piaget (cited in Thurer). Based on Piaget’s theory, mothers have been advised that stimulating their infants is essential to development. Many experts promote this belief and suggest ways for a mother to talk or play with their baby in order to encourage the baby’s intellectual growth (Thurer). However, many mothers may be le wondering whether they have provided enough stimulation for their children. Related to the mother discourse are dominant beliefs and values that cherish children for their innocence and purity (Contra
o; Coontz 1992; Hays). According to this discourse, children are always good and if they misbehave it is because they are either lacking something or because the mother is failing somehow. The myth of the vulnerable child exaggerates both “the power of the parent and the passivity of the child” (Coontz 1992 225). One could speculate that, as a consequence of the mother discourse (that is, mothers are responsible for child care), social institutions are freed from playing a larger part in the care of children. Also related to the mother discourse is the working/professional woman discourse. Some of the messages in this discourse are contradictory to the dominant discourse on mothering (Baber and Allen; Hays). Generally, employers expect women to be dedicated and commi
ed to their work regardless of their family obligations, a perspective that is consistent with the dominant philosophy of the workplace (for example, self-interest, profit-maximizing motive). As Hays suggests, working mothers believe that they must perform

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to their maximum potential in the workplace. Furthermore, they must act quite differently when fulfilling their work and mothering roles—competitive and tough-minded at work, and warm and loving at home (Hochschild). Women who try to integrate both the mother and work roles are told that their children should come first. However, the “ideas of appropriate childrearing all contradict the ideology of the workplace and the dominant ethos of society” (Hays 8), which promotes competition, individualism, equal opportunity, self-fulfillment, and advancement (Ratner). For mothers who work outside the home, leaving their children in the care of others is oen associated with feelings of guilt (Bernard; Coontz 1992) because the myths associated with the mothering discourse suggest that these children run the risk of “insecure a
achment” and low self-esteem (Karen). This double bind may create distress for women who have either chosen to or need to work. Although the mother discourse reflects a society that values children, our social structures and political policies do not adequately support children’s development (Berry). As a consequence, mothers may experience increased pressure, guilt, and self-doubt about the choices they make regarding their parenting and work roles. To summarize, maternal care-giving is viewed as essential to the “healthy” development of a child. Paradoxically, mothers are offered few clear guidelines and given li
le support to carry out this endeavour (Baber and Allen) even though they live by the ideology of intensive mothering. This ideology suggests that mothers should be the central caregivers of children. According to Hays, mothering is child centred, expert guided, emotionally absorbing, labour intensive, and financially expensive. One can conclude that for many mothers, a consequence of this discourse may be feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and low self-esteem. Given the emphasis put on a mother’s relationship with her child in a society that is individualistic and lacks community support, some have argued (Contra
o) that the exclusivity and isolation of the mother-child relationship is problematic for both the mother and the child. Moreover, our review revealed that the mothering discourse excludes the “voices” of low-income mothers, gay mothers, single mothers, and mothers in general. The voices in the mother discourse are those of experts—politicians, academics, physicians, media personalities, and those in positions of power. The mother discourse implies that mothers have the power to profoundly affect the social and intellectual development of their children. This belief reflects the assumption that mothers are all-

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powerful when it comes to their children and that they have primary control over how children develop. However, missing from this discourse are many other factors and social forces that affect children (for example, poverty, media, traumatic events, peers, discrimination, teachers, and schools) but that are too complex for mothers to control or modify (Coontz 1992). Temperamental differences among children also play an important role in their development (Karen). For example, mothering is not one-sided; interactions with the child are systemic in that the child affects the mother, her experience, and her responses, which in turn affects the child in an ongoing exchange. A consequence of the mother discourse, which empowers mothers relative to their children’s lives, is that it also frees society of greater responsibility for child care.

Stress and Coping Discourse The stress and coping discourse is also pervasive in our society (Lewig and Dollard; Newton; Pollock) and we wondered what myths and messages were a result of its interrelationship with the mothering discourse. Thus, in this section we first describe the general stress and coping discourse and then specifically examine the stress discourse directed at mothers. Given the limited literature in this area, we identified this discourse by reviewing two sources of material—Internet sites that focus on mothers or parenting, and popular women’s magazines. This was an initial a
empt to identify the ideology and practices that result from the stress and coping discourse and its interrelationship with the mothering discourse. Stress is generally understood to be harmful and especially detrimental to our health. For example, Parker et al. provide evidence that the lay public believes that stress can lead to heart a
acks, nervous breakdowns, the wearing down of the body’s defences, high blood pressure, ulcers, stroke, intestinal disorders, and skin disorders. One of the most powerful aspects of the stress discourse relates to this belief that stress causes illness. However, aer reviewing the literature on stress and health, Pollock (390) concluded that research focused on the role of stress in health is “inconsistent, contradictory, or inconclusive.” Although it is not unusual to find a relationship between stress and some illnesses, according to Pollock the strongly held belief that stress causes illness is not yet warranted. Pollock also suggests that there is

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the implicit message in the stress discourse that one should be able to handle or cope with stress, and if one cannot, one is therefore “weak.” Thus, responsibility for stress-related illness is placed on the individual because he or she should be able to modify problematic behaviours. If unable to do this, an individual may be regarded as possessing certain personality characteristics or behaviour pa
erns that lead to stressrelated illness. Furthermore, individuals are expected to engage in self-care and should be able to access resources to deal with their stress. Not being able to do this is a sign of weakness and a deficient nature (Newton). Another prevalent belief inherent in the stress discourse is that certain stressful events can cause great stress to everyone who experiences them, and this belief reflects the universalization of stress (Aldwin; Pearlin). For example, researchers and the lay public alike generally believe that experiencing the death of a loved one is a traumatic event. However, Wortman and Silver found that nearly one-third of bereaved spouses did not appear distressed at any point during the first year aer their spouse died. Therefore, those who do not experience stressful events consistent with the dominant stress discourse may feel guilty and different. The stress discourse also implies that employment is stressful but that workers should be able to cope—that is, to manage or control their stress (Furnham). Furnham found that employees explained their inability to cope in terms of psychological phenomena—in other words, the deficit was perceived to be intrinsic to the individual. Although employees in Furnham’s study suggested that stress was related to the structural organization of their companies, they also believed that stressed workers were less effective and more prone to self-destructive behaviours. These same employees suggested that the best way to deal with stress was to seek professional help and to use the advice of the self-help industry. The belief that work is stressful and that it is the individual’s responsibility to deal with it is prevalent (Lewig and Dollard; Newton). Generally, stress in the workplace has been a
ributed to psychological factors, which have been emphasized over the functions and structures of organizations and society and which is consistent with the western ideology of individualism. Handy suggests that an understanding of organizational culture, power, and conflict in institutional life is necessary in order to construct a more complex conceptualization of workplace stress.

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The stress discourse portrays stress as an individualistic and natural phenomenon (Newton; Pearlin), yet stress is affected by various social factors that are not intrinsic to the individual. Economic class, race, ethnicity, gender, and age are examples of social forces that affect people’s exposure to stressful events and their ability to cope. Coping is also related to historical factors that reflect constraints that limit or govern individual choices (Lennon). Moreover, other societal practices such as competition, individualism, and materialism interact with the experience of stress (Ratner). The stress discourse suggests simplistic solutions, such as, individuals should be able to ease the stress they experience if only they engaged in self-care practices (Pollock), particularly if they exercise, eat well, meditate, and organize their time. Thus, the stress discourse does not take into account that women are subject to other discourses that pressure them to succeed in multiple valued roles—to be good mothers, to develop careers, and to be good partners (Gilbert; Polaski and Holahan; Pollock). We now highlight aspects of the stress discourse directed at mothers and women in general. In order to deconstruct this discourse, in late 1999 and early 2000, we carried out an analysis of 13 articles that were found in current issues of three popular women’s magazines (Canadian Living, March, 2000; Good Housekeeping, March, 2000; and Woman’s World, March, 7, 2000) and on three Internet sites (parentsplace.com; allhealth.com; and womenfirst.com). To select articles from the Internet, 30 of the most recent articles from each Internet site were printed and numbered. A random selection of the Internet articles from each site was undertaken, by pulling corresponding article numbers from a hat. Because we were most interested in the discourse associated with mothering, we selected six articles from parentsplace.com and two each from the other two sites (allhealth.com and womenfirst.com). In addition, we selected three articles from current issues of popular Canadian women’s magazines that were prominently displayed on magazine racks. They were chosen because articles on stress were highlighted on their covers. The method we used to analyze these articles was based on a qualitative methodology developed by Horwitz, which was an extension of Mishler and Van Manen. In order to conduct the discourse analysis, the first author read and reread the articles and asked, “What is this article trying to convey?” and “What is the main message embedded in it?” The messages were cross-checked by finding support

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for interpretations through the language and statements contained in each of the articles identified under each main message. They were then grouped into themes by matching the messages they contained to defined categories. Finally, each article was re-examined for evidence found in the language and meaning to verify the theme to which each of the articles belonged. The 13 articles were distributed to seven counselling psychology doctoral students and the second author to determine whether they agreed or disagreed with the analysis. Their examination of the articles supported initial classifications. The results of the analysis yielded four main themes. The first theme was: A mother’s stress can harm her child’s health. Four of the articles explicitly made this claim. These articles claimed that a mother’s stress can aggravate her child’s asthma or allergies (Wheeler), and even play a role in the occurrence of her daughter’s anorexia (“Anxious Mothers Can Play a Role in Anorexia” 1999). One article claimed that stress during pregnancy can affect the unborn infant’s health and well being (Plumbo). Finally, a fourth article claimed that marital stress is harmful to children (Huggins). Consistent with the mother discourse, this theme placed a strong emphasis on mothers’ stress as being potentially harmful to their children. The second theme identified was: Stress is damaging to mothers’ health and well being. In addition to harming children, stress is also damaging to mothers. One article claimed that stress can be positive if it is kept under control, but if it becomes unmanageable it can “wreak havoc” upon a woman’s mind, body, and productivity (“The Positive Side of Stress”). In another article, the author suggested that stress can damage a woman’s psychological well being (“Stress and Your Emotions”). The message implicit in these examples is that stress is bad and can create problems in various areas of a mother’s life. If stress can affect a person’s productivity, mind, and body, a stressed mother may fear the loss of her job and with it the loss of her self-esteem, as well as financial security. The third theme we identified was: Stress can affect mothers’ interpersonal relationships. In one article, it was suggested that a woman’s stress can overload other individuals. Another article claimed that marital stress can interfere with the communication between parent and child (Huggins), and another suggested that stress can damage interpersonal relationships with a woman’s family, friends, and co-workers (“Stress and Your Emotions”). A mother’s concerns may become magnified if she believes that her stress can affect her

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relationship with her children, because the modern discourse tells mothers that they must maintain safe and close attachments with their children, and that the mother-child bond is essential to the child’s healthy development. The experts warn that stress is dangerous to the mother-child relationship, which complicates a mother’s experience, particularly given that women are expected to be the keepers of family relationships (Coontz 1997). The final theme we identified was: Mothers should be able to cope with their stress because there are many options available. Seven articles contained a variety of solutions to cope with stress. Some of these suggestions included a
ention to diet (Somer), writing journals, exercising, listening to music, laughing, meditation (Donovan), prioritizing, visualizing, and identifying stressors (Donovan). Other suggestions were to nurture emotional connections, plan (Peterson), worry constructively, never fret alone, confine your worry time, distract yourself (Umansky), wake up earlier, eat breakfast, drink decaffeinated coffee, have a snack, and hug your kids (Smalley). Finally, women were cajoled to take a mini break, deal with their time problems, and socialize (Langlois). In sum, women are told they should be able to cope because there are many options available to them. This claim places the responsibility of a mother’s stress solely on her and ignores social factors that aggravate her experience or limit her resources. For example, access to reliable universal daycare may reduce a mother’s sense of responsibility and the experience of stress (Gordon). In addition, the dual role of mother and worker leaves many women struggling for time and juggling responsibilities (Hays; Reifman et al.). Lack of time and resources can make it difficult for these women to dedicate any part of their day to activities such as organizing, meditation, exercise, cooking nutritious meals, and ge
ing adequate sleep. Mothers who are unable to engage in the coping strategies suggested by experts may experience guilt and anxiety over the possible negative consequences of their inadequate coping. The themes we identified are only a preliminary analysis of the dominant stress and coping discourse present in popular women’s magazines and parenting Internet sites. For example, a search of the allhealth.com site yielded 3,621 documents relating to stress, a search of parentsplace.com yielded 1,074 documents, and a search of womenfirst.com yielded 200 documents. These themes are representative of the general dominant discourse on stress and coping identified above: (1) stress is

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harmful, (2) stress can cause illness, (3) individuals should be able to cope, (4) individuals cannot avoid stress—it is universal, natural, and (5) individuals are responsible for managing their own stress. When these messages are directed at mothers and women, they interact with the mothering discourse and help to reinforce the myths and messages ingrained in it.

Interrelationship of Discourses on Mothering and Stress Discourses on mothering and stress have become legitimized by their claims to truths. In this sense, discourses are assigned the status of objective knowledge and therefore defy, dispute, and legitimate knowledge (Foucault; Sco
). The manner in which these discourses become so ingrained in the consciousness of mothers is through expert advice that claims to be based on scientific, objective knowledge. It may be that discourses are culturally entrenched and therefore invisible, so that members of society are not even aware that most of what they assume is real is a culturally created myth. Discourses can interrelate with one another in a manner that affects the experience of those to whom they are directed. The discourse on stress in western society posits that individuals are supposed to manage their own stress (Pollock); in addition, the mothering discourse stresses that mothers are responsible for their children’s well being (Thurer). Thus, as a consequence of the belief that stress can affect health and is harmful, mothers not only struggle to manage their own stress but also to seek ways to minimize their children’s stress. This series of expectations aggravates the burden on mothers and may lead them to feel deficient and guilty for not being able to control their environment enough to safeguard their children from the devastating effects of stress. An exploration of both discourses reveals that the stress and coping discourse bears a strong similarity to the mothering discourse and serves as a reinforcement of the embedded myths and messages.

Conclusions Modern constructions of motherhood, and also childhood, are filled with contradictions that are tied to the patriarchal, individualistic nature of western society (Baber and Allen). Some of these contradictions

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are the result of the multiple discourses by which mothers live (for example, career versus motherhood). However, the stress and coping discourse is remarkably similar to the intensive mothering discourse and serves to reinforce its myths and messages. Despite this, not all women assimilate these dominant discourses to the same extent. A mother may resist certain aspects of a discourse in order to maintain the integrity of her identity by creating opposing views (Croghan and Miell). To explore the effects mothering and stress discourses have on individual subjectivities, future research would benefit from examining the strategies women use to negotiate and resist the messages and myths embedded in these dominant discourses. Furthermore, the socio-political context of women’s lives is ignored in both the stress discourse and the mothering discourse because, for the most part, it has been reduced to women’s biological and the psychological experiences. Thus, future studies of mothers’ health and well being need to include consideration of social factors such as income, class, sexuality, and ethnicity.

References Aldwin, C.M. Stress, Coping, and Development. New York: Guilford, 1994. “Anxious Mothers Can Play a Role in Anorexia.” 1999. Retrieved February 22, 2000, from h
p://www.parentsplace.com. Baber, K.M., and K.R. Allen. Women and Families: Feminist Reconstructions, New York: Guilford, 1992. Badinter, E. Mother Love: Myth and Reality. New York: MacMillan, 1981. Bernard, J. The Future of Motherhood. New York: Dial Press, 1974. Berry, M.F. Politics of Parenthood: Childcare, Women’s Rights, and the Myth of the Good Mother. Toronto: Penguin Books, 1993. Bowlby, J. Maternal Care and Mental Health. New York: Shocken Books, 1966. Bowlby, J. A
achment. New York: Penguin Books, 1991. Brazelton, T.B. Touchpoints: Your Child’s Emotional and Behavioral Development. Don Mills, Ont.: Addison-Wesley, 1992. Contra
o, S. “Mother: Social Sculptor and Trustee of the Faith.” In the Shadow of the Past: Psychology Portrays the Sexes. Ed. M. Lewing. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. 226–55. Coontz, S. The Way We Never Were. New York: Basic Books, 1992. ____. The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America’s Changing Families. New York: Basic Books, 1997.

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Croghan, R., and D. Miell. “Strategies of Resistance: Bad Mothers Dispute the Evidence.” Feminism and Psychology 8 (1998): 445–465. Donovan, D. Finding a Balance. 1999. Available online at Ivillage, h
p://www. parenting.ivillage.com/mom/time/0,,432,00.html. Foucault, M. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Writings. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Furnham, A. “Lay Theories of Work Stress.” Work and Stress 11.1 (1997): 68–78. Gilbert, L.A., C.K. Holahan, and L. Manning. “Coping with Conflict Between Professional and Maternal Roles.” Family Relations 30 (1981): 419–426. Gordon, T. Feminist Mothers. London: MacMillan Education, 1990. Handy, J.A. “Theoretical and Methodological Problems within Occupational Stress and Burnout Research.” Human Relations 41.5 (1988): 351–369. Hays, S. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. Yale University Press: New Haven, 1996. Hochschild, A. The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work. Metropolitan Books: New York, 1997. Horwitz, E. “The Experience of Mothers in Stepfather Families.” Unpublished master’s thesis. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada, 1998. Huggins, C. “Fathers’ Job Stress Can Affect Children.” 1999. [At the time of publication, this article is no longer available online. For copies of the article, please contact: Erika Horwitz, [email protected].] Karen, R. “Becoming A
ached.” The Atlantic Monthly Feb. (1990): 35–70. Langois, B. “Surefire tips for Mastering Stress.” Canadian Living Mar. (2000): 71–74. Leach, P. Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five. New York: Random House, 1989. Lennon, M.C. “The Structural Contexts of Stress.” Journal of Social Behavior 30 (1989): 261–268. Lewig, K.A., and M.F. Dollard. “Social Construction of Work Stress: Australian Newsprint Media Portrayal of Stress at Work, 1997–1998.” Work and Stress 15.2 (2001): 179–190. Mishler, E.G. “The Analysis of Interview-Narratives.” Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct. Ed. T.R. Sarbin. New York: Praeger, 1986. 233–55. Newton, T. Managing Stress, Emotion, and Power at Work. London: Sage, 1995. Parker, J.D., M.D. Finkel, and L.C. Indice. “Stress and Illness: The Structure of a Belief System.” Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science 25.2 (1993): 193–204. Pearlin, L.I. “The Sociological Study of Stress.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 30 (1989): 241–256.

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Peterson, G. “Back to School Anxiety: Strategies to Help You Cope.” 1999. Available online at Ask Dr. Gayle, h
p://www.askgayle.com/qa222.htm. Plumbo, P. “Can Work Stress Affect Baby?” 1999. Available online at Ivillage, h
p://www.ivillage/com/newborn/topics/0,,4rn6,00.html. Polasky, L.J., and C.K. Holahan. “Maternal Self-discrepancies, Inter-role Conflict, and Negative Affect Among Married Professional Women with Children.” Journal of Family Psychology 12.3 (1998): 388–401. Pollock, K. “On the Nature of Social Stress: Production of a Modern Mythology.” Social Science Medicine 26.3 (1988): 381–392. Ratner, C. “Concretizing the Concept of Social Distress.” Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless 1.1. (1991): 7–22. Reaney, P. “Anxious Mothers Can Play a Role in Anorexia.” 1999. Available online at CYCNET, h
p://www.cyc-net.org/newsdesk-006207-m.html. Reifman, A., M. Biernat, and E. Lang. “Stress, Social Support, and Health in Married Professional Women with Small Children.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 15 (1991): 431–445. Rice, J.K. “Reconsidering Research on Divorce, Family Cycle, and the Meaning of Family.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 18 (1994): 559–584. Scott, J.W. “Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism.” Conflicts in Feminism. Eds. M. Hirsch and E.F. Keller. New York: Routledge, 1990. 134–148. Sho
er, J. Conversational Realities: Constructing Life Through Language. London: Sage, 1993. Smalley, B. “All-Day Stress Relief.” Woman’s World 7 March (2000): 22. Somer, E. How does my diet measure up stress-wise? 1999. Available online at Allhealth, h
p://www.allhealth.com/quizn.draw/o,4/28,6540_18041,00. html. Spock, B., and M.B. Rothanberg. Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. Stress and Your Emotions.” 1999. [At the time of publication, this article is no longer available online. For copies of the article, please contact: Erika Horwitz, [email protected].] “The Positive Side of Stress.” 1999. Available online at Ivillage, h
p://www. ivillage.co.uk/workcareer/survive/stress/articles/0,,272_156491,00.html. Thurer, S. L. The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Umansky, D. “Escape from the Worry Trap.” Good Housekeeping 230.3 (2000): 148–150. Van Manen, M. Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. London, Ont.: Althouse Press, 1994.

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Weingarten, K. “Radical Listening: Challenging Cultural Beliefs for and about Mothers.” Cultural Resistance: Challenging Beliefs about Men, Women, and Therapy. Ed. K. Weingarten. New York: Haworth Press, 1995. 7–23. Wheeler, B.C. “Lower Your Stress, Relieve Your Kids Allergies.” 1999. [At the time of publication, this article is no longer available online. For copies of the article, please contact: Erika Horwitz, [email protected].] Wortman, C.B., and R.C. Silver. “The Myths of Coping with Loss.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 57 (1989): 349–357.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

A LESSER WOMAN? FICTIONAL REPRESENTATIONS

OF THE

CHILDLESS WOMAN

Enza Gandolfo

I

n 1999, aer reading Susan Johnson’s A Be
er Woman, a memoir of her experience of childbirth and motherhood—a poetic and brave book—I went to a talk Johnson gave in a local bookshop. As it turned out, the all-female audience was predominantly made up of women who were mothers. The women, admirers of Johnson’s book, shared their appreciation of her willingness to tell her story, one of the hidden, never-told stories of motherhood, in which, they said, they could find themselves. In the midst of this discussion a number of women vented their anger against a reviewer who had called A Be
er Woman “self indulgent.” “She wouldn’t understand, she’s childless,” one of the women called out. Oblivious, or indifferent, to the fact that childless women may be si
ing among them, the women joined in a tirade not only against the reviewer but also against all those “selfish and bi
er childless women,” who “can never understand what it’s like to be a mother.” Silenced by the fever of their antagonism, I did not declare myself. Though I longed to stand up and speak in defence of childless women, it seemed impossible to argue with their key premise that a woman without a child could never understand what it was like to be a mother. Discovering myself as the other among this group of women did not surprise me. Most of them were middle-class women of Englishspeaking background; as a woman of non-English-speaking and working-class background, I had oen felt the outsider. However, I found this division between them, as women with children, and myself, as a woman without children, disturbing. I spent several years in my thirties struggling with my inability to bear a child. When I finally

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decided to stop fertility treatments and to accept that I would never have children, I started to question what being childless meant for me. I read novels, autobiographies, and studies of childlessness, searching for the voices of other women without children. And I wrote to explore, examine, and imagine the lives of women who were not, and never would be, mothers. My approach in this chapter is what Rosa Braidotti calls “transdisciplinary” and “nomadic” (Braido
i 1997 76). The first stage begins as I set my own experience in the context of other childless women’s experiences. It winds through sociology, psychology, cultural studies, and feminist theory to explore what it means to be a childless woman in a society where, as Adrienne Rich argued in 1976 and as continues to be true today, “a woman’s status as childbearer [is] the test of her womanhood … motherhood [is] the enforced identity for woman” (Rich 26). Then, the second stage is across a footbridge into literary studies where the journey will venture into fictional territory to focus on the representation of the childless woman in three Australian novels— Eleanor Dark’s Prelude to Christopher, Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story, and Elizabeth Jolley’s The Sugar Mother—and the relationship between these representations and the discourses surrounding childlessness. The third stage—I think of it as reaching base camp—focuses on my own writing. My novel, Swimming, is not the final expedition, even though this chapter closes with an extract from it. As a childless woman who is also a feminist and a writer, my intention is to make visible my experience of being childless so that the stereotypical perceptions of childlessness are exposed and disrupted. Maternal desire and longing is generally believed to be innate and natural, even though many feminists (and others) have argued that what we consider to be “naturally” female (or male) is in fact socially constructed. It is not surprising then that the involuntarily childless—the infertile women—incur pity, while the voluntarily childless—those women who have chosen not to become mothers—are oen viewed as selfish, and are faced with having to defend their “aberrant” choice (Letherby 719). What are the consequences for each woman of remaining childless? “Who are we as we reach middle age?” asks Laurie Lisle in her book Without Child. “No longer maidens, but not yet matrons or matriarchs either, we are something else yet to be named” (Lisle 223). And we remain unnamed, for there is no noun in the English language to

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describe the woman who never has children: “Within language, women [continue to] exist in the category ‘not men’ and then are produced as wives, mothers, lovers, daughters and sisters rather than subjects in their own right” (Schaffer 10). In this chapter, I have chosen to use the adjective childless rather than child-free or non-mother. But all three terms are problematic. Childfree implies a desire to be rid of children and non-mother perpetuates the articulation of womanhood with motherhood and implies a failure to become. I have chosen to use childless because of its common usage in the literature and among women without children, but it is a term weighed down by implications of lack, and it too illustrates the negative nature of the discourses surrounding childlessness. In this chapter I have italicized childless to highlight the constructed nature of that discourse, and to problematize its use to “define” women without children. Over the past 30 years, an increasing (though nowhere near comprehensive) feminist scholarship has developed on mothering, on the discourses of mothering, and involving critiques of the institution of motherhood. Yet feminists have only recently begun to examine the meaning of childlessness in women’s lives. As the feminist Ann Snitow observes: From the beginning, feminists set out to break two taboos: The taboo on describing the complex and mixed experiences of actual mothers and the taboo on the celebration of a childfree life … [but] feminists were be
er able in the long run to a
end to mothers’ voices than they were able to imagine a full and deeply meaningful life without motherhood, without children. (Snitow 145)

The documentation of the experience of childlessness is generally confined to psychology, sociology, oral history, and autobiography. These are personal reflections, case studies, or evidence of what has been and continues to be perceived as the problem of being “other” (Marshall; Sandelowski; Hampson; Peacock; Burke
). Current research on childlessness contends that the childless woman is seen and oen sees herself as “not a whole person” (Ireland 18). The woman who does not have children is believed to be abnormal; she is the damaged woman—infertile, barren, and childless. Even when a childless woman is envied her freedom, it is understood to be at the cost of the most intimate and crucial of human relationships. The childless woman is the other of the other, doubly lacking first as a woman (not

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man) and then as a non-mother (not fully woman). Carolyn Morell, a childless feminist social worker, provides a summary of the negative views towards the childless in what she has identified as the “three dubious discourses” about childless women: “Discourses of derogation: (these women are morally flawed) … discourses of regret (the only future for the childless) … discourses of compensation (not-mothers’ activities and a
achments are simply efforts to make up for the absence of children)” (Morell 76). Despite these negative discourses and the fact that the “motherhood mandate” remains firmly in place, an increasing number of women are remaining childless. In Australia, as in many other developed countries, the birth rate is at its lowest level ever (Gray). The mere existence of an increasing number of childless women offers an opportunity to challenge the discourses that perpetuate the essentialist notion that “woman = mother = womb” (Huffer 10), discourses that are oppressive for all women, whether they have children or not. With this in mind, I head across the footbridge into the territory of fiction, into the realm of the imaginative, in search of childless women whose lives are not the negative opposite of mothering—in search of narratives that challenge those “dubious discourses of childlessness” (Morell 76). There are very few Australian novels directly exploring childlessness. Of the three novels that I have chosen, childlessness is a central theme only in Elizabeth Jolley’s The Sugar Mother. However, all three novels are concerned to some degree with the consequences for women of not following what Judith Wilt, in Abortion, Choice and Contemporary Fiction: The Armageddon of the Maternal Instinct, calls the “sunny narratives”: courtship and marriage leading to motherhood. Eleanor Dark’s Prelude to Christopher is set in Australia in the 1930s, within a small rural community that views motherhood as a woman’s only role, and in some ways her only worth. Nigel, the main protagonist, is a doctor commi
ed to the principles of eugenics as a way of improving social conditions. He is married to Linda. Linda wants to have children but Nigel decides that they will not, because of a strain of madness he fears runs in Linda’s family. Although initially Linda agrees, she soon realizes how important having a child is to her and she appeals to Nigel: “You haven’t the right to deprive me of any hold I have on—on normality. If I were climbing a cliff, you wouldn’t knock away my footholds” (91). Linda’s maternity is the novel’s narrative crisis (Moore 349). For Linda, not having children makes her less of a woman:

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“To be born a woman with a woman’s urge for creation—and to have nothing to give to life but sterility and death! You saw yourself before some fantastic judgement-seat, following women who had lived long and fruitfully … you saw yourself a figure of fun with your angular barren body.” (Dark 181)

Our sympathies are with Linda—she takes over the story as soon as she enters it—but she cannot survive in the world she lives in, and when she commits suicide, we are not surprised. Nigel denies Linda maternity because he considers her a dangerous and difficult woman, but we know there is nothing abnormal about Linda. Even though in the end it seems it is the actual denial of maternity that leads Linda to end her life, that finally drives her “mad,” we suspect that having children would not have made Linda any less difficult or curbed her husband’s desire to control her life. Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story is the story of Theodora Goodman’s life. She is born in the late 1800s on the family station, where she lives until aer her mother’s death. In her fiies, finally free, she sets off on a journey to Europe and America that is really a search for self. Like many of the childless women in novels of the time, Theodora is a spinster. Of course even then single women had children, but we realize early on that this is not going to be Theodora’s fate. While still a child at school one of her spinster teachers says, “Probably you will never marry. We are not that kind.… You will grow up probably ugly, and walk through life in sensible shoes. Because you are honest and because you are barren, you will be both honoured and despised” (63). Theodora has at least two opportunities to form relationships that might have resulted in marriage and children, but each time she destroys that possibility by her actions; marriage and maternity would only come to Theodora if she were able to transform herself into someone else. Theodora, like Eleanor Dark’s Linda, is a strong and intelligent woman. Theodora like Linda is more masculine than feminine; she does not know how to behave as a “normal” woman. Like Linda, she joins others in her disdain of herself: “this thing a spinster,” she says, “which at best, becomes that institution an aunt” (12). As an aunt she has some identity, as a spinster she has none. In the second section of the novel, set in Europe, Theodora meets an array of characters, most of them imaginary, with whom she can live a more exotic and erotic life. Through her relationship with these people, she is finally able to start accepting herself and her past. The

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third part of the novel, set in America, begins with this epigraph from Olive Schreiner: “When your life is most real, to me you are mad.” Is Theodora mad? In the closing chapter of the novel Theodora takes refuge in an empty house and the ghost Holstuis appears to her and says, “They will come for you soon.” He tells her, They will give you warm drinks, simple, nourishing food, and encourage you to relax in a white room and tell your life. Of course you will submit. It is part of the deference one pays to those who prescribe the reasonable life. (283)

Theodora is not able to prescribe to this “reasonable life” and so must accept their assessment that she is mad. There is no room in the world for Theodora, just as there was no room for Linda. In the end she is taken to the asylum; coming to accept herself means accepting she doesn’t fit in—accepting that she will never fit in: Theodora Goodman took her hat and put it on her head as it was suggested she should do. Her face was long and yellow under her great black hat. The hat sat straight, but the doubtful rose trembled and gli
ered, leading a life of its own. (287)

In these two novels the childless women are struggling with the limitations placed on them as women in a patriarchal society. Both are denied motherhood because they are unable to conform, to behave like “normal” women. And these writers, like early writers writing about motherhood—for example, Emily Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell— cannot see a way out for their women characters and so they end the narratives with the woman’s descent into madness or with her death (Heilmann 142). Elizabeth Jolley’s The Sugar Mother, published in the late 1980s and more than 40 years aer Prelude to Christopher and The Aunt’s Story, reflects some of the changes in societal a
itudes and circumstances over that time. Jolley’s childless woman can be herself; she can choose not to have children and survive past the end of the novel—even if not within a heterosexual relationship. As with Prelude to Christopher, a childless marriage is at the centre of this novel; however, in The Sugar Mother the situation is reversed—Edwin Page, a 53-year-old professor, wants children, but his wife Cecilia, a gynecologist who has le to study overseas for 12 months, does not. Edwin confides his regret at being

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childless to his neighbour, Mrs. Bo
s. He lies, telling her Cecilia has had three miscarriages. He never says why they don’t have children, but we know he has not been able to convince Cecilia; he quotes from Euripides: “If only children could be got some other way without the female sex” (26). Of course there is no other way, so Mrs. Bo
s and her daughter Leila move in with Edwin, and Leila becomes the surrogate—or “sugared mother,” as Mrs. Bo
s terms it—and bears a child for him. Via Mrs. Bo
s, Jolley voices the societal a
itudes to the childless; Mrs. Bo
s believes Cecilia will regret not having a family, that she will be “lonesome” (22). She assumes Cecilia’s work is poor compensation for motherhood, but there is no evidence that Cecilia, never diminished by her absence, is suffering in her childlessness. She does not show any signs of regret and is commi
ed to her work, from which it is obvious she derives much satisfaction. She prefers we imagine “studying on the other side of the world” to having to care for the “cats and dogs and bicycles” (5) that Edwin believes would be part of their life with a child. All three writers expose the narrow and stereotyped view the world has of childless women—the dubious discourses of childlessness—and the difficulties facing women who refuse to play a particular role in order to survive. This point is further reinforced in these novels by the narrative positioning of women who are mothers. Here the narrative drama is oen created by a binary logic that pits mother against nonmother—that sets the childless woman and the mother apart. The childless women characters have masculine a
ributes—they are intelligent and strong. This makes them difficult women, and oen there is no place in the world for them. The world belongs to men, and women’s place in it is as mothers. But the mothers in these novels behave badly; they are either ambitious and cruel or naive and stupid. Motherhood, these novelists seem to be saying, obliterates the self, and though a stronger sense of self may ultimately be fatal for the childless woman, it is preferable. White’s Theodora is “a scarecrow in a mushroom hat,” while her sister Fanny is pre
y and “normal.” Fanny marries and has children; she is the sane one. But she is also a woman who “always ask[s] the questions that have answers” (40). She does not have Theodora’s “great understanding” (31). Mrs. Goodman, Fanny and Theodora’s mother, is preoccupied with appearances and is oen cruel to Theodora. Jolley’s Mrs. Bo
s is manipulative and vulgar, and Leila, the child-woman who

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is set up to give her baby away to Edwin, exists only as an object of his desires. Even at the end of the novel when Leila comes to reclaim her baby she is not real, transformed into a mythical Madonna. Nigel’s mother in Prelude to Christopher is overly ambitious for her son, and blames Linda for her son’s problems. She is constantly encouraging Kay, a young nurse, who is in love with Nigel. Linda is continually compared to Kay. Linda is angular, thin, and difficult, while Kay is so, emotional, and pre
y. Kay, the not-yet mother who will marry Nigel aer Linda’s death, the woman that will give birth to the Christopher of the novel’s title, is a silly young woman obsessed with an older man. Linda, Theodora, and even the absent Cecilia, are the heroes. Our sympathies lie with these childless women and we come to despise the “mothers” who work to actively undermine them. Rose Lucas in her discussion of mothers and daughters in Australian fiction tells us that the language of the fictional or the imaginative … offers a discursive space that is relatively unbounded by the paradigms of the phallocentric, in which a potentially new set of interactions … might be envisaged. (Lucas 36)

These three novels expose and challenge “the paradigms of the phallocentric,” but to a large extent they remain in place. Both motherhood and non-motherhood are problematic choices for women that result in a loss of some kind—loss of self, of sanity, or even of life. In Cecilia’s case in The Sugar Mother, it is the possible loss of her marriage, and though by the end of the novel the reader may not consider this much of a loss at all, it raises the question of how a woman can be true to herself and remain within a heterosexual relationship. Aer Susan Johnson’s talk, I contemplated the possible responses I might make to the antagonism those women voiced towards the childless: I could remain silent and continue to resent them, or feel excluded by them, or be angry and dismissive of them. These are all avenues likely to increase the divide between us. Instead, I chose to tell them a story. I am a feminist fiction writer commi
ed to exploring a new set of interactions for mothers and non-mothers, and in the same way that Susan Johnson allowed me to connect with her experience of mothering when she wrote A Be
er Woman, I hope that Swimming will allow them to connect with Kate and her experience of being childless. My experience of being a childless woman and my exploration of what it means to live a full and meaningful life without children has

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been, and continues to be, supported by my friends, mostly women, many of them mothers. My struggle to not be defined by my childlessness is similar to their struggle to not be defined by being a mother. This does not mean that our relationships are always problem-free or without conflict, but I do not see women with children as intrinsically different from women without children. Nicole Brossard reminds us that “if patriarchy can take what exists and make it not, surely we can take what exists and make it be” (103). This has been my intention: to write a novel that will increase the reader’s … sensitivity to the particular details of the pain of other unfamiliar sorts of people.… This process of coming to see other human beings as “one of us” rather than as “them” is a ma
er of detailed description of what we ourselves are like. This is a task not for theory but for genres such as … the novel. (Rorty 1989 xvi)

My intention is to write one childless woman’s narrative not only so the reader will empathize with the particular woman but so she or he may come to appreciate the “positivity of difference” (Braido
i 2002 177) and recognize the limitations of her own position. It is important to me that the readers (female and male) see aspects of themselves in Kate’s story, so that the childless woman may become “one of us” rather than one of “them,” not as another of the same but as “alternative figuration” (Braido
i 2002 13) of the possibility of being woman. I end this chapter with an extract from Swimming, but this is a beginning not an ending; the forging of a new path towards the creation of alternative discourses of woman. Swimming is an active intervention in the discourse that perpetuates the essentialist notion that “women = mother = womb” (Huffer 10) and explores the question posed by Simone de Beauvoir in 1949, and asked by other feminists ever since: “What is a woman?” (de Beauvoir 13). From Swimming: (In this extract Kate, caught up in the grief of her third miscarriage, has been avoiding Lynne who is pregnant with her first child. Lynne here confronts Kate.) Lynne rings every day, but Kate avoids her calls or makes excuses for needing to run off, promising to ring back but never ge
ing round to it. Until, Lynne arrives without warning. “It’s been long enough,” she says, “you have to talk to me.” Kate notices that Lynne’s belly is round and full.

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“I am talking to you.” “Cut the crap,” Lynne demands pushing past Kate and into the kitchen where she sits down at the table, “I’ll have a coffee, strong.” “Coffee is not …” “Don’t start with that stuff just make me a fucking coffee.” Kate concentrates on the coffee making. She takes the coffee from the cupboard and grinds the beans. As they crush, coffee fragrance was across the room. Neither of them say anything. Kate shivers, she can’t stop her hands shaking. This friendship is important to her—vital—but what if Lynne can read her mind. Kate stares out the window at the poplar trees—four of them—as they sway in the breeze, trembling in the distance and she remembers she didn’t like Lynne when they were in primary school—a grubby kid with long plaits and an endless reserve of smart-arse comments. In high school their English teacher pushed them together—a sadistic joke, Kate thought at the time. Kate loved English, loved reading, spent her spare time with a book held up to her face so that it blocked her view of the world. Lynne struggled at school, just scraping through. She had trouble reading. When Mrs. Hedley put them together for a poetry project, Kate was furious. “I hate you too,” Lynne hissed in her ear. “And I don’t fucking care about the stupid project.” Lynne swore all the time—the only person who swore more than Lynne was Kate’s father—when he was drunk. Mrs. Hedley made them sit together every English lesson. On the first day they sat on the outside edges of their chairs careful not to touch. “I know it must be hard—but you can’t write me off because I’m pregnant …” Lynne’s words spiral through the silence. Kate lights the stove and pulls out cups and teaspoons. “We are best friends,” Lynne continues. “You are one of the most important people in my life—and you’re going to be one of the most important people in her life.” Her hand and her eyes rest on her belly. “You can’t escape—no ma
er how much it hurts.” Best friends—yes they became best friends—how did that happen? How had they become friends? Outside the wind picks up and poplars sway and shimmer, from a distance they look like a troop of ethereal dancers. Why didn’t they break? How did they survive the strong winds that blew along the creek? Kate rifles through her memories—two girls on the river bank, one fishing, one reading; her heart beating as she waits at the end of the row in the supermarket while Lynne steals chocolate frogs; swimming together—and then

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racing up to the high diving board, daring each other to jump and the squeals of delight as Lynne hits the water, as Kate shis to the edge of the board, waits for Lynne to swim out of the way and then without hesitating she too jumps; and aer that first time—again and again climbing the ladder, jumping, swimming. “I’m not going anywhere—I want to help if I can but I’m not going away,” Lynne says. Kate wants to yell at Lynne, to warn her to get out, to get away. She feels dangerous as if her thoughts have the power to destroy, the force of Kali’s darkest aspect, devouring life, destructive. “It’s too hard Lynne,” Kate admits reluctantly. “You’re going to be a mother, and this is a happy and exciting time for you. You don’t have to deal with my grief. You need to be around people who are happy.” “God you’re fucking hopeless Kate. I need to be around the people I love—and you’re those people for me. Don’t push me away.” “You don’t understand Lynne—it’s hard … I want to be happy for you but I can’t … I never thought I could be so jealous.” From the percolator comes the gurgle and hiss of coffee rising, and Kate pours them each a cup and then sits down. “You’re jealous. I can understand. Of course, we had all those plans.” “You don’t understand, Lynne. I’m angry. I don’t even understand.” “But I want to understand, we’ve shared every damn shi
y thing all our lives for years … I miss you.” “Sometimes I wish you would miscarry too …” She whispers but Lynne hears her. “Sometimes,” Lynne responds, “I wish I would miscarry too.” “No, you don’t Lynne,” Kate snaps back. “Actually I do. In my dreams I kill the baby. Stuff her in a shoebox and throw her in the river, I wake up shaking, terrified but relieved because I’m not pregnant. When the box floats away you appear and I run into your arms.” “You won’t lose me,” Kate cries. “I promise. And I do want you to have a happy and healthy baby …” She reaches across the table for Lynne’s hands; Kate’s hands entwined with Lynne’s are warm but the rest of her shivers, the icy sting of her dark thoughts and of Lynne’s nightmares caught between membrane and bone will take time to melt.

