letherby.ppt 1135KB Jun 23 2011 10:22:58 AM

(1)

Educated for Motherhood: natural

instincts versus expert advice

Gayle Letherby

(2)

Introduction

• Every Girl's Dream . . . Inevitable Destiny?

• Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

(3)

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'

(4)

Destiny?

(5)

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’

(6)

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

(7)

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

(8)

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

(9)

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 20

th

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

(10)

• 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 20

th

century ‘schools for mothers’ set up by

voluntary agencies to give advice and training to working

class mothers.

• And now - NVQ – childcare qualifications; often

(11)

• Not necessarily a bad thing – but aimed at

particular groups and individuals – e.g.

(12)

Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• Indeed, we found that ‘experts’ themselves often need

training and education (see various publications list

available from SURGE, Coventry University

(13)

• 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

(14)

• 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 easy-going; 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

(15)

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

(16)

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

(17)

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.’

(18)

• 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

(19)

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’

(20)

• 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

(21)

• 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

(22)

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

(23)

• Yet women themselves have not been completely

(24)

• 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.

(25)

• 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

(26)

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.

(27)

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)

(28)

Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

(29)

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

(30)

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’ –

middle-class women who go into deprived

(31)

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

(32)

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

(33)

Further Final Reflections on Good

Mothers . . . Bad (M)Others

(34)

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

(35)

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

(36)

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

(37)

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