letherby.ppt 1135KB Jun 23 2011 10:22:58 AM
Educated for Motherhood: natural
instincts versus expert advice
Gayle Letherby
University of Plymouth
Introduction
• Every Girl's Dream . . . Inevitable Destiny?
• Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Further Final Reflections on Good Mothers
and Bad (M)Others
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable
Destiny?
In Western society, all women live their lives against a
background of personal and cultural assumptions that all
women are or want to be mothers and that for women
motherhood is proof of adulthood and a natural
consequence of marriage or a permanent relationship
with a man. A great deal of social and psychological
research has focused on women and the role of children
in their lives and is thus complicity in reproducing
societal assumptions about women deriving their identity
from relationships in domestic situations and particularly
from motherhood within the family. Consequently, 'and
how many children have you got?' is a 'natural'
question. (Letherby 1994: 525)
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable
Destiny?
• Thus: ‘The 'right to choose'
means very little when women
are powerless. Women make
their own reproductive choices
but they do no make them just
as they please; they do not
make them under conditions
which they themselves create
but under social conditions and
constraints which they, as mere
individuals, are powerless to
change’ (Petchesky 1980 cited by
National Bioethics Consultative
Committee 1990:48)
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable
Destiny?
• However, although motherhood is something that
all women are 'expected' to do it is only
considered 'natural' and 'normal' when achieved
within the so-called 'right' sexual, social and
economic circumstances.
• In 1989 Elaine DiLapi argued there was a
hierarchy of motherhood and teenage mothers
along with lesbian mothers, older mothers,
disabled mothers, non-biological mothers and so
on often defined as ‘less appropriate’
even ‘inappropriate’.
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable
Destiny?
• Similarly, Kath Woodward (2003: 23) notes:
Motherhood may be taken for granted and even assumed to
be 'natural' but who is allowed to be a mother is strongly
contested, whether in terms of having the right to adopt a
child or to be permitted access to reproductive technologies.
. . older women, lesbian women and women from minority
ethnic groups have all had difficulty in obtaining access to
assisted reproductive technologies. . . Motherhood is up for
public debate in all manner of different places and the key
issue is often to pinpoint the 'bad' mother and by implication
the good mother, who nonetheless receives less attention
than her negatively constructed counterpart. Who ought
to be a mother?
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable
Destiny?
•
As Katherine Arnup (1994) notes that it is likely that women have
always needed to ‘learn how to be mothers’
• In earlier centuries much of this knowledge was passed along
through female support networks, from mother to daughter, from
elder to younger sister, from friend to friend.
• By the late eighteenth century books aimed at new mothers were
available. Books on infant feeding and care written specifically for
mothers appeared in Britain and the United States as early as the
1760s – mostly handing out ‘common sense’ advice.
• In contrast to those volumes, child-rearing manuals of the 20th
century were presented as scientific tracts, written by officials in
various levels of government and members of the medical, nursing,
and psychological professions – people whose knowledge of
children was and is frequently based on a professional rather than a
parental relationship - so just as birth became
‘scientific’ so did childcare. . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• So in addition to the ‘natural instinct’ to
reproduce and care for children it appears
that women also need ‘help’ when caring
for their children for as Ann Kaplan (1992)
notes there is a large body of experts busy
engaging in ‘motherhood discourses’ –
representing a tension between
authorized and experiential knowledge.
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• So why the need for authorized knowledge?
• Some like eugenicists C.W. Saleeby, writing about ‘The
Maternal Instinct’ in the early 20th century felt that women’s
maternal instincts had been blunted by the modern age
(Arnup 1994).
• Also: ‘The trouble is that the home today is the poorest run,
most mismanaged and bungled of all human
industries . . . . Many women running homes haven’t even
the fundamentals of house management and dietetics.
They raise children in the average, by a rule of thumb that
hasn’t altered since Abraham was a child’ (Canadian Home
Journal 1932) (Arnup 1994).
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• So education clearly needed – e.g. in 19th century UK
when mass education for girls was introduced the aim
was to produce ‘competent home makers’. . . So began
the teaching of ‘mothercraft’. . .similarly between the
wars in the 20th century ‘schools for mothers’ set up by
voluntary agencies to give advice and training to working
class mothers.
• And now - NVQ – childcare qualifications; often
childcare classes alongside sex education classes; focus
on childcare/refeminisation in prison. . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Not necessarily a bad thing – but aimed at
particular groups and individuals – e.g.
working class, non-white, single,
young . . .and continues today. . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Indeed, we found that ‘experts’ themselves often need
training and education (see various publications list
available from SURGE, Coventry University
http://www.coventry.ac.uk/researchnet/d/181):
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• This education does not just exist at the level of the
institution. It is supported by/continued in childcare
manuals which are basically as Hannah Marshall (1991)
notes ‘cookbooks’ telling women how to mother properly
- providing information and developmental guidelines
from conception to adolescence.