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References Braido
i, Rosa. “Mothers, Monsters and Machines.” Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. Eds. Katie Convoy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. 59–79. _____. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge and Oxford: Polity, 2002. Brossard, Nicole. The Aerial Le
er. Trans. Marlene Wildeman. Toronto: The Women’s Press, 1988. Burke
, Elinor. The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless. New York: The Free Press, 2000. Dark, Eleanor. Prelude to Christopher. Rushcu
ers Bay, NSW: Halstead Classics, 1934. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Trans. H. Pashley. 1949. New York: Penguin, 1953. 1979. Gray, Darren. “National Birth Rate Plunging.” The Age 11 July 1999: 1. Hampson, Amanda. Ba
les with the Baby Gods: Infertility: Stories of Hope. Sydney and Auckland: Doubleday, 1997. Heilmann, Ann. New Woman Fiction: Women Writing First-Wave Feminism. London and New York: Macmillan Press and St. Martin’s Press, 2000. Huffer, Lynne. Maternal Pasts, Feminist Futures. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Ireland, Mardy S. Reconceiving Women: Separating Motherhood from Female Identity. New York: The Guilford Press, 1994. Jolley, Elizabeth. The Sugar Mother. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1988. Johnson, Susan. A Be
er Woman. Sydney: Random House, 1999. Letherby, Gayle. “Non-Motherhood: Ambivalent Autobiographies.” Feminist Studies 25.3 (1999): 719–729. Lisle, Laurie. Without Child: Challenging the Stigma of Childlessness. New York: Ballantine, 1996. Lucas, Rose. “Telling Maternity: Mothers and Daughters in Recent Women’s Fiction.” Australian Feminist Studies 13.27 (1998): 35–46. Marshall, Helen. Not Having Children. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993. Moore, Nicole. Covert Operations: Abortion in Australian Women’s Fiction 1920s– 1950. PhD thesis. University of Queensland [St. Lucia, Qld], 1997. Morell, Carolyn M. Unwomanly Conduct: The Challenges of Intentional Childlessness. New York and London: Routledge, 1994. Peacock, Molly. Paradise, Piece by Piece. New York: Riverhead Books (Penguin Putman), 1998.

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Rich, Adrienne. On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose 1966–1978. London: Virago, 1978. Rorty, R. Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Sandelowski, Margarete. With Child in Mind: Studies of the Personal Encounter with Infertility. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. Schaffer, Kay. Women and the Bush: Forces of Desire in the Australian Cultural Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Snitow, Ann. “Feminist Analysis of Motherhood.” Encyclopaedia of Childbearing: Critical Perspectives. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1993. White, Patrick. The Aunt’s Story. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1948. Wilt, Judith. Abortion, Choice and Contemporary Fiction: The Armageddon of the Maternal Instinct. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

(MIS)CONCEPTIONS THE PARADOX OF MATERNAL POWER AND LOSS IN TONI MORRISON’S THE BLUEST EYE AND PARADISE Andrea O’Reilly

M

otherhood is a central theme in Morrison’s fiction and is a topic she returns to time and time again in her many interviews and articles. In her reflections on motherhood, both inside and outside her fiction, Morrison articulates a fully developed theory of African-American mothering that is central to her larger political and philosophical stance on black womanhood. Building upon black women’s experiences of, and perspectives on motherhood, Morrison develops a view of black motherhood that is, in terms of both maternal identity and role, radically different from the motherhood practised and prescribed in the dominant culture. In my book Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart, I explore how Morrison defines maternal identity as a site of power for black women that has as its explicit goal the empowerment of children. Motherhood, in Morrison’s view, is fundamentally and profoundly an act of resistance; essential and integral to the black people, and in particular to black women’s fight against racism (and sexism) and their ability to achieve well being for themselves and their culture. Motherlove and motherwork in the dominant ideology of motherhood are rarely, if at all, regarded in this way; rather, the love and work of mothering is seen simply as a private and more specifically an apolitical enterprise. In contrast, motherhood, according to Morrison’s maternal standpoint, has cultural significance and political purpose because motherhood is a site of power for black women and because motherwork is the way by which black people are empowered to survive and resist. In this chapter I examine instances wherein motherhood, as a result of an individual or a community’s loss of African-American values, does not become a site of power for women or empowerment for

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children. In particular, the emphasis will be upon how this inability or failure is signified metaphorically in images and experiences of failed reproduction and fractured relationships. This theme will be examined in her first novel, The Bluest Eye, and her second-to-last novel, Paradise. In The Bluest Eye, reproduction, in particular birth, signifies a black mother’s inability to experience motherhood as a site of power and her subsequent failure to empower/nurture her daughter because of her assimilation into the values of the dominant culture—in particular its definitions of female beauty—and the resulting rejection of the black values that would empower her. In Paradise reproduction signifies a black community’s failure to grant women power in motherhood and allow them to nurture/empower their children because of the town’s identification with the values of the dominant culture wherein power and ownership are valued over those of community and care. In an interview with Bill Moyers in 1989, Morrison describes motherhood as “the most liberating thing that ever happened to me” (Taylor-Guthrie 270–271). Morrison’s view contrasts sharply with “the predominant image of the mother in white Western society [which assumes mothers are] ever-bountiful, ever-giving, self-sacrificing … not destroyed or overwhelmed by the demands of [their] child[ren]” (Bassin 2–3). Motherhood in a western context, as numerous Anglo-American feminist theorists on motherhood have pointed out, is organized as a patriarchal institution that is deeply oppressive to women. Motherhood, for Morrison, is a site of liberation and self-realization, because her standpoint on motherhood is developed from black women’s everyday practices and meaning of motherhood, wherein motherhood is a site of power for black women. More specifically Morrison takes traditional conceptions of black womanhood—what Morrison terms “the ancient properties”—and traditional black values—what she calls the funk— and makes them central to her definition of motherhood as site of power for black women. Black women, Toni Morrison commented in an Essence interview with Judith Wilson, [need to] pay … a
ention to the ancient properties—which for me means the ability to be “the ship” and the “safe harbor.” Our history as Black women is the history of women who could build a house and have some children and there was no problem.… What we have known is how to be complete human beings, so that we did not let education keep us from our nurturing abilities … [t]o lose that is to

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diminish ourselves unnecessarily. It is not a question, it’s not a conflict. You don’t have to give up anything. You choose your responsibilities. (Taylor-Guthrie 135)

In a conversation with Gloria Naylor, Morrison elaborates further: [T]he point is that freedom is choosing your responsibility … it’s choosing the ones you want.… A lady doctor has to be able to say, “I want to go home.” And the one at home has the right to say, “I want to go to medical school.” That’s all there is to that, but then the choices cause problems where there are no problems because “either/or” seems to set up the conflict, first in the language and then in life.… I tried hard to be both the ship and the safe harbor at the same time, to be able to make a house and be on the job market and still nurture the children.… No one should be asked to make a choice between a home or a career. Why not have both? It’s all possible. (Taylor-Guthrie 195, 197)

Morrison’s concept of black woman as ship and safe harbour is developed from what she has termed the ancient properties of traditional black womanhood. Models, manifestations, and metaphors of these ancient properties may be found in the “herstories” of black women. Morrison continues: [I]f women are to become full, complete, the answer may not be in the future, but the answer may be back there. And that does interest me more than the fully liberated woman, the woman who understands her past, not the woman who merely has her way. Because that woman did know how to nurture, and survive.… It seems to me that the most respectable person is that woman who is a healer and understands plants and stones and yet they live in the world. Those people are always strange, when they get to the city. These women know what time it is by looking at the sky. I don’t want to reduce it to some sort of heavy know-how, but it’s paying a
ention to different sets of information, and that information certainly isn’t useful in terms of a career.… It’s a quality that normally one associates with a mammy, a black mammy. She could nurse, she could heal, she could chop wood, she could do all those things. And that’s always been a pejorative word, a bad thing, but it isn’t. That stereotype is bad only

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when people think it’s less.… Those women were terrific, but they were perceived of as beastly in the very things that were wonderful about them. (Taylor-Guthrie 81–82)

The black mammy figure represents for Morrison the “full and complete” manifestations of the ancient properties and thus may be viewed as an archetypical representation of Morrison’s standpoint on black maternal identity. In her article The Convergence of Feminism and Ethnicity in the Fiction of Toni Morrison, Denard argues that “[black women] always maintain, whether they desire it or not, a connection to their ethnic community.” They are the “cultural bearers, they function as a parent … as a sort of umbrella figure in the community not just with [their] children but with all children” (174). Morrison in her maternal standpoint uses the term ancient properties to signify black women who are the cultural bearers, who define themselves in connection with African-American culture and history, and who serve as ambassadors for their people, bringing the past to the present and keeping African-American culture in the community of black people. To have the ancient properties is to live life according to the ways of the foremothers; it is to define oneself according to the script of traditional black womanhood of being both ship and harbour. Morrison, thus, does not endorse the existentialist or power feminism championed by much of Anglo-American feminism. As she said in her interview with Koenen, “[I]f women are to become full, complete, the answer may not be in the future, but the answer may be back there. And that does interest me more than the fully liberated woman, the woman who understands her past, not the woman who merely has her way” (Taylor-Guthrie 81). The feminist stance that Morrison advocates is thus an ethnic and cultural one. Carolyn Denard explains: Among black women, who have historically suffered oppression because of both race and gender, there is usually a simultaneous concern for both these issues. They abhor both sexist and racist oppression. But because of their minority ethnic status, which keeps their allegiance to ancestral group foremost, most shun an advocacy of the kind of political, existential feminism embraced by many women of the majority culture. For black women, their concern with feminism is usually more group-centred than self-centred, more

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cultural than political. As a result, they tend to be concerned more with the particular female cultural values of their own ethnic group rather than with those of women in general. They advocate what may be termed ethnic cultural feminism. (171–172)

In Morrison’s fiction, women who shun the ancient properties of ethnic cultural feminism and embrace Anglo-American definitions of feminism do not achieve what Morrison calls “complete[ness]” and “full[ness]” of self. These qualities are obtained only by those women who live their lives according to the ancient properties of their foremothers. For these women of the ancient properties, motherhood is a site of power wherein mothers can perform the essential and crucial work of empowering children. The two books under discussion portray first a woman, and then a community that has become disconnected from the ancient properties because of identification with values of the dominant culture. In these instances, motherhood is not a site of power wherefrom mothers may empower their children. This loss is represented through images of failed reproduction and in experiences of fractured mother-daughter relationships.

The Bluest Eye This novel is concerned with a mother’s loss of the ancient properties and the devastating consequences of such for herself and her daughter. Of interest to Morrison is how women become disinherited from the ancient properties of traditional black womanhood noted above, and how this makes motherhood a site of disempowerment. Pauline Breedlove’s disconnection from the ancient properties that make motherhood a site of power, though apparent throughout the text, is signified most powerfully by Pauline’s inability to love her daughter upon her birth. This “failure to bond,” to paraphrase the medical diagnosis, becomes in this novel the central metaphor for the loss of maternal power, engendered by assimilation and the mother’s subsequent inability to nurture/empower her daughter. Pauline assumes rather than resists the identity assigned to her by the dominant racist culture. The narrator comments, “You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from

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conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious allknowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had accepted it without question” (34). Readers of the Bluest Eye have not considered why Pauline so readily accepts the dominant culture’s view of her as inferior and unworthy. I suggest that such is the result of her disconnection from her ancient properties. Critic Susan Willis contends that “the problem at the centre of Morrison’s writing is how to maintain an Afro-American cultural heritage once the relationship to the black rural south has been stretched thin over distance and generations” (264). As a young girl in Alabama, Pauline’s life was, literally, full of colour: My whole dress was messed with purple, and it never did wash out. Not the dress nor me. I could feel that purple deep inside me. And that lemonade Mama used to make when Pap came in out the fields. It be cool and yellowish … and that streak of green them June bugs made on the trees. (92)

Pauline talks about how with moving north “everything changed”: “It was hard to get to know folks up here, and I missed my people. I weren’t used to so much white folks” (93). It would seem that geographical dislocation, and the resulting separation from one’s heritage and family, is at the heart of Pauline’s emotional estrangement, which drives her to the movies and eventually leads her to a hatred of her black self. Separated from her rural culture and identifying with the values of the dominant one, Pauline loses what is, in The Bluest Eye, called funkiness: “the … funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of emotions” (68). Disconnected from her motherline, Pauline has lost her funkiness and the ancient properties that would have grounded her in the values of her people and enabled her to resist internalizing the dominant culture’s racist ideology. Pauline’s disconnection from the ancient properties of her foremothers, as noted above, is signified metaphorically in Pauline’s inability to love her daughter upon her birth. Pauline’s relationship with her daughter, her second child, is initially described as a caring and close mother-child attachment. “That second time [pregnant],” Pauline says, “I felt good and wasn’t thinking on the carrying, just on the baby itself. I used to talk to it whilst it be still in the womb. Like good friends we was” (98). “Up til the end,” Pauline tells us, “[she] felt good about that baby” (99). She

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also says that “[she’d] love it no ma
er what it looked like” (98). Once born, the daughter is described as a “big old healthy thing” (99) and is perceived by her mother as a bright and quick child: “They gave her to me for a nursing, and she liked to pull my nipple off right away. She caught on fast.… A right smart baby she was” (99–100). Pauline is also a
racted to, and fascinated by, her newly born daughter: “I used to like to watch her ... eyes all so and wet. A cross between a puppy and a dying man” (100). Although Pauline is impressed by her daughter’s health and quickness and is mesmerized by the child’s facial features, she sees her daughter as ugly: “I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pre
y hair, but Lord she was ugly” (100). Pauline cannot find in her real flesh-and-blood daughter the unborn child of her imagination: “She looked so different from what I thought. Reckin I talked to it so much I conjured up a mind’s eye view of it” (99). Since Pauline spent much of her pregnancy in movie houses, the text suggests her “mind’s eye view” of the unborn child was formed in terms of white definitions of beauty and acceptability. The child imagined in the womb is light skinned, fine featured, but the real Pecola is born dark. Pauline’s birth experience also contributes to Pauline’s perception of her daughter as ugly. For the birth of her second child Pauline chooses a hospital over a home birth “so [she] could be easeful” (98). Ironically, though not surprisingly, Pauline’s hospital birth is anything but easeful. As a poor, black woman Pauline is treated with contempt and indifference by the medical staff; in the hospital the doctors talk “nice friendly talk” to the white women, but neither speak to Pauline nor even make eye contact with her. To the doctors she is merely “[one] of these here women … [who] deliver right away and with no pain. Just like horses” (99). While Pauline resists the denial of her subjectivity and the dehumanization of her birth experience by forcing one doctor to look her in the eye and by “moan[ing] something awful … to let them know having a baby was more than a bowel movement” (99), her self-perception is, nonetheless, structured through the degradation of her labour experience. So when her child is born, and it is both black and female, Pauline sees it as she herself was seen while in labour. Significantly, when Pauline a
empts to convey her surprise at seeing her actual daughter, in contrast to the image she had of the baby while pregnant, she does so by way of analogy to her own mother and herself as daughter: “So when I seed it, it was like looking at a picture of your mama when she was a girl. You knows who she is, but she don’t look the same” (99). This analogy invokes the theme of the need for the

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parents to love themselves if they are to love their children. At the movies and while in labour, Pauline learns that her blackness renders her undesirable; it therefore is not surprising that when Pauline holds her black daughter in her arms she perceives her as ugly. The Bluest Eye exemplifies the need for mothers to maintain a strong authentic self by way of the ancient properties so that they may nurture the same in their daughters. In her article, appropriately entitled “Difficult Survival: Mothers and Daughters in The Bluest Eye,” Joyce Pe
is argues that Pauline fails at nurturing her daughter because she herself is unnurtured; quoting Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born, Pe
is writes: “The nurture of daughters in a patriarchy calls for a strong sense of self-nurture in the mother” (27). Disconnected from her motherline and, in particular, the teachings of the ancient properties, Pauline is rendered vulnerable to the dominant white supremacist ideology which results in the effacement and disparagement of her self as a black woman. “It is not simply,” to quote Rich again, “that … mothers feel both responsible and powerless. It is that they carry their own guilt and self-hatred over to their daughters’ experiences” (224). This generational continuation of female self-hatred explains and is signified by Pauline’s inability to love her black female child at birth.

Paradise The Bluest Eye considers an individual woman’s inability to achieve power in motherhood and empower her daughter as a result of assimilation in the dominant culture that caused her to see herself and her daughter as unlovable. Paradise examines a black community’s failure to nurture its own because of its identification with values of the dominant culture and the subsequent denial, disparagement, and displacement of traditional black values, in particular the funk and the ancient properties. This happens precisely because Haven, and later Ruby, is not a community—modelled as it is on patriarchal values of power, status, ownership, and control. These patriarchal values are signified by the Oven’s words and enacted through the town’s philosophy of racial seclusion and selection. In so doing, the town Fathers have exorcized the ancient properties and the funk that Morrison positions at the centre of black resistance and empowerment. In Haven and later Ruby, the sustaining values of the funk are lost through valorization of masculine values and the subsequent marginalization of women and the feminine.

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The erasure of the ancient proprieties and the funk is represented by reproductive loss and fracture. None of the town women experience fulfilment or connection through their maternal function. This absence of connection and fulfilment is symbolically marked by the absence of baby’s breath flowers in Arne
e’s bridal bouquet. Billie Delia, as the text tells us, “had suggested baby’s breath to fla
er the yellow buds but was astonished to find that no one garden had any. No baby’s breath anywhere” (149). For each of the town women, motherhood is associated with loss and harm, pain and suffering. Both Arne
e and Soanne seek an abortion at the convent (102). Denied an abortion by Connie, Soanne has a miscarriage—brought on, Soanne believes, by “the evil in her heart” (240). Arne
e, also “advised to wait her time,” brought on a premature delivery by “bash[ing ]the life out of [her baby]; “inserted [a mop handle] with a rapist’s skill—mercilessly, repeatedly—between her legs” (249, 250).The unborn baby, “[f]eisty, outraged, rigid with fright … tried to escape the ba
ering and ba
ered ship that carried it.… Had it not tried to rescue itself , it would break into pieces or drown in its mothers’ food. So he was born, in a manner of speaking, too soon and fatigued by the flight” (250). Close to 20 years later, Soanne’s “sweet coloured boys, unshot, unlynched, unmolested, unimprisoned,” Scout and Easter, are killed in Vietnam within two weeks of each other (101). Dovey Morgan is unable to bear children. Of Sweetie and her sickly children we are told that “[f]or six years she slept on the pallet near the cribs, or in bed with Jeff, her breath threaded, her ear tunnel ready, every muscle braced to spring.… [I]t was ge
ing harder and harder to watch and sleep at the same time” (125). Billie Delia took refuge in the convent aer “a quarrel with her mother turned ugly” (152). Pat Best, Billie Delia’s mother, reflecting upon the fight with her daughter, discerned that “[s]he, the gentlest of souls, missed killing her own daughter by inches.… [T]rying to understand how she could have picked up that pressing iron, Pat realized that ever since Billie Delia was an infant, she thought of her as a liability somehow” (203). Pat Best’s mother, Delia, the woman “with no last name [and] of sunlight skin,” was the only person other than Ruby to die in either Haven or Ruby. Delia and her daughter Faustine both died in childbirth (197, 198). Maternal loss, whether it is the loss of mother or loss of children, is what brings Mavis, Seneca, and Pallas to the convent. Mavis, fleeing aer the death of her twins, arrives at the convent when her car runs out of gas. Seneca is abandoned at the age of five by Jean, her mother

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whom she believed was her sister. Aer waiting a week for Jean’s return, Seneca, “demoralized by unanswered prayers, bleeding gums, and hunger, she gave up goodness, climbed up on a chair and opened the bread box. Leaning against the box of Lorna Doones was an envelope with a word she recognized instantly: her own name printed in lipstick … carried it [the le
er] for the rest of her life” (128). When Seneca comes to realize that she is not able to help Eddie, there is “no danger of tears. She had not shed one even when she found Jean’s le
er next to the Lorna Doones. Well cared for, loved, perhaps, by the mothers in both of the foster homes, she knew it was not her self that the mothers had approved but the fact that she took reprimand quietly, ate what she was given, shared what she had and never ever cried” (135). With five hundred in her pocket aer her three weeks with Norma Fox, Seneca catches car rides as a stowaway, “travelling resolutely nowhere, closed off from society, hidden among quiet cargo—no one knowing she was there” (138). The sight of Sweetie, “a black woman weeping on a country road broke her heart all over again,” (126), causes Seneca to jump from the truck and follow her to the convent. Seneca’s travels are prompted by another woman’s maternal loss. Seneca arrives in Wichita to ask Mrs. Turtle for money to help get her son Eddie, Seneca’s boyfriend, out of prison. Significantly, in terms of the theme of reproductive loss, Eddie is serving time for the murder of a child. Mrs. Turtle, as she explains to Seneca, “wasn’t about to cash in the savings bonds her husband le her for anybody, let alone somebody who drove a car over a child and le it there, even if that somebody was her only son” (133). However, later when Seneca returns to use the phone, we are told that she heard a “flat-out helpless mothercry—a sound like no other in the world.… Alone, without witness, Mrs. Turtle had let go her reason, her personality, and shrieked for all the world.…” (134). The final woman to arrive at the convent, Pallas comes as a consequence of her estrangement from her mother. At the age of 16, Pallas with her new and much older boyfriend Carlos, “the movie-star looking maintenance man at her high school,” (166) “elope” in a car “crammed with Christmas presents” to visit her mother, who lives 700 miles away and whom Pallas has not seen in 13 years. Unknown to Pallas, Dee Dee, her mother, and Carlos develop a relationship: “Carlos was closer in age to Dee Dee than to her. Had she noticed,” the text tell us, “she could have prevented the grappling bodies exchanging moans in the grass, unmindful of any watcher. Then there would have

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been no stupefied run to the Toyota, no blind drive on roads without destinations, no bumping, sideswiping trucks. No water with so things touching beneath” (169). On the run, Pallas hides in a swamp. The memory of the cold water with fearful “touching things” below haunts her and she later dreams of black water seeping into her mouth (163, 173). Water, suggestive as it is of the amniotic fluids of the womb, frequently signifies healing and cleansing, particularly in its association with rebirth. In this instance the water is cold and terrifying, signifying not maternal trust or love but its opposite: maternal deceit and abandonment. Pallas’s wounding, like that of Mavis and Seneca, is caused by reproductive harm or absence of a maternal relationship and signifies the suffering of women in a patriarchal culture. As well, it underscores the maternal loss of the town women and thus symbolizes the denial and repression of the funk in the town of Haven and later Ruby—a town that, as Mavis observed, looked “as though no one lived there” (45). However, through the love of Consolata, the convent women do eventually join together and create from their own individual losses a maternal community that heals the individual women and affirms the communal values of the funk that the town has outlawed. As Pauline’s rejection of her daughter at her birth signifies her assimilation in the dominant culture and the loss of the values of the ancient properties and funk that would empower her in motherhood and enable her to empower her daughter, so too do the bareness, abortions, miscarriages, sickly children, and dead babies alongside the many fractured mother-daughter relationships in Paradise serve as metaphors for the denial and repression of the ancient properties and funk in the black town that would create community, make motherhood a site of power for women, and enable them to nurture and empower their young. The question that may be asked is why Morrison portrays failed motherhood—if her concern is with how motherhood in black culture, through the values of the funk and the ancient properties, empowers women and enables them to empower children to survive and resist a racist culture whole and intact. I believe, as I argue fully in my book, that Pauline’s inability and the town of Ruby’s failure to provide nurturance actually confirms and affirms the truth and significance of Morrison’s maternal theory. The absence of nurturance/ empowerment demonstrates the importance of such by describing the devastation, both personal and cultural, that occurs when mothers, as an individual in The Bluest Eye or as a community as in Paradise,

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do not perform the crucial work of nurturing/empowering children. The absences therefore bespeak not a failure of the vision; rather they signify a narrative strategy, one that seeks to stress the importance of mothering by showing the loss and suffering that occurs in its absence. Too oen, we understand or appreciate the importance of something only in its absence. Morrison’s dedication in her second novel Sula bespeaks this theme: “It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you. This is for Ford and Slade [her sons], whom I miss although they have not le me.” This, I want to suggest, is the narrative strategy of The Bluest Eye and Paradise. Indeed, Morrison emphasizes the importance of mothering by way of images and experiences of failed mothering. This is the paradox of her maternal vision: a (mis)conception.

References Bassin, Donna, Margaret Honey, and Meryle Mahrer Kaplan, eds. Representations of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale UP, 1994. Denard, Carolyn. “The Convergence of Feminism and Ethnicity in the Fiction of Toni Morrison.” Critical Essays on Toni Morrison. Ed. Nellie Y. McKay. Boston: G. K. and Co., 1988. Morrison, Toni. “A Conversation with Toni Morrison.” Interview by Judith Wilson. Essence July 1981: 84–86. Reprinted in Conversations with Toni Morrison. Ed. Danielle Taylor-Guthrie. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994. _____. The Bluest Eye. New York: Washington Square, 1970. _____. Paradise. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. _____. Sula. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. O’Reilly, Andrea. Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004. Pe
is, Joyce. “Difficult Survival: Mothers and Daughters in The Bluest Eye.” Sage 4.2 (1987): 26–29. Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born. London: Virago Press, 1977. Taylor-Guthrie, Danille, ed. Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1994. Willis, Susan. “Eruptions of Funk: Historicizing Toni Morrison.” Black Literature and Literary Theory. Ed. Henry L. Gates, Jr. New York: Methuen, 1984. 263–283.

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CHAPTER NINE

HUMAN AND DIVINE MOTHERS IN HINDUISM Tamara Ditrich

H

induism is a problematic concept: it is a construct, being mainly the result of western colonization and the dominant social role of brahmanical forms of religion (King 96–142). In this chapter the term Hinduism loosely presents the numerous multi-faceted religions of India that have very fluid boundaries, share many common features, and have been freely borrowing from one another throughout history. However, despite many differences and an extremely rich variety of expressions, they have remained closely related. The dialectical relationship between religion and society seems particularly evident in Hindu social practices: the links between Hindu goddesses and the role of women in Hindu society are very striking, and so is the interrelatedness between human and divine mothering. When exploring the interplay of divine and human mothering in this context, as in any other context, it is important to be aware of the many parameters in this relationship, such as the historical and socio-economic context (that is, a particular time and place in history, the class and economic system of that period), the locality (village/city), and particular religious background. This chapter1 focuses on the characters of two popular Hindu goddesses: the benevolent, wifely goddess Sita, and the terrifying, ambiguous goddess Kali. Sita is the prominent heroine and deity of the Vaishnava tradition and she is oen regarded as the divine manifestation of Shri-Lakshmi, the wife of the great god Vishnu. Kali is usually an independent goddess but she is also associated with another great male deity of Hinduism, Shiva, and thus linked with the Shaiva tradition. The sources for their mythology are mainly literary and they were composed, or at least edited, by educated male elites of India, thus presenting the male vision of the divine. In this chapter I will explore

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the roles of mothers, wives, and daughters as prescribed in the Laws of Manu—one of the most important constructs of Hindu social and religious life. The Laws of Manu that we know at present was probably composed in the beginning of the Common Era by the male priests of that time and was also meant mainly for the audience of priests. It presents an a
empt to prescribe the correct conduct, rights, and duties for Hindus, covering all aspects of life. This chapter outlines the interrelatedness, and the parallels and dichotomies between the roles of women as constructed in the Laws of Manu, and in Hindu mythology and theology.

Divine Wives and Mothers Hindu goddesses play very diverse and multi-faceted roles—some have limited powers and others are all-powerful, some are presented as subordinate consorts to the male gods, and others occupy that supremacy themselves. In some goddesses the divine is revealed as beautiful, blissful, and sublime; in others, as terrible, fierce, and painful. Some clearly belong to the controlled, brahmanical social order, others to the uncontrolled, wild fringes of society. Many scholars, western and Indian, assume that all Hindu goddesses are manifestations of one Great Goddess or one underlying feminine principle. This assumption is also based on several Hindu texts, mostly belonging to later Hinduism.2 Kinsley (1988 4–5, 197–198) rightly challenges the view that all goddesses are one, arguing that the male Hindu gods have long been recognized and presented by most scholars as individual deities and there is no reason why the female deities should not be viewed similarly. Hindu goddesses, though diverse in their characters, can be divided into two groups, married and unmarried, and, as pointed out by Babb (215–230), the benevolent goddesses are generally presented as good, subordinate wives whereas the malevolent ones are usually unmarried. This division reflects the fear of female sexuality and the need for a husband to control it, as is well illustrated in many myths. This fear can be easily observed in Hindu society and is clearly expressed in the Laws of Manu: women are perceived as powerful and dangerous, they have to be tamed by their husbands, and only in marriage, under male supervision, can they express their sexuality in acceptable ways.

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Kali Kali is one of the most prominent Hindu goddesses, and in some parts of India, for example, Bengal, her popularity is outstanding: for millions of worshippers she represents the highest manifestation of the divine. She is a dangerous, wild, bloodthirsty, violent deity, oen associated with blood, destruction, death, and cremation. Her appearance is terrifying: she is very dark and frightening, usually portrayed naked, with lolling tongue and fanglike teeth, adorned with a garland of human heads, holding a sword, dancing madly and laughing, and intoxicated from drinking the blood of her victims. She is associated with the uncivilized margins of Hindu society, her abode being the ba
lefield or the cremation ground. As Kinsley says: She represents, it seems, something that has been pushed to its ultimate limits, something that has been apprehended as unspeakably terrifying, something totally and irreconcilably “other.” She seems “extreme.” (1975 82)

In later Hinduism many a
empts have been made to see Kali as a manifestation of one Great Goddess or as an active, female aspect of the god Shiva. This view has been accepted and reiterated by many western and Indian scholars to the present day. But even a brief encounter with Kali’s mythology and theology leaves no doubt that she has strong, individual characteristics and an identity of her own. Kali has many faces: she is a destructive goddess, uncontrolled lover, and a gentle mother. When associated with a male god she is always with Shiva, a wild and ambiguous god. This reflects an a
empt to place Kali into the mainstream Hindu traditions by subjecting her to Shiva through marriage, the usual way of taming a wild goddess. In many stories they appear dancing together, usually in a tumultuous cosmic dance, threatening to destroy the world. Although Shiva defeats her in their dance contests she is never totally subdued by him. In most Hindu traditions Kali is uncontrollable, and when portrayed with Shiva she is oen depicted in a dominant position: standing on Shiva, engaging him in sexual intercourse, or provoking him into dangerous and destructive behaviour. In the Devi-bhagavata-purana Kali reveals to Shiva that she is the universal goddess, the creator and destroyer of the universe. Her dominant position is most clearly expressed in the Tantric tradition and Shakta devotional movements.

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Her character is completely contrary to the expected social roles of women in Hindu society as prescribed in the orthodox Hindu Law Books. Kali is free from all social norms and expectations. She is associated with blood and death, both regarded by mainstream Hindu society as the most polluting aspects of life, requiring rituals of purification. Kali is usually portrayed naked, with wild, dishevelled hair, in complete contrast to Hindu social convention that expects women to look modest, with their hair tightly bound. Kali is also sexually powerful and aggressive. With her long, lolling tongue she is portrayed as a consumer of blood, demons, and sacrificial offerings. Kripal (243–252) interprets her tongue in the Tantric context as representing sexual gratification and consumption of the forbidden— that is, enjoying what society regards as forbidden or polluted. In her mythology Kali has no motherly role; she does not give life but rather takes life and feeds on life. There are only a few stories where Kali has some motherly a
ributes, such as the Linga-purana, a sacred text of the Shaiva tradition (1.106.20–28), where she is mothering her husband. In this story Kali killed a powerful demon and saved the world. Aer the ba
le, drunk on the blood of killed demons, she could not stop raging, and was threatening to destroy the world herself. To pacify her Shiva appeared in the ba
lefield as an infant, helplessly crying. Seeing him distressed Kali picked him up and nursed him, and she became calm. This is how Shiva tamed and pacified her and prevented the destruction of the universe: her disguised husband provoked her motherly feelings. Her devotees oen act like a helpless child and address her as the Great Mother. In the devotional Shakta tradition, most common in Bengal, Kali is usually approached as a mother. In her devotee’s eyes, she is the ultimate Mother who has to be accepted and loved by her children, despite being wild and destructive. Only through complete surrender and total child-like devotion can the fear of her be overcome (Kinsley 1975 120–1). As a loving mother, she can comfort her children, if they totally surrender, with unconditional love and devotion. There have been many a
empts to interpret Kali from various perspectives—cultural, political, sociological, and psychological. Psychologists, mainly Freudian and Jungian, often see Kali as the archetype of the Great Mother (Neumann 147–72) or a devotee’s regression to childhood and non-individuality (Zimmer 213). Kakar (173) and other psychologists interpret that Kali provides her (male) devotees with a ritual and symbolic integration of the two faces of

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Hindu motherhood: the “good” and the “bad,” the trust and the fear, the loving care and the fear of abandonment. Kinsley (1975 132–149) argues that Kali needs to be interpreted on her own plane of reference, as a representation of the Hindu vision of reality and of the divine. She expresses several central Hindu themes. She depicts the illusionary nature of the world, which is just a magical creation, and she shows the path beyond it by presenting the unpredictable, frightening “other” dimensions of this world, thus urging one to seek the Eternal. Her identification with death reminds her devotees of the finite nature of everything in this world. The person who has fully accepted her frightening side becomes child-like, open, flexible, and delighted in the world, which is seen as Kali’s play. As Kinsley says: Kali is Mother to her devotees not because she protects them from the way things really are but because she reveals to them their mortality and thus releases them to act fully and freely, releases them from the incredible, binding web of “adult” pretense, practicality, and rationality. (1975 145–146)

Kali is undeniably one of the most non-maternal goddesses of Hindu mythology, but she is also one of the goddesses most oen approached as the ultimate divine Mother.

Sita If Kali oen personifies the “bad mother” then Sita is certainly a perfect (male) construct of a “good mother.” Sita, the devoted wife of Rama, is the most popular heroine of the great Indian epic the Ramayana, a significant literary work that has had a profound influence on Indian society and the cultures of Southeast Asia. The main story of this epic concerns Prince Rama and his wife Sita: it narrates how he was disinherited and exiled, accompanied by his wife and brother, to the wilderness for 14 years; how his wife Sita was abducted by the mighty demon Ravana, and how her husband Rama heroically rescued her. Sita is an ancient Indian goddess who was known long before the Ramayana was composed. She was a goddess of the ploughed fields: the word sita means “furrow” (Kinsley 1988 67–70). Since the composition of the Ramayana, she has been almost entirely associated

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with Rama, representing his exemplary wife. The early Ramayana does not emphasize her divinity, but in later vernacular versions of the story she has become increasingly identified as the divine manifestation of Shri-Lakshmi, one of the most benevolent, demure, and good-natured deities of Hinduism (Kinsley 1988 65). Sita stands in Indian culture as the divine model of the perfect wife and forms an important part of Indian psyche: From earliest childhood, a Hindu has heard Sita’s legend recounted on any number of sacral and secular occasions; heard her qualities extolled in devotional songs; and absorbed the ideal feminine identity she incorporates through the many everyday metaphors and similes that are associated with her name. Thus, ”She is as pure as Sita” denotes chastity in a woman, and “She is a second Sita,” the appreciation of a woman’s uncomplaining self-sacrifice. If, as Jerome Bruner remarks, “In the mythologically instructed community there is a corpus of images and models that provide the pa
ern to which the individual may aspire, a range of metaphoric identity,” then this range, in the case of a Hindu woman, is condensed in one model. And she is Sita. (Kakar 64)

Sita has no independence: her status is defined entirely in relation to her husband Rama. She is a perfect pativrata—a virtuous, totally devoted wife, constantly worshipping her husband—the ideal wife as described in the Laws of Manu: “A virtuous wife should constantly serve her husband like a god … it is because a wife obeys her husband that she is exalted in heaven” (5 154–155).3 Throughout the epic, Rama is considered the ideal king and perfect husband, although he treats his wife abusively: he doubts her chastity, he allows her to undergo the ordeal by fire, and later he banishes her from his kingdom, though she is pregnant with his unborn sons. And throughout these ordeals Sita remains devoted to him, and blames only herself for her misfortunes. Her role as a mother of children is insignificant in comparison to her role as a wife. Apart from mentioning that she gave birth to twin sons when she was in exile, the text is silent about her mothering of her children. The epic is entirely focused on her mothering of her husband—she is a perfect (male) construct of a “good mother.” It is in her relationship to others, primarily to her husband, and in her complete sacrifice of self-will that the ideal feminine role has been

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constructed in Hindu society. All women’s religious practices—prayers, sacrifices, fasts, and pilgrimages—are for the benefit and salvation of her husband and for procreation of sons. Sita represents a model par excellence of a perfect wife, and Hindu women have been strongly influenced by that model to the present day.

The Laws of Manu The Laws of Manu is one of the earliest literary sources providing valuable information on all aspects of Hindu social structure, family life, and religion. Reputedly the first Hindu legal text, it has been regarded as an authority on most Hindu social, legal, and religious ma
ers. It is an important construct of Hindu religion and society. The Laws of Manu is the priests’ vision of how life should be lived, reflecting to some extent the social circumstances of that time: we do not know how the text was really applied, but a large part of it was probably wishful thinking rather than a description of reality. The Laws of Manu gives much a
ention to the complexities of family life and the position of women. The text became, and remains, the basis of the Hindu marriage code. It depicts women both in general and in specific roles as daughters, wives, mothers, and widows. The text expresses a firm belief in a natural hierarchical order of society. There is no “universal human nature,” and there is no law that would be common for all human beings. Therefore all the laws are given only in the context of class, gender, and stages of life, always with male priests on the top of the social hierarchy. The text views women as naturally inferior to men: women’s nature is defined as untrustworthy and corrupted and therefore women are unfit for any independence. “It is the very nature of women to corrupt men here on earth; for that reason, circumspect men do not get careless and wanton among wanton women (2.213). By running aer men like whores, by their fickle minds, and by their natural lack of affection, women are unfaithful to their husbands even when they are zealously guarded. Knowing that women’s nature is like this, as it was born at the creation by the Lord of Creatures, a man should make the utmost effort to guard them (9.15–17). Even women from a man’s own family are viewed as a dangerous sexual threat to him: “No one should sit in a deserted place with his mother, sister, or daughter; for the string cluster of the sensory powers drags away even a learned man” (2.215).

