Friday, June 8, 2012

review: Mum's the Word


Most of the books I have been reading on motherhood and feminism have been from writers in the metropolitan centres of the UK and USA. I have French feminist Elizabeth Badinter’s book in my reading pile too, but this review is about a book from little old Aotearoa New Zealand: Sue Kedgley’s 1996 book Mum’s the Word: The Untold Story of Motherhood in New Zealand.
Kedgley, who has had an interesting and varied career as a TV journalist, writer, director, councillor, feminist and Green MP, was inspired to research and write Mum’s the Word following the birth of her son at age 42. Both transformed and bewildered by the experience - not least from all the conflicting advice she received - Kedgley started wondering how women had managed in the past:
Since motherhood is such a fundamentally important part of women’s lives (and of the procreation of the species) the invisibility of motherhood in our history seemed odd, and I found myself wondering, how did my mother, and my mother’s mother manage? Was it easier or more difficult for them? ... It occurred to me that if the history of mothering was pieced together from these [written] sources it would provide an invaluable historical perspective to many of the issues about motherhood that are being debated today. (MTW, p vi)
Kedgley traces the history of New Zealand motherhood - or, more specifically, Pakeha motherhood - back to the nineteenth century and chronicles the changing trends that have defined birth and mothering for women. Although there are many similarities with (white) women in the UK and USA, there are specific differences about the situation for New Zealand women. 
During World War Two, for example, women entered the workforce as they did in the UK, USA and Australia. Unlike these countries, however, working mothers did not have access to widely-available, good-quality State-run childcare for their children. The debate in New Zealand instead revolved around keeping women at home with their children, but paying them a wage to do it. Established in 1939 - and abolished in 1991 as the welfare state was eroded in the face of free market reforms - the Family Benefit, a small amount of money per child paid directly to the mother, was a direct outcome of demands from women that the value of their work as mothers be taken seriously by the State. 
Kedgley traces the ways in which the introduction of labour-saving devices and the smaller numbers of children women had in the mid-twentieth century led to similar patterns of isolation, boredom, and depression experienced by women overseas. Early second-wave feminist Betty Friedan described this as ‘the feminine mystique’ in the US, and helped spark a political movement to improve women’s situation. In New Zealand, the debate around this issue was defined by experts: Kingseat psychiatrist Dr Fraser MacDonald pathologised mothers’ marginalisation as ‘suburban neurosis’ after treating large numbers of mothers suffering from depression. He described it thus:
Women are fed with the dogma that marriage will be the most fulfilling thing in the world - all endless joy and happiness ... [but] She’s trapped with her children who reduce her intellectual stimulation - trapped with them seven days a week, 24 hours a day. She often has virtually no contact with the neighbours and nobody to confide in. She probably sees very little of her husband ... So here she is, with this feeling of failure and inadequacy, of being trapped. She has no control over her life. She starts hating herself so much she may start attempting suicide or, to her horror, beating her children. (cited in MTW, p 221)
When MacDonald’s views made it into the mainstream media, however, they were somewhat distorted: one prominent article compared women at home to cabbages and talked about ‘cabbage patch syndrome’. While some mothers ignored the insult in the article and responded positively instead to MacDonald’s description of the ‘problem with no name’, other mothers were rightly insulted that the work they put in at home was being demeaned and further marginalised. It is a great shame that the identification of a problem that sparked second-wave feminism, and politicised women’s experience elsewhere, was used to divided and insult women further in New Zealand. Nonetheless, the identification of ‘suburban neurosis’ and the desire of women to do something about it played a role in igniting the women’s liberation movement in New Zealand. 
There are a great many things that I would like to comment on in this book - the marginalisation of mothers in favour of experts (particularly Truby King, the founder of Plunket), and the development of women-centred initiatives from Playcentre to the DPB Action Group - that I don’t have the room to do here. Instead, I would just like to offer a few observations about my enjoyment of the book:
  1. Unlike Shari L. Thurer’s overview of the Western history of motherhood that I have previously reviewed, this history is much more specific and detailed. It charts change over a relatively short space of time - just over a century - and also allows room for women’s voices, and the things they have done to improve their own and other women’s experience of motherhood. The emphasis on women’s agency is a really important aspect of this book.
  2. The more detailed and personalised history - which allowed space for women’s different voices (not all mothers agree about motherhood after all!) - made me think about my mother, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. How did they manage with Plunket routines, and, particularly, with the Great Depression and war? These are experiences that my grandmother never talked about, nor, while she was alive, did I think to specifically ask her. My mother’s recollection of her experience of birth and early motherhood is hazy and, from what little I can gather, not a bed of roses with three children under five.  Kedgley’s work of excavating the history of motherhood in New Zealand bring women’s untold experiences to light.
  3. It reminded me that progressive stuff doesn’t happen by itself. Changes to the way births take place - removing the routine humiliations and impossible positions - occurred because women demanded change. The Family Benefit was introduced because women said they deserved it for all the work they put in to raising the next generation. Parental leave was introduced because working mothers wanted to return to work.
  4. And, related to the last point, positive progressive change doesn’t stick without  continued  vigilance and pressure. The Family Benefit was removed in 1991, and other benefits, such as the Domestic Purposes Benefit (or DPB) for single mothers, are constantly under threat. Women and children, while routinely sentimentalised in the media, are easy political targets - particularly if they are poor and have little political clout.
Notwithstanding the positives, it did seem to be a missed opportunity that this book only focussed on the experiences of Pakeha women. Kedgley acknowledges this at the outset, and explains that material had been gathered to include a chapter (!) on the experience of Maori women, but she could not find a suitable writer for it. The experience of migrant women from non-European ethnic groups doesn’t even get a look-in. I don’t know for sure - and I will certainly investigate further - if a more recent book on New Zealand motherhood has been published, which captures the experiences of different groups of New Zealand women.  
As it stands, the book left me wondering things like, if middle-class Pakeha women found Plunket regimes difficult and alienating, what was the experience like for other women? Or, perhaps having greater access to extended family / whanau for much of the twentieth century, were they able to more comfortably ignore ‘expert’ advice and draw on the wisdom of previous generations of women?  Was their experience of childbirth better or worse than that of Pakeha women?  Did they also experience ‘suburban neurosis’ or were other issues more pressing? How did colonisation or migration from outside Europe affect their experiences?
Within the book, mothers’ voices ranged from those who felt validated as working mothers despite the criticisms they received about being ‘bad’ mothers, to those who wanted to stay at home and felt the work of full-time mothers was under-valued and demeaned even by other women. This split echoes those I have heard myself from other women, and it still makes me sad. The ultimate goal is surely happy healthy children, and it seems self-evident to me that happy mums (and dads!) are the key to ensuring this. Depending on what women either want or have to do, that means both supporting mothers to rejoin the workforce - through decent paid parental leave provisions and the provision of affordable high-quality childcare - AND supporting mothers to stay at home - by paying a family wage directly to them in recognition of the work they already do. 
After all, it takes a village - or, in this case, a nation - to raise a child.