• Not surprisingly here the emphasis is on the ‘good
mother’, the ‘ideal mother’ who is responsible in her
behaviour and who puts her children before anything
else including her own sexual and intellectual identity;
her first responsibility is to her child(ren)– and she is
expected to be grateful and find motherhood completely
fulfilling. Thus, there is no room for ambivalence.
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
•
During the interwar years of the 20th century the focus of advice was
regularity and order e.g. in The Expectant Mother (Toronto) women were
advised that the newborn baby:
•
‘. . . should be fed regularly, should be made comfortable and left in his bed
to sleep. He should not be handled any more than is absolutely necessary. .
.‘
•
BUT in 1950s advice manuals told parents that their children needed love.
In The Canadian Mother and Child 1953 edition:
•
‘Let him know you love him and think he’s the finest baby ever; be easygoing; accept the child as he is; never waver in being kind to him; try to
provide him with the things he needs to grow; physically, intellectually and
emotionally; and really enjoy your baby
and make him a welcome member of your family circle. . . ‘
(cited by Arnup 1994: 89).
Natural Instincts. . . Expert Advice?
•
Dr Benjamin Spock – whose
advice dominated women’s
magazines in the 1950s and
1960s and whose book, originally
published in 1946 - The Common
Sense Book of Baby and Child
Care - sold more than any other
book in history with the exception
of The Bible (50 million copies) challenged much of interwar
ideas about importance and
value of schedules but was
careful not to blame other
experts.
• The problem lay not
in the schedules
themselves, but in the
application of advice
for an average baby
to all babies.
Natural Instincts – Expert Advice?
• ‘Mothers have sometimes been so scared of the
schedule that they did not dare feed baby one
minute early. They have even accepted the idea
that at baby would be spoiled if he were fed
when he was hungry’. [a baby cries] ‘not to get
the better of his mother’ but because ‘he wants
some milk’. In turn, he sleeps for the next four
hours ‘not because he has learned that his
mother is stern’, but ‘because the meal satisfies
his system for that long’. (cited at
http://www.drspock.com/home/0,1454,,00.html)
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• ‘Trust yourself. You know more than you think
you do . . . Bringing up your child won’t be a
complicated job if you take it easy, trust your
own instincts, and follow the directions that
your doctor gives you’ (Spock 1946, cited at
http://www.drspock.com/home/0,1454,,00.html)
• ‘His life covered most of the last century. His
influence will reach far into the next. He was,
and will always be, a man for all children.’
http://www.drspock.com/home/0,1454,,00.html
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
•
•
Not just Spock of course:
‘At present there are so many gaps in the average woman’s
knowledge of pregnancy that she is extremely vulnerable to many
old wives tales, horror stories and unfounded advice which
continues to surround motherhood, and there is not comprehensive
work to which she can turn to relive her anxiety and answer her
questions. This book is a genuine attempt to fulfill this need’
(Bourne, Pregnancy 1979 cited by Marshall 1991: 73).
•
‘The modern mother takes for granted that she will have the advice
of experts and will not have to rely on the advice of her mother. The
previous generation of mothers may not necessarily be the best
advisers of the present generation’ (Jolly, Book of Childcare 1986
cited by Marshall 1991: 73)
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• ‘Some women are eager to meet the
challenge of motherhood which for
them brings immense fulfillment and
is the ultimate process whereby they
become complete human beings’
(Bourne, Pregnancy 1979 cited by
Marshall 1991: 68).
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• For some women, the books and pamphlets
represented a friendly, welcome voice . . . the
advice literature provided information about the
tasks of childrearing that had become, for many
women, frightening, alien chores.
• Arguably though - in exchange women had to
surrender power over themselves and their
offspring even though much their faith in experts
leads to increased fear, anxiety and even
paranoia and is often misplaced
(Furedi 2001).
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
•
While different countries have had their particularly influential
experts, mothers were increasingly spoken to by experts from an
orthodoxy which stressed the mother's responsibility for the
psychological well-being of the child. E.g. paediatricians such as
Spock and social psychologists such as Leach, all argue that
consistent nurture by a single primary care-giver is absolutely
crucial. Day-care centres, pre-schools, spouses, and baby-sitters
may help out but they are incidental to the bond the child really
needs with an individual adult, usually the biological mother
•
The increasing entry of mothers into the labour force has not been
accompanied by the public story which de-emphasizes the
significance of 'mother'. Rather the ideology of intensive mothering
which holds the individual mother as primarily responsible for childrearing heightens the tensions between work and mothering which
women manage (Hays 1996).