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A woman is always the property of men, first of her father and then of her husband, and she is oen listed together with other objects that a man possesses. At the same time, a woman’s body is a source of pollution: blood from her body—from menstruation, miscarriage, or giving birth—is extremely polluting, especially for priests; even looking at a woman menstruating or giving birth demands ritual cleansing (4.40–44). Though women are represented in these ways, the Laws of Manu gives the greatest a
ention to the role of the wife—it is presented as the most important role in a woman’s life. The wife’s dependence is not only economic but extends to all areas, including religion and, according to the Laws of Manu, the focus of a woman’s religious practice should be the worship of her husband: “[a] virtuous wife should constantly serve her husband like a god.… It is because a wife obeys her husband that she is exalted in heaven” (5.154–155). Chastity seems to be the most important feature of a “good” wife, and also the main factor in her spiritual salvation: “A virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has died goes to heaven.…”(5.160); “A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is an object of reproach in this world; (then) she is (re)born in the womb of a jackal and is tormented by diseases born of her evil” (5.164). The text allows a widower to remarry as soon as the funeral rites for his deceased wife are completed, but prohibits remarriage of widows (5.161–162). The fate of widows was, and still is, extremely miserable. In the medieval period it was regarded as the highest fulfilment for a widow to end her life on her husband’s funeral pyre (the custom of sati). The prohibition of remarriage of widows, although legally nullified since 1856, still affects Hindu society, especially among the upper classes where it is socially unacceptable for a widow to remarry. The greatest expectation from a wife is the mothering of her husband and the bearing of sons: only a son can perform rituals for his ancestors in the patriarchal family structure (9.137–138). In her role as a good wife and mother (of sons) a woman is compared to the great goddess Lakshmi: There is no difference at all between the goddesses of good fortune who live in houses and women who are the lamps of the houses, worthy of reverence, and greatly blessed because of their progeny. (9.26)

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The mother’s relationship with children is not much discussed. In talking about mothers the text always implies mothers of son(s) and mothers are presented as passive producers of sons.4 There is an ambivalence in the mother-son relationship: on the one hand the woman is dependent, on the other hand there is the apotheosis of the mother—she has to be venerated and obeyed by her sons. The emotional link between mother and son reverses the roles between man and woman; the mother exercises considerable influence on all his decisions (Mies 102). There is, indeed, a conflict between the two sets of rules: the son should obey the mother and the mother should obey the son. The rule prescribing that the mother should obey the son may represent an a
empt to check the great influence of mothers on sons that actually existed and still exists in Indian society (Mies 46). By contrast, the status of a mother of daughters only is almost equal to the status of a childless woman: “A barren wife may be superseded in the eighth year; one whose children have died, in the tenth; one who bears (only) daughters, in the eleventh.…”(9.81). A daughter is a misfortune for a mother, especially if she has no sons. It is considered to be the wife’s fault if she produces only daughters. Daughters are discussed mainly in the context of marriage laws—how a father should marry off his daughter to a man of the same class, according to the rules of his class. While staying with her parents, a daughter should be always strictly controlled. One of the most important reasons for this constant supervision is the preservation of her chastity: a daughter’s virginity is crucially important. The father makes all decisions about his daughter and gives her away in marriage. Child-marriage is encouraged: “A thirty-year-old man should marry a twelve-year-old girl who charms his heart, and a man of twenty-four an eight-year-old girl” (9.94). Daughters are also mentioned in the context of property and inheritance: patrilineal law is advocated in all respects—the lineage continues through the eldest son. If a man has no son he may appoint his daughter’s son to continue the lineage for religious purposes (9.127). Only in this context can a daughter be regarded as equal to a son (9.130): if a man dies sonless, his daughter’s son should inherit his entire property (9.131), and take on the duty to perform all rituals for ancestors of his mother, and of his father (9.139). The inheritance right is her son’s; she herself has no rights over the property. The text is silent about the mother-daughter relationship, apart from a few brief passages on a daughter’s inheritance of her mother’s

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property (9.192–193; 9.194–195). Since daughters were married off as children, the relationship between mother and daughter was not as clearly defined as the mother-son relationship. The mother’s task was to prepare the daughter for her future role as a daughter-in-law: she had to train her to be obedient and subservient to her future in-laws since she would fill the lowest position in her in-laws’ family until she gave birth to a son. From the earliest historical records to the present day a consistent strong preference for sons has been expressed all over India. All Hindu texts give abundant evidence of strong patriarchal values and cultural devaluation of girls and women. The birth of a son is always rejoiced at, whereas the birth of a daughter is regarded as a sorrowful event. The religious roots of this can be found in the oldest recorded Hindu texts. A son has a ritual significance in securing a place for his ancestors in heaven, whereas a daughter is considered an economic burden because a dowry is expected upon marriage. Moreover, because the daughter leaves her parents’ home, she does not contribute to her family’s income. It is obvious that the oppression of women in modern India— pronounced preference for male infants (resulting in an unbalanced sexratio in India), child-marriage, dowry,5 abuse of widows, etcetera—was articulated in the Laws of Manu.

Wives and Mothers Feminine ideals of past and present Hindu society centre around marriage and children; the sorrow of unmarried or childless women is well recorded in all periods of Indian history. The woman’s role is always presented in her relationship to others, primarily to her husband, and in her complete sacrifice of self-will. This is reflected in women’s religious practices, which usually focus on longevity for her husband and for many sons. The Laws of Manu and the Ramayana both prescribe the role of wife as the most important role in a woman’s life. Both texts emphasize the rights and duties of wives rather than mothers, and express the same image of social perfection for women: although a married woman should produce sons (not daughters!), all her devotion and affection must go to her husband. Only through “husband worship” could the wife a
ain spiritual salvation. It is obvious that both texts were composed by the male upper classes of India. The Laws of Manu was composed by the male priests

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of that time, and the Ramayana, though initially kshatriya literature and addressing a primarily kshatriya audience (that is, the politically dominant class), became, during its oral and later wri
en transmission, increasingly appropriated by the brahmanical classes of India (Pollock 9). Not only the Ramayana but also other myths and theologies within Vaishnava traditions reflect the subordination and control of femininity, as do the heroines and goddesses of the Vaishnava tradition. It is important to remember, when studying early literary sources, that they were mainly literary constructs of a social order as envisaged by men from the upper classes, belonging to the brahmanical Hindu tradition, and also that they were meant for a similar audience of men. Men have been almost exclusively controlling public and formal religious practices and institutions from the earliest recorded history of Hinduism till present day. We have to be aware, too, of the discrepancy between social norms wri
en by male priests and actual social practices. Women of all classes belonged to unrecorded, illiterate Hindu traditions—they had no access to study mainstream Hindu religious texts, which were mostly wri
en in Sanskrit. The numerous ancient cults of village mother-goddesses, probably of pre-Aryan origins, continue to play an important role in Indian villages, and belong to unrecorded women’s traditions (Mies 38–41). If hardly any historical records of women’s religions exist, there is certainly a rich body of evidence of women’s traditions in today’s Hinduism, which is a continuation of the past beliefs and religious practices, handed down orally through countless generations of women—for example, rituals around childbirth (Jacobsen), family, and household rites (Wadley), rituals of middle-aged women (Freeman), the well-known women’s active role in numerous devotional traditions, and so on. The dominant recorded men’s religious traditions and unrecorded women’s traditions have been parallel and interrelated, encompassing tensions, ambivalence, and contradictions, as well as a continuous process of integration—they have been influencing one another and freely borrowing from one another throughout history. The recorded texts, like the Laws of Manu and the Ramayana, reflect the ever-present tension in Indian society between the dominant brahmanical patriarchal order and non-orthodox, non-brahmanical traditions of India that had some matriarchal components. There is tension between controlled social order and the “other”—all aspects of life that can never be under a man’s control, like the unpredictability of disease and death. The perfect control, the predictable social order, is personified in Sita whereas the

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untamed, unpredictable “other” is personified in Kali. Both of them have an important role in the Hindu world. Sita is a demure, submissive wife; although she is the mother of two sons she is portrayed exclusively as a wife. Her devotees see in her a divine model of a good wife who is a “good mother” to her husband. Conversely, Kali has a limited wifely role and hardly ever displays any motherly nature. Although in her mythology she is perceived as a devourer of life rather than a giver of life she is oen addressed and worshipped as “Mother.” In Shakta tradition, she represents the ultimate Mother and her devotees oen take the role of her children. This phenomenon of “mother-worship” displays the deep-seated ambivalence of Hindu men towards women: the ambivalence between the horror of women as the embodiment of all impurity and the passionate veneration and idealization of the mother (Mies 46–47). The mythologies of Hindu goddesses can be viewed as a reflection of the male experience of a woman that is split into a pure, benevolent, nurturing “good mother” and a threatening, malevolent, seductive “bad mother.” The “good mother,” like Sita or Lakshmi, is reassuring, nurturing, and life-giving; she is what Kakar (85) calls a “good (M)Other.” The “bad mother”—the Dark and Terrible Mother, as Neumann (149–153) calls her—is the seductive, demanding, devouring, and destructive maternal image that encompasses two themes: her destructive, aggressive role and her sexually seductive role. The “good” and the “bad” versions of the maternal-feminine expressed in the innumerable images of various mother-goddesses, who are oen the main deities of Indian village life, are reservoirs of both constructive and destructive energies (Kakar 109–110). Both these themes are presented in the most grandiose form in Sita, the ultimate “good mother,” and Kali, the “bad mother.”

Conclusion Are all Hindu goddesses ultimately mothers? We could answer “Yes.” Yet, although Hindu goddesses are ultimately mothers, their mythologies can be viewed mostly as male constructs of “good” and “bad” mothers; usually the “good mothers” are married goddesses who are “good” wives, and the “bad mothers” are the wild, unmarried goddesses. When presented as mothers, they are mothers of sons; however, they are presented as mothering their husbands much more

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than their children. Interestingly, their devotees more often view the ambiguous and terrifying goddesses, rather than the benevolent ones, as mothers. But mothering is not their only role; they can be the source of creation and destruction, either for a small village or for the entire universe, or they can be the ultimate divine principle, the ultimate Mother. Could we reduce the wide spectrum of divine mothers to many manifestations of one Great Goddess, one divine Mother? What is the underlying “deep structure” of Hindu goddesses? Is there an ultimate female divine principle, which is manifested on the surface in innumerable goddesses of the Hindu pantheon? I would rather view the “deep structure” of Hindu goddesses as a wide spectrum of divine mothers who range from ambiguous, fearful, and non-motherly goddesses, to benevolent, submissive, divine wives, mothering primarily their divine husbands. Probably the majority of Hindu goddesses could be situated somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. Human mothering, in Hindu society, is in many aspects parallel to divine mothering. Being a mother of son(s) is the most empowering role of a Hindu woman. Giving birth to son(s) will give her a purpose and identity and a respected position in society—there is nothing else that could contribute more to her social status. It gives her power and authority in the patriarchal family. Only the birth of a son emancipates a woman from the situation of absolute subordination in which she entered the family as a young daughter-in-law. Although Hindu society is far too complex to bear any generalizations, it could still be stated that being a mother of sons is one of the major factors that contribute to her empowerment and respect within her family and society. If a woman is a mother of daughters only, or childless, or unmarried, it will adversely affect her social status. Yet, there are many roles a woman can take in Hindu society, depending on her class, geographical area, or particular religious tradition, and there are numerous questions about human and divine mothers in Hinduism that need to be explored. Many parameters, many possible interpretations, and many ambiguities will arise whenever we explore any aspect of the extremely diverse Hindu traditions, where the meaning of any phenomenon is always multivalent. Yet it is possible to uncover some unifying aspects of mothering themes throughout the Hindu society.

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Endnotes 1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

In this chapter, Sanskrit words are transliterated without diacritical marks. The earliest text expressing this idea is probably the Devi-mahatmya, from about the sixth century , followed by several other texts. All quotations from the Laws of Manu in this chapter are from the latest English translation of the Sanskrit original by Doniger and Smith. The mother’s role is represented in this way in the following passage: “The husband enters his wife, becomes an embryo and is born here on earth. That is why a wife is called a wife (jaya), because he is born (jayate) again in her. The wife brings forth a son who is just like the man she makes love with; that is why he should guard his wife zealously in order to keep his progeny clean” (9. 8–9). The problem of bride-price in the text indicates that brides were purchased in ancient India, but this practice is strongly condemned, especially for the priestly class: the custom of bride-price is equated with daughter-selling and is even not advised for servant classes (9. 98).

References Babb, Lawrence A. The Divine Hierarchy: Popular Hinduism in Central India. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. Doniger, Wendy, and Brian K. Smith [trans.] Laws of Manu. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991. Freeman, James M. “The Ladies of Lord Krishna: Rituals of Middle-Aged Women in Eastern India.” Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives. Eds. Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gros. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1989. 82–92. Goldman, Robert P., trans. Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India. Vol. 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Jacobson, Doranne. “Golden Handprints and Red-Painted Feet: Hindu Childbirth Rituals in Central India.” Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives. Eds. Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gros. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1989. 59–71. Kakar, Sudhir. The Inner World: A Psycho-analytic Study of Childhood and Society in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978. King, Richard. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and “The Mystic East.” London and New York: Routledge, 1999.

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Kinsley, David R. The Sword and the Flute: Kali and Krishna, Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California, 1975. _____. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1988. Kripal, Jeffrey J. Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Mies, Maria. Indian Women and Patriarchy: Conflicts and Dilemmas of Students and Working Women. Trans. Saral K. Sarkar. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 1980. Neumann, Erich. The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype. 2nd ed. Trans. Ralph Manheim. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970. Pollock, Sheldon I., trans. The Rsmayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India. Vol. 2. Ed. Robert P. Goldman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Sharma, Rajendra Nath. Ancient India According to Manu. Delhi: Nag Publishers, 1980. Wadley, Susan S. “Hindu Women’s Family and Household Rites in a North Indian Village.” Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives. Eds. Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gros. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1989. 72–81. Zimmer, Heinrich. “Die Indische Weltmutter,” Eranos Jahrbuch 6 (1938): 175–220.

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PRACTICES

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CHAPTER TEN

RESISTANCE NARRATIVES FROM MOTHERS OF MARRIED DAUGHTERS IN SINGAPORE Hing Ai Yun

T

his study was instigated by the moral panic and anxious debates about women’s reproductive role sparked off by declining birth rates in most affluent societies. The confusion and guilt to which such campaigns have given rise deserves a firm rebu
al that will lay to rest any apprehension over the loss of control over women’s bodies, and urge more adequate community support for those who want to take on the responsibility of mothering. Specifically, this chapter examines ideologies pertaining to the gendered division of labour and gender hierarchy in the family. The approach taken here is holistic, highlighting the wide range of experiences recounted in women’s personal narratives in the real world of globalization and intense competition, in contrast to the narrow space of femininity marked out by conventional gender ideology. Since ideology is not a single phenomenon but involves dense networks of social processes, this study will view domesticity and mothering as both dynamic and developmental processes carried out within overlapping webs of relationships. The ideology of motherhood represents the culmination of a woman’s development, from the subordinate role of female child, to daughterhood, to wifehood. Motherhood ideally represents the pinnacle of a woman’s achievement within the framework established by patriarchy. The ideology of motherhood is also constituted relative to other gendered roles within and outside the family. How real mothers negotiate their roles will shape the reproduction of the ideology itself. The term ideology is used here in a broad sense that recognizes the importance of prescriptions to the shaping of behaviour and the formation of personhood. Ideology in this study is defined as

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commonsensical beliefs or understandings about the social world and how it should be organized. The study of ideology problematizes this research in a way that has led sociologists such as Bourdieu to comment, “No doubt one has to cease to regard the family as an immediate datum of social reality and see it rather as an instrument of construction of that reality” (24). Instead of focusing on institutions, this chapter will view mothers as agents and actors, as well as subjects actively interacting with the wider environment. This particular perspective will perforce de-institutionalize motherhood to disclose the porosity of boundaries put up to mythologize motherhood as an unchanging ideal. “Mother” as discursive subject does not have a simple or direct relationship to real-life mothers who have to struggle to maintain livelihood and stability for their families as translated into the real world of life and daily living. Unfortunately, apart from studies undertaken by realists such as Hochschild, radical family studies have not paid systematic a
ention to how beliefs and family ideologies are produced and reproduced by individual practices. They therefore have not highlighted how familial ideology works to undermine/enhance individual capacities. Ideology informs us what can count as truths, but it does not exert a determinate impact on subjects who can automatically be assumed to be passive subjects. On the contrary, “in human history there is always something beyond the reach of dominating systems, no matter how deeply they saturate society, and this is obviously what makes change possible” (Said 246–247). Power and resistance do not exist independent of each other (Foucault), for in the exercise of power is also the production of resistance. This makes the study of ideology challenging, yet necessary. The a
empts of people to reconcile competing demands made on them, and the considerable difficulties they are involved in when reconciling ambiguities and contradictions in their lives all contribute to the dynamism so characteristic of living in real worlds of suffering and happiness. Struggles of individual mothers in effect bring to the surface problems caused by structural and social imperatives. While one can also see resilience and inventiveness in mothers when they are faced with social wrongs and oppressive traditions, unrealistically high expectations of finding fulfilment in family intimacy (a dream touted by state ideological apparatus and the cultural industry) have made it doubly difficult to achieve promised myths of female bliss.

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By examining the critical impact of cultural ideals of the family on individuals who hold them, this chapter aims to focus on the nature of ideological representation and how these are reinforced or sometimes subverted in the constitution of everyday relationships. First, based on the method of historical reconstruction of life-courses of family members, the study discloses the dynamics of the changing social representation of the family and the mother in Singapore. Second, the chapter will focus on contemporary transformations of economy and society, to explore how these have acted to destabilize traditional views on major family roles and the hierarchical structuring of gender relations in the family. Data for this study came from unstructured interviews with 150 respondents. This chapter represents an initial a
empt to distil some interesting results from a selected number of cases covered. Five threegeneration interviews with grandmother-mother-daughter sets were chosen to illustrate changes and evolution in motherhood and family ideology. Throughout the analysis, differences in the experience of respondents due to their class position are noted. Although details in this study are based on the particulars of Singapore society, issues discussed here reflect concerns that societies face when shiing out of a labour-intensive economy. Accompanying this transformation is the extension of opportunities for women to redefine their roles given their rising level of education in a rapidly expanding economy.

Background Context to the Family in Singapore Singapore is an ideal case for the study of change and transformation due to its experience of rapid industrialization. Within four decades, the republic was transformed from a regional trading hub at the end of the 1960s, to today’s high-tech industrialized economy based on the mass production of semi-conductor electronics. The Singapore state’s prescriptions for the family are straightforward and simple, corresponding closely to economic imperatives. During the 1960s and prior to Singapore’s development into a rational industrial society, families were led to believe that “two is more than enough.” Access to public housing (which provides shelter to about 90 percent of the population) and education were aligned to this policy of small

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families. State-led industrialization was based primarily on cheap labour. Rapid expansion of the industrial base quickly absorbed the labour surplus present during the political independence of 1957. By way of contrast, as acute labour shortage (thus spiralling costs) began hindering growth in the 1980s, selected groups (especially women with tertiary education) were urged to have larger families. An array of tax incentives was established, not dissimilar to those designed to a
ract foreign investments, to encourage reproductive rates among those with higher incomes. Public spaces were saturated with the slogan of “Three or more, if you can afford it.” The female labour participation rate in 2002 (Ministry of Manpower) was 53.4 percent (the comparative figure for male labour was 77.2 percent), having risen from 24.6 percent in 1970. Low median monthly wages of $1,867,1 decades of full employment, generally free access for women to education and limited child-care facilities had all contributed to the trend of declining birth rates. State persistence in pushing patriarchy and traditional family ideology, combined with continuous moralizing against new family forms and alternative lifestyles, has only subverted cognitive autonomy and capacity to rethink a new paradigm to cope with the impact of economic transformations on social reproduction. Like waged workers of the industrialized west, Singaporeans are just as enamoured of love, intimacy, and the family. In their twenties, the overwhelming majority, when questioned, are desirous of marriage and having children. However, when it comes to establishing families, Singapore society has difficulty reproducing itself. Multiple Realities It is now widely accepted that the common assumption of the conjugal nuclear unit as the norm for the modern period is a myth (Hareven and Plakans). Studies linking industrialization with family processes (i.e., Hochschild 1990) show myriad strategies have been adopted when family members have to accommodate/negotiate their way through both internal and external demands. As a result, when one takes the trouble to reconstruct the family life-course, the result is a multi-tiered reality. This section looks at five three-generation families to highlight how different family members transact between internal and external spheres even as they transit from one role to another over time.

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Mothers, Daughters, and Sisters Comparing samples from three-generation families allows for the observation of behavioural change over the family life cycle. Generational comparisons also provide a means to study how ideology interweaves with practical considerations to reproduce existing cultural imperatives, while at the same time creating new elements that contribute to an emerging normative framework. While first-generation mothers are totally identified with the family and without any concept of the self, the second generation has merely an emerging self that becomes assertive only when faced with extreme suffering and threats to the survival of the family. The third generation, however, building on experiences of suffering women, and having benefited from universally available educational opportunities and globalization of local cultures, have more options to model their selood and family life. Divorce is still stigmatized but is an option because women are educated enough to take advantage of the tight labour market. The case of 80-year-old grandmother Wong is typical of the poor immigrant daughter coming to Singapore in 1945 to make a living to support eight siblings in China. Her marriage to a gambler a few years later proved to be a disaster, but she continued in the marriage to avoid social censure as “unclean” and “polluted.” Also, as a wife, she had to “follow whomever you marry.” Slogging hard as maid and dishwasher, she tried supporting six children but soon had to give away two children, a boy and a girl. In the meantime, her family in China threatened to disown her because she could no longer send them the monthly remi
ance. Despite such sufferings, she hung on to the belief that a “woman’s place is always in the family.” She could not understand how “modern women can prioritize their careers at the expense of neglecting their children.” Her wrong was in not choosing the right man for a husband. But ultimately, a working-class woman has to “bow down to life” and be filial, not only to her own parents but also to her mother-in-law. This is a live example of the child-centred idealized mother who has no legitimate rights or interests apart from her children. Grandma Wong’s daughter, Li, now 54, continued with the traditional sacrificial role destined for poor uneducated older daughters. She was substitute mother for her siblings, even aer her marriage, when she worked at home as a babysi
er. However, hers is a vision of an expanded role for a woman as good wife, daughter, and

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filial daughter-in-law. She sees women carrying a heavy load of also bringing food into the home. This is exactly her role in supporting her taxi-driver husband’s inadequate income with some sewing and child care. In contrast, daughter Amy with tertiary education and in her thirties has chosen to remain single, ignoring the advice and pressures from relatives and friends. She believes that “women have the right to pursue their ideal lifestyle.” She categorically rejects the role played by her own mother and grandmother. She does not see herself as a “sacrificing wife and daughter-in-law who does everything for the family.” Having witnessed the sacrifices of friends and colleagues who had all given up their dreams of career and fun, she did not want to go their way. She does not want to “short-change myself in terms of personal independence and autonomy.” First-hand experience with female oppression helped her withstand the barbs and scorn typically encountered by the childless single female. Amy’s experience mirrors somewhat the life of 20-year-old undergraduate Eileen, whose mother le her alcoholic father aer five years of abuse and neglect. She feels that “a woman need not have a man by her side in order to survive and to lead a happy life.” She was able to ignore how society views her “un-ideal” family. She now has a “warm and happy family.” She has had “enough of a stressful and disrupted life … a time when I had to stay out oen as I could not study at home … my dad will do anything when he flares up, shouting, throwing things, etc.” She had known him only superficially; “he is now just like any other person, not my dad.” But for younger sister Ming, who was only 11 years of age when the divorce went through, it was a time of strangeness and depression, especially when she saw others in the company of their parents. She wanted to have a father like her friends had. Sharing the lot of working-class women, Mrs. Ng, 41-year-old mother of Eileen and Ming, was also working to help support her family. But unlike Mrs. Li, Mrs. Ng had suffered her husband’s tantrums for five years before deciding to break away from him. She was driven by concern for the emotional well being of her daughters even though women over 60 years of age would tend to say that younger women today are too intolerant and resort to divorce too quickly. One 67year-old housewife, for example, alleged that younger women today are “undermining the significance of marriage.” The consensus now

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is that if the man is “unreasonable,” the woman has a right to ask for a divorce, whereas previously, whatever the abuses, divorce was bad and the woman would be blamed. Said a 70-year-old married woman of the case of Mrs. Ng: No point sticking with such a man, who is nothing but a burden, adding so much stress, unhappiness and tension to the family … very hard on the wife and daughters to live with him and bear with the emotional and mental stress … how can a man be so useless, not fulfilling the role of a father cum husband and the woman got to slog so hard to support the family. He still dares to take money from her. Want this type of husband for what? Unfair to point the finger at the woman all the time, as if a divorced woman is a “bad and improper” woman … in this case, the woman is not the one to be blamed at all.

The initial reaction of some families is to blame their abused daughters for having a broken marriage, as this would cause them acute social embarrassment. Mdm Teng, 53 years old, now married to alcoholic husband number two, recalled her father asking her to hide from family visitors because he was too ashamed to explain why she had run away from her abusive first husband. The case of 52-year-old Hindu clerk Gayathiri, too, is a useful illustration of family rejection at the initial stages of divorce. When her parents, who were originally from India, realized how many years of neglect, adulterous behaviour, and alcoholic abuse she had suffered, they shared her relief when her husband decided to leave. Gayathiri herself had borne her sufferings for many years due to the fear that her children would be outcasts of the Indian community. For 48-year-old Hamidah, a Muslim housewife, many other reasons had added to hold her back in her marriage of 20 years, including fear, loyalty, and shame. She was not sure if she could take the slander that she had “low morals.” The ideal of the conjugal unit had therefore acted as a strong restraining force in keeping some women imprisoned in their marriage despite years of abuse. The most crucial factor in overcoming this fear of social approbation for women is a greater fear of harm to their children. Once divorce becomes a reality, it is as though the evil spell binding family members together in a dysfunctioning entity has been broken. They begin a new phase of life with peace. Though life is hard, they can survive. Gayathiri, for example, is a low-paid clerk, but she has worked hard to hold her family of two daughters together:

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… it was a tough road … I had to be a disciplinarian, friend, and a mother to my children. I had to pay for the house, the food, the bills, the children’s education, clothing, and everything. Other than being a li
le short of money at times and having trouble making ends meet, my children and I are very rich in happiness and laughter.

Both her daughters are now undergraduates. Her social values did not prepare her to carry such a tremendously expanded role. On the contrary, her values reduced her capacity to live a full life and forced her instead to play the socially required but oen demeaning role of traditional wife. But the society is also giving birth to new truths. A 20-year-old female undergraduate said, “[T]he man was abusing her, making her submissive and she beared it all? Was she sadistic [sic]? But I think she is brave to keep the family together. I myself would not have that much courage to carry on with life.”

Flexible Production and Emerging Family Roles Combining idealist expectations of love and social expectations of the gendered division of labour, family practices have built-in tendencies to failure. Conventional ideas about the domestic division of labour are held at all levels of society including among young children. While the domestic ideology of the gendered division of labour has oen blinded men to the burdens of housework shouldered by their working wives, children who have imbibed this ideology may lose respect for their mothers or even feel shamed when their mothers become the primary breadwinner. Conversely, men become subverted when, through no fault of their own, they cannot take on the breadwinner role. Examining how ideology is lived by husbands, wives, mothers, and children can reveal the ways ideology is worked out daily in reallife situations. As well as showing how the family interacts with the environment, this section will show that while changing external forces create opportunities for the family to redefine itself, whether these opportunities are seized depends very much on internal dynamics of the family. Detailed case studies as well as snippets of interviews will be used to reveal the dynamics surrounding stalemate, negotiation, accommodation, and conflict in situational management of family life. To focus the discussion, we have chosen families with working mothers

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as this is the category where most fundamental changes have occurred regarding how roles should be played out in the new industrial economy. We first look at families where mothers are allowed to work outside the home. This is followed by discussion on non-working mothers who later are forced to work due to incapacity of husbands to play the conventional breadwinner role.

Work and Patriarchal Mandates Structural imperatives such as open access to education and job opportunities for women are the chief driving forces pushing for change in motherhood practices and family ideology. These have given women a certain level of confidence, which has led to their pioneering new flexible roles for themselves, their spouse, and sons. These cases are illustrated below. The first case is that of Valerie and Marcus, who both leave the house together at 8 a.m. for work and only return at 6.30 p.m. in the evening. Frequent tirades over housework oen end in stalemate. To enact the repetitiveness of the cycle of arguments that Valerie had to go through again and again with her husband Marcus, she said: Marcus, this is not working. I take the major care of Vicky [child], do the housework and I am working full time [an administrative assistant]. This is your house too. Vic is your child. You have to do your part for them. Look, how about this, I will cook the food while you wash up the dishes, help sweep the floor every alternate day.

Alas, Marcus does not like having anything to do with housework. Housework is a woman’s job. “It is unmanly to be seen mopping the floor or hanging up the clothes to dry.” However, aer much persuasion and pleading, Marcus agreed to help. Nonetheless, his efforts dwindled as the days went by and by the next week, he totally forgot his promise. The pa
ern of resistance continued. At times, Valerie had to shout at him that she was tired, but to no avail. The reasoning on the part of Marcus was rather different. If Valerie loved working so much, he was happy and proud to support her in it. However, he did not see why, just because she chose to work, he had to help out with the housework. Why should her personal decision to work outside the home require him to do more inside it? He was happy

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helping her once in a while but it was too demanding of him to have to share the housework every day. He happened to think that a man should be the one earning money and providing enough for the family to run well. Since Valerie’s pay was much lower than his, he thought she should be the one doing the majority of the housework; and, since Valerie kept talking about having equality of the sexes, the only way he saw them as having equality was that she did most of the work at home to compensate for her earning less than he did. Continuing in this vein, Marcus alleged that sharing the housework would upset a certain culturally acceptable balance of power. If he were to do the housework, it would mean his wife extending some control over him, as she had to tell him when to sweep the floor, how to wash the clothes, and so forth. This would be contrary to the culturally acceptable norm of him making the major household decisions. Finally, “a man should be doing the macho stuff such as washing the car, repairing the electronic equipment.… Washing the dishes or sweeping the floor is definitely out!” The unhappiness caused to Valerie had built up much resentment on her part and this had spilt into their sex life. Unfortunately, sex has to play the role of weapon for the weak. She had considered divorce, but the thought of her “fatherless” child had shored up her will to bear all her hardship. In Ted’s case, his mother had taught him that it was his wife’s duty to care for all his needs: “[M]y mom taught me a wife’s job is to take care of my needs, and she should also be the one doing all the housework.” He was forced to analyze his beliefs four years ago aer his wife, Belle, suffered a fractured hand. Since she had to wear a cast, she could no longer do the housework. “Up until then, I thought that I had already exceeded my priorities in doing these two things: washing the cars and mowing the grass.” Ted had thought that housework was an easy job. “All you have to do is use the vacuum-cleaner and walk around the house to clean the floor.” It was only when he had to do the housework during the time of Belle’s injury that he finally realized the full meaning of domestic responsibilities. In this modern society, everyone has to do his part for the family … moreover, Mom never really understood what Belle was going through.… When I really tried my hand at sweeping the floor and hanging out the clothes to dry, I finally realized what she’s been going through all this while. Housework isn’t as simple as it seems

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to be! It is really time consuming and energy draining. No wonder she seemed so stressed because I never helped her out. The thinking of my Mom is quite obsolete. It can never work. She has never gone out to work. The only duties she had were to take care of Dad and I, and the house. She can never understand the stress Belle has to face in doing two jobs: one at work and the other at home.

Now, even their son has been included in the housework, “to educate him from young that a man has to do his fair share of the housework.” Still unchanged, however, was Ted’s insistence on his role as head of the household. As a man in the family, I am the head of the family. Even though Isabel is working, she is earning less than I am. Even if she is earning more than I do, I still cannot accept her having more power than I do. A man has pride; it is very demeaning for the husband to have less power than his wife.

As for Belle, she has now accepted Ted as the head of the household. “He has his pride. I am already very happy that he is willing to help out with the housework, considering what he has been taught by his Mom.” But Belle does confess that, being a powerful person (chief editor of a successful magazine) at the workplace, it is a bit difficult to listen to her husband at home. “People who work with me and know me personally say I have two personalities. But we have to give and take within the family in order to maintain peace. I am perfectly happy with the arrangement now as life is easier.” While it has taken a serious accident to partially ameliorate the unequal relationship between Ted and Belle, in most other cases the inequalities just continue, causing much frustration and a standoff between couples. The reality of cases cited above shows that gender equality does not follow automatically upon expansion of women’s economic capacity. Shis in power relations are not predetermined. They result from struggles, oen in stormy scenes sometimes ending in stalemate. Redefining their domestic role is still an uphill task for women, despite a
ainment of education. In the 1990s, the number of female students overtook that of male students in Singapore. Yet, remuneration of female labour is still comparatively lower for every level of the workforce, reinforcing the convention of the male provider.

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Celebration of Motherhood and Domesticity Aborted The myth of the male breadwinner is cast in concrete such that, even when they are incapacitated and unable to carry out their provider role (for example, retrenched during the recent financial crisis), men resist asking their wives for help. The myth of the male provider has also given to men a sense of false pride that discourages mutual help between family members. Not only that, it also builds false expectations among children. When the myth is blindly accepted, it sometimes leads to disastrous consequences. It has driven some men to strive hard to provide their families with all the socially defined luxuries or to meet the high expectations of their wives. They sometimes end up with no family at all. Jee, an enterprising young business entrepreneur, worked all hours to build up his thriving business. Entertaining till late into the night, he neglected his family. In her loneliness, his wife Josephine found solace in another man. Unfortunately for middle-class women who can afford to live the traditional division of domestic labour, the risk economy has increased the family’s vulnerability to loss and/or departure of the male-breadwinner head of household. The ideology that propagates fathers’ roles as disciplinarian and authority figure can cause much grief to children and wife once father is absent. Our first example of this ideology is that of 22-year-old June, whose father died five years aer diagnosis of cancer (she was 15 at that time). Her mother was able to take over as the “financial pillar” of the family after some initial difficulties. Her father had been someone unapproachable and chauvinistic, the perfect disciplinarian. Powerless women such as their wives can hardly aspire to take their place. For Karen, who was only 8 when her father died of heart a
ack, the idea of “mother taking over father’s role” was immediately rejected and deemed unacceptable. As a result, she was forever rebellious, always doubting that her mother was capable of handling family ma
ers. Resentment built up and, even now, as a financially independent 23-year-old, she still seethes with anger, and cannot talk sincerely with her mother. When she handed in money as a contribution to the household, she was still doubtful and questioning of her mother’s spending pa
erns. Oen, her sister alleged, each used outbursts of hurtful words to “cut the other down to size.” In other cases of premature departure of husbands, women who think they can rely on their children have not reckoned with conventional socialization of children into dependents. Teen-aged children may have

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the physique of adults, but are oen still so enmeshed in their own fantasy world that any request for help may arouse resentment at being thrust abruptly into the adult world of responsibility and duties. Commenting on his mother’s early dependence and expectations that he play a leadership role, 15-year-old Gene had this to say: “Mum was whimpering like a child … come on, I cannot play the role of husband.” The male-breadwinner myth, implying the propriety of the maleheaded household with husband as leader, has not only disempowered women from having confidence in their capacities for independent action, it has led sons to shrink from their share of responsibility for family well being. In working-class families where strong female roles are commonly encountered, the myth of the male breadwinner no longer has many loyal adherents. As an expanding economy drives more daughters into schools and universities, it has forced some rethinking about conventionally held illusions of the male breadwinner. Fourteen-yearold respondent Ai Ling complained bi
erly that her 50-year-old father would not take on a steady job, aer he was sacked a year ago, even though he was physically able and healthy. Previously, he had a stable job in a construction company but he was fired when the company was retrenching workers. He had accumulated vast debts because of his habits of gambling and womanizing and was being harassed by a loan merchant. Despite not holding a job, he did not help out with the housework. In contrast, his hearing-impaired wife had to work hard at different jobs to support him and the family of two daughters. She earns about $800 a month as a cleaner. She also supplements her income by selling spring rolls on order to customers. The eldest daughter Mei Ling, who works at a confectionery business, contributes about $1,500 monthly to defray schooling expenses despite long complaints such as the one shown below: He just stays at home the whole day and nags. My mother works the whole day, and then comes home and has to do the housework, but he thinks he is very big, still dares to ask us to do things for him (serving him). My big sister doesn’t like to come home because all he does is ask for money … she is already working so hard, you know? … I don’t know why he can’t get a job [in Singapore’s tight labour market]. I told my mother that we will be be
er off without him … he just stays at home and eats anyway, and those loan sharks come because of him.… But my mother wants us to respect him … like that

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how to respect? I can’t be patient as my mum. My er jie [second sister] is different, she always takes care of me, even though sometimes she is fierce. But I know she loves me.…

Aer experiences of repeated abuse, “victims” of the ideology of the male breadwinner cannot totally rid themselves of such thinking. Ai Ling continues to buy food for her father on her way home from school because she knows he has no money to buy any. But capable er jie (second sister) who practically supports the family is more able to overcome early fears of her father, for she “oen quarrels with him and he dares not shout back at her because he knows he has done something wrong before [womanizing].…” At the same time, when couples are able to devise their own pa
ern of role exchange or create new models of domestic division of labour, they are likely to be discouraged by social pressure and derogatory remarks. For instance, children of professional women who can easily support themselves and their husband and children on a single income have to learn to cope with the stigma of being supported by their mother. Wei, 12-year-old son of skin specialist Tham, got into a fight with his classmate who had called his father names like “useless,” and “bum.” Says Wei, “My friends are surprised when I tell them that my mother supports the family herself … they oen tell me that my family is not normal and that fathers should be the ones supporting their families, not mothers.” Wei feels this pressure even though Tham’s husband, an engineer, gave up his job partly because he did not enjoy his work, and partly because the family had four children to take care of. He ferried them to school, helped them with their schoolwork, and did the cooking. Tham remarks, “He is a marvellous cook and does a really good job managing the household chores … the house is more tidy and organized with him at home ... it is a perfect arrangement for us given our personalities and circumstances ... he is the homely sort and I am an extrovert who enjoys working.” He just did not bother to look for another job due to the onset of financial crisis.

Conclusion This study on domesticity, motherhood, and femininity in Singaporean families was carried out from the standpoint of real families in their

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struggle for livelihood and intimacy. While women are generally subsumed under patriarchal mandates, the use of three-generation narratives shows how socio-economic transformations can have an enabling impact on the building of agency for women in a range of circumstances. Though the number of “new women” is not high, opportunities for autonomous development and new models of sexuality and intimacy are no longer just residual alternatives. They represent palpable new choices of femininity. However, while rejecting ideologies of domesticity, many are still groping with the how and why of building the “new.” In this study of working mothers wrangling with rigid conventions and over-socialized husbands are many stories of stalemate and frustrated bitterness. Nonetheless, where there is flexibility, equality, and democracy, the chances for domestic happiness are increased. It is hoped that these stories have contributed towards opening up the debate on new ways of practising domesticity and motherhood and the building of “real” family togetherness.

Endnotes 1.

All dollar amounts noted in this chapter are in Singapore currency. At the time of this research $SG1.00 was approximate to $US0.57.

References Bourdieu, P. “On the Family as a Realized Category.” Theory, Culture and Society 13.3 (1996): 19–26. Foucault, M. The History of Sexuality: Vol 1: An Introduction. Trans. R. Hurley. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1978. Hareven, T., and A. Plakans, eds., Family History at the Crossroads. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1987. Hochschild A. The Second Shi. London: Piatkus, 1990. Ministry of Manpower. Report on Labour Force Survey of Singapore 2002. Singapore: Manpower Research and Statistics, 2003. Said, E. The World, the Text, and the Critic. London: Vintage, 1991.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

SURVIVAL NARRATIVES OF ETHIOPIAN-JEWISH MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS IN ISRAEL Ruby Newman

T

here are 90,000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel today, many of whom emigrated in two Israeli government-sponsored rescue missions. The first of these, Operation Moses in 1984–85, secretly brought 6,500 Jews who had fled from Ethiopia to Sudan. The second, Operation Solomon in 1991, airlied 14,000 Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa to Israel in the span of 36 hours. There were already some Ethiopian Jews in Israel who had arrived in the early 1980s as well as a handful who had come in the 1950s and 1960s. Because of their isolation from other Jewish communities around the world, they have retained a Jewish heritage that is similar to biblical (Mosaic) Judaism but which is also informed by the African milieu. I collected oral narratives from nine pairs of mothers and daughters in Israel during the summers of 1997 and 1998. I met many of the women through an Ethiopian women’s leadership seminar sponsored in part by the Israel Women’s Network. In some cases I used a snowballing technique to make the acquaintance of the women. The project actually had several phases of research. During the design phase, I had intended to collect narratives of older women who had experienced the life cycle in Ethiopia prior to emigrating to Israel. In order to meet older women it was necessary to connect with younger, Hebrew-speaking women, as the older women spoke only Amharic and Tigrigna, neither of which I understand. I am fluent, however, in Hebrew and I had hoped to have the younger women translate their mothers’ or grandmothers’ stories into Hebrew. I was not interested in hearing the women’s stories filtered through interpreters who would offer their own translations. However, as I met with younger women they repeatedly told me that their own memories of life in Ethiopia

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were vivid and should be documented and recorded as well. Their mothers spoke enough Hebrew for me to interview them without their daughters being present; and on several occasions, I taped conversations with both mother and daughter. In phase one of my research, in 1997, I interviewed nine pairs of Ethiopian-Jewish mothers (aged 38–75) and daughters (aged 20–32). I conducted the interviews in Hebrew and then I transcribed and translated them into English. The young women’s narratives provided a counterpoint to or expansion of their mothers’ stories. Contrasts between the mothers’ and daughters’ Jewish practices and identities emerged, as did evidence of the strong ties between the generations and the mutual respect and support offered by these dyads to one another. I began the interviews with open-ended questions about what life was like as a Jewish woman living in Ethiopia followed by questions that encouraged them to describe their immigration to Israel, arrival in Israel, and their adaptation to life in their new home. The contrasts between the experiences of the mothers and daughters were striking, particularly with regard to marriage, education, and religious observance of the Sabbath, holidays, and menstrual laws. During the second phase, in 1998, I returned to Israel and met with the women again, interviewing them both formally and informally. In 1997 I had met many of the women through an Ethiopian women’s leadership seminar, and I returned in time for their 1998 closing meeting and worked together with the women on producing reports of the projects in their communities that they had designed and implemented during the year, including offering classes on sex education for teenagers, advising parents on how to become advocates for their children by meeting with teachers and school officials, and making shelters for ba
ered women more accessible. During these 1998 meetings we reviewed the oral histories that I had transcribed the year before, and the women clarified many points, elaborating on their narratives and exploring not only their lives in Ethiopia, and their arrival and early adaptation to Israel, but also some of the events of the past year. The picture that emerged aer phase two was more expansive and complete than the original interviews alone. The following summer, in 1999, I returned to Israel for a short visit and met with the women informally. The narratives of Ethiopian-Jewish mothers and daughters are oen reminiscent of the testimony or literature wri
en by Holocaust survivors. The stories reflect the construction of their identities as women and as

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Jews during times of extreme stress and they demonstrate women’s strength and agency. As women refugees who fled war, famine, and religious persecution, they relate tales of resistance and survival against harrowing circumstances. Their descriptions of the trek from Ethiopia to Sudan en route to Israel detail the dangers in crossing treacherous terrain. Girls and women were vulnerable to rape, and pregnant women suffered the effects of the gruelling trek including giving birth under dangerous conditions, either during the journey or in refugee camps in Sudan. Several narrators le Ethiopia while eight months pregnant, with babies on their backs and one or more children by their sides. They were the lucky ones, however, as 4,000 members of their community lost their lives along the way. Despite the difficulties they suffered, the women refuse to call themselves refugees or to present themselves as victims. The stories passed on from mother to daughter and by the daughters to their listeners are of strength, resistance, and agency. They speak to the affirmation of empowerment through the motherline presented in Naomi Lowinsky’s work on the importance of stories that reclaim the mother-daughter bond. Motherline stories are “stories of female experience: physical, psychological, and historical … that link generations of women and which have the potential to transform the experience of younger generations through the narratives of their mothers and grandmothers” (Lowinsky 1). They also speak to writing or storytelling as a form of resistance to oppression, as Rachel Brenner has argued in the case of four women writers who lost their lives during the Holocaust, but who employed the wri
en word in the form of diaries or autobiographies as resistance to the Nazi’s Final Solution. The intersection of religion and race, the generational transmission of gender roles, and the construction of new identities as women and as Jews are issues explored in the women’s oral histories. Their narrative accounts highlight women’s resistance and survival as they adapt to life as members of a visible minority, acquire literacy, and adjust to the demands of a highly industrialized, urbanized, and technologically advanced society. The stories reflect the construction of their identities as black Jewish women living in Israel. The daughters’ repeated enjoinders that their mothers’ heroism be transmi
ed, recorded, and passed on to succeeding generations speaks to the mother-daughter bond and to the ways in which that bond continues to empower both mothers and daughters as they share their

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stories and pass them on. The younger women view their mothers, and speak of them, not as victims or refugees but as agents of their own survival and of the survival of their children, both in terms of their flight out of Africa and their adaptation to Israeli society. I am indebted to Helene Moussa’s insightful analysis of Ethiopian and Eritrean women refugees as “victimized rather than as victims, and as active shapers of their personal and collective lives” for the distinction regarding being subjected to victimization yet retaining one’s subjectivity (16). Mothers and daughters recounted tales of treks through deserts and forests, detailing events such as crossing treacherous mountain roads, confronting bandits, and surviving the the of their provisions. They put us on donkeys, horses, and we just le and I remember that the whole time we were [travelling] at night, at night, at night, and not in the daytime. We didn’t walk during the day; if it was daytime we would sleep, and I always asked: why is it like this? And they explained to us, they explained to us, they themselves also were afraid, would we arrive or not, will they kill us or won’t they? We suffered from that dilemma. Aer a few months, on the road, I almost died of thirst; … a person who needs water and doesn’t have it, is almost dead. And Mother was pregnant. My brother was a baby. I was six, he was four, one child two years old, and one in her stomach? The road itself, because there wasn’t water, the road was parched. There were cracks. And oen the horse fell and there are women that almost died in childbirth. Oh, what she went through.

Although many of the women had husbands and fathers, the men are rarely, if ever, mentioned in their tales and, by their descriptions, were either not around to help in the struggle to survive the journey or the subsequent adaptation to life in Israel, or were powerless to protect them. When the women recount incidents that include the men in their families, those narratives invariably speak of the women’s strengths and the men’s difficulties either in adapting to life in the Sudanese camps, or in having the flexibility needed to mask their Jewish practices sufficiently to ensure the family’s survival. The women described the religious persecution they encountered once they reached Sudan, where they had to hide the fact that they were Jews by pretending to eat unkosher food and desecrate the Sabbath. They spoke of their mothers’ cleverness in accepting the food that was offered and making a show of eating while quietly slipping the stewed

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meat into the sand. In a few cases the women contrasted their mother’s adaptability with their father’s refusal even to pretend to be eating the meals and thereby pu
ing the entire family in danger. She credits her mother’s adaptability with saving the family. They came to check us out. But people said you have to light a fire so they won’t hurt you. Later they’ll kill you? My father didn’t want to see the fire on the Sabbath. Every day he’d pray there. He had a li
le water. Every Sabbath. My mother was very strong. “Come, drink coffee,” she’d say. They put out a fireplace, a fireplace with coals. They put on a ke
le there as if they were drinking coffee and my father, really didn’t want to see.

One young woman in her mid-twenties, who is now completing a degree in psychology, wrote about her experiences and especially about her mother who died three years ago and with whom she was very close. I talk about my life and also about women who lived in Ethiopia, yes, if I’ll succeed. I wrote about my mother too, about a strong woman.… The reason I wrote about my mother is that when we came on the road [the trek] my father remained in Ethiopia. There was a trial, the government, they wanted to [take] my brother, so we had to close everything and run away. On the road I was li
le and also my brothers and [her mother’s] grandchildren and that. My mother was very strong when we came from Ethiopia. She was a woman who walked from Ethiopia to Sudan. We had horses. She would climb on, climb on for a few minutes, then she’d get down. She was a woman who prepared food for us. All the time, nice things. She was a woman who, when people got sick, infants got sick, she would start to cure them.… She was a woman who wore so many hats in all areas. She had so much strength. She was never tired and she never got sick. She was never sick at all. She was never sick. Later we walked. We reached Israel like that. She was healthy. And it’s one of the reasons I want to write. We were without father and she [brought us] to Israel. There were several mothers but they were sick. A woman of ours, it’s forbidden aer you give birth, she came with us.1 She made a li
le hut, it was like a jungle, trees, she made her a hut, and she entered with her. She cut the cord; she got her se
led, with the baby. She did it all by herself. She prepared food for her, she sat her there, she immersed

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[herself] in water exactly when the sunset. She had so much strength … spirit and strength.

Several of the mothers I interviewed had le Ethiopia when they were close to the end of their pregnancy and a few of the women delivered their babies before they reached Israel. In Ethiopia, oen, babies are delivered by a woman’s mother and this pa
ern continued for some of the more fortunate women. Here the daughter articulates her admiration for her mother who operated as a “ritual expert” (Sered) in caring for a woman who gave birth on the trek: “We got by. There was Mother. Mother manages like a doctor. Fantastic. They manage, they manage everything, like a doctor.” Daughters who were separated from their mothers, however, felt bere. A woman who delivered her child in an Israeli hospital while her mother was being held in a Sudanese jail described how isolated she felt: He was born in the hospital in Afula.… I wasn’t used to giving birth in a hospital. They put me there, without parents. Aer five minutes, I’m screaming, screaming. I didn’t talk to them. I was in a bed with a curtain; it was a big room. They came and asked me questions and I didn’t know what to tell them. I didn’t know what to tell them. I didn’t know the language or anything. I only knew how to scream. Yes. Aerwards I gave birth and that’s it.

When her mother was liberated from jail and the family was reunited, the process of acculturation began, mainly for the younger members of the family; the grandmother has remained the repository of Ethiopian traditions and is tapped for her stories and memories by her granddaughters. The older generation has maintained the language, food, and, in some cases, the cras of Ethiopia, while their daughters and granddaughters have become more integrated into Israeli society. Although Ethiopian Jews dreamed of reaching the Promised Land, life in Israel has brought new problems; as immigrants to an industrialized society they continue to encounter difficult challenges. Many of the mother-daughter dyads reflected upon the ways in which the mothers continue to promote their children’s well being and success in Israel despite their own limited education and financial means. Most of the mothers arrived in Israel illiterate and have learned Hebrew, acquired literacy skills, and are working in their communities as

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teachers, child-care workers, and community organizers. They articulate the importance of education, work, and economic independence and their daughters show great pride in their mothers’ workplace successes. Stories of extraordinary courage on the journey were complemented by stories of Ethiopian mothers in Israel helping their children to level the playing field when dealing with native-born Israelis. They accomplished this through a variety of strategies ranging from working overtime to pay for tutors and after-school programs for younger children, to looking after their grandchildren so that their older sons or daughters could save money to buy their own homes. Such practical support is reinforced by the family stories that contribute to the mothers’ and daughters’ sense of empowerment. They also reflect how the daughters look to their mothers to corroborate their memories of Africa as they define themselves as black Jewish women in Israel. One young woman reflected: “I’m 24 and I feel as if, all the time, I’m searching into the past.” Stories from the motherline offer her a key to that past, which is dramatically different from her present life as a university student. In Ethiopia mothers and daughters followed a traditional trajectory and mothers taught their daughters the skills that would make them marriageable. “My mother was a homemaker; my father worked the land” was the formulaic opening to several life histories. By the age of four or five girls assumed substantial household responsibilities such as cooking, cleaning, and looking aer younger children, while boys went out into the fields to help their fathers. Women received li
le or no education and married very early; marriages were arranged by the parents and some girls did not meet their husbands until their wedding day. One woman who was married at the age of nine has never forgiven her mother. She is now in her mid-twenties and lives with her husband and four children; she regrets her lack of education and of opportunities to develop herself. Most women, however, married between the ages of 12 and 16; some who were motherless married later, but considered this an example of their bad “luck.” One mother commented: I was small. My mother died when I was small. I missed my mother. [Her daughter interjected:] All day long she longed for her mother. Because she had no mother, no money, who would help her? In Ethiopia it’s hard to marry without a mother. Who will prepare food? A lot of things have to be done before a marriage. If there’s no mother, who would prepare food for them?

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Motherless girls oen spent their youths caring for their fathers and younger siblings; the lack of maternal guidance precluded early marriage, which was understood by the community to be in the girls’ best interest. Women who married in their early teens, however, reflected on how difficult it was to be separated from their mothers. Furthermore, marriage put an end to schooling and to aspirations to higher education. One woman described how desperately she wanted to remain unmarried and go to school. She ran away from home at the age of 12 when she discovered that her parents intended to finalize her engagement. They relented and sent her and her two sisters to school. Today they speak proudly of their daughter who is in university. Education for girls was oen feared within the Ethiopian-Jewish context as it would take the girl outside her home environment and make it impossible for her to follow the laws of Jewish observance. A few Jewish schools had been built, however, in villages with large Jewish populations, and one of the young women narrators had a
ended it. The dangers there were not of assimilation but of antiSemitism. This young woman described an anti-Semitic incident that occurred when she was in Grade 2. She was a
ending a Jewish school where she was studying Hebrew. At first we studied Hebrew, and then they burned the books.… I was in Grade Two. Two. I didn’t understand. I thought they burned them because they were old. I took the books to burn them. I thought it was, like, old. Because if it was old, they don’t just throw it away, to make things dirty, because in Ethiopia everything is natural and clean. No, there isn’t, like, there isn’t garbage, there isn’t what to throw out; there is no packaging, so if there is garbage they burn it. I thought it was an old book. I took one to throw. Everyone took, so I took, too, but later I understood that it was Hebrew and they wouldn’t let us keep it.

Despite the difficulties she encountered, her mother encouraged her to continue her studies and did not force her to marry at a young age. Her mother is eager for her to complete her university degree before marrying. “She’ll study, she’ll study, she’ll travel. Here, without a profession it’s a bit difficult. A profession. She will finish her degree. It’ll be good.” All the mothers I interviewed echoed this sentiment. One woman asserted repeatedly that she would love to be a grandmother:

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I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying for grandchildren. I’m dying for her to marry. Dying for her to marry but she doesn’t want to. [she laughs] I’m dying. I’m dying. But it isn’t working; [she laughs] she wants to study. She says “It’s not Ethiopia, we’re not in Ethiopia, Mother. Ethiopia is le behind,” she says.

Even so, she is prepared to wait for her daughter to complete her education before she starts a family. The cohort of young women who came to Israel as small children and are now in their twenties has greater access to education than do those who married young in Ethiopia and who, now in their mid- to late twenties, are raising large families. Many of these women voiced their frustration and bi
erness at the limitations that they are facing. They hope for greater opportunities for their children but they themselves are trapped; they are still in their twenties yet they know that the prospect of further education is sadly out of reach. They are caught between two worlds. Education is seen as a key to adaptation to life in Israel and although the daughters have had greater opportunities for formal education than their mothers, either in Ethiopia or since their arrival in Israel, they continue to look towards their mothers’ experiences and wisdom as they negotiate the difficult terrain of being black and female in Israel. The older women continue to take courses to upgrade their skills within their workplaces, and several of the younger women have graduated from university with bachelor’s degrees since our initial contact. When I asked one woman what she thinks the future holds for her daughters, she replied, “If it’s good for me, it will also be good for them. It’s good for me that they get ahead as much as possible,” and to that end she began working outside the home to pay for school outings, aer-school programs, and tutoring when necessary. “I do everything, thank God, I do everything and with God’s help they’ll complete their studies. If she [her daughter] wants a profession she will study and it will be good. If it’s good for me I’m sure it will be good for her.” Her daughter speaks with pride of her mother’s strength in leading her family to Israel, in learning Hebrew, and in holding a job for which she is highly respected. The daughter’s determination that “it’s forbidden to forget” her mother’s and grandmother’s stories of life in Ethiopia and their journey to the land of Israel, sustains and grounds her as she proceeds on her own journey. The girls’ close connection to their mothers, and their appreciation of their mothers’ stories that recount a heroic personal history, offer

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them successful models of informal if not formal education, of heroism in the face of adversity, and also of acceptance as respected members of the Israeli as well as the Ethiopian community. This mother-daughter bond corroborates the findings of Nancy Chodorow, Sara Ruddick, Carol Gilligan, and Naomi Lowinsky regarding the psychological development of girls and the solidarity between mother and daughter that provides a model for girls of connectedness, continuity, and recognition of the other. This connectedness also provides them with the courage to be themselves and consider their own experience to be of value and worthy of respect. The narratives from the motherline are examples of life-writing as resistance to oppression and in the cases of the Ethiopian mothers and daughters who shared their stories with me, fortunately, also of their survival.

Endnote 1.

She is alluding here to the custom among Ethiopian Jews that women remained in a menstrual hut for a designated period of time aer giving birth.

References Brenner, Rachel. Writing as Resistance: Four Women Confronting the Holocaust. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1979. Gilligan, Carol. In A Different Voice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982. Lowinsky, Naomi R. Stories from the Motherline: Reclaiming the Mother-Daughter Bond. Los Angeles, California: Jeremy Tarcher, Inc., 1992. Moussa, Helene. Storm and Sanctuary: The Journey of Ethiopian and Eritrean Women Refugees. Dundas, Ontario: Artemis Enterprises, 1993. Ruddick, Sara. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. Sered, Susan Starr. Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

DOWN UNDER POWER? AUSTRALIAN MOTHERING EXPERIENCES IN THE 1950S, 1960S Marie Porter

Introduction The 1950s and early 1960s is an interesting period in Australian history. It is a stable, prosperous time of significant social conformity and structure between the upheavals of the World Wars, and the Depression, and the social changes that began in mid-1960s. It is sometimes referred to as the golden age of the ideal family, when the women stayed home and mothered to the benefit of husbands and children, while the husbands earned the necessary wages (Falding). For feminists, it is the age of an oppression of women that helped spawn secondwave feminism (Gi
ens). Despite this interest in, and significance of, the period, there has been li
le research examining it (Murphy and Smart). There has been no feminist research concentrating on Australian women’s mothering experiences in the1950s and 1960s. In this chapter I argue that, in those decades, despite Australian mothers being oppressed by the general socio-cultural norms and, in some areas, by the law, my interviewees were strong, active women, empowered by their own resistance and creativity in their motherwork, to face the difficulties the context presented. This argument is based on data collected via in-depth interviews undertaken with 24 Australian women who became first-time mothers between 1950 and 1965. The data demonstrate that where constraints interfered with a mother’s ability to nurture her children, the mother responded to constraints with positive action rather than submissive compliance. While in some instances a mother’s actions could not negate the difficulties she faced, in every case the mother’s resistance resulted in some shielding of her children.

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The interviewees acknowledged constraints, but overwhelmingly they saw themselves as active agents in their own lives. Their focus was on their agency, even in situations of severe oppression. Their agency was developed principally by their motherwork. Motherwork, which I refer to as transformative power, consists of mothers’ actions as they preserve, grow, and develop their child to be an acceptable citizen who will fit into the socio-cultural context in which she or he will live (Ruddick). This work could be done by others, but in this era it was almost always the work of the biological mothers. The interviewees’ desire to mother well was a strong motivator in developing their agency and strength, even in extremely constrained circumstances.

Theorizing Power Power is an important concept for feminism and has been probed by feminists from the beginning of the first phase of second-wave feminism (Bartky, Frye, Wearing). The expressions of power relevant to this work are the power over the interviewees both on the personal and institutional level, their power to resist or respond creatively to this power, and their use of transformative power. “Power-over” and “power-to” are recognized by both Wartenberg, and Allen. However, where Wartenberg refers principally to these two forms of power in the social world, Allen refers to power as complex and enmeshed to such a degree that the different expressions of power are “best understood as representing analytically distinguishing features of a situation” (127). I argue that transformative power is not simply a form of power-over, as Wartenberg argues, but that it is a different expression of power that is complex and interwoven with other expressions of power. Feminists have claimed that power is viewed differently by women (Miller). For example, Miller defines power broadly as “the capacity to produce a change. “She rightly points out that definitions of power are based on male experiences, use male terminology, and therefore represent only part of the concept of power (248). As Miller acknowledges, women have traditionally used their power to empower others and have done so with awareness of “appropriate timing, phasing, and shiing of skills so that one helps to advance the movement of the less powerful person in a positive, stronger direction” (242).

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Drawing on Miller’s ideas that concepts of power are still in flux and Allen’s claim that transformative power is more intricate in its expressions than power-over, a more creative description of transformative power can be sustained. Wartenberg argues that, because influence, force, and coercive power are a part of transformative power, transformative power is really power-over. I reject this narrow definition of transformative power. The aim, the focus, and the usual exercise of transformative power are different from power-over.1 These power relationships for women (or men) who are mothering are relationships where the mother is seen as powerful and, indeed, has total physical power, in the beginning, over the baby. As anyone who has cared for a baby will know, while the mother has physical power over the baby, it is not possible to make the baby do as she wants. The baby will not go to sleep/be fed/smile/stop crying and so on, when the mother wants it to. From my experience, if a baby resists it is more tenacious than any adult. Transformative power is distinct because the power-over the child that the adult does have must be in constant flux over the child’s life. The mother must nurture in a way that grows the child into an independent and responsible adult with full power over her or his life. This task is particularly difficult because there is a constant movement of power from the mother to the child. The mother has to manage this fluidity of power wisely. What was right yesterday may not be right today. Such power has expressions of power-over but it is more complex than power-over. This complexity is expressed in the aim that is to eventually make the power in the relationship redundant; in the constant fluidity of the power relationship that is present in daily life, and even more so over the years; and in the effects it has on both the mother and the child. Transformative power is evident in the data. The interviewees were nurturing future Australian citizens.2 It was a task they took seriously and did to the best of their abilities. While power theorists aided an understanding of the mothers as active agents, Nussbaum’s feminist theory of a “capabilities approach” provided a powerful tool of analysis for the data. Nussbaum’s approach examines what an individual “can be or do” to expose inequalities. This approach can incorporate inclusiveness and universality. It has the ability to integrate diversity. It has the potential to address contemporary feminist critiques of the “mainstream” feminism of the second wave. Nussbaum’s approach is inclusive on one level, but

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can account for differences on another level and is pertinent to this research because it reveals the capabilities, resources, enablements, and constraints that the interviewees experienced. In short, Nussbaum’s approach gives a framework for exploring power and agency evident in the data, while, concurrently, allowing aspects of theoretical stances on agency and power to be bypassed.

Capabilities, Inequalities, and Power For agency to be valid, there must be a choice. Theoretically there is always a choice open to an agent. Giddens argues that people are active, knowing agents who are shaped by social forces, while simultaneously reshaping social forces. The agent must have the ability to “make a difference” or else she cannot be an agent. The agent may resist, may be empowered in some way, but is never completely powerless. I argue that the interviewees were such agents throughout their mothering. When their experiences of motherwork did not equate with their ideas and assumptions, the mothers questioned their ideas and assumptions and changed accordingly. They used power, in the form of resistance or creativity, to cope with constraints that limited their choices and circumscribed their lives. They used transformative power to nurture their children to adulthood.

Research Results The interviewees were constrained in many ways by socio-cultural norms and institutions and agreed that they grew up believing it was necessary to conform, and to obey, and as young mothers they usually conformed. They were also trained to “choose” to be an at-home mother. The education system, the economic system, the legal situation, and the master narratives in society, in many forms, from Mary, the Mother of God, the mother model for young Catholic women, to the answers to personal problems found in women’s magazines, idealized the stay-athome married woman to be both mother and the best mother (Porter 1994; Sheridan; Wearing). Interviewees were generally aware of the image of the mother depicted in the media. Barbara remembered her expectations of what a wife/mother should be:

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Well, mother was always sort of nicely dressed and sweetly speaking and never seemed to be angry or anything like that. The house was always nice. Everybody was wonderful to each other. … and where did that image come from?3 Probably in the movies and the books, you know, where, “This is how it is!”

This always-in-control, always-present, always-patient, always-neatand-tidy mother, in a neat and tidy home, was a reflection of the general socio-cultural norms. Representations of womanhood encouraged a woman to be wife/mother/housekeeper and all encouraged her to do it unrealistically well. A mother was in a vulnerable position if her chosen husband was violent or financially controlling. Wives had no legal claim on their husband’s income, although the basic wage was supposed to support a couple and two or three children. A woman’s financial situation depended on her choice of husband. Should a woman make a “bad” choice for a husband (one who in some way exercised his power over her by denying her adequate money, or beating her), her options were to put up with the situation, divorce him, and/or leave him. Society frowned upon the second two options, and ge
ing paid employment as a married woman was difficult. While the interviewees recognized their vulnerability as mothers, they did not relate to the word oppression. They identified with the concepts of constraint and obedience, but still saw themselves as active agents doing valuable work. Agency emerged more strongly from the analysis of the interview material than did constraint. Even in contexts where an interviewee had to cope with quite unreasonable situations, her concern for a successful outcome to her motherwork gave her the incentive to cope and/or resist in difficult contexts. To explore agency, I introduce two concepts that refer to two categories of agency. These terms are significant shis and persistent processes and they refer to the two principal ways that agency is realized at the empirical level. By examining the data through these two sites, agency can be more readily and clearly demonstrated.

Significant Shi
s “Significant shis” describes events that resulted in a rapid change in the lives of the interviewees. To cope efficiently with the following

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change in their work, the women needed to respond with a rapid growth in agency. Becoming a first-time mother biologically, and beginning motherwork were both significant shifts—probably the most significant shis many of the mothers had ever experienced. Other significant shis were as follows: the death of a child, the serious illness of a child or significant other, the birth of a “crunch” baby (the baby the mother hoped would be her last), a change of living location, or a sudden exercise of power-over in the context. I will examine two types of significant shis, illnesses/accidents and the crunch baby, to demonstrate how a mother further developed transformative power when she needed to respond to a change in her nurturing. The first example is that involving a life-threatening illness of a new baby girl. Kara was overjoyed when her second child was a girl. Her joy turned to anguish eight weeks later when her precious daughter became ill. Illness was common enough, but this illness was acute viral meningitis. Kara’s baby was not expected to live. Because Kara explains so clearly the change that occurred in her agency as a result of her daughter’s illness, I have cited her at length. The other defining moment—was when I had my second child, who was a girl. And I desperately wanted a girl. Desperately wanted a girl! And I was just so delighted when she was born. I thought our dreams had come true and she looked a beautiful li
le thing. And—our family was complete. And then eight weeks later she was struck with acute viral meningitis. She was paralysed, unconscious, stiff like they go with their heads onto their backbone.… And the doctor told me that she would die. And to prepare myself. And they took a lumber puncture, … I’ll never forget it. And he said, “I’m sorry. I can only have one chance at trying to save her but I don’t think I can.” And her next few weeks were just dreadful torture. And he said, “If she does survive, she’ll be subnormal.” And I realised then … I used to sit down, feed her, and in my mind desperately pray, “Please take her.” And I said, ... I didn’t care how she was, I just wanted her to live. And I recognised how much the children meant to me. And I felt that was the moment that I became—a woman, and not a girl. I was ... just turned 27 when I had my second child, and—my life sort of changed for everything. I was always a happy, … blonde, blue-eyed, coy li
le thing.… And that, that changed me. And from that time I was really quite a serious person. I turned to the Church more … I realised the depths of what it means to me, and I realised that very few people

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could help me in that situation. I was on my own. Bit like living and dying. That moment stood out to me as being, “You’re on this earth and you’ve just got to cope” … And, well, I think I changed. I just realised what the family was all about. Till then I was just playing at house, really.

Kara experienced her baby contracting the sort of illness every mother dreads. Her daughter was le disabled and needed Kara to work with her for four years in retraining her physically.4 The extra motherwork that an ill/disabled child requires is a heavy load in itself (Hillyer; Porter 2000). Consequently, Kara’s motherwork became far more intensive and her transformative relationship with her child changed dramatically. As a result of the illness the baby had to learn skills that formerly would have developed without intervention. The mother, whose aim did not change, had to change the transformative power relationship. She had to learn new skills to cope with her daughter ’s disabilities. This example is particularly remarkable because the interviewee herself recognized this defining moment in her development as a mother agent—a significant shi. The second example of a significant shi is one that almost all the mothers experienced. Twenty-three of the 24 women married intending to become a mother. Most of these women had a crunch baby. A crunch baby was the baby the mother judged should be her last. When an interviewee fell pregnant aer this crunch baby, she needed to think clearly what to do. Eleven of the interviewees had had this experience. One interviewee was Anglican, another interviewee was Methodist, and the remaining nine were Catholic. The decisions these mothers made resulted in a significant shi in their agency. In all cases the reasons the women gave for conceiving another child or proceeding with a pregnancy were religious constraints. Laura felt strongly that she did not want to mother another child and contemplated abortion. She sought the advice and support of another Christian woman of a different denomination. Abortion did go through my mind, to be honest with you, ’cause I didn’t want any more children.… I spoke to my—very dear friend about it, who goes to the Lutheran Church.… We talked about my faith and so forth, and what I believed in and—I knew then that I couldn’t go through with an abortion. That I would have to have the fourth child, no ma
er what—

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… and that was the influence of your religion? That was the influence of my religion. Yes. Very much so. That I had already made a life and that I could not kill that life.

Laura was an active agent who made her decision in discursive consciousness to include another child in her family. She obeyed the church’s teachings. Freda made a similar decision because of her religion. Neither of them had subsequent pregnancies, unlike some of the Catholic interviewees, who had many babies aer their crunch baby. The Catholic interviewees were particularly susceptible to the power of the Catholic religion. For women, the model was the passive, obedient, self-sacrificing Mary, Mother of God (Porter) In the 1950s and 1960s, Catholics were le in no doubt that if they did not obey the church’s teachings, they would burn forever in hell. For them hell was no mythical place. For Catholics it was a real threat and cause of great fear. Anna’s words referring to Catholic missions and why she obeyed the Catholic on birth control demonstrate this fear: … but—it—was very scary and then there’d be always a talk on hell and how you were going to be punished forever. I think I thought, “Well, yes, I’ll be a candidate for hell.” And who wants to burn forever, sort of? [she laughs] I know I had my babies.

This teaching allied with the Catholic Church’s teaching on birth control5 gave it great power over mothers. Babies that were born aer the crunch baby meant more motherwork for women already too busy. Mothers had to become more skilful and work longer hours. Nine mothers had these experiences of recurring births—sometimes more than doubling the family that they wanted. For the mothers to cope with these situations caused by significant shis, they had to develop their agentic skills. Moreover, the significant shis resulting from the birth of another baby occurred so frequently for some mothers that the reproductive process itself could be seen as a persistent process.

Persistent Processes Persistent processes refers to changes that were more gradual, because the processes were recurring tasks that developed and honed agency

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over time. For example, a new mother had to learn how to bathe a baby, but as this recurring process was practised, she became a faster, more efficient agent. Here, Frances, the mother of nine children, here is speaking about the first time she bathed her first baby: … and, consequently, when I gave him his first bath I think it must have taken—a couple of hours.… By the time I aired the bath to sterilize it and sunned all his clothes so that they’d be warm on him and put the towel out in the sun to kill any germs and things like that, it was a major production to give him a bath.

Compare that account of bathing a baby with Frances’s account below, 12 years later. She is now the mother of nine children, washing and keeping her twin babies amused. Well, I had lots of li
le tricks, like when I was doing the washing. We’ve got two washing tubs down there, and—we just had a—twintub washing machine and I couldn’t just put the washing on and leave it. I had to do. And I would have the twins si
ing in one of the tubs full of water so—they were having a great time and I knew where they were. That’s one of the things I did.

The change in Frances’s agency is marked. She had “tricks” to help her cope. She could now do the washing for 11 people, while keeping the twin babies amused. She had learned that her elaborate preparations were unnecessary. Such agentic skills were developed from persistent processes. Much development of a mother’s agency was the result of such repetitive work. As noted above, having babies involved significant shis in the lives of these mothers; when the mother did not want any more children, the pa
ern of repeated and significant shis became a persistent process of adjustment. These women developed agentic strategies to cope with the persistently increasing workload. The strategies were of three types: support, changes, and creativity/strength/sacrifice. In the first strategy the women looked for support of any kind and support came in many ways. Their Christian world view gave them support because their actions had meaning and this meaning gave them strength. The physical and emotional supports they received from their family, friends, peer group, and even neighbours were even more evident.

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Women who used the second strategy changed their lives in several ways. One Catholic mother claimed autonomy in birth control and only had two children. She and her husband looked aer a wheelchair-bound parent and sought a priest who agreed with their decision. Two Catholic mothers eventually changed their lives of constant reproduction by relinquishing responsibility for birth control to their non-Catholic husband. Frances, with her nine children, prioritized her work, did what needed to be done, and forgot all non-necessities like dusting and ironing. The third strategy was thinking creatively, or developing great strength, or being self-sacrificing. Thinking creatively was common. Some interviewees found a routine that worked well and followed it. Eve reflects, But when you have them, three, close together, then you’ve got to really be strict, I felt, and keep to a very strict routine …just to cope with work? To cope with the work. There was no le
ing go, sort of thing. I had to—say—this is what I want you to do now [tapping noise on tape]. Nothing else.

Diane relied on routine and treated all her children the same way, which in hindsight she found both positive and negative. Her sons and daughters both know how to cook, clean, wash, and do any other household work, but Diane regrets not having had the time for helping them to develop their individual differences and gis. I sort of feel, I wished I’d been able to give each of the—a li
le more of what they individually needed because they are all so different. But you didn’t have time and you didn’t have time to think about it. You just did for one what you did for them all. I mean, you lined them all up and gave them piano lessons. And you—whether they were interested or not you think, “Well, I gave him a chance, I’ve got to give her the chance.”

The mothers of large families worked long hours efficiently to cope with their workload. Leisure time was not available or very rare. The majority of the work in the home was repetitive—a persistent process that honed agency. The interviewees saw this work as part of their motherwork because they wanted a clean, healthy, and happy environment for their children. In the home, the mothers were

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autonomous. They planned their work to encompass the children’s activities, the husband’s routine, and their own work. The mothers aimed to do the best they could to rear stable, healthy, happy, welleducated, independent Australians. Their strong empowerment came from this awareness that they were growing the next generation into good citizens (Ruddick). With this end in view they worked long hours with li
le support or interference from their husbands. While most of them recognized the lack of status given to their motherwork in general society, they themselves were sure of its importance and were strong agents in the home. Controlling the money was another significant source of power for many interviewees. Almost half of the interviewees completely controlled all the money and were proud of their ability to successfully handle a budget year after year, dealing with all the unexpected financial problems. Cath has kept her budget even though her children have le home. Well I used to get satisfaction out of that budget. I’ve still got it—and everything’s been wri
en down, broken into weekly payments—and it’d all be multiplied by 52 and that amount used to go into the bank … and the budget was a really good budget.

Associated with the budget was the ability to have a yearly family holiday, usually at the beach. Being able to afford a holiday meant saving during the year and was a source of pride and pleasure. It gave all in the family leisure and demonstrated the mother’s budgetary skills. The interviewees who handled the money developed significant agentic skills. Moreover, controlling the money added to the marriage relationship because, as Laura noted, “And that’s a great trust between the two of us, that … I feel it’s a trust that he’s got in me.” Where the husband controlled the money unfairly, the opposite effect can be observed. Two interviewees experienced this gross inequality in their marriage. Both women maintained themselves and their children by becoming expert at budgeting and saving money.

Conclusion In the Australian context of the 1950s and 1960s, the mothers whom I interviewed were constrained in many ways, both at a societal

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and personal level. The interviewees acknowledged constraints, but overwhelmingly they saw themselves as active agents in their own lives. They claimed and created a sphere of power and a satisfying life in most cases. The interviewees impressed me with their ability to cope and with their strength. They dealt with their difficulties in creative ways. In most cases they enjoyed their motherwork and felt empowered by it. The interviewees’ desire to mother well was a strong motivator in their developing agency and strength, even in extremely constrained circumstances.

Endnotes 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

I acknowledge that transformative power can, and has been, used in a negative way where the carer has expressed it as power-over a vulnerable person. Many survivors of abuse both on a personal and institutional level testify to such expressions of transformative power on the part of one who was supposedly nurturing them. This does not deny the presence of transformative power as it is expressed in a very valid manner by so many nurturers and carers. “Good Aussies” and “good citizens” were two of the aims mentioned by the interviewees. In verbatim quotations, the words of the interviewer are noted in italics. This daughter is now a practising professional in a high-stress position. Her only reminder that she has of her early years is a slight limp and a need to exercise daily. Only Natural Family Planning and abstinence were allowed as forms of birth control.

References Allen, A. The Power of Feminist Theory. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999. Bartky, S.L. Femininity and Oppression. London: Routeledge, 1990. Falding, H. “Inside the Australian Family” in Ed. A.P. Elkin, Marriage and the Australian Family. Melbourne: Angus and Robertson, 1957: 54–81. Frye, M. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. New York: Crossing Press, 1983. Gi
ens, D. The Family in Question. London: Macmillan, 1985.

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Hillard, D. “Church, Family and Sexuality in Australia in the 1950s.” Australian Historical Studies: The Forgo
en Fiies 109: 133–146. Miller, J.B. “Women and Power” in Ed. T.E. Wartenberg, Rethinking Power. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992: 240–248. Murphy, John, and Mary Smart, Mary. “Introduction.” Australian Historical Studies 109 (1997): 1–5. Nussbaum, Martha C. Sex and Social Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Porter, M. “A Unique Model: Contradictory Representations of Mary as Mother in Australian Catholic Truth Society Pamphlets.” 1950–1982. Unpublished thesis in Studies in Religion, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 1994. Rich, A. Of Woman Born. London: Virago, 1976. Ruddick, Sara. Maternal Thinking. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. Sheridan, S. Who Was That Woman? Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2002. Wartenberg, T.E. The Forms of Power. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Wearing, B. The Ideology of Motherhood. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MOTHERS AT HOME OPPRESSED OR OPPRESSORS OR VICTIMS OF FALSE DICHOTOMIES? Elizabeth Reid Boyd

Introduction I wish to explore in this chapter issues of power and oppression with regard to mothers who stay at home. Between 1996 and 2000, I carried out research that focused upon mothers who stay at home to care for their children, in the context of the Australian child-care debate between mothers at home and mothers at work. The research incorporated interviews with mothers at home and advocates for mothers at home as well as an analysis of politics, the media, child-care literature, and feminist theory. In the interviews, gender was crucial in accounts of and rationales for staying at home. There was a sense of gendered fait accompli. Mothers said, for example: “someone” had to be at home (so she stayed at home); my/his mother was/wasn’t at home (so she stayed at home); we decided “to give them the best” (so she stayed at home). There was not always total acceptance, in spite of compliance. One mother expressed some ambivalence regarding the way that her being at home had come about: “It was never going to be me” but “as it’s worked out” (she stayed at home). I do not intend to imply that these women lack personal agency, that they are somehow duped; that is not how I want to look at power and oppression. For me, this provides a far too limited, simplistic explanation, which might potentially only add to “all the women of the world lying like squashed ants beneath the increasing load of sociological documentation of men’s power over them” (Wearing 32). There are also limitations in viewing mothers at home as victims of “false consciousness” (Wearing 33) and seeing them solely as “suffer[ing] from

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the ideologies of motherhood” (Doucet 274). While mothers staying at home cannot be posited easily as resistant to dominant Australian familial tradition and ideology, the mothers and advocates for mothers at home I interviewed portrayed themselves, in some cases, as resisting pressure to use child care and return to paid work. The use of rhetoric of resistance is perhaps an indication of a sense of women’s current struggle against and challenge to the constraints of traditional and non-traditional gendered child-care norms and limited choices. Mothering at home has formed part of, rather than been a challenge to or subversion of, traditional western family ideology. However, the dominance of this ideology has been eroded in Australia. In part, this is because of the increased number of mothers in full-time and part-time work, and because of changes in perceptions regarding mothering at home. What has not been eroded are man-made divisions that construct public/private, work/home, and male/female. The power of gender in child-caring lies not only in the private negotiations of work and care between parents, but also in the very organization of the workplace and the way these two influence each other. Paid and unpaid work are intimately connected (Acker; Cockburn). It is the power of male employment structures, based upon gendered assumptions, into which both women and men must fit, which constrain and construct child-care choices. It is a false dichotomy, which is nonetheless experienced as a daily reality, which has the power to shape women’s child-caring.