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Which of course leads to GUILT . . .’During the
later part of my pregnancy, partly as an
antidote to all the serious and alarming
books on the subject – such as those by
Penelope Leach and Sheila Kitzinger, to
name but two, which I had previously
devoured and which mainly left me feeling
that I’d already got parenthood wrong and
she wasn’t even born yet . . . I decided to keep
a diary (Walters 2008: 262)’.
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Yet women themselves have not been completely
passive in all of this and we have evidence of resistance.
For example, Jocelyn Cornwell’s early 1980s research
in the East End of London demonstrated that women do
resist expert/authorized knowledge – Cornwell talked to
people about their understanding of their own health and
illness and found that it was in the area of antenatal care
that there was the most resistance to the medical model
– when women had kin close by they listened to them
and not to the medics when pregnant and preparing for
birth . . . Clearly then whatever doctors and others say
there is value in ‘old wives tales’ . . . . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Elizabeth Murphy’s (1999) project on ‘infant
feeding’ (which of course has always been an
area about which women should take expert
advice) – found that yet again that there is
evidence to suggest that to be good citizens and
good mothers women must be sensible and
listen to experts – yet again mothers are held
responsible for their children yet are considered
incapable of doing this without expert help.
Thus, Murphy (1999) argues that infant feeding
a moral issue as well as a nutritional one.
• Yet, here too evidence of resistance . . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
•
Clearly the implication is that authorised and expert versions have
higher status than the experiential knowledge of actual mothers.
Indeed, as Arnup (1994) notes one early version The Care and
Feeding of Children written by De L Emmett Holt in 1894 was billed
as the ‘Bible for Young Mothers’. Further to this any woman-centred
perspective was and is devalued.
•
Historically, women have been advised not to listen to ‘old wives
tales’ (Ussher 1991) and listen to expert advice. But we know also
that the authorized version of correct mothering is subject to
fashion. The best way to give birth, the best way to feed babies, the
best way to care for children’s physical and emotional needs, have
all been the subject of changing ‘expert’ opinion and is historically
and culturally variable and the dominant ideologies of the time are
supported by dominant media constructions/representations of
motherhood.
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
•
•
Talking of the media:
As Woodward (2003) notes media reports often focus on mothers as
good or bad, with examples of bad mothers including those who
abandon their children, leaving them at home while they go on
holiday, or who selfishly put the interest of their own careers before
the care of their children. Woodward adds that fathers are rarely
subjected to the same kind of scrutiny or classification as ‘bad’
parents in similar cases. In 2002 one mother in the UK was send to
prison for failing to ensure that her daughters attended school,
although there was no mention of a father in the newspaper reports
that led on this story.
• Also good mothers today are recognised as responsible for the
safety of their children, for managing the’culture of fear’ – both from
‘external’ and ‘internal’ threats – in a way that they were not in the
past.
• In addition women’s magazines, alongside other Western media,
frequently feature ‘celebrity’ mothers.
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• A variety of super models such as Kate Moss, pop singers such as
Victoria Beckham (Posh Spice) and Jordan, actors, the merely
famous, and several women whose pregnancies and births
(predominantly by Caesarean section) are of interest because they
are rich and occupy public media space are included.. . . Magazines
often run mother and daughter fashion features at Christmas time. . .
• The upmarket fashion magazines also feature famous women such
as Jerry Hall who clearly demonstrate that it is possible to retain the
body of a supermodel after having four (glamorous, attractive)
children . . . ‘What is new is that the women are not otherwise very
different from their non-pregnant or non-maternal selves in what they
wear and in looking sexually attractive. Successful motherhood is
encoded as ‘well-off’ and sexually attractive’ . . . . (Woodward
2003: 23-30 – see also Douglas and Michaels 2004 for similar
examples from North America).
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• And what of the current advice – in
addition to plethora of books. . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
Mother & Baby (February 2009)
• P12 YOUR WORK: Earn
extra money with a job
that works around your
baby.
• P134 20 OF THE BEST:
Feeding gadgets and
accessories to make
mealtime easy.
• P99 ASK OUR
EXPERTS: From
newborn niggles to
taming toddler trantrums
•
•
•
•
A paediatrician
A GP
A phychotherapist
A health visitor
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
Mother & Baby (February 2009)
• P33 THE BIG QUESTION: Should the
Government teach new mothers to
breastfeed?
• ‘The State plans to spend an extra
£2million on ‘Breast Buddies’ – middleclass women who go into deprived
neighbourhoods and encourage mums-tobe to breastfeed. . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Although there is some emphasis on experiential
e.g.:
• P32 ASK A MUM: Mothers give their tips on
getting a toddler dry through the night.
• P162 MUMMY IN TRAINING: Erin weights up
the options of where she should have her baby.
• Plus Mother & Baby and Pregnancy & Birth have
an associated website askamum.co.uk . . .
Natural Instincts . . .Expert Advice?
• Use of internet – as in other areas (e.g.
Broom 2005 reporting on the significance
of the Internet to Dr/patient relationships)
can be empowering – e.g. see Friedman
and Calixte (2009) Mothering and
Blogging – but as in Bloom’s study likely
that some women will lack the confidence
to judge between difference information
available. . .
Further Final Reflections on Good
Mothers . . . Bad (M)Others
• Evident then that mothering is not something
that women do without external comment and
censure and women’s mothering is defined as
‘good’ or ‘bad’. Good mothering as noted earlier
is ‘intensive mothering’ (Hays 1996) where the
individual mother is primarily responsible for
childrearing and which is child centred, expertguided, emotionally absorbing, labour-intensive
and financially expensive.
Further Final Reflections on Good
Mothers . . . Bad (M)Others
• Link this to historical and other contemporary views of
good/bad mothers/mothering . . . ‘different applications of
mother in the history of the word reveal an ambivalent
attitude towards the primary love object. For just as the
good mother is cherished and venerated as the one who
creates, loves and nurtures, so also is she feared and
hated as the bad mother, the one who thwarts the
desires of the young infant, who rejects and abandons
her child when she withdraws the breast. Ultimately she
is associated with death; she is the despised CRONE,
for each child she gives birth to is destined to die’ (Mills
1991: 169).
References
•
•
•
•
•
•
Broom, Alex (2005) ‘Medical specialists' accounts of the impact of
the Internet on the doctor/patient relationship’ Health 9(3): 319 - 338
Cornwell, Jocelyn (1980) Hard Earned Lives: Accounts of health and
illness from East London. Published in the USA by Tavistock
Publications in association with Methuen
Arnup, Katherine (1994) Education for Motherhood: Advice for
Mothers in Twentieth-Century Canada. Toronto: Toronto University
Pres
DiLapi, Elaine M. (1989) Lesbian Mothers and the Motherhood
Hierarchy Journal of Homosexuality 18 (1-2): 101-121
Douglas, Susan J. and Michaels, Meredith W. (2004) The Mommy
Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined
Women. Canada: Simon & Schuster
Friedman, May and Calixte, Shana L. (eds) (2009) Mothering and
Blogging: The Radical Act of the Mommy Blog. Toronto: Demeter
Press
References cont
• Hays, Sharon (1996) The cultural contradictions of motherhood.
New Haven: Yale University Press
• Furedi, Frank (2001) Paranoid Parenting. Allen Lane (Penguin)
• Kaplan, Ann E. (1994) Motherhood and Representation London: Routledge
• Letherby, Gayle (1994) Mother or not, mother or what? Problems of
definition and identity, Women's Studies International Forum 17(5): 525–
532
• Marshall, Hannah (1991) `Childcare and Parenting Manuals', pp. 66-85 in
A. Phoenix, A. Woollett and E. Lloyd (eds) Motherhood: Meanings,
Practices and and Ideologies. London: Sage
• Mills, Jane (1991) Womanwords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Patriarchal
Society. London: Virago Press Ltd;
• Murphy, Elizabeth (1999) 'Breast is best': Infant feeding decisions and
maternal deviance’ Sociology of Health and Illness 21(2): 187 - 208
• The National Bioethics Consultative Committee (1990) ‘Surrogacy report
1’ April 1990
References cont.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Spock, Benjamin (1946) The Common Sense Book of Baby and
Child Care. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce
Ussher, Jane (1991) Women's Madness: Misogyny or Mental
Illness? Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf
Walters, Julie ( 2008) That’s Another Story: The Autobiography.
Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd).
Woodward, Kath (2003) Representations of Motherhood in S. Earle
and G. Letherby (eds) Gender, Identity and Reproduction: social
perspectives. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan
And:
Dr Spock the website http://www.drspock.com/home/0,1454,,00.html accessed Dec 2008
Mother & Baby Magazine (February 2008) and see askamum?
http://www.askamum.co.uk/News/Search-Results/?&N=190+555&N
s=P_Publication_Date%7C1
accessed December 2008
instincts versus expert advice
Gayle Letherby
University of Plymouth
Introduction
• Every Girl's Dream . . . Inevitable Destiny?
• Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Further Final Reflections on Good Mothers
and Bad (M)Others
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable
Destiny?
In Western society, all women live their lives against a
background of personal and cultural assumptions that all
women are or want to be mothers and that for women
motherhood is proof of adulthood and a natural
consequence of marriage or a permanent relationship
with a man. A great deal of social and psychological
research has focused on women and the role of children
in their lives and is thus complicity in reproducing
societal assumptions about women deriving their identity
from relationships in domestic situations and particularly
from motherhood within the family. Consequently, 'and
how many children have you got?' is a 'natural'
question. (Letherby 1994: 525)
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable
Destiny?
• Thus: ‘The 'right to choose'
means very little when women
are powerless. Women make
their own reproductive choices
but they do no make them just
as they please; they do not
make them under conditions
which they themselves create
but under social conditions and
constraints which they, as mere
individuals, are powerless to
change’ (Petchesky 1980 cited by
National Bioethics Consultative
Committee 1990:48)
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable
Destiny?
• However, although motherhood is something that
all women are 'expected' to do it is only
considered 'natural' and 'normal' when achieved
within the so-called 'right' sexual, social and
economic circumstances.
• In 1989 Elaine DiLapi argued there was a
hierarchy of motherhood and teenage mothers
along with lesbian mothers, older mothers,
disabled mothers, non-biological mothers and so
on often defined as ‘less appropriate’
even ‘inappropriate’.
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable
Destiny?
• Similarly, Kath Woodward (2003: 23) notes:
Motherhood may be taken for granted and even assumed to
be 'natural' but who is allowed to be a mother is strongly
contested, whether in terms of having the right to adopt a
child or to be permitted access to reproductive technologies.
. . older women, lesbian women and women from minority
ethnic groups have all had difficulty in obtaining access to
assisted reproductive technologies. . . Motherhood is up for
public debate in all manner of different places and the key
issue is often to pinpoint the 'bad' mother and by implication
the good mother, who nonetheless receives less attention
than her negatively constructed counterpart. Who ought
to be a mother?
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable
Destiny?
•
As Katherine Arnup (1994) notes that it is likely that women have
always needed to ‘learn how to be mothers’
• In earlier centuries much of this knowledge was passed along
through female support networks, from mother to daughter, from
elder to younger sister, from friend to friend.
• By the late eighteenth century books aimed at new mothers were
available. Books on infant feeding and care written specifically for
mothers appeared in Britain and the United States as early as the
1760s – mostly handing out ‘common sense’ advice.
• In contrast to those volumes, child-rearing manuals of the 20th
century were presented as scientific tracts, written by officials in
various levels of government and members of the medical, nursing,
and psychological professions – people whose knowledge of
children was and is frequently based on a professional rather than a
parental relationship - so just as birth became
‘scientific’ so did childcare. . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• So in addition to the ‘natural instinct’ to
reproduce and care for children it appears
that women also need ‘help’ when caring
for their children for as Ann Kaplan (1992)
notes there is a large body of experts busy
engaging in ‘motherhood discourses’ –
representing a tension between
authorized and experiential knowledge.
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• So why the need for authorized knowledge?
• Some like eugenicists C.W. Saleeby, writing about ‘The
Maternal Instinct’ in the early 20th century felt that women’s
maternal instincts had been blunted by the modern age
(Arnup 1994).
• Also: ‘The trouble is that the home today is the poorest run,
most mismanaged and bungled of all human
industries . . . . Many women running homes haven’t even
the fundamentals of house management and dietetics.
They raise children in the average, by a rule of thumb that
hasn’t altered since Abraham was a child’ (Canadian Home
Journal 1932) (Arnup 1994).
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• So education clearly needed – e.g. in 19th century UK
when mass education for girls was introduced the aim
was to produce ‘competent home makers’. . . So began
the teaching of ‘mothercraft’. . .similarly between the
wars in the 20th century ‘schools for mothers’ set up by
voluntary agencies to give advice and training to working
class mothers.
• And now - NVQ – childcare qualifications; often
childcare classes alongside sex education classes; focus
on childcare/refeminisation in prison. . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Not necessarily a bad thing – but aimed at
particular groups and individuals – e.g.
working class, non-white, single,
young . . .and continues today. . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Indeed, we found that ‘experts’ themselves often need
training and education (see various publications list
available from SURGE, Coventry University
http://www.coventry.ac.uk/researchnet/d/181):
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• This education does not just exist at the level of the
institution. It is supported by/continued in childcare
manuals which are basically as Hannah Marshall (1991)
notes ‘cookbooks’ telling women how to mother properly
- providing information and developmental guidelines
from conception to adolescence.