Research Background When I started my research, I began with interviewing mothers at home. It was a rare account that did not include a weighing up of the relative merits of being at home versus being at work. I heard that “there’s always a huge working mum versus stay-at-home mum issue, always.” It is not only mothers who are involved in this debate. It has been significant politically and in the media. There has been an undoubted shi away from support for public child care, to support for private or family child care, under the current Liberal government. This is discernible in reductions in financial support to child-care centres and constraints on the Child Care Rebate, in contrast to payments such as Parenting Payment and portions of the Family Tax Initiative, which oen have been specifically for couple, single-income families, in which one parent stays at home.

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In the Australian media, although motherhood is celebrated as eternally fulfilling (especially if you have got the right appliances) and sometimes deplored (if you have not), the word mother is now frequently qualified. There is the working mother on the one hand and the mother at home on the other, and all too oen, either one group or the other is found wanting. The child-care debate has also been taken up in child-rearing discourse. Steve Biddulph asserts that children in long day care (full day care on longer) have a seriously deprived childhood experience. More recently this year, in the United States, Jay Belsky has reignited the debate, arguing that child care is detrimental to children. Feminism has also had a particular placement in the child-care debate. This is partly because in the early stages of the second wave of feminism, following the publication of books such as Greer’s The Female Eunuch and Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique, it was thought and hoped that motherhood would be radically changed. But in the past decade, in the United Kingdom, Maureen Freely has claimed that feminism has failed mothers by devaluing motherhood and regarding children as an obstacle to fulfilment (1995). In the United States, Anne Roiphe wrote, “I remain a mother linked—or is it chained—by a thousand thoughts to her children. It is clear to me that feminism, despite its vast accomplishments, has not cured me of motherhood” (ix). Catherine Hakim evoked a controversy in 1996 when she argued that it is a feminist myth that the majority of women want to work full time, and that many women want to stay with their children. Still other feminist writings that emerged in the 1980s, such as those of Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, and Sara Ruddick, are works that have formed part of what Jane Flax has called “the maternal turn” and Lynne Segal has called “maternal revivalism.” But this maternalist strand of feminist thought has not been played up in the child-care debate between mothers at home and mothers at work. Feminism’s positioning in the debate was particular and radical, or anti mothers at home. And this is part of an emphasis on power struggles between women which ensures that the debate remains between women: either mothers at home are powerful, or mothers at work are powerful; either feminist women are oppressing conservative women, or vice versa. A dichotomous debate is sustained and nicely disguises where the real power and oppression lies.

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Dichotomy, Dualism, and Difference What I would like to do, then, is look beneath this apparent dichotomy between women by examining dichotomy, dualism, and difference. In defining these, I draw on Nancy Jay’s seminal discussion. Not all dichotomous distinctions form dualisms. A dualism takes the form of an “A/not-A” distinction (44) and requires an either/or. This is particularly explicable with regard to gender. A dualism is not the same as a dichotomy that can be conceptualized as A/B. In A/B distinctions both terms may have a positive reality. Further, there is nothing in A/B distinctions that necessarily limits the consideration of A/B/C, and in this, I believe, lies the possibility of difference, although a dichotomy seems limited in scope. A/not-A, however, is structured so that a third C and other terms (D, E) seem impossible. I choose the word seems with care, because [A]s a fundamental principle of formal logic the A/not-A dichotomy is wonderfully simple and supremely all encompassing. But it is necessarily distorting when it is applied to the empirical world, for there are no negatives there. Everything that exists (including women) exists positively. (Jay 48)

As a conceptual framework imposing an interpretative order on the world, a dualism is, of course, a powerfully simple ideological device. This can be demonstrated by exploring the Australian child-care debate in these (distorting) terms. Mothers at home versus mothers at work form a dichotomy (A/B). They are not strictly a dualism, since they are not mutually exclusive (A/not A). A mother at home may do some part-time work (and still define herself as a mother at home—that is, one who does not work).1 Mothers who work are also mothers at home when they are not doing their paid work, and so on. In view of the continuity and links between A and B, mothering at home and mothering at work, how the debate works in terms of dualism may seem limited. The two states do not logically contradict each other, there is continuity and commonality, and both have a positive reality. Yet this debate is oen played out in terms of positive and negative, virtue and vice, presence and absence, oppressor and oppressed, and these representations are strongly reminiscent of dualism (Jay 44). One

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kind of mothering is viewed as good, the other bad, one natural, one unnatural, and so on. This still does not make the dichotomy of mothering at home/ mothering at work a dualism. But these dualistic features are not inexplicable. I contend that the ideological power of dualism in this debate is not in the dichotomy of mothering at home versus mothering at work itself. This breaks down, as a dualism, under preliminary examination. The strength of the mothers at home/mothers at work dichotomy (A/B) is that it rests upon, and is upheld by, a number of dualisms. The conceptual dualism at the heart of the child-care debate is male/female. I am not simply referring to biological manifestations of sexual difference, for “men” and “women” and their interests rest not on biological difference, reproductive relations, or the sexual division of labour, but on the discursive practices that produce them (Pringle and Watson 216). As a discourse, the child-care debate operates as both reflector and producer of the male and the female, with powerful effects for the parameters of male and female responsibility for children. The male productive worker (using his mind) and the female reproductive carer (using her body) are familiar ideological figures. In this dualistic framework, a male is worker/not carer, and a female carer/not worker. Thus the dichotomy between mothers arises because men are deemed not-carers, based upon them being not-mothers. Even though mothers do paid work, the male/female dualism holds: the debate is between mothers, because mother equals carer. Other dualisms uphold the separation between men and care by reinforcing and reinventing male/female. Especially pertinent to the debate between mothers at home versus mothers at work are public/ private, production/reproduction, mind/body, and culture/nature. These dualisms work together, as well as separately. The dualisms I have identified form old divisions. According to Mary O’Brien, they rest upon the separation of man from nature and continuous time (34). For O’Brien, it was not women’s nature that excluded them from culture, public, and work. It was the construction of the historically male public world of work, which separates men (and “pseudo men”) from the so-called private care of children (34). Today, this hierarchical “man-made” separation lies largely unaltered. But in the Australian context, it is (women’s) child-caring, rather than (men’s) work, that is problematized. Implicitly, work is

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valued over care, production over reproduction, and, historically of course, social and political theory has reflected this value.

The Processes of Child Care In contrast, Mary O’Brien in The Politics of Reproduction argued that social and political theory must be grounded in the experiences of women, in the politics of reproduction. She argued that reproduction was not simply biological, or natural. Instead, O’Brien provided a dialectical account of reproduction. Reproduction as dialectic is integral to my analysis. Hartsock cites Ollman’s statement regarding dialectics, which I have found valuable: Dialectics resources our thinking about reality by replacing the commonsense notion of “thing” as something that has a history and has external connections with other things, with notions of “process,” which contains its history and possible futures, and “relation,” which contains, as a part of what it is, ties with other relations. For my research, a dialectical account of reproduction views it as process in itself, and in process and relation with other processes such as production. It involves relations across production and reproduction, and work and home, between women, men, and children. The dichotomous framing of the child-care debate currently obscures these relations for women and men. In a straightforward dualistic manoeuvre, male reproductive responsibilities are made logically inconsistent. But reproduction is not “only body” any more than production is “only mind.” To view only the female as embodied is misleading, for the “male” productive sphere is made up of a populace as embodied as the “female” reproductive sphere. There are both mothering and fathering bodies in the public sphere, or world of work, and both mothering and fathering bodies in the private sphere, or in the home, and these are in dynamic social and political relationship with each other. Currently, though, in our contemporary constructs, the father at home remains a shadowy figure. In the child-care debate, he is merely on the sidelines, cheering for his maternal team. This paternal invisibility, due to dichotomous debate underpinned by dualism, means we can’t fully focus on process, between women and men, between women, and across the boundaries of work and home. If the child-care debate remains an oppositional one between women, with men looking on, li
le will be changed.

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Social transformations involve a relationship between positions, and nothing is gained if they are set up as opposites (Eveline 464). I am arguing for recognition of the relationship between mothers at work and mothers at home, for clearly, in the child-care debate, nothing is gained when they are set up as opposites. There are women and men at home and women and men at work, all in relationship with each other. But the power of the child-care debate, as a discourse that defines child care as a woman’s interest, even though as a process it crosses the boundaries of work and home, ensures that the responsibility for childcaring ultimately remains with women and their individual choices. As Adrienne Rich argued 20 years ago, “the absence of choice remains the great unacknowledged reality, and in the absence of choice, women will remain dependent upon the chance or luck of their individual relationships” (1986 259). Thus individual accounts of so-called child-care choices are defined and discussed in personal terms and power relations—women at home said they were “lucky” or “not lucky” to be able to stay at home, or work, or have a husband who helps, or have a husband who is a good wage earner. I am not trying to obscure the imbalance of these personal power relations. I simply suggest that it will be useful to focus on these individual power relations and contextualize them within Rich’s great unacknowledged reality, the constructed lack of real choice for women, a void with the pulling power of a black hole. It is not debates between women, or feminist debates, or opposite positions held by mothers that are the problem. Rather, the problem is the point of reference: the prior privileging and advantaging of male norms (Bacchi 252) including work/care norms. This means we must look more closely at how the gendered parameters of the child-care debate work and how they are sustained. It means we must look at the discourses that continue to reinvent and reinforce these dualisms and divisions. It is only by unravelling these discourses, such as the child-care debate between mothers at home and at work, and perceiving the dualisms that lie beneath them, that we have any hope of dissolving the gendered division that currently ensures care is a woman’s responsibility. We must look more closely at the hierarchical man-made divisions that constrain our lives, and point out that these need not be permanent, they can be altered, and they might only consist of a flimsy membrane—and membranes, as mothers know, cannot permanently hold water.

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Endnotes 1.

As did some of the mothers I interviewed; this is an issue I discuss further in the methodology.

References Acker, J. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organisations.” Gender and Society 4.2 (June 1990): 139–158. Bacchi, C. Same Difference: Feminism and Sexual Difference. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990. Biddulph, S. More Secrets of Happy Children. Sydney: Harper Collins, 1998. Chodorow, N. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Cockburn, C. In the Way of Women: Men’s Resistance to Sex Equality in Organisations. London: Macmillan, 1991. Doucet, A. “Gender Equality and Gender Differences in Household Work and Parenting.” Women’s Studies International Forum 18.3 (1995): 271–284. Eveline, J. The Politics of Advantage: Managing Work and Care in Australia and Sweden. PhD thesis. Murdoch University [Perth], 1994. Flax, J. Thinking Fragments. Berkeley, US: University of California Press, 1990. Friedan, B. The Feminine Mystique. Harmondsworth: Penguin; London: Gollancz, 1963. Freely, M. What About Us? An Open Le
er to the Mothers Feminism Forgot. London: Bloomsbury, 1995. Greer, G. The Female Eunuch. London: Paladin, 1971. Hakim, C. “The Sexual Division of Labour and Women’s Heterogeneity.” The British Journal of Sociology 47.1 (1996): 178–187. Hartsock, N. “Mary O’Brien’s Contribution to Contemporary Feminist Theory.” Canadian Woman Studies 18.4 (1999): 62–68. Jay, N. “Gender and Dichotomy.” Feminist Studies 7.1 (Spring, 1981): 38–56. O’Brien, M. The Politics of Reproduction. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. Pringle, R., and S. Watson. “Women’s Interests and the Poststructuralist State.” Feminism and Politics. Ed. A. Phillips. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. 203–223. Rich, A. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. London: Virago, 1976. ____. Blood, Bread and Poetry. Selected Prose 1979–1985. London: Virago, 1986.

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Roiphe, A. Fruitful: A Real Mother in the Modern World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996. Ruddick, S. Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989. Segal, L. Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism. London: Virago Press, 1987. Wearing, B. Gender: The Pain and Pleasure of Difference. Melbourne: Longman, 1996.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

MOTHERS AT THE MARGINS SINGULAR IDENTITIES

AND

SURVIVAL

Patricia Short

Identity and Survival The connections between identity and survival for a group of women doing motherwork in extreme financial circumstances is the focus of this chapter. During in-depth interviews held at emergency relief centres, mothers revealed aspects of their identity that shaped their responses to adversity. Their motherwork emerges as a set of practices deeply connected to singular identities of strength, self-reliance, and endurance that sustained and enabled survival in extreme circumstances. At the same time, these identities and practices appear to have reproduced the mothers’ estrangement and exclusion from the nexus of particular market-state and informal economic relations1 that are the dominant means of survival and security in contemporary Australia.

The Emergency Relief Centre Client (ERCC) Study The women’s stories recounted in this chapter are drawn from in-depth interviews conducted with women who presented at emergency relief centers in the Ipswich-Moreton region of southeast Queensland during late 1995 and 1996. This study of Emergency Relief Centre Clients (the ERCC Study) included both women and men, and was part of a much broader study of “vulnerable households” in the Brisbane metropolitan region. The aim of the broader study was to map out the “survival strategies” or householding practices of people differently connected to the labour market, the state, and the informal economy relations among families, friends, and associates that involve exchange and/or

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transfer of goods and services for well being and survival. Put simply, the question explored was “How do people in different social and cultural circumstances, and different social positions organize their households in order to obtain and use the goods and services they need for well being and survival?” In this broader study, different forms of household organization and income arrangements were mapped. Inequalities in access to resources for survival and well being were found to be linked to differences in divisions of labour and income-earning potential; pa
erns of association in community contexts; arrangements for financial management and expenditure within households; and differences in forms of informal support. Participants for the study of highly vulnerable households were recruited from among people who approached emergency relief centres for assistance. This second stage of study, the Emergency Relief Centre Client Study (ERCC Study), involved a total of 28 interviews with both women and men who presented at three emergency relief centres. What follows is an exploration of the connections between women’s identities and survival as they were expressed in interviews2 with 16 of the women in the ERCC Study. These women, all mothers, were working to survive in material and social conditions that had pushed them to the very margins of survival. It should be noted here that among the study participants were two men who also, as sole parents, were actively engaged in “motherwork,”3 but the ways these men did their motherwork at the margins were quite different from the ways women did their motherwork, not so much in terms of the practices (the foreground) but in the ways they experienced their domestic work and expressed the personal-political aspects of identity. The men’s approaches to motherwork, and their emergent identities as “sole parents” were clearly shaped by their primary identity as “men/fathers without wives (to do care work).” Elsewhere (Short 2001, 2004), I have explored issues of identity and practice for these men, revealing tendencies in their talk and action to adopt “hapless victim” subject positions, in contrast to the identities of strength and struggle that emerge from the women’s talk that is analyzed here. Study participants were not asked directly to speak about “identity and survival.”4 Rather, their understandings of themselves and their struggle to survive are drawn from their talk about the circumstances that led to their “emergency” (the immediate event or circumstances that brought them to the emergency relief centre), and their experiences of ge
ing help. The focus upon identity and survival arose from the

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ways the ERCC participants, through their accounts, revealed aspects of their identities that were clearly significant in shaping their experience of deprivation and their survival strategies and (re)positioning them at the margins of a market-state-familial nexus through which the dominant forms of distribution operate in contemporary Australian society. While the voices of the women remain at the centre of this analysis, the interpretation of their voices presented here draws upon feminist and critical realist perspectives of power, agency, and action (Allen; Giddens). Among the women whose stories are analyzed here, 11 had children under the age of 16 in their care and custody when they approached the emergency relief centre. Three other mothers (Kathleen, Marion, and Iolana)5, who no longer had dependent children living with them in their household, were providing a high level of care for adult daughters not living with them. The ages of the mothers ranged from early twenties to mid-sixties.

Motherwork at the Margins Motherwork at the margins is labour-intensive, conflictual, urgent (oen critical), and always emergent; the study revealed that housework, care-work, and financial management of households were all done in contexts that were constrained by limited resources and financial dependency. As they spoke of themselves and their children, all the women described ongoing concerns about their limited resources to provide food and clothing, housing and schooling, emotional support, and physical protection for themselves, their children, and/or grandchildren. They spoke of the difficulties they faced on a daily basis in their efforts to provide food and clothing for their families. I’ve just lived on bread and bu
er and Vegemite … or I’ve just bought some … noodles to feed him ’cause I haven’t got nothing to give him because he’s a big eater. And because he won’t eat bread and he’s a really fussy, fussy, fussy eater … I can’t give him lunch for school so I have to have money so I can give him for lunch … to keep him happy. Like I smoke but I’ll go without smokes or I’ll go without dinner or anything just so I’ll have enough money to give him for lunch food, enough money to buy him food and enough money to get her formula and nappies.… Every week, I have a couple of days of the week that I go without, until I get paid. (Kellie)

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… if we don’t want to eat [much] we’ll have a salad sandwich that night and the next night we’ll have a meal. And I go to Woolworth’s or Coles and get li
le portions of meat. Whoever says you can’t survive on social security is wrong. You can. … I have [gone without], the children haven’t. (Melanie)

Participants also talked at length about the recurring difficulties and ongoing tasks involved in finding and affording appropriate accommodation. Among their concerns about accommodation were personal safety, and access to transport and facilities such as schools, hospitals, and prisons (where some families visited partners/fathers). Schooling their children was another aspect of motherwork at the forefront of participants’ struggles, and the work they did to have their children educated was frequently problematic. Schools were crucial sites of their active struggle against exclusion and marginalization—for their children and themselves. Most participants spoke passionately about the deprivations and injustices they felt their children suffered because they (the parents) could not afford to pay for some core curricula activities (excursions, cultural events) and/or regulated practices (especially compulsory wearing of school uniforms, including specified shoes). It’s school too, because lately I’ve been pu
ing my hand in my pocket for excursions and … cra projects.... Like this week [the last week of the school year] my daughter had a choice of doing all these different cras which only cost $1.50 or $3 or something but she has six classes per day, five days a week … and that adds up, something like $15 for the week for her and if she didn’t do that, she would have to do li
er duties. I just said that you can’t do it, so she has been staying home this week because I don’t feel that she should be punished just ’cause she can’t do the cra things.… Basically, if you’re not a rich family, your child gets punished by having li
er duty or clean-up duty.… I just said, “Well no, I’m sorry, she’s not coming to school.” (Sandra)

Some voiced dissatisfaction that, at times, they had needed to deal with their knowledge and responsibility as parents being brought into question or directly challenged in school contexts. I was told by one guy in there [in the Department of Family Services] that I must have bashed my daughter because they do not take

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children off their parents for not a
ending school. They do! See my daughter had learning difficulties and I used to have time off so I could help [at school] and I tried to get remedial reading at school and things like that for her, and I kept ge
ing told there was nothing the ma
er with her. In fact, she’s dyslexic. It took me six and a half years to prove it.… [It was eventually diagnosed] when Children’s Services put her in hospital. The school teachers said, “Yeah, it’s a shame what they’ve found out” … [but] they still won’t agree that she’s dyslexic. (Marion)

For a few, “school” had been the site of the most direct form of challenge to their parental status—direct custodial challenges, either from the state or from non-custodial parents or other relatives had occurred at schools. In all of these situations, motherwork entailed many hours of being at schools, talking (in more or less conflictual situations) with teachers and school principals, working to comply with school authorities, and, not infrequently, relocating children to different schools. Indeed, these and other “boundary disputes” with state authorities—over income entitlements and allowances, housing assistance, and other citizenship rights—were the focus of considerable expenditure of time, money, and physical and emotional labour in their motherwork. They won’t give [a disability pension] to [my 16-year-old son] because they said they can re-train him to do a course within two years.... The doctor said he can’t do anything for two years anyway, so he should be entitled. Like he’s ge
ing $60 a week.... They won’t give him Newstart, they put him on Sickness Benefits. He was ge
ing $220 before, now he’s on Sickness Benefits and he only gets $120 a fortnight.... When he was in hospital and running backwards and forwards to the hospital and that it wasn’t even covering the expenses of transport and tablets and everything. (Del) … trying to find bond money. Now I know that the Government Housing Commission does [lend it] but I wasn’t aware until recently that I had a debt with the Housing Commission. They’re charging an enormous amount of money for clean-up and I’ve been to discuss this and I thought I was being set up. And I le that house spotless. I bleached the walls down.... I really cleaned that place up ... and they charged about $220 clean-up.... They’re affecting poor people and

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they’re stinging them again. It’s like, when they’re down, kick ’em again. (Margot) I visit Friday for one hour and Saturday for one hour and um, then, from the 1st August, it’s only one day a week for two hours which is going to make it hard because she [six-month-old daughter] always plays up even in the one hour. She’s always tired or hungry and that and you’re only allowed to bring in one bo
le, one nappy, no pram, no nothing, you know, so it makes it awkward then too.… Apparently the guards there have said that it’s too much paperwork and I don’t know, they’ve made up a lot of excuses and so they’ve cut it down to the one two-hour visit … there’s not much we can do about it. We don’t like it. We tried to figure out a way, you know, the group of us women who go in, we’re trying … if they don’t want us to bring in our own prams, at least provide prams so that we can put the children in, and somewhere for the children to play because the children just run riot and then they say, “You can’t do this and keep your kids quiet” and it’s really hard. I can’t keep her quiet, she’s a baby! We’re trying to object but whether we succeed or not … (Kellie)

For several participants, motherwork also entailed intensive support and protection of their children in traumatic contexts of violence, neglect, family separation. and custodial dispute. Kathleen describes her feelings about her role in supervising access visits between her grandchildren, aged six and four years, and their paternal grandmother. I’m very protective over the children. He’s [the children’s father] in jail. He killed … [she describes the incident that lead to his conviction and incarceration]. I’ve got to go [to the park] to sit there for an hour and a half. This woman [the children’s paternal grandmother], she’s supposed to have access to her grandchildren.… She talks about him, saying he’s not guilty, that he shouldn’t be in there.… It worries me because I know what he’s capable of and I worry for Anne and her husband and the kids … I know what happened.… We know that he was on his way to kill my daughter and children, his own children when he done what he did…. It puts a lot on me.

Women’s motherwork at the margins emerges as a set of practices deeply connected to singular identities of strength. Their capacities

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for self-reliance, risk taking, and endurance sustained them and enabled survival in extreme circumstances. At the same time, these identities and the practices linked to them appear to have reproduced the mothers’ estrangement and exclusion from the nexus of particular market-state and informal economic relations that are the dominant means of survival and security in contemporary Australia. The women’s stories, fragments of which are recounted here, illustrate vividly the intensity of motherwork at the margins—in critical circumstances, with few material resources and in the midst of life changes that lay quite beyond their control. The stories of the women were, at once, similar and different, common and unique, but the themes of strength, self-reliance, risk, and endurance were expressed in different forms in all their stories.

Strong Women “Strength” as an aspect of identity and an a
ribute that all the women drew upon in such extreme circumstances was expressed in many ways. Perhaps the most salient and direct expressions of strength were evident in Kellie’s and Margot’s statements. Both declared “I’m a strong woman …” as they described how they had dealt with and would continue to deal with their difficult circumstances. Brenda also stated quite directly, “You’ve got to be strong” when describing how she responded to a series of extreme stresses in her wifework and motherwork. Typically “strength” was articulated in subtle ways and often iterated through words like “coping,” “handling it,” and “managing.” Sometimes, the women spoke of their strength by reflecting upon temporary (and perceived uncharacteristic) lack of strength. This is the way Kathleen revealed her perception of her own “strengths” and her valuing of “strength.” She spoke of her temporary lack of strength in dealing with her familial and financial responsibilities, her sudden and recent “inability to cope.” When asked what it was that had led her to seek help, Kathleen referred directly to the frailty she was experiencing, rather than any of the many stressful events that had occurred in her life over a prolonged period. “At the moment, I just, I’ve just found that, like food-wise, I’m not managing, I can’t cope.” Although there were many and diverse expressions of personal strength(s) in these women’s stories that spoke to the ways in which they felt themselves “enabled” to take necessary action, three principal

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aspects of strength emerge from close consideration of their stories— their capacity for self-reliance, their willingness to take risks, and their capacity for endurance. Yet, it is also apparent that these capacities, in the contexts of deprivation experienced by these mothers, were double-edged swords—they at once enabled and constrained these mothers. Entailed within their capacities for self-reliance, risk taking, and endurance are evident potentialities for isolation, harm, and entrapment. Self-Reliance Expressions of self-reliance were perhaps the most salient signs of the women’s sense of empowerment but, at the same time, they revealed what are possibly the most contentious forms of strength emerging in their motherwork. Self-reliance clearly has both positive and negative elements. This aspect of strength emerged mostly in contexts where the women were called upon to mount a defence—either against the state in (re)claiming entitlement to welfare benefits or against real or threatened physical violence. For some, self-reliance emerged through taking risks and “going-it alone,” their only option for escape from intolerable circumstances. The signals of self-reliance evident in the women’s talk were embedded most oen in statements about interpersonal conflicts or not trusting others. They are also evident in the mothers’ descriptions of personal risk taking that are discussed below. Melanie, like others, described her distrust of “making friends of neighbours” and how she had resolved to keep her distance from them. No. I don’t choose to [make friends with neighbours] … from the experiences I’ve had. I don’t really like ge
ing in with your neighbours. I like to sort of go—I’ll say ‘Hello!’, I just mind my business. [Where I lived before] there was an elderly chap next door. He was quite nice—but other than that, no!

Brenda, too, described her general lack of trust in other people, especially of “the welfare”6 and her strategies for dealing with this in situations where she was compelled to interact with them. She also describes situations of conflict with relatives (and consequent estrangement) that had arisen when she felt it necessary to defend her

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domestic situation in which she was endeavouring to rebuild a family household devastated by intra-familial criminal abuse. I said “Nup! I don’t trust any of you, you think youse are God” … I didn’t really trust her [the Child Care Officer] with them [her children] … They always had 50 cents for a phone call in their pocket.… I was scared of her ’cause I knew how much power she had. But after I’d done the [assertiveness] course, I said, “You don’t scare me any more.’”

In another context, speaking about a situation in which she felt family members had insulted her husband, she said, “My Les thinks women shouldn’t fight but I said, ‘Yes, they’re not going to [treat us like that].’” Margot gave an account of another kind of ba
le—one that expresses her capacity not only for self-reliance but also for endurance. I’m fighting custody for my girls … and my grandchildren.… My ex–husband is in [overseas country] and before I came home, my girls were due to come with me and he pinched them just before. They’re teenagers … he pinched all three of them. Catherine’s … walked out on her father.… He’s still got the 15- and 14-year-olds. He’s been abusing them quite badly.… The Government have been on my back to get over there and get ’em but I haven’t got the finances.…The A
orney General here, for the past two years, have passed it from one department to another. It’s been going on, um, six years.… Well I’m fighting for [Legal Aid] now.

Whatever particular form their self-reliance took, it involved pa
erns of contest, defence, or guardedness that were invariably linked to estrangement from family or friends, distancing from neighbours and other informal sources of support, and a level of marginalization arising from “non-compliance” or non-conformity in the context of state agencies. Taking Risks Another element of the mothers’ strength, closely connected to and probably based upon their self-reliance, was their willingness (if not preparedness) to take risks. The actions the women took to escape

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from extreme situations always carried emotional consequences, sometimes extreme, but they usually also involved the risks of material deprivation, and sometimes physical harm. Kellie’s experience in travelling to Queensland from New South Wales to assist her partner who was being held in custody and establish a home, near him, for herself and her two small children is recounted below. Her decision to do so involved considerable material and personal risk. She recalled the extent of their deprivation as they made that journey and then a
empted to se
le in Queensland. Yet, at no time in telling her story did she express regret or doubt at what she perceived as necessary risks to assist and support her partner and to reunite her family. All I’ve got is a car, a cot, and some clothes. That’s all I’ve got with me—nothing, nothing to my name, money-wise or anything else like … From New South Wales I came. I drove here with two kids in the car, it was full of clothes.… I had to stay in a pub. I had no money.… They’re still doing bits and pieces [to my car] … the men [at the Church] are fixing my car.

Susan told how she had reported her beliefs about her husband’s sexual abuse of her six-year-old daughter to a state child welfare authority, and then went on to describe what she felt was suspicion of her motives among welfare workers, the expressions of disbelief from her immediate family, and their subsequent withdrawal of support. Reporting this concern was a risk she had been prepared to take. I’ve just le my husband about a week ago, during which I went and took him to the cleaners, interfering with my daughter. It’s been proven; she’s ge
ing help.… Well, I just put two and two together and it clicked and … I had a suspicion, I did. I was always suspicious but I wouldn’t let her get into that situation and then, the night before [last] she was with him.… My brother [who was looking aer her] thought it was just me but I can’t let her get into that situation, so I had to report it. I wasn’t going to stand by and let that happen.

Risk taking, however it happened, usually involved “taking a stand” or “standing up to” others. Invariably it involved impulsive or urgent actions. Implicitly, it involved being “on your own.”

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Endurance In contrast, expressions of “endurance” were evident in the ways in which the women spoke to the long-term nature of adversity and the extremes of hardship they had faced. Formulating strategies for survival in the long-term (rather than the short-term, emergency situation) clearly involved a degree of acceptance of the circumstances of adversity. While expressions of endurance involved elements of acceptance, they also articulated ways of resisting, rather than succumbing to the extreme effects of adversity. Sandra was facing a difficult period of extraordinary expenses and mounting financial commitments and was unable to obtain support from her mother who usually offered it. She expressed her capacity to endure and contain this situation by (re)framing what were clearly unusual and unfamiliar circumstances as an incidence of a familiar, recurring pa
ern of events that the family would pull out of with assistance. Like we usually always struggle around this time of the year but Mum usually gives us a helping hand but she’s not financial, not financially well off at the moment, she’s had a few debts that she’s had to incur, she just couldn’t help us out at this stage.

Christine expressed her capacity for endurance when she described, in some detail, the disciplined routines of “cutting back” she had developed, over a period of time, to ensure that she and her two young daughters were able to manage on her low income (as a sole supporting parent). Well, the lights get turned on only when they need to be turned on and there’s no excess. Things that are in the power points get taken out at night so there is no excess there. If the girls are going to bed, I leave a lamp on and then when they’re asleep, turn it off.… The girls don’t get as much as they used to … toys and clothes, treats, ice-creams. A friend of mine has a daughter … she gives [my daughter] clothes that don’t fit [her daughter] any more and I go out and do the op-shops7.… I can manage if I don’t do it too oen.

Diane described her circumstances as “a waiting game.” She explained her focus upon her younger children and their well being,

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and upon repairing her relationship with her older daughter rather than searching for and reconciling with her husband, in terms of the need to “wait.” It’s just a waiting game. He hasn’t taken off for another woman or anything like that.… He’s got a job down there, he’s happy. And, y’ know, a couple [of friends] have rung me and they’ve said, “… You know what he’s doing?” and I’ve said “Yes” [and they say] “Huhhh! ... you know where he’s living!” and I’ve said “No … but he’s just living…” and I’ve said, “I don’t really want to know unless he wants to tell me.”

Brenda’s endurance was expressed in her forgiveness of her husband, who had been convicted of offences relating to intra-familial abuse. Her preparedness to “forgive” and carry on was clearly the starting point for her to rebuild family relationships—with her estranged daughters, her father and her brother, and the basis on which she was working to provide a stable “family” context in which to raise her son. I forgive him. All the charges were dropped except one of violence. Everyone deserves a second chance.… Kenny [her son] lost his sisters, then he lost his father.… He’s happy with his Dad at home but his Dad, er, I don’t know … and he [her husband and Kenny’s Dad] says that if there’s any more arguments, he’s going to ask to go back [to prison] and, of course, Ken and I, of course, poor Ken, ’cause he’s the one who probably started it.…

“Getting by,” “cutting back,” “waiting,” and “staying” were familiar and enabling strategies of endurance evident in nearly all the women’s stories. They had few personal, social, or material resources to form alliances with others and nearly all spoke directly of their convictions that they could manage on their own, “if only …”. Linked to the potentially isolating strengths of self-reliance and risk taking, such a capacity for endurance can constitute a form of entrapment.

Singular Identities and Shi
ing Dependencies For these women/mothers, identities of strength and their capacities of self-reliance, risk taking, and endurance were formed in adversity

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and their understandings of their circumstances and actions can be heard as sense-making strategies that maintain positive identities and produce capacities to deal with highly constrained personal, social, and economic circumstances. Yet, their strategies of agency and resistance were “lone” strategies, the central aspects of their strengths/power were singular, not collective capacities. The urgency, emergency, and intensity of their motherwork contained few opportunities for solidarity and collective action; the sustained “singularity” of their identities of strength was at odds with any potential for solidarity as a form of power (cf Allen). These women have told how their qualities of self-reliance and endurance, and their preparedness to take risks underpinned their capacities for control (over circumstances), resistance (to domination), and empowerment (to act). Yet, their stories also reveal elemental contradictions in the forms of strength they cited. Their means of control over their circumstances were ultimately linked to subordinate relations of consumption (dependencies); resistance invariably led to degrees of isolation or estrangement that distanced them from both formal and informal structures or networks of support; and their capacities to act were always highly constrained by their limited control over material resources. They lived and worked in situations of sharp transition— precariously relying at different times upon waged partners, one or another form of (inadequate) state benefit, tenuous familial support, and emergency relief such that their means of survival, and that of their children, always entailed subordinate social relations. Their singular identities of strength, and their capacities for self-reliance, risk taking, and endurance were inextricably linked, in practice, to pa
erns of shiing dependency.

Endnotes 1.

2.

“Informal” economic relations refers to those social relations formed in community, inter-household and family contexts, outside the dominant market-state (formal) economy, that provide sources of income (goods and services) for the household. I conducted interviews with emergency relief clients aer they had received attention from service providers. Relief Centre workers asked clients if they would be willing to talk with a researcher from The University

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

of Queensland, offered the clients a brochure about the research, and explained that participation was voluntary. Those who agreed to participate at this point, and who were able to stay for an interview were introduced then to the researcher, who obtained informed consent from participants before proceeding with the interview. Only one of the referred participants (a man, not included in analysis for the present chapter) declined to be interviewed and this was because of an urgent need to obtain food for an infant. I use the term motherwork to refer to the full range of caring duties— physical, emotional, and material—that women as parents are expected to undertake, and normally do. Normative expectations of men as parents do not usually entail the range or intensity of emotional and physical labour expected of women/mothers. Some men do undertake “(women’s) motherwork” but such work is usually perceived by the men themselves and others as “contradictory” to or, at least, awkwardly aligned with their status as “men.” Interviews were conducted using a “sense-making” strategy (Dervin) that involves allowing the informant to provide a reflexive account of their experiences at critical moments in their lives. This interview method provides a set format of questioning that encourages reflection on events, circumstances, feelings, and detailed description of the informant’s and others’ actions. Shields and Dervin have argued the appropriateness of the strategy for feminist enquiry. Pseudonyms are used throughout this chapter to protect the anonymity of the participants, and any details of their circumstances that might lead to their identification have been withheld from publication. Brenda referred to personnel from various state welfare agencies by a colloquial, and somewhat derisory term, “the welfare.” Use of this term among folk frequently exposed to state interventions in their family life is, in itself, a signal of distance and mistrust. The term “op-shop” is a truncated form of “opportunity shop” and is used locally to refer to shops selling second-hand goods, mostly clothing or furniture items, and run by charity organizations for the purpose of raising funds.

References Allen, A. The Power of Feminist Theory: Domination, Resistance, Solidarity. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999.

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Dervin, B. “From the Mind’s Eye of the User: The Sense-Making QualitativeQuantitative Methodology.” Qualitative Research in Information Management. Eds. J.D. Glazier and R.R. Powell. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1992. 61–84. Giddens, A. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity, 1984. Shields, V.R., and B. Dervin. “Sense-Making in Feminist Social Science Research: A Call to Enlarge the Methodological Options of Feminist Studies.” Women’s Studies International Forum 16.1 (1993): 65–81. Short, P.M. “Working (at) the Margins: Household Work and Poverty in the Ipswich–Moreton Region.” Unpublished paper. Presented to the School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, 26 Oct. 2001. ____. “Association, Reciprocity, Sharing and Dependency: Conditions of Access and Forms of Inequality beyond the Market State.” PhD thesis. University of Queensland [St. Lucia, Qld], 2004.

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SEPARATION

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

NAMING MATERNAL ALIENATION1 Anne Morris

T

he term maternal alienation was first formulated in conjunction with an action research project in 19992 that investigated the process by which perpetrators of violence alienated children from their mothers (Morris 1999a, 1999b, 1999/2000). The reception of these ideas by practitioners has been rich and challenging. This chapter briefly outlines the process of naming maternal alienation, responses to its naming, and the issues that emerge from this tableau.

What Is Maternal Alienation? The term maternal alienation refers to an aspect of male abuse against women and children whereby the perpetrator deliberately creates wedges in the relationship between children and their mother. Maternal alienation is one weapon in an arsenal of strategies utilized by violent men against their women partners and/or children. The act of naming maternal alienation was important, as its effects on women and children are powerfully destructive, and yet it has been virtually invisible in professional discourse and practice, and in popular discourse. The term maternal alienation was created partly as a response to the contentious Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS),3 used particularly by men in custody disputes in the United States, to counter allegations of their violence and abuse towards mother and/or child, predominantly child sexual abuse. As PAS insists that it is mainly women who alienate their children from their fathers, while being silent about fathers’ a
empts to alienate children from their mothers, the term maternal alienation draws a
ention to the prevalence of alienation aimed at mothers. Central to

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maternal alienation is mother blaming, which is so pervasive in cultural and professional discourses and practice that its presence goes largely unnoticed. Having observed alienating practices and mother blaming in my work with survivors of domestic violence and child sexual abuse, I chose to conduct research in this area, interviewing women who as mothers were alienated from their children, as well as women who had been alienated from their own mothers as children. Some women had both of these experiences. Participants’ experiences varied, with alienation reaching different levels: causing the complete breakdown of the relationship in some cases, and less extensive outcomes for others. Within the open-ended interviews considerable data emerged about the deliberate strategies abusers used to alienate children from their mothers, and this finding was the most significant. Further explication was undertaken of the ways in which these strategies drew on discourses of “proper mothering,” “men’s rights,” and images of mothers and fathers. Maternal alienation was named in this process, and it together with mother blaming was identified as powerful and successful in deflecting responsibility for men’s violence in families onto mothers. Studies of men’s use of violence against women reveal that gendered violence is intentional and pa
erned, and aimed at achieving certain outcomes (Dobash and Dobash 141; Ptacek 150). Through “the instilling of fear, the humiliation, the degradation, [and] the assault on her identity as a woman” (Ptacek 147), perpetrators of violence set out to punish, to inflict injury, to silence, to isolate, and/or to maintain dominance and control over their partners. Within domestic violence, it should not be surprising that some men seek to achieve this by trying to destroy their partners’ relationships with their children: “Women with children commonly have a strongly invested sense of identity and selfworth related to being a mother, which makes mothering an easy target for men who wish to injure and punish” (Morris 1999b 13). But maternal alienation is also at play when men sexually abuse children. There is a growing body of literature that describes the tactics used by sex offenders to create and maintain power over their victims. Laing and Kamsler (169) drew a
ention to “the offender’s power in shaping the perceptions of his victim and the mother.” They also identified the camouflage maintained by mainstream professional theory and practice, whereby mother and victim blaming have successfully hidden the perpetrator’s responsibility for the abuse, and were among the first

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to point out that “[t]he offender’s actions create a context in which the mother and child are blind to his role in creating the difficulties in their relationship” (169). Lesley Laing’s later research revealed that “[t]he most common tactic acknowledged by [sex offenders] was that of dividing mother and child” (147). Similarly, Carol-Ann Hooper’s study of mothers of children who had been sexually abused describes how in some cases the abusive man had appeared to “take over” the child, drawing her into the secrecy surrounding the abuse and excluding the mother (38). Hooper also tells us that: [c]hildren’s descriptions of the victimisation process illustrate the way in which such “special” relationships are constructed, with abusive men manipulating children’s estrangement from potential sources of support…. Study of abusive men shows they are fully aware of this process. (38)

The Project’s Findings Feminist scholarship has stressed the importance of naming to make gendered reality visible. The naming of maternal alienation is part of this wider project, which has a particular history within research and responses to gendered violence. The main conclusions of the research into maternal alienation are as follows: ●

●

●

Maternal alienation is a strategy used in male abuse, and involves the perpetrator’s deliberate intention to undermine the child’s relationship with her or his mother. A range of tactics can be used by perpetrators to destabilize mother-child relationships. All tactics entail both debasing the mother and elevating the father. The latter involves representing himself as both a hero and a victim (of the mother, or of a child who will not co-operate). A feminist framework gave a broad socio-cultural context to the analysis of strategies, through its recognition of the ways in which gendered violence is supported by existing social structures and a
itudes towards women, men, and families. While maternal alienation is performed within interpersonal relationships, the strategies are successful because they are strongly embedded within social discourses. In other words,

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●

the tactics of maternal alienation replicate, within families, societal discourses that hold women responsible for others’ behaviour while denying them credibility and status. The findings contradict romantic and popular beliefs about the family—that it is a haven from the harsh world, where all family members work together, caring and sharing in a co-operative environment. In the families focused on in this study, the fathers put their own needs uppermost, above not only those of their partners’ but also their children’s. They formed competitive and exclusive relationships with their children, where no other figure of importance was tolerated in their children’s lives, undermining children’s relationships with their mother and with any sibling who did not acquiesce to the father’s construction of reality.