• Not surprisingly here the emphasis is on the ‘good
mother’, the ‘ideal mother’ who is responsible in her
behaviour and who puts her children before anything
else including her own sexual and intellectual identity;
her first responsibility is to her child(ren)– and she is
expected to be grateful and find motherhood completely
fulfilling. Thus, there is no room for ambivalence.
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
•
During the interwar years of the 20th century the focus of advice was
regularity and order e.g. in The Expectant Mother (Toronto) women were
advised that the newborn baby:
•
‘. . . should be fed regularly, should be made comfortable and left in his bed
to sleep. He should not be handled any more than is absolutely necessary. .
.‘
•
BUT in 1950s advice manuals told parents that their children needed love.
In The Canadian Mother and Child 1953 edition:
•
‘Let him know you love him and think he’s the finest baby ever; be easygoing; accept the child as he is; never waver in being kind to him; try to
provide him with the things he needs to grow; physically, intellectually and
emotionally; and really enjoy your baby
and make him a welcome member of your family circle. . . ‘
(cited by Arnup 1994: 89).
Natural Instincts. . . Expert Advice?
•
Dr Benjamin Spock – whose
advice dominated women’s
magazines in the 1950s and
1960s and whose book, originally
published in 1946 - The Common
Sense Book of Baby and Child
Care - sold more than any other
book in history with the exception
of The Bible (50 million copies) challenged much of interwar
ideas about importance and
value of schedules but was
careful not to blame other
experts.
• The problem lay not
in the schedules
themselves, but in the
application of advice
for an average baby
to all babies.
Natural Instincts – Expert Advice?
• ‘Mothers have sometimes been so scared of the
schedule that they did not dare feed baby one
minute early. They have even accepted the idea
that at baby would be spoiled if he were fed
when he was hungry’. [a baby cries] ‘not to get
the better of his mother’ but because ‘he wants
some milk’. In turn, he sleeps for the next four
hours ‘not because he has learned that his
mother is stern’, but ‘because the meal satisfies
his system for that long’. (cited at
http://www.drspock.com/home/0,1454,,00.html)
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• ‘Trust yourself. You know more than you think
you do . . . Bringing up your child won’t be a
complicated job if you take it easy, trust your
own instincts, and follow the directions that
your doctor gives you’ (Spock 1946, cited at
http://www.drspock.com/home/0,1454,,00.html)
• ‘His life covered most of the last century. His
influence will reach far into the next. He was,
and will always be, a man for all children.’
http://www.drspock.com/home/0,1454,,00.html
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
•
•
Not just Spock of course:
‘At present there are so many gaps in the average woman’s
knowledge of pregnancy that she is extremely vulnerable to many
old wives tales, horror stories and unfounded advice which
continues to surround motherhood, and there is not comprehensive
work to which she can turn to relive her anxiety and answer her
questions. This book is a genuine attempt to fulfill this need’
(Bourne, Pregnancy 1979 cited by Marshall 1991: 73).
•
‘The modern mother takes for granted that she will have the advice
of experts and will not have to rely on the advice of her mother. The
previous generation of mothers may not necessarily be the best
advisers of the present generation’ (Jolly, Book of Childcare 1986
cited by Marshall 1991: 73)
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• ‘Some women are eager to meet the
challenge of motherhood which for
them brings immense fulfillment and
is the ultimate process whereby they
become complete human beings’
(Bourne, Pregnancy 1979 cited by
Marshall 1991: 68).
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• For some women, the books and pamphlets
represented a friendly, welcome voice . . . the
advice literature provided information about the
tasks of childrearing that had become, for many
women, frightening, alien chores.
• Arguably though - in exchange women had to
surrender power over themselves and their
offspring even though much their faith in experts
leads to increased fear, anxiety and even
paranoia and is often misplaced
(Furedi 2001).
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
•
While different countries have had their particularly influential
experts, mothers were increasingly spoken to by experts from an
orthodoxy which stressed the mother's responsibility for the
psychological well-being of the child. E.g. paediatricians such as
Spock and social psychologists such as Leach, all argue that
consistent nurture by a single primary care-giver is absolutely
crucial. Day-care centres, pre-schools, spouses, and baby-sitters
may help out but they are incidental to the bond the child really
needs with an individual adult, usually the biological mother
•
The increasing entry of mothers into the labour force has not been
accompanied by the public story which de-emphasizes the
significance of 'mother'. Rather the ideology of intensive mothering
which holds the individual mother as primarily responsible for childrearing heightens the tensions between work and mothering which
women manage (Hays 1996).