Recognitions and Resistances Since completing the research, I have presented and published papers on maternal alienation on many occasions. The ideas have circulated among professionals who work with domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and family therapy, and their responses have provided impetus for a further development of the concept. Naming maternal alienation had a profound impact on many service providers and students, some of whom recognized that maternal alienation occurred in their own families. Limited feedback has been available from men. There has also been some resistance to the ideas. In analyzing the responses, I will focus on three main themes: ●

●

●

the consequences of naming experiences that have been silenced, and of articulating a framework to recognize and understand these experiences; the tendency of children, as well as professionals, courts, and agencies, to readily position themselves with fathers while distancing themselves from mothers; and the rejoinder that “women do it too.”

The Consequences of Naming The act of naming is an extremely powerful one that enables a reconfiguring of experience and meaning (Kelly). It is curious that

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maternal alienation, which does not seem to be an unusual experience for mothers and children, has only recently been named. This discrepancy between the commonality of experience and its lack of representation in language gives rise to questions about who has the privilege of naming in our society, and who benefits from naming or not-naming. We can understand naming as a political act, an act of power. Naming something previously unrecognized opens up new possibilities of understanding and action that were inconceivable before. But equally, as naming is a political act that affects balances of power, one would expect resistances to it. The research project first arose from listening to the grief of women whose children hated them, and their despair at the responses they received from services, where they were further blamed for the breakdown of their relationships with their children or were dismissed and told to get on with their lives. If service providers have no framework for understanding such experiences other than motherblaming discourses, that is, that mothers are solely responsible for all that happens within families, then it would follow that these women’s experiences could not be heard. Their experiences of alienation lie beyond the paradigms of most practitioners. As Liz Kelly says, “What is not named is invisible and, in a social sense, nonexistent” (114). The not-naming of women’s and children’s experiences of violence allows gendered biases and stereotypes to remain unchallenged in our systems. Central to maternal alienation is mother blaming by perpetrators of abuse—the placing of all responsibility for their violence and the effects of their violence on mothers, who have simultaneously been deprived of their power to act and be taken seriously within families. Because mother blaming is so pervasive in our contemporary western culture and is thus invisible to most people, it should not be surprising when practitioners replicate mother blaming in their beliefs, assessments, counselling of women, children, and men, family therapy, recommendations to courts, and perhaps, also, in their relationships with their own mothers. Also integral to maternal alienation is the portrayal of mothers and women as mad, stupid, malicious, unloving, and monstrous. These images of mothers are constructed in dynamic relation to fathers’ depictions of themselves as safe, respectable, and rational. Furthermore, these gendered images correspond to stereotypes in both professional and wider socio-cultural practices and beliefs. The strength of these wider gendered constructions contributes to practitioners’ difficulties

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in recognizing and naming the strategies of maternal alienation; it explains why they are oen blind to the ways in which mothers are discredited and debased in maternal alienation, and fathers are exalted and glorified. The research project gave women the opportunity to talk at length about experiences that had not previously been articulated, heard, and validated. Most of the women described undergoing a process of re-framing their experience, so that light was thrown where it had not fallen before—on the actions of the alienator, the tactics used, and the processes by which alienation had proceeded. One of the women who described her experiences of being alienated from her mother was able to reframe her understanding of her uncle’s and father’s abuse against her, and see both herself and her mother very differently. She recovered memories she had lost of the many ways that her mother had cared for her and supported her. It became clear that the alienating story and tactics had been so powerful that any memories or understandings of her mother that conflicted with the alienators’ versions were completely eliminated—until she was able to talk in this way. Through maternal alienation, children’s memories of their childhood and their abuse, and their beliefs about their mothers and themselves are shaped by the voices of male abusers. The power of these alienating voices is augmented by their simultaneous articulation of the wider cultural beliefs that blame and degrade mothers; children’s “truths” are created by the commanding voices of perpetrators of violence that converge with popular beliefs. However, the naming of maternal alienation begins a process of untangling these convergences between the voices of the perpetrators and cultural biases, which disrupts these prescriptive and distorting messages that shape children’s reality. Women who experienced maternal alienation related that, when it was named, they felt that for the first time their story was being told and acknowledged. They gained words and concepts that enabled them to be
er describe and understand their own experiences. They could now speak about their abuse in a way that made sense to them, and that represented their experiences more fully. They could see mother blaming and maternal alienation practices (inside and outside the family) where these practices had previously been invisible, and felt more able to resist them. They could act for their own and their children’s safety, because the power of naming had given them the power to understand and to act.

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Positioning with Fathers, Distancing from Mothers The research project found that not only children, but also social workers, teachers, judges, and other professionals easily allied themselves with fathers, but rarely did so with mothers. While they would stand in a father’s shoes, seeing the world through his eyes, they seemed to resist positioning themselves with mothers and experiencing events from a mother’s standpoint. This corresponds with the project’s finding that mothers tended not to highlight their contributions to their families, which in turn reflects socio-cultural propensities to undervalue mothers’ care-taking activities. On the other hand, fathers who were alienators positioned themselves as central to their children, and authorized their version of reality as the family’s reality. Furthermore, alienating fathers recruited others into their version of events, partly by eliciting sympathy for themselves while orchestrating repulsion and outrage towards the mothers. In response to these dynamics, in my presentations to practitioners I a
empt to make visible the tactics used in maternal alienation and to articulate women’s experiences. A number of practitioners and students have since revealed that learning about maternal alienation enabled them to recognize the pa
erns of maternal alienation in their family of origin. They re-evaluated their relationships with their mothers, and their role as daughters, having realized how this relationship had been shaped by mother-blaming discourses, or by maternal alienation. I believe that naming the tactics of maternal alienation, and articulating mothers’ own experiences of grief, isolation, and lack of validation, made it possible for daughters to recognize what had previously been invisible—the myriad ways in which mother-blaming discourses and alienating practices shaped and destroyed their relationships with their mothers. One of the challenges in a
empting to open spaces for people to take up mothers’ perspectives has been the barrier created by the personal/professional divide, and the sanctified place that professional ideas and practice usually occupy, making it difficult to critique the ways in which the professional arena reflects and supports popular discourses. In presenting material about maternal alienation, mother blaming, and gendered stereotypes, I have tried to demonstrate the close connections between cultural and professional discourses. I believe that practitioners who have repositioned themselves with mothers, both at a personal and professional level, have crossed this

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personal/professional barrier to reflect on how their personal and cultural background influences their professional practice. There is a second barrier to positioning oneself with the mother and understanding her experience. This barrier appears to be widespread as a dynamic of daughter-mother (and son-mother) relationships, and was certainly dominant in the families I studied and worked with. I found that while mothers were able to understand how their children had been alienated from them, they were not so ready to understand that similar processes may have occurred for their own mothers, and that they, as daughters, may have participated in alienating practices against their mothers. The question of children standing in their father’s shoes but rarely in their mother’s shoes opens an arena that deserves greater investigation. The research on maternal alienation illustrates, on the one hand, how central motherhood had been in the lives of the mothers studied, and on the other hand, how li
le their contributions as mothers were seen or valued. The women in the study consistently put their wishes to do the best thing for their children before anything else. These findings correspond with McMahon’s study of mothers, in which she says, “I felt almost haunted by the data, which repeatedly pointed to the tremendous significance of children and motherhood in women’s lives” (6). Yet the mothers in the research project on maternal alienation did not claim centre stage in their children’s lives, and, sometimes tragically, nobody else claimed this for them. A woman in the project who was alienated from her mother spoke about how central her mother had been to her life, but how li
le she realized it before exploring this relationship in the research interviews. When mothers’ contributions to their children’s lives are barely seen, let alone valued, it is hardly surprising that other aspects of mothers’ lives, which give mothers a presence as people in their own right and which provide a context for understanding their actions, are also invisible to sons and daughters. To cross the barriers between daughters and mothers, even for those that understand how mother blaming shapes our a
itudes to and expectations of mothers, goes against the cultural grain. Our sociocultural practices of mother blaming have created maternal alienation on a grand scale as part of our family culture. As daughters and sons we may look forward, but we rarely look back, seeing, acknowledging, and valuing what our mothers have given us. When we look back it is in anger! In working with women in counselling and groups to explore and cross this daughter-mother divide, I found that we had to consciously

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bring the realizations that women achieved about their own mothering to the experience of standing in our mothers’ shoes. For example, in asking them to explore cultural expectations of mothers and how they impacted on them, I have also asked them to imagine how such expectations might have affected their own mothers. This has been unfamiliar and painful territory for most, as many women only realize the poverty of their past relationship with their mothers as they become able to empathize with her pain. Until we do this work, and begin to give our mothers the same understanding we give ourselves, I believe we have not even begun to deal with mother-blaming beliefs and practices in general, and these will inevitably influence our practice. Learning to step into our mothers’ shoes does not mean that we should minimize abuse when women have abused their children, but the research into maternal alienation indicates the importance of focusing also upon the children’s anger towards non-abusing mothers. In fact, in the cases I studied, all the children had experienced or witnessed their fathers’ abuse, and yet most still stood with him, in sympathy with him, aligned with him against their mothers. I believe these understandings have profound implications for the work we do in families. We cannot expect that women and children recovering from violence can cross these divides between mother and child without careful and guided work to help them explore territory that our culture has banned. The research concluded that maternal alienation was founded on two main pillars—the pervasive mother blaming of our culture, and the high status of the male voice. In this age of so-called post-feminism, many would say that women have largely won the ba
le to have equal standing with men. However, the findings of the research, and women’s own reluctance and, it would seem, inability to step into their mothers’ shoes, to hear with respect and belief their mothers’ voices, contradict this. The study showed that men’s voices are heard and believed in structures of power, in institutions, and also in their families. They overshadow and sometimes annihilate the voices of women and children. This is why I find practitioners’ preparedness to reappraise their relationships with their mothers so exciting. “Women Do It Too” Several times when I have presented on maternal alienation, I have received the retort, “It’s not just men who alienate their children from the

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other parent; women do it too!” This is oen a response to my providing information that highlights the wealth of research demonstrating that most violence is perpetrated by men. Such a response may be a form of resistance to the shiing of power that occurs when the unspeakable is spoken, the not-named is named. However the rejoinder that women do it too is a useful platform from which to further examine maternal alienation. Indeed some women do alienate their children from their fathers, but this involves very different dynamics and use of power from men’s alienating practices. As referred to earlier in this chapter, the very idea that women are the prime alienators has received a lot of coverage. PAS is beloved by fathers’ rights groups who insist that it is a gender-neutral syndrome, even though it claims that women alienate their children against their fathers in 90 percent of cases. Fathers in custody cases commonly use PAS as a counter-claim when they have been accused of sexually abusing their children. They use PAS to argue that allegations of child sexual abuse are made by women out of malice, not out of a genuine and desperate a
empt to protect their children. When children allege sexual abuse, according to PAS, it is because they have been coached by malicious and vengeful mothers. Parental Alienation Syndrome has been widely discredited among professionals who work in the areas of violence and abuse. For example Conte says that Gardner’s scale for assessing true and false allegations of abuse is “[p]robably the most unscientific piece of garbage I’ve seen in the field in all my life” (quoted in Humphreys 38). Furthermore, Catherine Humphreys’s carefully researched paper on allegations of child sexual abuse in divorce proceedings argues that the percentage of child sexual abuse allegations are certainly no greater in custody cases than elsewhere. In fact she says, “The figures, if anything, suggest an under-reporting by mothers of child abuse in divorce proceedings” (42). Yet, despite the weight of evidence that discredits PAS, the syndrome wields enormous influence in the courts in the United States, and similar ideas exert similar influence in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Gardner asserts that the first step towards treatment for PAS is removal of the child from the mother’s home and placement with the father who has been accused of sexually abusing her or him. Many courts have made custody orders based on Gardner’s “treatment.” PAS, like much discourse on mothers in mainstream institutions including

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legal arenas, makes use of constructions of mothers as vengeful wives, hysterical mothers, skilful liars, and women who are malicious and highly manipulative. Despite the fact that these constructions of mothers in custody cases have been discredited, they have a life of their own. It is paradoxical that in cases of maternal alienation where it has been documented that men lie, manipulate, are vengeful and malicious, and act against their children’s best interest, these findings confront a socio-cultural discourse that does not support such negative descriptions of fathers, and thus this evidence disappears into a vacuum. As Jocelynne Scu
(192) and Catherine Humphreys (45) point out, men’s use of violence and abuse to establish their authority over “their property,” meaning “their family,” is consistent with the legal view of what constitutes reasonable male behaviour. Mothers are rendered as “malicious” and “hostile,” while family men are rendered as “safe” in the legal system (Collier). Alienation and isolation of victims, spreading nasty stories about them, punishing those that support them, and encouraging others to victimize them are common tactics of abuse. Some women are capable of abusing others, just as men are, but the research on maternal alienation shows that men’s abuse of women and children carries authority and support that women are unable to muster when they are abusive. Indeed, women are oen unable to summon such authority and support when they try to protect themselves and/or their children from violence and abuse from their ex-partner. The research on maternal alienation also traces the close connection between interpersonal practices and socio-cultural and professional discourses of mothering, between the micro and the macro worlds. The practices of maternal alienation are so close to social and cultural discourses and practices that practitioners and researchers easily miss them, even when they work consistently in the areas of gendered abuse and violence. The practices of maternal alienation are powerful because they are not challenged. They are powerful because they come out of and reinforce people’s popular notions of women and mothers, and how they should be treated. They are powerful because women’s stories that contradict these versions of reality are not heard, as they do not fit preconceived ideas. They are powerful because they continue to shape a new generation’s a
itudes and practices towards women.

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Endnotes 1.

2.

3.

The author wishes to acknowledge the considerable contributions of Dr. Margie Ripper, University of Adelaide, and Professor Liz Kelly C.B.E., Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit, London Metropolitan University. The research was carried out in connection with a master’s degree in Women’s Studies, University of Adelaide, in partnership with Northern Women’s Community Health Centre (Northern Metropolitan Community Health Service, Adelaide). “Parental Alienation Syndrome” (PAS) has been described by Dr. Richard Gardner, most notably in his 1987/2000 publication, The Parental Alienation Syndrome. It is also widely discussed and documented on numerous Web sites, for example, the “PAS Resources” site at www.rgardner.com/refs/ and the “Parental Alienation Information Archive” at www.deltabavo. net/custody/pasarchive.htm.

References Collier, Richard. Masculinity, Law and the Family. London: Routledge, 1995. Dobash, R.E., and R.P. Dobash. “Violent Men and Violent Contexts.” Eds. R.E. Dobash and R.P. Dobash. California: Sage, 1998. Gardner, Richard. The Parental Alienation Syndrome. Creskill, N.J.: Creative Therapeutics Incorporated, 2000. Hooper, Carol-Ann. Mothers Surviving Child Sexual Abuse. London: Tavistock/ Routledge, 1992. Humphreys, Catherine. “‘Walking on Eggshells’: Child Sexual Abuse Allegations in the Context of Divorce.” Challenging Silence: Innovative Responses to Sexual and Domestic Violence. Eds. Jan Breckenridge and Lesley Laing. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1999. Kelly, Liz. “How Women Define Their Experiences of Violence.” Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse. Eds. K. Yllo and M. Bograd. Newbury Park, C.A.: Sage, 1988. Laing, Lesley. “A Different Balance Altogether? Incest Offenders in Treatment.” Challenging Silence: Innovative Responses to Sexual and Domestic Violence. Eds. Jan Breckenridge and Lesley Laing. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1999. Laing, Lesley, and Amanda Kamsler. “Pu
ing an End to Secrecy: Therapy with Mothers and Children Following Disclosure of Child Sexual Assault.” Ideas for Therapy with Sexual Abuse. Eds. M. Durrant and C. White. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications, 1990.

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McMahon, Martha. Engendering Motherhood: Identity and Self-transformation in Women’s Lives. NY: The Guildford Press, 1995. Morris, Anne. “Adding Insult to Injury.” Trouble and Strife 40 (Winter, 1999/2000): 30–35. _____. “Maternal Alienation: The use of Motherblaming in Abuse.” Australian Journal of Primary Health-Interchange 5.3 (1999a): 71–75. _____. “Uncovering ‘Maternal Alienation’: A Further Dimension of Violence against Women.” Unpublished paper. Presented at the University of Adelaide, 1999b. Ptacek, J. “Why Do Men Ba
er Their Wives?” Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse. Eds. K. Yllo and M. Bograd. Newbury Park, C.A.: Sage, 1988. Scu
, Jocelynne. “Criminal Assault at Home: Policy Directions and Implications for the Future.” Issues Facing Australian Families: Human Services Respond. Eds. R. Ba
en, W. Weeks, and J. Wilson. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WOMEN OF COURAGE THE NON-CUSTODIAL MOTHER Julie Thacker

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en courageous mothers from North-Central British Columbia who lived apart from their children agreed to share their experiences of motherhood with me in two research projects between 1997 and 1999. Together we examined their experiences of marginalization and oppression and how they challenged the stereotypes about themselves and redefined their role as mothers. This included developing alternative interpretations of themselves as mothers, identifying spaces in which to continue to nurture their children, and challenging the practice of evaluating fathers’ parenting abilities differently than those of mothers. Participants were contacted through networking, and the interview process for both research projects was semi-structured with open-ended questions. A mother without her child(ren) was defined as a woman who had either given birth or adopted a child who at the time of the research was less than 17 years of age and with whom she did not live. This age was chosen because in British Columbia, children are not permi
ed to live independently until they are 17 years of age (British Columbia 1998 7.10.1). Several of the participants also had children over age 17 and their experiences provided unique and important insights about mothering that are included in this chapter where appropriate. Each woman participated in one primary face-to-face data collection interview. I conducted additional interviews to verify data and check my analysis. Participants chose all interview locations and whether subsequent interviews would be face-to-face or by telephone. I audio-taped and transcribed each primary data collection interview. Areas of interest were identified prior to the data collection interview. Each primary data collection interview was audio-taped and

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transcribed completely. Prior to the interview, participants were given a description of the research topic and a copy of the interview probes (questions). Participants then answered the interview probes without direction and with minimal prompting. I provided clarification only when requested. The audio recorder was turned off when requested. Succeeding interviews were not audio-taped and additional information participants wished included was transcribed as dictated. During these interviews participants reviewed their transcripts, clarified details, and removed any information that they felt would reveal their identity. Pseudonyms were used to identify all participants. The two studies together included 10 participants between 20 and 55 years old who together had 20 children under 17 years of age. Four women self-identified as having some First Nations ancestry; six said they were of European descent. Their education levels varied: one had a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education, four had some post-secondary education, one had a high-school diploma, and four had not completed Grade 12. Five identified as middle class, five were on welfare, two worked as direct-care providers, two were primarily homemakers, one was a student, and four were unemployed. At the time of the interview, their children lived with an ex-spouse, or with relatives, or in foster care, or at the Youth Correction Centre. Six of the women self-disclosed a history of childhood sexual abuse, nine said their childhood homes were dysfunctional, and one said her home was functional. Synthesizing the results of both research projects revealed two areas where the women shared similar experiences. First, all experienced oppression and reduced agency from marginalization. Second, each of them developed strategies to resist society’s message that they were “bad mothers.” The remainder of this chapter explores these two areas separately before examining the artifacts or social expectations of mothering.

Marginalization My research revealed that the participants were women of courage seeking to find their place in a culture that marginalized them and denied or denigrated their status as mothers. Reticence, or a reluctance to openly acknowledge their status, is a visible sign that individuals are

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members of a marginalized and oppressed group. Society’s denial of these women’s lived experiences as acceptable mothers who occupy just another point on the continuum of “good enough” mothering is a form of oppression and moves them to the margins in at least this part of their lives. Each of the participants was aware of negative social sanctions and that their desire to continue to parent their children required more of them than just resisting the internalization of negative messages. In this respect they recognize, as bell hooks states, that “opposition is not enough. In that vacant space aer one has resisted there is still the necessity to become—to make oneself anew” (hooks 1990 15). In seeking to “make themselves anew” each of the mothers interviewed challenged society’s stereotypes of who they were and developed an “oppositional world view.” Denial can mean either not acknowledging something or interpreting it from a different viewpoint than the person experiencing it (Bishop 67; Kirby and McKenna 7). For example, television and magazine advertisements show women in parks with children, women baking cookies with children, and women calling their grandchildren on the telephone. They do not show mothers who live apart from their young children sending them parcels, picking out cards for them, or calling them long distance. The media’s failure to include these mothers is an example of society’s denying their existence: it gives the implicit message that the part-time or absent mother does not exist. This invisibility can lead to isolation and, as one mother told in a lifeless voice, the conclusion that [I] was the only one. When I left, I felt that no mothers left their children. I felt that I had done something very bad. And obviously nobody, I mean, that there were not that many people who did things like that.

In describing her feelings she said, “It felt that something inside really did die.” Denial of the lived experiences of people, such as this woman described, is one of the effects of marginalization and a form of oppression. Social disapproval is another form of oppression participants experienced. They indicated this by their many comments about feeling guilty and blaming themselves because they did not live with their children. One mother succinctly summarized all the women’s comments about society’s disapproval when she said,

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How did I feel about it? Just how could you explain yourself? You feel bad, you feel guilty. As if you don’t have enough guilt in your life you know. So that is about it—guilty as charged!

The statement “guilty as charged,” whether explicitly verbalized or only alluded to, demonstrated the participants’ acceptance of their failure to comply with the socially accepted role of motherhood and responsibility for their situation. Some were able to take a more holistic view of how their life circumstances, rather than their own behaviour, had reduced the available options for them to be their child’s primary care provider. Maintaining this viewpoint, however, appeared to be an ongoing struggle of actively resisting the label of “bad mother.”

Sites of Resistance “Cultural criticism” can help oppressed minorities resist domination by the dominant culture. It is a “practice of critique and analysis that … disrupt[s] and even deconstruct[s] those cultural productions that were designed to promote and reinforce domination” (hooks 1990 3). This resistance … create[s] an oppositional worldview, a consciousness, an identity, a standpoint that exists not only as that struggle which also opposes dehumanisation but as that movement which enables creative, expansive self-actualisation?… There is an inner uprising that leads to rebellion.… That space within oneself where resistance is possible remains! It is different then to talk about becoming subjects. That process emerges as one comes to understand how structures of domination work in one’s own life, as one develops critical thinking and critical consciousness, as one invents new, alternative habits of being, and resists from that marginal space of difference inwardly defined. (15)

The process participants used in developing resistant strategies was similar to the grief process described by Kübler-Ross (170). This is understandable because when they began living apart from their child(ren) they lost daily contact with their children and their role as their child(ren)’s direct care provider. As they came to accept their loss and the limitations of mothering their children from a distance, they

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used their agency to develop alternative definitions of motherhood and ways to maintain their relationships with their children. Following are six of the resistance strategies my participants used to reduce their feelings of oppression and increase their feelings of acceptance and competence as women and mothers. The first step the women took in developing strategies to resist internalizing society’s stereotypes appears to have been to develop an awareness that society’s ideology was false—that it was not necessary for mothers to be their children’s primary caregivers, and that not all mothers live with their children. Once they developed this awareness, they also began to recognize, as bell hooks states, that “opposition is not enough. In that vacant space aer one has resisted there is still the necessity to become … to make oneself anew” (hooks 1990 15). Here is an example of one participant’s process of challenging and constructing a new understanding of who she was as a mother: … and then aer I le my kids, then I felt that I no longer had the right to be called a mother because I had lost the role of a mother. So therefore, it’s like why hold onto a role. So then, but then I realised that to be a mother is more than a role, it’s really it’s part of who I am. It’s part of my soul. It’s part of it, because those children are not just children. They come from me. So there is more of a bond that cannot be defined by a role. So to be a mother really is not what I do and what I did but it’s really who I am.

While this mother felt she was the only one, the First Nations mothers knew they were not. Time and again while working at a women’s shelter, I observed them comforting each other as they grieved for their missing children and acknowledging that their children really were part of their lives. Regardless of when participants developed an awareness that they were not the only mother who lived apart from her children, accepting this fact appeared to be an essential step in developing a successful resistance strategy and accepting themselves as “okay” women and mothers aer the separation from their children. A second resistance strategy the women used was to remember words of encouragement from people who accepted and valued them even though they lived apart from their children. Remembering and reminding themselves of even small bits of support in difficult times helped them comfort themselves and resist internalizing the message that they were “bad mothers.” Positive messages of support came

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from family members, friends, support groups, and counsellors. One mother mentioned her friend and partner’s family as being very good at accepting what happened and supporting her. Another woman received some support from her mother. She stated, “Yeah, she [my mother] gave me some [support]. We don’t talk very oen, but the couple of times we did…” These women’s comments suggest that acceptance explicitly stated and a lack of negative judgement are two essential factors of positive support. A third resistance strategy participants used was developing an alternative understanding of motherhood. When I asked, “What is a family and who are mothers?” they told me that they believed a mother’s role was to be her children’s primary caregiver. In expressing this, one participant said, “When I am with them I do everything I can for them. I stay home with them, I do things with them, and I take care of them, and I love them.” Their statements seemed to indicate acceptance of our society’s definition and norms for mothers as identified by researchers such as Jill Ma
hews (6) and Marlee Kline (311). However, aer sharing these feelings with me they went on to show how they had developed a new understanding of motherhood. One woman said, “But then I realize[d] that to be a mother is more than a role, it’s really part of who I am.” A second volunteered that: For me it’s to give the kids a sense of knowing where they belong. Knowing that it doesn’t ma
er, they can talk to me about anything. And they do at this point.… I don’t know if it’s unconditional [love] or conditional. There are conditions in so far as you have to behave yourself and this and that. But it doesn’t ma
er what you do, I am always going to be your mom and I’m always going to love you.

She also said that aer a while she came to recognize that being a mother is “helping the child [to] discover where they belong” and to recognize that she will always be available for them. The fourth resistance strategy participants used was identifying spaces where they could maintain their relationships with their children. This required them to construct new pa
erns of interacting with their children and new definitions of who they were as mothers. Sometimes it included developing an awareness that access to transportation to visit their children required at least some discretionary income. For one mother, the need to visit her children appeared to be the impetus she needed to become financial stable. In response to my question “Do you get to visit your children very oen?” she stated:

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Now I’m starting again, since my financial situation has improved I can visit them a li
le bit more. But when they moved, then visiting time was usually from one summer to the other.… [I wasn’t able to keep in touch with them] except over the phone, always remembering birthdays and all the state holidays. And you know as I said in the summer time, so it has been pre
y hard. And you know, the last couple of years or so, which I was not financially able to go there, but I really needed and wanted to see them. But I was just not able to afford it financially. Which was one of the reasons I was really determined to get back on my feet a bit more financially, and I have achieved that. I last visited them the beginning of November.

Transportation was an issue for most of the women who lived in material poverty. Unfortunately, if they desired to see their children, negotiating rides, which sometimes placed them in unsafe situations, was the only option. Two mothers who said that their children’s behaviour was the precipitating cause of their living away from them still a
empted to maintain a relationship with the children. The first, whose child was residing at a youth correction centre, said she was searching for a way to keep in touch when her child appeared not to want to make the effort. Here is part of our conversation: (S)he is never totally abandoned. And I have sort of made up my mind; it was my sort of commitment to the cause that I would not leave Prince George, as long as (s)he was living here.… I haven’t gone up, ’cause (s)he hasn’t [called]. And I have been thinking about sending [my child] a card saying “dear so-and-so, thinking of you, I am praying about you.” And I am thinking that I should go the extra mile and do that … and I understand that … I know you are going through a rough time. It is fine if you don’t phone. Phone when you want.

Telephone calls and visits to the centre are restricted and a child’s behaviour may cause further curtailment of those that are available. These constraints and the child’s not choosing to invite a parent to visit may override a parent’s desire to see the child who is residing at the centre. The other mother whose child’s behaviour was at the heart of their separation commented: Inside I love [my child] because (s)he’s mine: [my child] came from me. But no[t] behaviour wise and as a person I don’t love [my child]. And

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now I just feel a lot of loss. And you feel very sorry for the child.… I’m just sorry that [my child] has made these choices. Because ... what’s going to happen to [my child] as an adult?

This mother currently is keeping in touch with her child only through phone conversations. Although she is not actively a
empting to be involved in her child’s life at the moment, she expressed disappointment at the care her child was receiving and was concerned for her child’s future. A fifth resistance strategy that some of the mothers used was recognizing that motherhood was a lifelong opportunity rather than just the brief period from birth to independent adulthood. This awareness oen came as the mothers discovered and accepted that mothering is an occupation that changes as one’s child(ren) mature, whether one lives with them or apart from them—that when one’s children become older teenagers and young adults, there is no stigma a
ached to living apart from them. For these mothers it was a time of increasing freedom to participate with their friends in conversations about their children. An additional benefit of maturing children for some mothers was the fact that custody arrangements are for children: young adults are able to choose where and with whom they live. One mother maintained her relationship with her children while they were younger and she lived separate from them. Then when her oldest child became a young adult, (s)he chose to come and live with her. Another mother took a similar route. She kept in touch as the child grew up, and when the child was ready, the two of them rebuilt their relationship. Now she appears to be acting as a mentor for her child and says they have a relationship based on mutual friendship. All of the participants appeared initially to have struggled to find a method to meet their children’s needs for mothering and nurturing despite the fact that they lived apart from them. When identifying these spaces they redefined their understanding of motherhood and found creative parenting solutions. They demonstrated vision and agency in so doing, while being bombarded with messages from the media that good mothers care for their children themselves and that those mothers who do not are bad. The conclusion they each came to independently was that, a mother, regardless of whether or not she lives with her child(ren), is a person who nurtures her child(ren) by helping them to develop boundaries, self-esteem, and an understanding of themselves as independent valuable beings.

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The sixth resistance strategy was only used by those mothers whose children lived with the mother’s ex-spouse. They challenged the accepted beliefs about what a father’s role is as primary caregiver for his child(ren) and modified how they assessed their ex-spouses’ parenting abilities. An example is one woman’s comment about the difference between mothers and fathers when a father has custody. She said: “It’s really warped because that doesn’t happen the other way around. Men who have custody tend to be the new heroes in our society. They are doing your job and they make sure you know you abandoned [your children].” Another mother also appeared to use a form of comparative analysis to challenge the judge’s decision in her custody hearing. She said that the judge stated that her ex-spouse was “a perfect father because he works and he’s hired a nanny, and he’s willing to take responsibility for his children.” She then challenged this assumption, stating she didn’t think her ex-spouse should be “considered a good parent [when] a nanny provides the physical care for the children.” Her stated objections to his being considered a good father included the following: (1) he did not make time for the children, (2) he did not take them shopping with him, and (3) he did not accompany them on their first day to kindergarten—all things that a mother would be expected to do if she were their primary care provider. She also said he did not help the children maintain their relationship with her by telephoning at the agreed times and that he made negative comments about her to the children. She concluded that if a mother with custody exhibited similar behaviours she would be judged negatively. For each of the women who had children living with her ex-spouse, questioning his ability to parent effectively, and challenging the belief as stated by one mother that “a father is good as long as he doesn’t beat his kids and provides for them financially,” provided a break from negative social messages. First, their comments indicated that they did not accept the belief that fathers are good as long as they provide financially for their children. Instead they believed fathers who were primary guardians of their children should be expected to provide the same standard of care as mothers who were primary guardians of their children. Second, they began to realize that no one person is able to provide all the care a child requires and began to judge themselves less harshly for their personal failing to so do. Analysis of the six ways in which participants resisted society’s belief that they were bad mothers showed that their resistance enabled them to recognize that the currently held definition of a mother is

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flawed and unrealistic. It also showed that another way non-custodial mothers could resist society’s definition of them was to step outside their assigned role and identify spaces where they could continue nurturing their children.

Examining the Artifacts The previous section showed that participants concluded that nurturing was the essential feature women provide for the next generation. Using crystallization (Richardson 522) I examined the socially defined role of mothers to see if I could find evidence to support their interpretation. To do so, I looked at the participants’ understanding of a mother’s role, what research indicates is a mother’s role, what role mothers lose when they begin living apart from their children, and what role a father has. This analysis identified the work of raising children that is assumed by others when mothers live apart from their children, and compared it to what jobs mothers who live with their children are expected to fulfil. This systematically identified the areas where a mother who lives apart from her children might continue to parent them. I then compared these areas to those participants identified as the spaces where they could continue to nurture their children. To begin my analysis, I looked at what society understands a mother’s role to be. A good mother, as described by Jill Ma
hews (87) and Marlee Kline (311), bears healthy children, keeps them healthy and well behaved, and maintains her fitness and ability to mother at all times. A quick review of my participants’ experiences confirmed that in North-Central British Columbia these expectations are also accepted as the norm. For example, the two mothers whose children had behavioural problems had had their concerns ignored by their physicians when their children were toddlers. Both mothers recalled that they were judged negatively for their inability to mother these children. This negative judgement’s tacit assumption is that somehow mothers are able to prevent abnormal development in their children. One of the mothers commented, … for the woman you go out and get a job and you are only home Saturday and Sunday with the kids and the occasional evening. (And you hear the comments), “Oh she’s a horrible mother. She can’t even take care of her kids. She doesn’t take care of her kids. She is ge
ing child support; I don’t understand why she’s got to go to work.”

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Her words point to the fact that some members of our community believe that a mother should care for her child(ren) at all times and should not leave her child(ren) for paid employment. If, however, she chooses to subsist on social assistance or a combination of child/spousal support and social assistance so she can remain at home and mother her children full-time, she is also faulted. The mothers who were or had been in this situation mentioned society considered them freeloaders. In addition, if they were unable to adequately provide for their child(ren) they faced the very real risk of their caregiving ability being challenged in court and custody of their child(ren) being awarded to the child(ren)’s father or having them removed to foster care.1 This portion of my analysis revealed that mothers are expected to care for their children 24 hours a day, seven days a week, always available and pleasant, have infinite wisdom about how to negate the effects of genetic abnormalities and outside influences, love and nurture their child(ren), help them to discover who they are as individuals, and never have any personal issues that prevent them from doing their job as a mother. It also identified two parts of a mother’s role that are artifacts (Reinharz 146) of the roles mothers are assigned by our culture. The first was the portion of a mother’s tasks that a father assumes when he provides primary care for his children. The second was those portions of a mother’s role she loses when she is not responsible for the daily care of her children. Table 16.1 summarizes my literature review on this subject and my participants’ data. When one examines what is le of a mother’s role when she lives apart from her child(ren) the last three rows are essentially the only part of motherhood that is still available. The ability to make decisions on her child’s behalf, be with her child during special events, crisis, and on a daily basis, or care for her child’s daily needs, as indicated in the first four rows, are all gone. For the most part, my participants believed that their child’s new care providers had not assumed the role of helping their children discover themselves as worthwhile human beings. They identified this as a place where they could continue to influence their child through nurturing. In this respect my systematic analysis agreed with the participants’ findings.

Conclusion The women who participated in these two research projects were women of courage. Just living in a society that denies who you are

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and marginalizes you takes courage. Further, most of them sought and found a space where they could continue to mother their children and at least partially resist the negative messages about themselves as mothers with which our society continually bombarded them. It took agency and vision together with determination for them to identify and find these spaces in a culture that limits all mothers’ autonomy to determine their role as mothers and gives mothers who live apart from their children even less autonomy. Viewing members of a particular group as inferior marginalizes and silences them. bell hooks states that in the black community, when this type of “silencing occurs, it usually happens with the tacit complicity of audiences who have over time learned to think always of race within blackness as a male thing and to assume that the real political leaders emerging from such public debates will always and only be male” (1995 2). Likewise in North-Central British Columbia where I conducted my research the roles assigned to women of being their child(ren)’s primary caregiver are tacitly accepted without examining their impact on society or its members. Looking at individual instances when women are unable to be “good enough mothers” hides the discriminatory beliefs that guide our society’s expectations of mothers. On the other hand, identifying the group that a particular women is part of, and looking at individual members’ lives to determine what forms of oppression are common throughout the group, reveals systemic oppression. In this case it also showed that mothers who live apart from their children are resisting the stereotypes about themselves as mothers and are part of the body of pioneers who are helping to redefine motherhood.

Endnotes 1.

See Bishop (70), for a discussion of taking children from their natural parents and placing them in foster care. Several phone calls on May 7, 1999, to British Columbia’s Ministry of Children and Families and Active Support Against Poverty, revealed that foster parents are paid between $669 and $732 for an average child 12 to 19 years old whereas parents receive assistance in the range of $140 to $379 for the same child. The Liberal government in British Columbia has reduced social assistance rates. Currently, as an inquiry to Active Support Against Poverty on April 7, 2004, indicates, Social Assistance pays parents support of $140.58 for one or more children and an additional $195 for shelter for the second

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member of a household whether spouse or child and $35 shelter for each subsequent member. Thus a single parent with one child would receive $335.58 to care for the child, and in a two-parent household with three children, the rate would be $81.86 per month per child. A child living in a relative’s home is supported at the rate of $357.82 for a child 12 to 13 years old and $402.70 for a child 14 to 17 years old. Regular foster parents are paid $805.68 per month (as of January 1, 2001; see <www.mcf.gov. bc.ca/foster/foster_home_model/home_care_rate.htm>) and special-needs foster parents a maximum of $4,524.48 per month ().

References Bishop, Anne. Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1994. British Columbia, Ministry of Human Resources. BC Benefits Manual. (April, 1998) 7.10.1. hooks, bell. Killing Rage: Ending Racism. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995. _____. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Toronto: Between the Lines, 1990. Kirby, Sandra, and Kate McKenna. Experience Research Social Change: Methods from the Margin. Toronto: Garmond Press, 1989. Kline, Marlee. “Complicating the Ideology of Motherhood: Child Welfare Law and First Nations Women.” Queen’s Law Journal 2 (1993): 311. Kübler-Ross, Elizabeth. On Children and Death. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1983. Matthews, Jill Julius. Good and Mad Women: The Historical Construction of Femininity in Twentieth-Century Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984. Richardson, Laural. “Writing a Method of Inquiry.” Eds. Norman Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994: 516–529. Reinharz, Shulamit. Feminist Methods in Social Research. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ABANDONING MOTHERS AND THEIR CHILDREN Anita Pavlovic, Audrey Mullender, and Rosemary Aris

I

t might be supposed that the phenomenon of abandonment has virtually disappeared. Sadly, this is not the case. In England and Wales, abandonment of children under two is a criminal offence recorded under section 27 of the Offences Against the Person Act (1861), which defines it as: “an act whereby the life of a child shall be endangered or … the health of a child is likely to be permanently injured” [s.27 Offences Against the Person Act 1861].” Official statistics, compiled by the police and Home Office, show that the number of cases in this category is increasing in Britain and is now higher than at any time since the Second World War. This chapter conveys early findings of research in Britain conducted to explore and understand the increasing rate of abandonment. The research was undertaken in two stages. Stage one aimed to construct a social profile of abandonment. In practice, this involved documentary analysis of archival materials1 as well as analysis of a range of official records relating to recent cases (dating from 1996 to 2001). The second stage of the study included in-depth interviews with health, welfare, and criminal justice practitioners who have been involved with abandonment cases, as well as with abandoners and adults who were abandoned as infants. We suggest that although the term abandonment has particular legal meanings, as a social act it is be
er understood in terms of a continuum that includes facilitated and sanctioned as well as unlawful forms. Whatever form it takes, abandonment occurs and is constructed in relation to broader ideals of motherhood.