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Which of course leads to GUILT . . .’During the
later part of my pregnancy, partly as an
antidote to all the serious and alarming
books on the subject – such as those by
Penelope Leach and Sheila Kitzinger, to
name but two, which I had previously
devoured and which mainly left me feeling
that I’d already got parenthood wrong and
she wasn’t even born yet . . . I decided to keep
a diary (Walters 2008: 262)’.
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Yet women themselves have not been completely
passive in all of this and we have evidence of resistance.
For example, Jocelyn Cornwell’s early 1980s research
in the East End of London demonstrated that women do
resist expert/authorized knowledge – Cornwell talked to
people about their understanding of their own health and
illness and found that it was in the area of antenatal care
that there was the most resistance to the medical model
– when women had kin close by they listened to them
and not to the medics when pregnant and preparing for
birth . . . Clearly then whatever doctors and others say
there is value in ‘old wives tales’ . . . . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Elizabeth Murphy’s (1999) project on ‘infant
feeding’ (which of course has always been an
area about which women should take expert
advice) – found that yet again that there is
evidence to suggest that to be good citizens and
good mothers women must be sensible and
listen to experts – yet again mothers are held
responsible for their children yet are considered
incapable of doing this without expert help.
Thus, Murphy (1999) argues that infant feeding
a moral issue as well as a nutritional one.
• Yet, here too evidence of resistance . . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
•
Clearly the implication is that authorised and expert versions have
higher status than the experiential knowledge of actual mothers.
Indeed, as Arnup (1994) notes one early version The Care and
Feeding of Children written by De L Emmett Holt in 1894 was billed
as the ‘Bible for Young Mothers’. Further to this any woman-centred
perspective was and is devalued.
•
Historically, women have been advised not to listen to ‘old wives
tales’ (Ussher 1991) and listen to expert advice. But we know also
that the authorized version of correct mothering is subject to
fashion. The best way to give birth, the best way to feed babies, the
best way to care for children’s physical and emotional needs, have
all been the subject of changing ‘expert’ opinion and is historically
and culturally variable and the dominant ideologies of the time are
supported by dominant media constructions/representations of
motherhood.
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
•
•
Talking of the media:
As Woodward (2003) notes media reports often focus on mothers as
good or bad, with examples of bad mothers including those who
abandon their children, leaving them at home while they go on
holiday, or who selfishly put the interest of their own careers before
the care of their children. Woodward adds that fathers are rarely
subjected to the same kind of scrutiny or classification as ‘bad’
parents in similar cases. In 2002 one mother in the UK was send to
prison for failing to ensure that her daughters attended school,
although there was no mention of a father in the newspaper reports
that led on this story.
• Also good mothers today are recognised as responsible for the
safety of their children, for managing the’culture of fear’ – both from
‘external’ and ‘internal’ threats – in a way that they were not in the
past.
• In addition women’s magazines, alongside other Western media,
frequently feature ‘celebrity’ mothers.
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• A variety of super models such as Kate Moss, pop singers such as
Victoria Beckham (Posh Spice) and Jordan, actors, the merely
famous, and several women whose pregnancies and births
(predominantly by Caesarean section) are of interest because they
are rich and occupy public media space are included.. . . Magazines
often run mother and daughter fashion features at Christmas time. . .
• The upmarket fashion magazines also feature famous women such
as Jerry Hall who clearly demonstrate that it is possible to retain the
body of a supermodel after having four (glamorous, attractive)
children . . . ‘What is new is that the women are not otherwise very
different from their non-pregnant or non-maternal selves in what they
wear and in looking sexually attractive. Successful motherhood is
encoded as ‘well-off’ and sexually attractive’ . . . . (Woodward
2003: 23-30 – see also Douglas and Michaels 2004 for similar
examples from North America).
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• And what of the current advice – in
addition to plethora of books. . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
Mother & Baby (February 2009)
• P12 YOUR WORK: Earn
extra money with a job
that works around your
baby.
• P134 20 OF THE BEST:
Feeding gadgets and
accessories to make
mealtime easy.
• P99 ASK OUR
EXPERTS: From
newborn niggles to
taming toddler trantrums
•
•
•
•
A paediatrician
A GP
A phychotherapist
A health visitor
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
Mother & Baby (February 2009)
• P33 THE BIG QUESTION: Should the
Government teach new mothers to
breastfeed?