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”Abandonment” and “Motherhood” The concept of abandonment per se is problematic. Boswell argues that abandonment refers to “the voluntary relinquishment of control over children by their natal parents or guardians, whether by leaving them somewhere, selling them or legally consigning authority to some other person or institution” (24). Acts of infanticide and sanctioned forms of abandonment, like adoption, might fall into this definition as well as a whole host of other categories of “voluntary relinquishment” such as: children who are le home alone; exposed/street children; children who are transported for care in other nations, for example, in wartime; babies who are “farmed”2 and so on. Not only is there a broad continuum of categories, but any or all of these will also be culturally and, to some extent, historically relative. Panter-Brick suggests that, in this context, the concept “abandonment” is best understood as a social construct and moral discourse that, in contemporary Western societies, closely constrains our thinking about childhood, placing a particular emphasis on parental responsibility. In England and Wales, the notion of parental responsibility is endorsed in law through the Children Act 1989 (England and Wales) that defines it as “[a]ll the rights, duties, powers, responsibilities and authority which by law a parent of a child has in relation to the child and his property” (s.3.1 Children Act 1989). Whatever form “abandonment” might take, it invariably involves a failure of a “parent,” in legal terms, to either own (in the case of adoption) or exercise parental responsibilities. The Children Act 1989, however, uses the term parent in a gender-neutral way and this masks the social reality that parenting is based on a sexual division of labour and, thus, renders mothering invisible. It is women, as primary carers, who are expected to ensure that children are safe and that “childhood” is “carefree, secure and happy” (Somerville). It is, therefore, within the context of motherhood that abandonment occurs and needs to be understood. In western societies, motherhood has largely been constructed and idealized in relation to broader economic agenda that shape labour markets and income-support policies. Yet, the role of women as primary carers of children has been presented and justified by recourse to what are also essentially moral discourses about their emotional capacity as well as their physical “nature.” In this context, women who

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abandon their children present something of a paradox. They become not only unnatural but, by implication, immoral. They are mothers, in the sense that they have given birth, but are non-mothers in terms of social understandings and normative ideals of what a “proper” mother should be. Attempting to locate abandoning mothers within conflicting understandings of mothering, O’Donovan employs the concepts of “maternity” and “motherhood” to differentiate between “giving birth” and “being a mother.” The boundaries are blurred, however, since, as she points out, maternity (giving birth) “makes a woman a mother in English law” and places a range of legal obligations on mothers and those who assist her in giving birth that are sanctioned by criminal law. These include obligations to name the mother on the child’s birth certificate, an obligation that is linked to the right, of children, to know the identity of their “real mother,” that are, in turn, reflected in broader provisions such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. These legal constructions of identities and rights have informed, over time, social policies and practices in relation to sanctioned forms of abandonment such as adoption. That sanctioned and facilitated forms of “abandonment” exist indicates that, as a society, Britain has not condemned, absolutely, the abandonment of children, but instead has decreed, at particular times in history, what forms this may take. Abandonment is, thus, historically and culturally relative (Panter-Brick). Yet while this is the case, philosophies about what constitutes “normal” versus “pathological” motherhood (and childhood) have proved enduring and have been central to the ways in which laws and public policies have been implemented.

Facilitated and Sanctioned Forms of Abandonment Historically, in the European context, abandoned infants were known as “foundlings.” The development of “foundling hospitals” across Europe is well documented (Brownlow; McLure; Pullan; Panter-Brick, and Smith). In Britain, the archives of charitable organizations established during the 18th century (such as the Thomas Coram Foundation, Barnardo’s, and the Children’s Society) reveal that, within the broad parameters of child-care practice, specific policies relating to abandoned infants were at odds with broader aims to promote Christian morality

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and economic responsibility through marriage. At the same time, during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, an increasing number of illegitimate births were adding to the escalating cost of relief for the poor, and it was within this moral and economic climate that some charitable organizations devised policies that facilitated, although they did not morally support, abandonment as a form of welfare provision. Thomas Coram (a sea captain) was so disturbed by the number of children le to die on the streets of London in the early 1700s that he raised money to establish The Foundling Hospital. From 1741 illegitimate babies “not exceeding two months” could be le there with “no questions (being) asked of a person who (brought) a child.” The person leaving the child would deposit him or her in a basket hung at the gate of the hospital, then ring a bell. Admission was limited to 20 children per day, but there were “frequently one hundred women at the door” and it seems this gave rise to the “disgraceful scene of women scrambling and fighting so that they might be one of the fortunate few to reap the benefit” of this open-door policy (Nicolas and Wray). The archival records of London’s Foundling Hospital indicate, however, that Poor Law officers in some cases by fraud, in others by force, [also] sent the children of pauper parishioners to the hospital to relieve their parishes from the cost of maintaining them [and that] strangers were [also] employed by parents to convey their children to the hospital at so much per head. [In addition,] parents brought their own children who were in a dying state for the purpose of having them buried at the expense of the hospital.

This “abuse” of the system eventually led to policy being reformulated so that abandoning mothers had to draw a ballot and, later, petition for their children to be received. Women who were poor, “whose delivery and shame were known only to a few persons,” and who “would have some prospect of marriage if the child were received,” were considered the “most deserving cases,” but records describing in meticulous detail what abandoned children wore and so on suggest that foundlings came from all social classes. A wider trawl of archival records shows that variations of the policies pioneered by Thomas Coram were replicated in other

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charitable organizations, such as Barnardo’s and The Children’s Society (formerly Waifs and Strays). These early welfare responses moved between facilitating and preventing abandonment, with at least some understanding that men’s “profligacy” as well as women’s “wantonness” lay behind the problem (Brownlow). It is also evident from the records that infants were not necessarily abandoned by mothers, but were sometimes le at the hospital by the father, another family member, a friend, or an associate of the mother. Where mothers did take an active role, the social act of abandonment was not solely because of illegitimacy but related to broader circumstances that reflected the disparities between women’s assumed (and enforced) dependency and the realities of their everyday lives as mothers. Abandonment generally occurred in the context of hardship, violence, or moral disapproval. It is unclear when or why facilitation actually ceased, but it seems plausible to argue that the need for criminal abandonment was gradually eroded through the introduction of socially “sanctioned” forms of assistance such as adoption, on one hand, and on the other, the development of broader welfare provisions that enabled lone mothers (in theory at least) to provide for and keep their children. Adoption was formally introduced in England and Wales in 1926. Like social a
itudes towards illegitimacy, the social character of adoption varies over time and between cultures to reflect the broader political context in which it occurs. In Britain, adoption has gone through two stages: “In the first, adoption was to satisfy the needs of the childless married couple. In the second, the philosophy was reversed and it was the needs of the child that were given primary consideration” (Howe et al.). Initially administered through voluntary organizations, adoption did not routinely involve state intervention until the 1950s. Both voluntary bodies and the state borrowed the casework approach that had been pioneered through the Charitable Organisation Society during the 19th century. Casework essentially individualized and personalized what feminists have long recognized as political problems, and was as much concerned with moral policing and social control as with the promotion of welfare. Within this, the birth mothers of adopted children were constructed as pathological figures and subjected to punitive strategies that had, historically, been reserved for those deemed undeserving of help. As a legal process, adoption effectively shis parental responsibility away from the family of origin or the state to the adoptive family. But a wealth of literature (Howe et al.; Wells; Shawyer) reveals that the social

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process of adoption, and the philosophies underpinning it have, in many important respects, reflected those historically embraced in relation to abandoning mothers of foundlings. Thus, as recently as the late 1960s and early 1970s, practices and policies that were implemented through collusion between the public and private domains oen concealed the pregnancies of unmarried mothers. Women were banished by their families and confined in mother-and-baby homes for the duration of their pregnancies. As in relation to foundlings, this widespread practice was “justified” on the basis of promoting a reputable future for the unmarried mother and, through adoption, for her illegitimate child. These factors became major considerations in some organizations, which required women to petition for their babies to be received. References were sometimes obtained, for example, to assess whether women had been of “good character” prior to the birth of the baby and whether adoption was likely to result in them leading a “satisfactory life” in the future. In addition, voluntary bodies oen required that the birth mother (like abandoning mothers of foundlings) contribute towards the upkeep of her relinquished child until the completion of the adoption process, even though many women did not actually have custody between birth and adoption. Both the ideal and the process of adoption have, until very recently, been to sever all links between the child’s genetic and adoptive families. Recourse to reclaim the infant is still not available in adoption. The impact of this on the lives, identities, and subsequent relationships of those involved has been widely researched and is now well documented (Howe et al.; Argent; Mullender and Kearn; Mullender 1999). Personal accounts of birth mothers of adopted children indicate that, for them, “motherhood” began prior to birth, when a relationship with the unborn child that was to be lost through adoption was forged and treasured. Indeed, for these women, pregnancy and birth oen provided the only opportunity to “mother” their child. But their accounts also indicate that motherhood, rather than maternity, continues to be an important part of personal identities post adoption, even though they are redefined in law as “former parents” (Howe et al.; Wells; Mullender and Kearn). Drawing distinctions between “maternity” and “motherhood” becomes even more problematic when we consider that the majority of “birth” mothers also go on to mother subsequent children or are mothering children born prior to the birth of the child who is placed for adoption. The la
er scenario is particularly true of the contemporary birth mother, who is likely to be the product of a direct legal judgement,

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oen contested, which has officially assessed her as an unfit parent in relation to a particular child (Howe et al.; Ryburn). This might also apply to mothers who lose custody of their children as a result of public care proceedings (Masson et al.). At the same time, some women who are legally defined as “former parents” may continue to have a social role in relation to children who are placed in open adoptions. In addition, some mothers who have lost children to adoption may become adoptive mothers of other women’s children. Because there is a continuum of abandonment, it is not surprising that some of the features of sanctioned and facilitated forms are also reflected in criminalized forms. In Britain, for instance, abandoning mothers who are never traced, though they are birth mothers of adopted children, can neither benefit from open adoption nor access services such as the Adoption Contact Register, and nor can the children they have relinquished. In these circumstances, the increasing number of infants who are abandoned under s.27 of the 1861 Act, even when sanctioned forms of abandonment exist, is puzzling and begs further enquiry. Li
le is known of the motives and lived experiences of the birth mothers of adopted children today, and much less of how closely they might reflect those of the abandoning mothers of foundlings in earlier times. As O’Donovan points out, “most judgements about mothers who abandon newborns centre on their physical and mental states, against a backdrop of what are considered to be adequate State-provided support systems for mothers” (68).

Unlawful Abandonment of Children under Two In response to this, and informed by the legal definition of criminal abandonment, our research focuses on unlawful forms of abandonment. Our exploration of official documents has shown that the increasing rate of abandonment of children under two years old in Britain relates to a range of criminalized categories. These include children under two who are le at home alone; children who have not been collected from child-minders or day nurseries; children who are le behind in public houses; children who are le alone in parked cars for short periods of time; children who are known to and le at welfare agencies such as Social Services. While each of these categories is worthy of analysis in its own right, this chapter focuses on children under two who have

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been le, anonymously, in public places. Although the social act of abandoning infants in this way is no longer facilitated in Britain, we employ the term foundling to distinguish children who are le in these circumstances from other abandoned children. About 20 percent (24 cases) of the official records we studied relate to contemporary foundlings. The majority of these are newborns, although some cases involve babies who are weeks or months old when they are abandoned. This form of abandonment tends to a
ract a good deal of media a
ention, not least because police oen make media appeals for abandoning mothers to come forward. While these appeals are oen couched in terms of concerns about the mother’s welfare, reports also frequently refer to babies who are found in public places as having been “dumped” as opposed to “le” or “abandoned.” These competing discourses of sympathy and blame are evident in a range of diverse mediums (O’Donovan) and reflect broader constructions of “good” and “bad” mothers. We could be le with the impression that mothers of contemporary foundlings are young, naive, desperate, reckless, and uncaring all rolled into one. Positioned a “world apart” from “real” mothers, the broader assumption tends to be that abandonment relates to the mother’s first-born child and involves a rejection of “motherhood”—perhaps in the context of postnatal depression or mental illness. Our preliminary research findings challenge these views. Far from being the anticipated young, lone mothers, the majority of women in these cases were aged in their mid- to late twenties. Almost half were already mothering older children and had, in fact, oen made failed a
empts to care for the child before abandonment. This is, of course, obvious when foundlings are not newborn; but even where abandoned infants were only hours old there was evidence in the records of “mothering.” In some cases, for instance, notes or other items le with the infants revealed that women had breastfed their child prior to leaving them; others had cuddled, kissed, and talked to their babies. Most women had le their babies in places where they thought they would be safe and readily found such as busy public thoroughfares like shopping malls, bus stations, domestic doorsteps, telephone kiosks, hospitals, and so on. Some of the women were living with partners or other adult family members, although most had never disclosed their pregnancy to family, friends, or partners and the majority had not received any antenatal care. As we have seen, “concealment” of pregnancy has been

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a feature of both facilitated and sanctioned forms of abandonment. Yet, when women take control and actively conceal their pregnancy, this is seen as problematic and taken as evidence either that the social act of abandonment is premeditated and therefore “malicious,” or that the woman was in denial of pregnancy and motherhood. The supposed “denial” of motherhood by women might be measured against the denial of motherhood to women. This occurs against a broader backdrop of social policies that have not only defined some women as “unfit to mother” but that, more broadly, have either sought to ensure that women do not have too much control over motherhood or have had this result. The “traditional ideal” that mothering will take place within the context of dual-parenthood and female dependency is continually reasserted through a range of social policies and legislative measures. This has particularly harsh consequences for women who are mothering outside of the “ideal.” The progressive restructuring of welfare provisions and persisting inequalities—both gender and material—undermines parenting and means that, even for women who mother within ideologically and socially accepted circumstances, lived realities are oen at odds with the “ideal.” In this context, some have suggested that “policies that are rapidly unravelling the welfare state have resulted in a projected increase in child abandonment” (ScheperHughes and Sargent). Certainly since the 1980s in particular, levels of poverty in Britain have been increasing (Oppenheim). The assumption that there is an “underclass” of people overly dependent on welfare (Murray) has been used to “justify” the retrenchment of welfare provision. Within this, young people have experienced disproportionate levels of unemployment, the replacement of work with training schemes, and a systematic curtailing of levels of state income support and housing benefit (Hollands; Pilcher and Wagg). Britain also has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe, with 90 percent of births to teenage mothers happening outside marriage (Home Office). The highest proportions of teenage mothers are in the poorest areas and are among the most vulnerable young women, not only financially but also in terms of their limited access to housing and their fragile or disrupted networks of social support. Yet social policies have been concerned, primarily, with whether and how these young women “abuse” the status of motherhood to gain access to resources such as housing. Across all age groups, there are over a million lone mothers

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in Britain—about two-thirds of whom are living in poverty (Millar) and disproportionately affected by universal cuts in state welfare provisions (Buswell). In addition, the majority of low-paid workers are women (Buswell) and an estimated one in three women experiences domestic violence (Mullender 1996). It is oen these, and other, external factors that affect women’s ability to mother. Still, they are frequently perceived by health and welfare practitioners to have failed in this respect (O’Hagan and Dillenburger) and may blame themselves for the problems they encounter, perhaps to the point of being driven to abandon a child. The coincidence in timing between these broader trends and the rise in number of abandoned children in Britain remains suggestive rather than conclusive, but, in the event, only two of the women in our study were diagnosed as having the types of “personal problems,” such as mental health issues, that tend to be over-readily associated with abandonment. One other woman claimed that she had not realized that she was pregnant until she began giving birth; the fact that she had sought medical help on two occasions during the pregnancy supports her account, since it seems unlikely that women who are trying to conceal their condition would approach medical agencies. That doctors and other medical staff failed to recognize that she was pregnant places the failure of other family members to do so in some context. Most of the women recognized and acknowledged that they were pregnant, but both their pregnancy and the abandonment that followed occurred in the context of very difficult and traumatic circumstances. Not unlike their historical counterparts, many mothers in the study abandoned their babies in contexts such as domestic violence, relationship breakdown, economic hardship, or sexual abuse. Lacking support networks, managing on very limited resources, and oen living in inadequate housing, many of the mothers in the study saw abandonment as a means of protecting, not rejecting, the child. The following cases demonstrate some of the complexities. Case One A newborn was found in a shopping precinct. The mother who abandoned her was captured on closed-circuit television and came forward aer footage was released to the press. In her account of the event and the circumstances leading up to it she said that she was aged 28 and the mother of two other children, who lived with her.

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She was married, but the relationship had broken down in the context of domestic violence and she had discovered she was pregnant aer her husband had le. She told him of the pregnancy but he was not supportive. She had been aware of the pregnancy but told no one. She gave birth to the baby alone, at home, when her other children were asleep. It was early in the morning when she le the baby and she returned home before the other children woke up. She was interviewed by a psychiatrist, who found no evidence of mental health problems. She described herself as having few friends and low self-esteem. Case Two A newborn was found in a bus shelter and, following a media appeal, an anonymous caller identified the mother. She was 32, single, and had moved away from, but remained in contact with, her family as she pursued her career. She had been forced to leave her previous position four years earlier, when a colleague raped her. For a long time aerwards she found it difficult to make friends, but eventually began a relationship with a man. By the time she realized she was pregnant the relationship had already ended. She told no one about the pregnancy. She stopped visiting her parents on the pretext that she was very busy at work. She was at work when the labour pains started. A colleague took her home and the baby was born soon aerwards. She felt exhausted aer the birth and went to bed, holding the baby with her. She tried to rest but could not sleep. The baby began to cry, so she breastfed him. Suddenly, she felt panic. She wrapped the baby in one of her own cardigans. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do but she set off towards the main road. When she came to the bus shelter, she le him there. She returned straight home and went to bed. She kept thinking about what had happened and wanted to go back to the bus shelter to make sure the baby was all right, but she didn’t. Case Three A three-month-old baby was found on the doorstep of a house. Police enquiries identified the mother as a 20-year-old woman living with the father of the child. In her account of events she explained that he was violent towards her and had threatened that, if she tried to leave him, he would find her and kill both her and the baby. She abandoned the baby to try to protect her.

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Case Four A newborn was found on the grounds of an office block, following several anonymous calls to the offices and to police to say that the baby was there. The baby’s 25-year-old mother came forward later the same day. She explained that her partner, whom she lived with, was not the father of the child and had not known that she was pregnant. The couple lived in his house; she had nowhere else to go and, therefore, could not care for the child. It is apparent from these case profiles that mothers were traced in these instances. How representative these cases are or whether similar themes occur in relation to mothers who abandon but are never traced could not be assessed in the early stages of the research. Also, it must be noted that the accounts given here are not the mothers’ personal accounts, but merely a record of those accounts that have been constructed for specific purposes and in the public domain. As Miller points out, personal narratives about childbirth and motherhood may not resonate with either public or lay accounts and may be difficult to voice. It was evident from the study cases, however, that most mothers bi
erly regre
ed abandoning their baby, and although some mothers in the study did not seek “reclamation,” the majority were reunited with their infants and received ongoing social work support. One final point: it was not always mothers who abandoned children under two. In a small number of cases in the study it was a male relative or partner of the mother who had abandoned a child le temporarily in his charge, and had done so without the mother’s knowledge or consent.

Challenging Stereotypes These accounts challenge many of the broader assumptions and stereotypes that are oen associated with abandonment and suggest that mothers of contemporary “foundlings” are not a “world apart” from “real” mothers. Rather, the social act of abandonment occurs and needs to be understood within the context of a range of tensions between the “ideal” and lived realities of women’s lives as mothers. These tensions have proved remarkably consistent and enduring over time, and have oen been reflected and reinforced, rather than addressed, through

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a range of social policies. The extent to which abandonment can be seen as a “voluntary act” (Boswell) in this context is debatable. Rather than being an unreasonable act commi
ed by “pathological” women, abandonment might be experienced and understood as a reasonable response to unreasonable circumstances.

Endnotes 1.

2.

The archival materials accessed for this research are held by a number of children’s charities in the United Kingdom, such as Barnado’s and N.C.A. (formerly National Children’s Homes), and most notably, the Archives of the Thomas Coram Foundation retained from the Foundling Hospital (London) established by Captain Thomas Coram in 1741 to accept illegitimate babies of up to two months old. In Victorian England, “baby farms” were institutions run by mostly unscrupulous profiteers, where women could place their illegitimate children or those they were unable to care for themselves, without any official record. Mothers or, in some cases, putative fathers, paid for the upkeep of their infants. Few infants survived and many were starved when their upkeep was no longer profitable or when parents were unable or unwilling to pay the cost.

References Argent, H., ed. See You Soon: Contact with Children Looked After by Local Authorities. London: BAAF, 1995. Boswell, J. The Kindness of Strangers. Chicago: Chicago Press, 1988. Brownlow, J. Chronicles of the Foundling Hospital. London: Sampson Low, 1847. Buswell, C. “Women, Paid Work and Poverty.” Women and Poverty in Britain: The 1990’s. Eds. C. Glendenning and J. Millar. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. Hollands, R. The Long Transition: Class, Culture and Youth Training. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990. Home Office. Aspects of Crime: Children as Victims 1997. London: Home Office, 1999. Howe, D., P. Sawbridge, and D. Hinings. Half a Million Women: Mothers Who Lose Their Children by Adoption. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.

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Masson, J., C. Harrison, and A. Pavlovic. Working with Children and “Lost” Parents. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1997. McLure, R. Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century. London: Yale, 1981. Millar, J. “Lone Mothers and Poverty.” Women and Poverty in Britain: The 1990’s. Eds. C. Glendenning and J. Millar. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. Mullender, A. Rethinking Domestic Violence. London: Routledge, 1996. Mullender, A., ed. We Are Family: Sibling Relationships in Placement and Beyond. London: Sage, 1999. Mullender, A., and S. Kearn. I’m Here Waiting: Birth Relatives’ Views on Part II of the Adoption Contact Register for England and Wales. London: BAAF, 1997. Murray, C. The Emerging British Underclass. London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit, 1990. Nichols, R.H., and F.A. Wray. The History of the Foundling Hospital. London: Oxford University Press, 1935. O’Donovan, Katherine. “Constructions of Maternity and Motherhood, and Stories of Lost Children.” Feminist Perspectives on Child Law. Eds. J. Bridgeman and B. Monk. London: Cavendish, 2000. O’Hagan, K., and K. Dillenburger. The Abuse of Women within Childcare Work. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995. Oppenheim, C. Poverty: The Facts. London: CPAG, 1993. Panter-Brick, C. “Nobody’s Children? A Reconsideration of Child Abandonment.” Abandoned Children. Eds. C. Panter-Brick and M. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Panter-Brick, C., and M. Smith, eds. Abandoned Children. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pilcher, J., and S. Wagg, eds. Thatcher’s Children: Politics, Childhood and Society in the 1980’s and 1990’s. London: Falmar Press, 1996. Pullan, B. Orphans and Foundlings in Early Modern Europe. Reading: University of Reading, 1989. Ryburn, M., ed. Contested Adoptions: Research, Law, Policy and Practice. Aldershot: Arena, 1994. Shawyer, J. Death by Adoption. Auckland, New Zealand: Cicada Press, 1979. Scheper-Hughes, N., and C. Sargent, eds. Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Somerville, J. The Rise and Fall of Childhood. NY: Sage Publications, 1982. Wells, S. Within Me, Without Me. Adoption: An Open and Shut Case? London: Scarlet Press, 1994.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

WHEN EVE LEFT THE GARDEN A MODERN TALE ABOUT MOTHERS WHO LEAVE THEIR FAMILIES Petra Büskens

Introduction When Eve picked the forbidden apple and learned the difference between “good” and “evil,” she catapulted humankind out of blissful stasis and into a self-conscious history. Like Eve, the “mother who leaves” jolts the Edenic garden of the modern nuclear family into conspicuous discontent. In jettisoning her role, she forces a reorganization of the structure of the family and its relationship to the public sphere. Importantly, she disrupts conceptual and practical limitations placed on women as mothers not through abandoning motherhood but rather by reinventing it. Her creation, it seems to me, is to make modern liberal concepts such as autonomy and self-determination more compatible with mothering. Certainly, Sharon Hays is correct when she says these presently stand in “cultural contradiction.” We may ask, then, who is the mother who leaves? In this chapter, I define her as a woman who has chosen to leave her family home and not take her children with her. This may be for a short period of time, such as for a number of months, or more permanently. She is a mother who has elected to live apart from her children and who does not undertake the majority of family duties following separation or divorce. Importantly, she no longer cohabits inside the nuclear family dwelling but, rather, in a “home of her own.” Current data indicate that while non-cohabiting mothers are still a tiny minority, their numbers are increasing every year (Ardi
i; Bianchi; Depner). Since no direct statistics exist on this group, figures are usually derived from the growing number of single fathers. Greif (1997a), for example, suggests that, in the United States, “[b]etween 1970 and 1990, the number of single

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fathers raising children alone increased from 275,000 to 1,355,000” (46). Meyer and Garasky also note that “the number of father-only families has tripled since 1974, making them the fastest growing family type in the United States today” (73). In Britain, figures from the early 1990s suggest that 15 percent of mothers, or about 500,000 women, are living away from their children (Jackson 4). In Australia, statistics show a similar pa
ern, indicating that during the period from 1989 to 1998 the absolute number of lone fathers increased by 58 percent (ABS), while the Council of Single Mothers and their Children claims that men account for 11 percent of all sole parents. As Greif suggests, “[a]lthough obviously one mother is without custody for every father with custody who is single, probably an equal number of mothers whose ex-husbands are remarried do not have custody” (Greif 1997b 46). To put these findings in context, contemporary studies on marriage and the family indicate three parallel findings. First, despite women’s large-scale entry into the workplace, or the more recent image of the rolesharing husband, the organization of domestic labour and child care has proven especially resistant to change (Bi
man; Baxter; Delphy and Leonard; Dempsey, 1997a, 1997b; Steil; Maushart; Sanchez). Women, across class and race divides, are still undertaking the vast majority of child care and domestic work and this persists even when they are involved in paid work (Baxter; Dempsey, 1997a, 1997b; Hochschild 1998; Probert and Macdonald; Probert; Shelton; Steil). Second, married men still prioritize their own leisure above the women with whom they share families, and reap the rewards of labour market participation largely unaffected by domestic responsibilities. In spite of our be
er wishes and widespread (mis)perceptions of gender equality, it is still women who are assigned the difficult responsibility of managing the incompatible demands of work and home. This places women in what is variously termed “cultural contradiction,” “dual role conflict,” or the “double burden.” However, given modern social complexity and individualism, such contradictions apply not only to paid work but also to any activity a mother may wish to undertake apart from child care. In effect, it is difficult indeed for the ordinary mother, especially of young children, to cultivate an independent and autonomous sense of self1—the self, incidentally, most highly valued in contemporary western societies (see Giddens; Melucci; Castells; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim). On the surface, then, mothers who leave may be seen as an outcrop of new family arrangements—the rise in divorce, the growth

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in women’s labour-market participation, increasing individualism, and the feminization of poverty (Greif 1997a, 1997b). On a deeper level, however, it is my contention that mothers who leave are rejecting— intentionally or not—the cultural contradictions of motherhood. In this sense, I read the mother who leaves as a subversive and creative agent of change much like Eve. While the boldness and devastation of her act may horrify us, if we delve into the practical and philosophical implications of her decision, we see the possibility of profound social change. Indeed, we see the complete rupture of gendered distinctions between autonomy and care, and a possible synthesis of the two. I would like to explore, therefore, a key theme emerging from my empirical research on mothers who leave:2 namely, how this group of mothers disrupt the gendered antinomies between freedom and care as developed in classical liberal political philosophy and reworked in contemporary feminist theory. My concern, here, is with the la
er, since feminists have yet to develop a cogent theory of female subjectivity beyond the impasse of rejecting male categories or valorizing difference. Or, to put it another way, feminist political theorists have yet to create a model of the free individuated woman who is also a mother. In general, then, feminist theory reads liberal political theory in three interlocking ways: first, it suggests that the notion of a public sphere of “individuals” mystifies what Carol Pateman calls the “sexual contract” (Pateman 1989); second, it rejects the universality underpinning modern concepts of human rights, freedom, and equality in the name of difference, in particular the feminine difference; and third, it argues that abstract equality excludes and inferiorizes women’s moral orientation towards the particular others whom they care for and relate to in everyday se
ings. In essence, “the individual” and the impartial egalitarianism of liberal-democratic theory are rejected in favour of relationality, emotionality, community, and difference. I will look briefly at each of these positions through the work of three representative theorists, Carol Pateman, Iris Marion Young, and Carol Gilligan, before proceeding with a short case study from my empirical research on mothers who leave. In this way, I will re-evaluate the extant antinomy between freedom and care (in theory and practice), sketching one possible third way for mothers beyond the logic of impossibility (cf DiQuenzio). This is not to suggest that mothers who leave provide an unproblematic synthesis between freedom and care, or that practice easily relates to theory, only that a poignant synthesis between autonomy and care presents itself in the case of the mother

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who leaves. Such a project marks only the beginnings of a larger theoretical and practical erosion of the institution of motherhood (cf O’Reilly; Hochschild 1998; Wearing 36–58; Bell-Sco
et al.; Dunne; Reimann).

Women’s Exclusion from Freedom and the Category of “the Individual” Carol Pateman dely argues that the institution of modern citizenship was—and still remains—a male prerogative. Through the early modern separation of public and private spheres, women were sequestered to the domestic realm, demarcated from the public sphere of rights, freedom, equality, contract, and justice. However, Pateman points out that modern women occupied a paradoxical position vis-à-vis the free individual, since they were simultaneously positioned inside civil society and therefore (potentially) free yet within the domestic sphere, and therefore (actually) unfree. This contradiction came to hinge on women’s status as wives, since the marriage contract (like all contracts) assumed ownership of “property in the person” while simultaneously usurping this status for women. Indeed, in the tradition of English law, until the late 19th century and in some places into the 20th, once a woman married she became the property of her husband (Lyndon Shanley 1989). In this schema, women were not born free, as with the ostensibly sex-neutral individual of social contract doctrine; rather, women were born subjected to free men. This subjection was deemed irrelevant, moreover, because it occurred inside the private so-called non-political sphere. In other words, modern women’s subjection to men was outside appeals to the principle of justice (Okin). Women were not individuals in the public-political sense but rather wives and mothers in the private sphere. For Pateman, this foundational premise of liberal-democratic society cannot be displaced by women’s more recent acquisition of formal citizenship, since the traits and capacities that define the “free individual” are still marked off from those ascribed to women. Thus difference, passion, sexuality, emotionality, and reproduction are eliminated from the public sphere of (purportedly) rational, free, and equal interactions, and, in turn, sequestered to the private or feminine sphere. As a result of this division, Pateman suggests women represent

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disorder to civil society. They become agents of emotional and sexual difference, if not outright corruption (Pateman 1989). The upshot, suggests Pateman, is that women can only be citizens by impersonating men and leaving their over-determined sexual and emotional personae “at home.” In this way, the subordination of women implied by universal citizenship is implicated in the very constitution of women’s difference. For Pateman, the individual cannot be made female within the terms of liberal discourse for it is premised upon a distinctly male abstraction from the body, its needs, labours, leisures, and pleasures. She writes, “femininity as subordination and the … [free] ‘individual’ … are not alternatives …” rather, “… to choose one is to choose the other too” (Pateman 1988 226).

Universality and Difference Theorizing women’s difference has become imperative for feminists as a way of revaluing women’s lives and understanding the ongoing pernicious inequality of social status, political representation, wages, family work, leisure, and autonomy in the context of women’s hard-won normal citizenship. Iris Marion Young has contributed significantly to this discussion, making a powerful case for group-differentiated citizenship and the representation of women’s difference within the public sphere (Young 1990, 1996, 1999). While Young supports the notion of citizenship for everyone, she contests the associated concept of universality as equal treatment. For Young, two correctives are required: first, the public recognition of group difference; and second, the extension of special rights to groups disadvantaged by hegemonic norms. She writes, “the idea that citizenship is the same for all translates in practice to the requirement that all citizens be the same,” while the imposition of hegemonic (white male) norms, whether in the workplace or in civil society, tends to make “some citizens more equal than others” (1999 110). A pertinent example of this inequality is the compromised labour-market participation of mothers who are unable to conform to workplace standards established on the norm of a domestically unencumbered male. In our time where formal citizenship rights are granted to all, Young notes that dependency work is one way in which women are excluded from full citizenship. This operates on two levels: first, given women’s lower earning capacity, if they choose to become mothers they

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almost always become financially dependent on a man (or, conversely, the state). This means mothers are typically unable to meet the norm of self-sufficiency inculcated as the hallmark of (full) citizenship in liberal-democratic societies. Second, and in a related sense, women’s dependency on men (for both money and “time off ”) oen generates unequal power relations within marriages (Dempsey 1997, 1997b; Okin). In the dominant gender structure, the two-parent heterosexual family therefore tends to reproduce the citizen/mother bifurcation whereby women’s allocated work (nurturing, domesticity, concern for particular needs) disqualifies them from the citizen virtues of individuality, independence, and the general or universal standpoint. Young writes, Independence is an important citizen virtue in the modern democratic republic, because it enables citizens to come together in public on relatively free and equal terms. If every citizen meets the needs of himself and his dependents through his own property, then citizens are immune to threats of particularist influence by others on whom they depend for their livelihoods. With independence in this sense they may deliberate on equal terms and consider the merits of issues in terms of the general good. (1999 109)

However, Young continues that while “independence is a paragon virtue of liberal citizenship … a mother’s virtue entails dependence on a man” (1999 107). This dependence is seen—paradoxically—as necessary for the cultivation of independence in children, or more specifically, in male children, “since their female children are likely to grow up to be mothers” and, by implication, relinquish their status as (potentially) full citizens (1999 107). Such a demotion presents an acute double bind for women since the very traits that define good mothering—availability to and concern for particular needs—are the same traits that impose a status of second-class citizen (1999 112). Young’s theoretical intervention consists in the suggestion that selfsufficiency and independence (financial and otherwise) be dislodged as primary criteria for “full citizenship” (1999 110–111). She argues— convincingly—that these prevailing values work to marginalize dependents and their usually female caregivers “to a private realm beyond the interaction of free and full citizens” (1999 110). In turn, she suggests that care work be re-valued, while those who carry out this work “should be materially supported” (1999 114–118).

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An Ethic of Care Young’s pragmatic a
empt to find political recognition of care work is offset by Carol Gilligan’s theoretical and empirical research on what she calls women’s “ethic of care.” Gilligan’s ideas emerged from her early work in moral development with Lawrence Kohlberg. He defined the “ethic of justice” as the highest ethical standpoint in which an equal system of rights is applied impartially to each individual. In tests regarding moral maturity, Kohlberg found that men, on average, scored higher than women who tended to make moral judgements in terms of relationships rather than rights. Drawing on Nancy Chodorow’s feminist rereading of Freud, Gilligan developed an alternative, less pejorative, account of female moral development. Gilligan defined women’s ethic of care as a different voice most oen (but not necessarily) associated with female-centred care-giving. In particular, because women were birthed and cared for by a same-sex parent, their mother, women tended to have more porous ego boundaries and a greater sense of reciprocal identification than boys (and men), who made a gendered move away from their mothers. In contrast to the ethic of justice, the ethic of care is concerned with the cultivation and preservation of relationships, a
ention to the particular needs and desires of others, and emphasizes empathy, compassion, and responsibility in relationships (Gilligan). Gilligan writes: … the moral problem arises from conflicting responsibilities rather than from competing rights and requires for its resolution a mode of thinking that is contextual and narrative rather than formal and abstract. This conception of morality is concerned with the activity of care and centres moral development around the understanding of responsibility and relationships, just as the conception of morality as fairness ties moral development to the understanding of rights and rules. (19)

Within an ethic of care, the self is therefore conceptualized as particular and interdependent rather than abstract and individuated. By association, it is oriented to the “concrete” rather than the “generalized” other (Benhabib). In this sense, ordinary people, their divergent needs and desires, are morally prioritized over universal principles of justice-as-fairness or the abstract “man” of human rights discourse.

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Gilligan writes that “[w]hile women thus try to change the rules in order to preserve relationships, men, in abiding by these rules, depict relationships as easily replaced”(44). Within an ethic of care, loved persons are special, unique, and irreplaceable—the opposite, in other words, of the generic citizen whose formal rights make “him” the same in principle as all others (cf Jagger 145–171). To summarize, then, feminist moral and political theory reveals a pervasive androcentric bias with regard to the idea of freedom and the category of the individual. Not only have women been conceptualized as “other” to rights, freedom, and justice, but the practical division of labour has assigned almost exclusive responsibility for domestic and care-giving work to women in a manner directly disadvantageous to public participation (or private leisure). As both Pateman and Young point out, this antithesis has not been ameliorated with the acquisition of formal citizenship. On the contrary, women now straddle incompatible spheres in contradiction. Mothering impedes women’s independence and participation because of the social organization of care work as “outside” production and politics. Mothers, in turn, become secondclass citizens, even in the context of equal rights. We see that the ethics women develop in a context of sequestered caregiving are also inferiorized within a traditional ethic of justice. We arrive here at the zero-sum game of femininity: care-giving and emotionality are assigned (almost) exclusively to women (through an interrelated combination of psychosexual development and liberal-democratic social structure) and then deployed to justify exclusion. With this theoretical picture in place, I would like to turn now to my empirical research on mothers who leave. In an effort to meet the conflicting needs of detail and brevity I have used only one case study. However, it is typical of the experiences of the women in this project3 and picks up on broader themes evident in large-scale studies on the division of labour and leisure in the home. In this sense, I read the “mother who leaves” in direct relation to the “mother who stays.” The key shi of the mother who leaves is her subversion of the contradictions currently besetting mothers (who stay) within conventionally gendered families. While these contradictions (between labour and leisure, autonomy and care) are widely known, what has remained li
le-explored in the literature is how they are being subverted. In other words, while research has exposed women’s double shi and the uneven constraints parenthood imposes, there are few documented instances of how this division is being actively resisted (see

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Van Every; O’Reilly for counter examples). I situate mothers who leave in precisely these terms of resistance and reinvention. Importantly, her actions—as will become apparent—do not constitute simple selfishness or capitulation to male norms of unencumbered individualism. Rather, the mother who leaves poses a noteworthy challenge to current gender divisions of labour, as well as gendered divisions of theory. Let us look in greater detail at Liz’s experience.

“This Is All Up to Me”: Liz’s Story of Leaving Home and Finding “Herself” Liz was almost 60 years old when I interviewed her and she offered an account of motherhood shaped by the counter-cultural movements of the 1970s. She is an unusual case for she came to motherhood in her late thirties in a communal society. She and her husband Steve had been married 11 years before her first pregnancy and were jubilant about the transition. However, aer a “blissful” pregnancy, Liz had an unexpectedly traumatic birth. By the end of her labour, Liz had been awake for over 48 hours and her son Luke had been, as she put it, “ripped out” with forceps. Whether it was this experience (as she suspects) or simply her infant’s innate temperament, Liz found herself caring for a “very difficult baby.” She recalls that Luke cried continuously and slept for no more than one hour at a time for the first 13 months of his life. With no respite from these relentless (though by no means uncommon) demands, Liz saw her dreams about motherhood collapse. When I enquired about her husband’s participation, a familiar story appeared. Steve had to go to work by day and simply “didn’t hear” the baby cry when he was le in charge at other times. She says: He was perfectly happy to go along with what I was doing [a
achmentstyle parenting] but he was exhausted too, and he tried to give me a break by having Luke in the room with him and me trying to get at least three hours’ sleep but then I’d hear Luke crying. So, he’d gone to sleep next to Luke and Luke had cried and he’d not woken. So I thought, “This is all up to me.”

Like most married mothers, Liz took on the overwhelming majority of child-care responsibilities and felt the burden of her demanding baby, both physically and psychologically, on her own. She says that her

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husband’s involvement “was very limited,” while from well-meaning but intrusive outsiders there was a constant stream of conflicting and sanctimonious advice. Liz’s own family was in England and unable to provide the practical assistance she sorely needed. Coupled with this uneven strain, Liz struggled with her newfound financial dependence. She says with respect to her marriage, I think there was no actual change in affection and feelings of closeness. The change became a question of dependence, particularly economic dependence, because I’d always been economically independent. Our financial situation had always been one where I’d control my finances and he’d control his. And then suddenly I was dependent. And, my view is that neither of us handled that very well. I think he became obsessively, “I’ve got to be the breadwinner” … No ma
er how much I talked about needing to be part of and having some control over some part of our financial situation ... we’d talk about it and he’d agree with me and set it up for a short time and then it would just all slide back.… it was just the tiny, tiny things. It was just needing to have money in my pocket.

For two years this situation continued, again confirming wider studies on income distribution in marriage aer parenthood (Pahl). Clearly Liz was lonely and tired. Indeed, she describes herself as “isolated,” and an “angry zombie.” Moreover, her “sense of self” had “just completely disappeared and I didn’t know what to replace it with ... I mean I had some kind of view of how it was going to be. … So, I think I just blanked out for a long time ... it would have been a couple of years.” She comments on a profound sense of powerlessness and the feeling of “not knowing what was going to happen. Not being able to make any decision at all.” Moving to a new town improved things for a while but the basic parenting dynamic remained the same. The couple had retained their “alternative” lifestyle, which meant for Liz many extra hours in subsistence labour. Luke also had difficulty interacting with the other children at play-group (having been relatively insulated with his mother for two years), compounding Liz’s feelings of isolation and failure. While noting that her sense of self had improved in the new community, Liz remained depressed and burdened by the asymmetrical domestic demands. Her life continued in this way for another four years.

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One day a childless friend visited from the city and upon hearing of her malaise told Liz that she had become a “drudge.” She suggested Liz have an affair to bring back some pleasure into her life. This struck a powerful chord with Liz who was patently yearning to “find herself” again. It was a catalyst that would change her life forever and mark her off as a “bad mother” in the eyes of both her peer group and society at large. Liz took up an affair with a former colleague when Luke was six years old and aer one illicit year decided to leave her marriage and her son and move to the city with her lover. Initially Liz wanted to take Luke with her, but Steve threatened suicide so she decided to go on her own. This ambiguity of circumstance has plagued Liz. Did she want to leave Luke or was she more worried about Steve’s life? Was this his will or hers or some inextricable union of the two? She is unsure and remains haunted by the uncertainty, or rather, by the possibility that she may have wanted to leave not only her husband but also her child. She says, “I’ve always wondered how much [was] … my wanting to go and how much was I scared of Steve killing himself. I just don’t know. I just don’t know. I can’t work that one out.” Clearly there are multiple factors in operation in any one decision, but what does remain clear is that Liz needed to change her role in the family both in terms of her financial dependence and her loss of self-identity and esteem. Liz needed to alter her subservience to the family—what had become “drudgery”—and cordon off a place, both conceptual and physical, where she herself could thrive. After she left, Liz resolved to have weekend access. This was an especially painful time for both her and Luke, particularly when they parted at the end of a weekend. She recalls poignantly: “Oh the separation, that is the wound. That separation ... For him every time we said goodbye he was in floods of tears and so was I. I don’t know how I bloody got in my car and drove away ... [crying] ... I said, “I always want you but I can’t take you.” At that time I just couldn’t see any other way. I couldn’t ... I mean it was either/or. I couldn’t think out a third way …” While Liz still finds li
le to reclaim in her experience and suffers enormously under the guilt of her own departure, what her story is especially useful at highlighting is that mothers who leave—in spite of, or perhaps because of their own internalized model of maternal propriety—resolve the cultural antithesis between autonomy and mothering not by sacrificing themselves but rather by asserting themselves. Liz is a renegade because she has transgressed a

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primordial taboo: she has made her own needs for self-expression and independence equally important with the care of her husband and child. We know that this is not the usual solution to the “problem with no name” (Friedan). If we take Liz’s experience as paradigmatic, and my research suggests we can, mothers who leave are forging an historically unique pathway out of the current impasse between mandatory selflessness and/or cultural contradiction. In effect, mothers who leave create a space outside the family nexus for their individuated selves. This rupture does not simply break up the family; rather, it creates a redistribution of child care in a manner advantageous to the production of maternal autonomy. In asserting this primacy of self, it is my contention that mothers who leave reinvent the institution of mothering in ways that make it more compatible with full citizenship (to use Young’s expression) and all that this implies for economic independence, selfidentity, and civil participation. The mother who leaves—some of the time—is no longer anchored to a domestic space that mandates her labour and obstructs her autonomy. Indeed, by leaving, we see that Liz forced a redistribution of labour that enabled her to create the necessary structures for self-production (a private dwelling), self-sufficiency (a job), and self-fulfillment (in this case, through a new relationship, access to a more cosmopolitan environment, paid work, and mothering in dynamic combination). Importantly, Liz was unable to achieve such balance inside the nuclear family nexus. On closer examination, notwithstanding Liz’s own definition and the peer disapproval she endured, Liz never actually “left” her son. Liz didn’t simply abandon Luke, as a conventional reading might suggest; rather, Liz had Luke stay with her two or three nights in every week and she remained involved in all decisions regarding his education and welfare. Liz was, by her own account, an active co-parent. It appears, however, that reorganizing the place from which she exercised her mothering (and as a result reducing her time spent in active parenting to hours more comparable with that of the typical working father) was enough to label her an “abandoner.” She speaks poignantly about the disparity between her own and other people’s perception of her “leaving”: I became very much aware that my idealized version of leaving was not the version that was seen.… [I felt] … that we were sharing, yes. And that’s the way we talked of it. That was the language we used

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around it. It wasn’t that I’d le … I hadn’t le.… We’d separated and we were sharing Luke’s parenting. But that was not the way other people saw me. [How did other people see you?] I’d run off to pursue some bloke and I’d le my responsibilities and what a terrible mother. So it took a while for me to realise that that was what was actually perceived. [And what about when you told others new to your life?] You could see in people’s thinking processes this incredible re-evaluation [of me].

So what exactly did Liz abandon if it was not her child? I suggest Liz abandoned the patriarchal structure of mothering and it is this that troubles people (including herself) so greatly. She was mothering from a completely different vantage point, one that permi
ed, and indeed cultivated, her individuated sense of self. She had, in effect, refused to be tied day and night to the home. She was indeed an autonomous mother. As far as current research indicates, this is an innovation on the present state of motherhood when it is achieved without the lowly paid services of a mother-substitute, or, in other words, when it involves the serious domestic contribution of the child’s father. Interestingly, leaving is viewed as clandestine, unnatural, even evil, behaviour in a mother yet fails to raise an eyebrow in the postdivorce (or for that ma
er, married) father. Fathers, including Luke’s father, leave every day for work and leisure (oen for most of children’s waking hours) while the ever-expanding category of separated fathers leave on a more permanent basis (Blankenhorn; Seltzer; Greif 1997a; Amato and Gillbreth). However, these fathers do not a
ract the moral condemnation of the mother who leaves (some of the time) indicating our pervasive double standard with respect to parenting. Let us look at this scenario more closely in relation to the feminist political and moral theory examined earlier.

Mothers Who Leave Theory and Reinvent Practice In light of my research on mothers who leave, my concern with the feminist critique of the liberal individual and the promotion of feminine difference is twofold: first, it reinforces women’s exclusion from freedom or justice (defined as always already male); and, second, it fails to disrupt the oppressive consignment of privatized care-giving and, by association, over-determined emotionality, particularity, and sexuality to women.

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While feminist political and ethical theory is an excellent diagnostic tool in understanding the structure, ideologies, and roles of modern patriarchy, it too oen fails to think outside the binary oppositions produced therein. Such theory illuminates the terms within the sexual contract but does not shi them. Thus even when theorizing women’s purported difference, what it means to be a woman is read off the contemporary and arbitrary set of arrangements within the modern family. It seems that the exploitative division of labour that grew out of the modern separation of public and private spheres is being (mis)taken as a legitimate starting place for analyzing difference. Similarly, the gender subtext, elucidated so well by Carol Pateman, concentrates on women’s exclusion from the modern public sphere so rigorously that all possibility of inclusion is lost. Inclusion, if we follow Pateman’s exegetical interpretation, necessitates capitulation to masculine norms, implicitly reinforcing the stereotype that independent publicly active women are somehow masculine. If we accept that femininity just is the opposite of “the individual as owner” (Pateman 1988 6), as indeed the canonical liberal texts would have us believe, then women remain defined as outsiders to the ideal and the practice of freedom. Pateman critically elucidates this position, bringing its gendered implications into view, yet falls short of conceptualizing alternatives. This leaves us with li
le more than a seemingly intractable status quo. The rejection of the individual on the grounds of feminine difference thus begins to look suspiciously like the patriarchal dualism we were rejecting, albeit with a different hermeneutic. Iris Young’s rejection of universalist models of citizenship suffers identical pitfalls. While she provides an insightful analysis of mothers as second-class citizens (unable to conform to universal norms of equality and self-sufficiency), she proceeds to use this very position as the basis for a gender-specific citizenship. Though her notion of special rights (for special circumstances) and the recognition of women’s dependency work are crucial interim strategies, they do li
le to disrupt patriarchal norms in the longer term. While mothers require more flexible workplace structures that take account of care-giving, the specific constitution of mothering in modern western societies—including sequestration to the private sphere, a
achment-style intensive mothering, largely unshared domestic and child-care responsibilities—must also be challenged and reorganized on more equitable terms. We must do more than generate policies for the inclusion of dependency workers (like, for example, the postulated “mummy track” where women have the so-called “option”

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of a less intensive career in order to accommodate their maternal and domestic commitments), we must also find ways to abolish the structures and practices that segregate dependency work to women in ways that generate long-term disadvantage, economic dependence, and emotional frustration. While the feminist critique of the free (male) individual and his privatized feminine counterpart is a vital and incisive intervention into an all-pervasive ideological and institutional framework that would otherwise parade men’s freedom and masculine norms as universal, it is time, as Pateman asserts, that we “open up space for two figures; one masculine, one feminine” (Pateman 1988 224). Part of this space making involves the reinvention of freedom by women as mothers. The mother who leaves is one instance of this project in the arena of everyday family practice. Here, where gendered conceptions of autonomy and care are each day enacted and contested, mothers who leave are craing new models of feminine difference to include economic and personal autonomy within a more egalitarian childcare practice. In this way, the mother who leaves (and stays) disrupts the citizen/mother dualism enough to shi an otherwise intransigent patriarchal familial and social structure (widely reproduced in theory). Specifically, in assuming both sides of the autonomy/care equation, while also subverting the second shi, the mother who leaves destabilizes the gender monopolies currently at play. Arguably, it is precisely this difference, with its radical implications for the status quo, that is prevented from emerging in theory and in practice. My project with mothers who leave, therefore, seeks to understand how the (im)possible free mother might erupt through a series of apparently mutually exclusive categories. It moves from interpretation of scripture—to return to our guiding biblical analogy—to a subversion of the script. The mother who leaves is a creation myth of sorts for she promulgates the possibility of a mother in possession of her own desire: a desire to be a free individual and a mother. Here is the gi of loss that may just prove to catapult us out of gendered stasis and into an altogether new family history.

Endnotes 1.

For extensive examinations of this problem see: Wearing, 1984; Hays, 1996; Maushart, 1997; DiQuenzio, 1999.

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2.

3.

This research is part of a PhD degree funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award undertaken in the Sociology Programme at the University of Melbourne. Research participants voluntarily responded to advertisements in local newspapers requesting interviews with mothers who had le their families. It was prerequisite that participants had voluntarily le for a period of six months or more and that this was not due to political problems, refugee status, or having an infant adopted. From here, I undertook two semi-structured interviews of approximately two hours duration with each participant. Interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, and read over by participants prior to final inclusion in the project. Pseudonyms have been used throughout. The notable exception here is one woman who has been able to leave mothering for substantial periods of time within the context of her marriage. In other words, her husband, unlike the great majority, has facilitated an equitable parenting arrangement that has included her a
achment to long-term projects overseas.

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Maushart, Susan. Wifework: What Marriage Really Means for Women. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2001. Melucci, Alberto. The Playing Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Meyer, Daniel R., and Steven Garasky. “Custodial Fathers: Myths, Realities, and Child Support Policy.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 55 (1993): 73–89. Okin, Susan, M. Justice. Gender and the Family. New York: Basic Books, 1989. O’Reilly, Andrea, ed. Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Empowered Mothering. Toronto: The Women’s Press, 2004. Pahl, Jan. Money and Marriage. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1989. Pateman, Carol. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity, 1988. _____. The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity, 1989. Probert, Belinda, and Fiona Macdonald. Young Women: Poles of Experience in Work and Parenting. Melbourne: Brotherhood of St. Laurence, 1999. Probert, Belinda. “Mothers in the Labour Force.” Family Ma
ers. Australian Institute of Family Studies 54 (Spring/Summer 1999): 60–65. Reimann, Renate. “Does Biology Matter? Lesbian Couples’ Transition to Parenthood and Their Division of Labour.” Qualitative Sociology 20 (1997): 153–185. Sanchez, Laura. “Material Resources, Family Structure Resources and Husbands’ Housework Participation: A Cross-National Comparison.” Journal of Family Issues 15.3 (1994): 379–402. Seltzer, Judith. “Relationships between Fathers and Children Who Live Apart: The Father’s Role aer Separation” Journal of Marriage and the Family 53 (February 1991): 79–101. Shanley Lyndon. Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England, 1850–1895. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989. Shelton, Beth., A. “The Distribution of Household Tasks: Does Wife’s Employment Status Make a Difference?” Journal of Family Issues 11.2 (1990): 115–135. Steil, Janice. Marital Equality: Its Relationship to the Well-Being of Husbands and Wives. California: Sage, 1997. VanEvery, Jo. Heterosexual Women Changing the Family: Refusing to be a “Wife”! Bristol, PA: Taylor and Francis, 1995. Wearing, Betsy. The Ideology of Motherhood: A Study of Sydney Suburban Mothers. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984. Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. _____. “Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy.” Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. Ed.

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Benhabib Seyla. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996. 120– 135. _____. “Mothers, Citizenship, and Independence: A Critique of Pure Family Values.” Is Feminist Philosophy Philosophy? Ed. Bianchi Emanuela. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999. 99–121.

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

CONCLUSION REFLECTIONS

ON

MOTHERHOOD

Patricia Short

Reflection on the Institution of Motherhood In the introduction to this body of work, the focus was upon aspects of power and oppression in motherhood. Furthermore, each of the authors writing in this volume has spoken directly to these issues, for Motherhood: Power/Oppression was the theme of the conference that brought this work together, and these are central aspects in experiences of motherhood. In formulating a conclusion, however, I want to turn a
ention back to motherhood as an institution1 and to consider where the insights from this volume might lead us in both the doing and the scholarship of motherhood. It is important to note at the outset that “doing motherhood” is used here to signify not only the practices of mothers and the social expectations that shape their lives but also the emotional expressions of motherhood and, ultimately, the identities that arise (are performed) in and through the social relations of mothering. In reflecting upon the papers assembled here, I have been guided by the principal elements of Dorothy Smith’s strategic analytical method of “institutional ethnography.” Here, “motherhood” is the institution in focus—a set of practices that entail specific “relations of ruling”2 and a distinctive function in the wider context of society and economy. Ethnography, as a guiding principal in this context, means that we must continue to treat “the everyday world [of motherhood] as problematic,” commit to understanding “how ‘it’ actually is … [and] how ‘it’ works” (Smith 1987 160), and, all the while, preserve the presence of subjects. In this chapter, I consider how the studies reported in this volume, taken together, have revealed “relations of ruling” that are entailed

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in the institution of motherhood and that continue to exclude, divide, marginalize, and obscure (m)others.3 The problems, perspectives, and practices evident in the range of voices heard in these studies reveal features of a dominant institution of motherhood—a form of mothering and relations of mothering that are discernible in dominant cultures of the west4 and are promoted at the level of ideology and of practice as the “ideal.” This both constrains and enables (m)others; it persists yet is changeable. The features of motherhood, in this form, will be discussed here as a way of looking forward and afar at emergent forms of mothering and the agenda of motherhood scholarship. The aim of this exercise is to identify sites and possibilities for change, possibilities for “shiing the centre” (in Collins’s terms), and ways of “mothering against motherhood” (O’Reilly). In attempting to reflect upon motherhood in this way, I have been drawn to re-examine the principal sites of motherhood power/ oppression identified in this volume: embodiment (which involves consideration of both the physical and emotional intimacy of the relations of mothering); representation (wherein a
ention must be focused not only upon the hegemonic elements of language, narrative, and myth but also the possibilities for resistance in voicing maternity); the practices of motherhood (which include not only the practices of mothers doing motherhood but the broader range of everyday, routine practices and the formal, legal, political, and economic practices that shape the institution of motherhood and the lives of those living in relationship with it); and separation (which at once draws a
ention to the boundaries of motherhood and to pathways of resistance and institutional change). Review of these sites of power/oppression in motherhood, as they have been represented in the works in this volume, has revealed four core features that can be seen as fundamental aspects of the “relations of ruling” within the institution of motherhood: ● ● ● ●

persistent patriarchal dichotomies that shape understandings, relations, and practices of mothering; an ascendant, essentially individualized and isolated form of mothering; a duplicitous affirmation of the intensity of mothering; and strategic confinement of the physical/corporeal and emotional experiences of mothering.

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Analysis of the chapters presented here has also revealed ways of disrupting the dominant relations of ruling in motherhood, of “shiing the centre,” so that experiences of maternity and the social relations of mothering can be defined by those who do (m)othering, in all its forms. In particular, the chapters in this volume have highlighted: ● ● ●

the reality/actuality of different/diverse forms of mothering in practice; the liberating potential of “outing,” “voicing,” and “publicizing” maternity; and the possibilities for resistance and change that lie within the institution.

Each of these features will be considered briefly for what they reveal about both the dominant institution of motherhood and imminent possibilities for change.

The Persistence of Patriarchal Dichotomies While the existence of patriarchal dichotomies in the language and relations of motherhood is no longer surprising, the persistence and scope of the divisions based on the fundamental male/female and public/private split warrant a reiteration of feminist critique in this context. Strategies that have historically positioned mothers “at home” are clearly illustrated in the works of Porter (Chapter 12), who has presented the stories of women mothering in the 1950s and 1960s in Australia, and Ikas (Chapter 5), who has documented the way in which the gendered geography of war in the early 20th century redefined the boundaries of “home” to include, temporarily, the public places of work usually occupied by men, and relocated the public sphere of work and political relations abroad at the “war-front.” The divisions that continue to situate women, and mothers in particular, in the private, domestic sphere “at home” in contemporary societies, are evident, as fundamental aspects of motherhood, in the work of Horwitz and Long (Chapter 6), who identify specific ways in which mothers’ position at home, with their children, is iterated in popular media; the work of Hing Ai Yun (Chapter 10), who reports on the persistence of “traditional” gendered divisions of labour in Singapore; the work of Morris (Chapter 15), who, in naming “maternal

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alienation,” focuses a
ention upon a strategy based essentially upon the dominant notion of “good” mothers being located at home in family households; and in the work of Thacker (Chapter 16) and Büskens (Chapter 18), for instance, who highlight the importance of the link between “motherhood” and “home” by relating the experiences and strategies used by mothers living apart from their children, “at home.” Extending these observations, Büskens specifically identifies a patriarchal dichotomy of citizen/mother5 that aligns with male/female and public/private and autonomy/care dualisms and asserts, more pointedly than other contributors, the significance of leaving the “otherwise intransigent patriarchal familial and social structure” of the family household (yet “staying,” under new social relations of mothering) as perhaps the only way of “leaving” and, ultimately, subverting the dominant institutional form of motherhood. Gannon and Müller-Rockstroh (Chapter 3) and Bartle
(Chapter 4) suggest other ways of destabilizing the patriarchal public/private dualism that situates women and care in the home—but these will be discussed later.

The Isolation of Motherhood This second salient feature of the dominant institution of motherhood is closely intertwined with the first, for the isolation or sequestering of motherhood in the private sphere is possible only in the context of the discursive and practical separation of the public world of production and politics and the private world of reproduction and care. Beyond this, and more specifically, the isolation of motherhood entails the individualization of mother care, the valuing of an intensive “mother–child” relation that specifies the ideal (“real”) mother as the biological mother. Horwitz and Long point directly to the ways in which the dominant discourse of motherhood individualizes mothering by emphasizing the specific mother-infant bond, but this is evident also in the resistance to sharing domestic labour (including child care) among young fathers in Singapore, and, in historical context, in the loneliness of mothering done by “stay at home married wom[e]n” recorded by Porter. Reid Boyd’s analysis (Chapter 13) also is instructive in recording another strategy of isolation of motherwork—the strategic, discursive opposition of “stay-at-home mothers” and “working mothers” played

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out in a particular public discourse to effect a definition of “child care” as a concern of mothers only. By contrast, Newman’s account (Chapter 11) of the collective nature of mothering among Ethiopian-Jewish mothers migrating to Israel provides an instance wherein the dominant notion of individualized mothering in the western world is problematized. Yet, within a narrative of survival the collective nature of this mothering can be read, from the dominant perspective, as “outside the norm.” So, too, though less readily, can the collective “performance” of mothering documented by Bartle
, and the collective nature of the scholarship that arose from difficulties in the practice of maternity at the Internationale Frauenuniversität (Gannon and Müller-Rockstroh)—though the intent and effect of these was specifically political. It is the importance and the reality of the community and cultural context of “black maternity,” enunciated in this volume through an analysis of the work of Toni Morrison (O’Reilly, Chapter 8), that contrasts most sharply with and challenges the dominant, isolated form of motherhood (cf Edwards; Wane). It serves, also, as a pointer to the prevalence and diversity of other minority, collective forms of mothering, especially in First Nations, Indigenous communities,6 in communities of the developing world, and in other cultural and material contexts of poverty where, though the gender division of labour is usually marked, the contexts of wage labour are less clearly demarcated from the informal, household, and communal economy of care.

The Affirmation of the Intensity of Mothering It is asserted here that the affirmation of the intensity of mothering within the dominant institution of motherhood, evident in several chapters of this volume, is duplicitous. It is apparent, from the work presented here and elsewhere, that dominant relations of maternity promote and support the physical and emotional intensity of mothering insofar as they legitimate the economic dependency of mothers and children within the family household. Ikas’s study and Porter’s work document the legitimacy (indeed, a requirement for participants in Porter’s study) of economic dependency of married women and children in various historical contexts. Reid Boyd’s research on “stayat-home” mothers and Hing Ai Yun’s research on changing pa
erns of household labour (and, by inference, wage labour) attest to the

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legitimacy, if not the practicality or the reality, of women withdrawing from “work” in contemporary contexts of mothering. These might all be taken as evidence of cultural and social affirmation of the intensity and intimacy of motherwork. Provision by the state and/or community of income support for women with dependent children, parenting alone (as were most mothers who participated in the study reported by Short, in Chapter 14) is another way in which the intensity of early mothering is acknowledged. While these forms of acknowledgement of the intensity of motherwork validate mothers’ experiences of physical and emotional labour, they at the same time situate mothers as “natural” within the moral economy of the family and the domestic economy of the (nuclear) wage-family household. The isolation, and privatization, of motherhood is reinforced.

The Confinement of Mothers The most obvious forms of confinement of mothers centre around birthing and breastfeeding. Featherstone (Chapter 2) and Ditrich (Chapter 9) document here the historical and cross-cultural forms of overt male control of the female body. These analyses illustrate the interconnection of ideologies (medical and religious) and practices of confinement of the female body in the construction of dominant relations of ruling in motherhood. Turning to a contemporary context, the public outrage expressed at the “scandalous practices” of mothers breastfeeding en masse in public (Bartle
) gives witness to the persistent norm that such practices of the body and emotional expressions of maternity will be confined to the private sphere of the home and to the personal level of the mother-child relationship. What is scandalous, of course, is not only that this behaviour has not been confined to the private sphere but also that these practices and emotions are strategically political in intent (and therefore read, in the context of the patriarchal public/private dichotomy, as “public”). In a similar way, the denigration of separated mothers (Thacker) can be understood as a response to “recalcitrance” on their part in leaving or being away from and “outside” the physical and emotional confines of the family home. It is apparent also that the “mothers at the margins” (in Short’s study), whose personal struggles erupted into the

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public sphere of community welfare, found their mothering confined through specific practices of provisioning wherein they had to comply with the rules of the organization and the state as prerequisites for receiving intermi
ent public assistance.

Disrupting Dominant Relations of Ruling The hegemony of the dominant institution of motherhood is not, of course, complete. Entailed in the relations of ruling identified above are evident forces of resistance, possibilities for empowerment, and opportunities to shi the centre. Some have been noted; others are apparent from closer analysis, focused upon immanently disruptive elements of (m)othering. The chapters by O’Reilly, Ditrich, Hing Ai Yun, Newman, Porter, Reid Boyd, and Short affirm the reality of diverse forms of mothering in practice, over the life course. Historically situated in different contexts of class, race, ethnicity, and gender, these studies show that diversity is real, and demonstrate the potential for change over time and place through the active agency of mothers. Forms of active mothering beyond the norm (Thacker; Büskens) also illustrate possibilities for positive difference, and the potential for change. Central to producing change is the capacity and opportunity to communicate difference. The studies of Gannon and Müller-Rockstroh, Bartle
,7 Ikas, Gandolfo (Chapter 7), and O’Reilly illustrate the liberating potential of “outing,” “voicing,” and “publicizing” maternity. In these ways, patriarchal dualisms can be disrupted and the “motherhood mandate” that, Gandolfo asserts, oppresses “all women whether they have children or not” can be challenged. Featherstone and Pavlovic et al. (Chapter 17) also do this through their reconstruction of absent voices in history. There are also evident possibilities for resistance and change that lie within the institution. In different ways and in different contexts, the studies of Ditrich, Hing Ai Yun, Porter, Reid Boyd, and Short illustrate this. Ditrich’s account of the empowerment of mothers of sons within Hindu tradition, though presenting a picture of extreme patriarchal control, suggests also that therein lie possibilities for the genuine empowerment of mothers in Hindu societies and the potential to exercise influence beyond the confines of the immediate patriarchal household. Hing Ai Yun and Reid Boyd, in their respective reports on households in Singapore and Australia, document the personal capacities of mothers to express their preferences and desires for

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mothering, and strategies of interpersonal negotiation that can produce at least incremental change in the position of mothers in the domestic sphere, as well as in the labour market. Porter’s study emphasizes the transformative potential of mothers’ influence and their capacity, therefore, to produce intergenerational change within the institution. Tolerance of difference, even if limited in practice, is another facet of change within the institution of motherhood. That different ways of doing motherhood emerge and are tolerated even under oppressive relations of ruling; that commonalities are recognized among (m)others, and others (see, in particular, Gandolfo’s expression of this and also Schmied and Lupton), and that positive changes can result, lead me to assert the value of tolerating difference. The importance of voices absent from this volume for the ways we do and study motherhood must also be considered. Significant, in this context for instance, are the voices of those mothering in developing-world contexts of limited resources, both economic and political; lesbian mothers challenging the presumed heterosexuality of motherhood; mothers whose experiences are shaped by corporeal, emotional, or intellectual capabilities and needs that lie “outside the norm”; adoptive mothers; surrogate mothers, and mothers who use other forms of assisted reproduction; and (m)others who, like “mothers who leave” (Büskens), do the work of mothering from outside the narrow confines of the institution of motherhood, such as fathers doing motherwork, foster carers (women8 and men) who work in (patriarchal) relationship with the state, and children doing motherwork. Acknowledging and including voices at the periphery, giving emphasis to the realities of (m)others’ lives and promoting understanding of one another’s experiences also might be regarded as positive, “disruptive” strategies both in scholarship (cf Arendell) and in practice. Forming strategic, inclusive maternity coalitions (wherein difference and diversity can be recognized) may well bridge the gaps between the centre and the periphery, and among the past, the present, and the future of (m)othering.

Endnotes 1. 2.

Rich’s distinction between motherhood as “experience or relationship” (mothering) and motherhood as “institution” also is relevant here. Smith specifies this term as designating “the complex of extra-local relations that provide in contemporary societies a specialization of organization, control and initiative [and] … also the complex of discourses, scientific,

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

technical and cultural, that intersect, interpenetrate, and coordinate the multiple sites of ruling” (1990 6). Such relations are clearly evident in the experiences of motherhood documented in this volume. I use this term “(m)other” in the same way that Gannon and MüllerRockstroh do in Chapter 3, to signify the “otherness” of the maternal body but also to signify the possibility of more fluid social relations of mothering, involving “others” in maternal relations of care, across the private-public divide. The significance of this institution for minority cultures and its consistency with dominant forms in societies and cultures of the East are also evident from the chapters in this volume, and are taken into account in this discussion. Featherstone’s historical paper also problematizes the concept of mother/ citizen, illustrating the impossibility of accommodating the pregnant body (of mother and child) within the discourse of individual rights in citizenship. Elsewhere, Reiger also addresses this as a fundamental issue in her consideration of “mothers as political activists”; Gheytanchi identifies opportunities for public political participation for women, as mothers, arising from contradictions in the status of women in Iran, and Chakravarty further problematizes the mother/citizen dichotomy (that she argues is reproduced in feminist critiques) through a cross-cultural analysis of mothers’ movements in India, Argentina, Lebanon, and Russia. For another, personal perspective on the tensions between the dominant institution of motherhood and Indigenous experiences and practices, see Ballangarry. Elsewhere, Bartle
challenges another dimension of the male/female— public/private dichotomy—the implicit dualism of mind/body, in a reflexive analysis of breastfeeding as “headwork.” Cuthbert provides an insightful and sensitive analysis, relevant for this discussion, of the stories of white (foster) mothers who cared for Aboriginal children removed from their families (by white, colonialist patriarchs).

References Arendell, Terry. “Conceiving and Investigating Motherhood: The Decade’s Scholarship.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62.4 (2000): 1192–1207. Ballangarry, Beatrice. “Our Story.” Hecate 21.1 (1995): 146-148. Bartlett, Alison. “Breastfeeding as Headwork: Corporeal Feminism and Meanings for Breastfeeding.” Women’s Studies International Forum 25.3 (2002): 373–382.

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Chakravarty, Anuradha “Political Praxis and Transformative Capacity of Mothers in Movement: Rethinking Positivist Dichotomies of Women in Dissent.” Unpublished paper. Presented at the World Congress, International Sociological Association, Brisbane, Australia, 2002. Collins, P.H. “Shiing the Center: Race, Class and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood.” Mothering: Ideology, Experience, Agency. Eds. E.N. Glenn, G. Chang, and L.R. Forcey. London: Routledge, 1994: 45–65. Cuthbert, Denise. “Mothering the ‘Other’: Feminism, Colonialism and the Experience of Non-Aboriginal Adoptive Mothers of Aboriginal Children.” Balayi 1.1 (2000): 31–49. Edwards, Arlene E. “Community Mothering: The Relationship between Mothering and the Community Work of Black Women.” Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Empowered Mothering. Ed. Andrea O’Reilly. Toronto, Women’s Press, 2004: 203–214. Gheytanchi, Elham. “Civil Society in Tran: Politics of Motherhood and the Public Sphere.” International Sociology 16.4 (2001): 557–576. O’Reilly, Andrea. “‘We Were Conspirators, Outlaws from the Institution of Motherhood’: Mothering against Motherhood and the Possibility of Empowered Maternity for Mothers and their Children.”Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Empowered Mothering. Ed. Andrea O’Reilly. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2004: 59–74. Reiger, Kerreen. “Reconceiving Citizenship: The Challenge of Mothers as Political Activists.” Feminist Theory 1.3 (2000): 309–327. Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born. London: Virago Press, 1977. Schmied, Virginia, and Deborah Lupton. “Blurring the Boundaries: Breastfeeding and Maternal Subjectivity.” Sociology of Health and Illness 23.2 (2001): 234–250. Smith, Dorothy E. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987. Wane, Njoki Nathani. “Reflections on the Mutuality of Mothering: Women, Children and Othermothering.” Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Empowered Mothering. Ed. Andrea O’Reilly. Toronto: Women’s Press: 229–242.

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Marie Porter is currently doing her PhD in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion, and Classics at the University of Queensland, Australia. She is researching the experiences of Australian women who became mothers in the 1950s and 1960s and has a particular interest in their experiences of oppression and agency in mothering. She has presented numerous papers both in Australia and overseas and has published several articles. Patricia Short, PhD, is a lecturer in sociology in the School of Social Science at The University of Queensland, Australia. She has undertaken sociological research in a wide range of fields including family studies, and the sociology of consumption and welfare relations in the informal economy. She is a co-editor and author of Society and Gender: An Introduction to Sociology and has had a long-standing interest in mixed methods and feminist approaches to sociological analysis. Current research interests include “motherwork” at the margins, a feminist sociological study of the experiences of women and men caring for children in extreme economic circumstances. Andrea O’Reilly, PhD, is an associate professor in the School of Women’s Studies at York University, where she teaches a course on motherhood (the first course in Canada). She is co-editor/editor of six books on motherhood: Redefining Motherhood: Changing Identities and Pa
erns (1998); Mothers and Daughters: Connection, Empowerment and Transformation (2000); Mothers and Sons: Feminism, Masculinity and the Struggle to Raise our Sons (2001); From Motherhood to Mothering: The Legacy of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born (2004); Mother Outlaws: Motherhood

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as Discourse and Practice (2004), and; Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart. O’Reilly is founding president of the Association for Research on Mothering (ARM), the first feminist association on the topic of mothering and motherhood, with more than 500 members worldwide, and is founding editor and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering. Rosemary Aris was research fellow of the Abandonment of Children Under Two research project, based at the University of Warwick in England. She has specialized in archival research but also has wider research experience relating to domestic violence and children. Alison Bartle
, PhD, is Director, Centre of Women’s Studies at the University of Western Australia. Her previous publications include Jamming the Machinery: Contemporary Australian Women’s Writing (1998), and Postgraduate Research Supervision: Transforming (R)Elations (2001). Her latest research is to be published in 2005 by UNSW Press as Breastwork: Rethinking Breastfeeding. Petra Büskens, PhD, is a lecturer in the sociology program at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her current research engages with questions of maternal identity in the contemporary west with a specific empirical focus on mothers who leave. She has published essays on motherhood, social structure, individualism and sexuality. In 2001 she was visiting scholar at the Centre for Research on Mothering, York University, Toronto. Scholarships from Melbourne University and the Australian Federation of University Women have generously supported her research. Tamara Ditrich is a lecturer in eastern religions in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion, and Classics at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her areas of interest are Sanskrit language, Hinduism, the position of women in Hindu society, and old Indian contemplative traditions. She has presented and published papers in all these areas. She is currently completing her PhD thesis on linguistic analysis of the oldest recorded Indian text, the Rgveda. Lisa Featherstone works in the Modern History Department at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, teaching Australian

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history. Her main interest is in the way gender operates within history, particularly in medical and scientific discourses. Her doctoral thesis is entitled “Breeding and Feeding: A Social History of Mothers and Medicine in Australia, 1880–1925.” Enza Gandolfo completed her PhD in creative writing at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. Her area of interest is the representation of childless women in fiction, her research question being “To what extent can fiction intervene in the discourses of childless woman as ‘not normal,’ ‘incomplete,’ and ‘damaged’ while challenging the phallocentric logic that locates non-mother as the negative opposite of mother?” Susanne Gannon lectures in secondary English and literacy education at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Her doctoral research played with the (im)possibilities of writing within poststructural theoretical frameworks, particularly through collective memory work, poetry, drama, and autoethnography. Her doctoral thesis included a play entitled The Breast Project. Hing Ai Yun is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. Her teaching and research interests focus on family and work in Asia, industrial restructuring and the new economy, and alternative work and organizational design. She has authored numerous papers and has focused her research on the positions of women and girls in family and work contexts. Erika Horwitz completed her doctorate in the Counselling Psychology Program at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her research and clinical interests include parenting practices and women’s experience of mothering, especially in stepfather families. Jackie Huggins is the deputy director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland, and is currently co-chair of Reconciliation Australia. She is a council member of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, and was a member of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Review Panel. She is a director of the Telstra Foundation and Chain Reaction Foundation. She is also a former executive member on the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (1994–2000), the former chair of the Queensland Domestic Violence Council (2001), and board

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member of the State Library of Queensland. Jackie was a commissioner for Queensland for the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. She is also a member of the Indigenous Forum of the Australian Youth Foundation. Jackie has published widely on Australian Indigenous issues—in particular history and women’s studies. She authored Auntie Rita (with Rita Huggins 1994) and Sistergirl (1999). In 2000 she received the Premier’s Millennium Award for Excellence in Indigenous Affairs, and in 2001 was awarded an AM for her work with Indigenous people, particularly reconciliation, literacy, women’s issues, and social justice. Karin Ikas has completed a PhD from the University of Würzburg in Germany. Her thesis topic was Modern Chicana Literature: An Intercultural Analysis. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the University of Würzburg and University of Frankfurt, Germany. She has published several books, the most recent on Mexican-American stories. Bonita Long is professor of counselling psychology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, where she earned her PhD in interdisciplinary studies. She is a fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association and has published over 60 articles or book chapters on stress and coping, and co-edited, with S. Kahn, Women, Work, and Coping: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Workplace Stress. Her current research interests focus on the influence of women’s interpersonal relationships on work-related stress and coping, the influence of social context on stressors and coping strategies, and the dialectics of resistance and accommodations within the dominant stress discourse. Anne Morris comes from a social work and education background and has worked in the women’s health arena for some years, while undertaking post-graduate studies in Women’s Studies at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. She has a particular interest in cultural discourses of mothering, and her recent research in the area of “maternal alienation” has brought together practice and academy to interrogate practices of mother-blaming in male abuse. This research has resulted in a number of publications and presentations on maternal alienation and a growing interest from workers and academics. Anne is developing this work further in both her doctoral research and her

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work with practitioners to improve services to women and children alienated from one another in violence or abuse. Audrey Mullender, a qualified social worker, is Principal of Ruskin College, Oxford, and formerly Professor of Social Work at the University of Warwick in England. She is a former editor of the British Journal of Social Work and has published many articles and books in the social work field relating to domestic violence, child-care, and adoption issues. Babe
e Müller-Rockstroh is a midwife and a medical anthropologist. She has worked as a midwifery researcher in a project concerned with quality management of out-of-hospital births at the University of Applied Sciences in Osnabrueck, Germany. In October 2001, she was appointed as a researcher in a Universiteit Maastricht project in The Netherlands, on the transfer of medical technology to developing countries. In her current research she examines the many different politics of (dis)empowerment involved in the transfer of ultrasound technology to developing countries, using Ghana and Tanzania as case studies. Ruby Newman holds degrees in comparative literature from Brooklyn College and the University of Wisconsin. She is an associate professor and teaches in the School of Women’s Studies at York University, Toronto, Canada. She has been the coordinator of York University’s Bridging Program for women. Anita Pavlovic, PhD, co-directed the Abandonment of Children Under Two research project. She is an associate fellow of the University of Warwick in England. Her previous research has related to children and young people in public care and their families, and to post-adoption issues. Her publications include Lost and Found: Making and Remaking Working Partnerships with Parents of Children in the Care System (with J. Masson and C. Harrison) and Adult Birth Siblings: Who Are They and Why Do They Search? (with A. Mullender). Previously a senior lecturer in social policy, Anita currently works with adult survivors of child abuse. Elizabeth Reid Boyd completed her PhD at Murdoch University on the subjects of mothers staying at home and the child-care debate. Her

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research interests include women and work, mothering, and family and culture. She teaches at Edith Cowan University in the School of International Cultural and Community Studies. Elizabeth has also wri
en for a variety of newspapers and magazines in Australia and the United Kingdom and is an occasional media commentator. Julie Thacker earned her MA in gender studies for her thesis “Mothers Who Live Apart from Their Children,” at the University of Northern British Columbia, in Prince George, in December 1999. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Natural Resource and Environmental Studies Program at the same university. Her PhD dissertation addresses the effects of industrialization on the Lheidli T’enneh native band.

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