• ‘The State plans to spend an extra
£2million on ‘Breast Buddies’ – middleclass women who go into deprived
neighbourhoods and encourage mums-tobe to breastfeed. . .
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Although there is some emphasis on experiential
e.g.:
• P32 ASK A MUM: Mothers give their tips on
getting a toddler dry through the night.
• P162 MUMMY IN TRAINING: Erin weights up
the options of where she should have her baby.
• Plus Mother & Baby and Pregnancy & Birth have
an associated website askamum.co.uk . . .
Natural Instincts . . .Expert Advice?
• Use of internet – as in other areas (e.g.
Broom 2005 reporting on the significance
of the Internet to Dr/patient relationships)
can be empowering – e.g. see Friedman
and Calixte (2009) Mothering and
Blogging – but as in Bloom’s study likely
that some women will lack the confidence
to judge between difference information
available. . .
Further Final Reflections on Good
Mothers . . . Bad (M)Others
• Evident then that mothering is not something
that women do without external comment and
censure and women’s mothering is defined as
‘good’ or ‘bad’. Good mothering as noted earlier
is ‘intensive mothering’ (Hays 1996) where the
individual mother is primarily responsible for
childrearing and which is child centred, expertguided, emotionally absorbing, labour-intensive
and financially expensive.
Further Final Reflections on Good
Mothers . . . Bad (M)Others
• Link this to historical and other contemporary views of
good/bad mothers/mothering . . . ‘different applications of
mother in the history of the word reveal an ambivalent
attitude towards the primary love object. For just as the
good mother is cherished and venerated as the one who
creates, loves and nurtures, so also is she feared and
hated as the bad mother, the one who thwarts the
desires of the young infant, who rejects and abandons
her child when she withdraws the breast. Ultimately she
is associated with death; she is the despised CRONE,
for each child she gives birth to is destined to die’ (Mills
1991: 169).
References
•
•
•
•
•
•
Broom, Alex (2005) ‘Medical specialists' accounts of the impact of
the Internet on the doctor/patient relationship’ Health 9(3): 319 - 338
Cornwell, Jocelyn (1980) Hard Earned Lives: Accounts of health and
illness from East London. Published in the USA by Tavistock
Publications in association with Methuen
Arnup, Katherine (1994) Education for Motherhood: Advice for
Mothers in Twentieth-Century Canada. Toronto: Toronto University
Pres
DiLapi, Elaine M. (1989) Lesbian Mothers and the Motherhood
Hierarchy Journal of Homosexuality 18 (1-2): 101-121
Douglas, Susan J. and Michaels, Meredith W. (2004) The Mommy
Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined
Women. Canada: Simon & Schuster
Friedman, May and Calixte, Shana L. (eds) (2009) Mothering and
Blogging: The Radical Act of the Mommy Blog. Toronto: Demeter
Press
References cont
• Hays, Sharon (1996) The cultural contradictions of motherhood.
New Haven: Yale University Press
• Furedi, Frank (2001) Paranoid Parenting. Allen Lane (Penguin)
• Kaplan, Ann E. (1994) Motherhood and Representation London: Routledge
• Letherby, Gayle (1994) Mother or not, mother or what? Problems of
definition and identity, Women's Studies International Forum 17(5): 525–
532
• Marshall, Hannah (1991) `Childcare and Parenting Manuals', pp. 66-85 in
A. Phoenix, A. Woollett and E. Lloyd (eds) Motherhood: Meanings,
Practices and and Ideologies. London: Sage
• Mills, Jane (1991) Womanwords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Patriarchal
Society. London: Virago Press Ltd;
• Murphy, Elizabeth (1999) 'Breast is best': Infant feeding decisions and
maternal deviance’ Sociology of Health and Illness 21(2): 187 - 208
• The National Bioethics Consultative Committee (1990) ‘Surrogacy report
1’ April 1990
References cont.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Spock, Benjamin (1946) The Common Sense Book of Baby and
Child Care. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce
Ussher, Jane (1991) Women's Madness: Misogyny or Mental
Illness? Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf
Walters, Julie ( 2008) That’s Another Story: The Autobiography.
Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd).
Woodward, Kath (2003) Representations of Motherhood in S. Earle
and G. Letherby (eds) Gender, Identity and Reproduction: social
perspectives. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan
And:
Dr Spock the website http://www.drspock.com/home/0,1454,,00.html accessed Dec 2008
Mother & Baby Magazine (February 2008) and see askamum?
http://www.askamum.co.uk/News/Search-Results/?&N=190+555&N
s=P_Publication_Date%7C1
accessed December 2008