Tag Archives: motherhood

11 Apr

Book Review – Mama: Love, Motherhood and Revolution, by Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Reading Mama is like reading two interleaving books: one collection of vignettes painting a glorious picture of Antonella Gambotto-Burke’s ineffable love for her daughter; and one collection of essays and interviews about parenting in the modern world. There is only the most tenuous connection between the two.

Taking them separately, the vignettes form a profound tribute to love of her family, with whimsical stories of moments when her daughter has made her proud; but also dark tales of her own childhood, displaying a deep resentment of her own emotionally absent parents. The link between the two books, such as it is, is the attempt to explore and understand her own experiences of mothering and being mothered, in the context of the pressures of today’s society. She has learned from her own mother that motherhood has little value in itself, and honestly reports on her realisation of the importance of the slow pace of parenting, that the little things: “kissing, nursing, coddling, caring,” (p60) are really not so little; and yet are perceived by society to be low priorities.

The thesis of the second book is that this society is broken when it comes to parenthood, in that nobody other than a few select parents actually value or appreciate what parenting is, and how it works. This is supported with reference to literature, and interviews with a number of experts who generally make strong statements about how parents (as a generic group) are getting it wrong. Presumably excluding themselves, they largely see parents as a feckless, economically-driven crowd, so welded to their smartphones that they are unable and unwilling to give their children the proper amount of attention. This dysfunctionality is blamed for a range of social and mental health disorders from autism to AGB’s brother’s suicide. There is much handwringing over examples of parenting that have been witnessed by AGB and her interviewees.

Some of the interviewees unfold coherent and interesting arguments demonstrating the feminist nature of motherhood. Stephanie Coontz extends this to argue for the democratisation of care in general. This was the book that I wanted and expected to read, and I was frustrated by the much less coherent inclusion for example of the slow chapter on slow living, and the absolutely harrowing chapter about IVF. Some of the conversations, however, explore the strange and fallacious idea that the world is an unhealthy place, “toxic to children,” (p100), as if there was a time when all childhood was blissful and perfect. Perhaps this was the 1970s; I’m fairly certain that for most of the existence of humanity, children have had to muddle along with the rest of us, taking greater responsibilities at a younger age, subject to real hardship. When the focus shifts to fatherhood, AGB accuses men of “vanishing” (p178) from their children’s lives, yet when in history have fathers been expected to be more hands-on? Steve Biddulph on p83 claims that the children of hunter-gatherers were smarter; how can he possibly know this? And how are modern children even comparable to those whose life expectance was a fraction of ours? Modern concepts of attachment parenting are a very different thing.

AGB is an intelligent writer, and she has had access to some big names in parenting and child psychology. Her feminism rings loud and clear through this book; this is her manifesto for a society that recognises the contribution of mothers. Without the anecdotal chapters, it would be a very earnest book, making some fairly controversial points. Perhaps controversy is necessary to kick-start this important conversation.

After a final chapter on the nature of marriage and what it means to her (a dogmatic view that only marriage – not cohabiting – can facilitate continuity and commitment), AGB bravely completes the book with a heartbreaking epilogue about the horribly ironic end of her own marriage, which must have broken down even as she was writing about her love for her husband. It is hard to read, after some of her strong words (supported by several of her interviewees) about couples not making enough effort to stay together for the sake of their children, and the contribution of divorce to the dysfunctional disconnectedness of society. One wonders where she can go from here, in her thinking and her writing.

Mama presents some important ideas, though none of them are particularly new. I am frustrated and conflicted by this book, which comes out of a deeply personal self-exploration: AGB’s discovery that motherhood should not, after all, be a lesser status; and her shock that the rest of society has not yet figured this out. Because the state of motherhood does include vulnerability, and sacrifice, and menial work; but that does not mean that it wrecks our lives or that we are lesser people for doing it. In many ways, the motherhood she discovered lives up to her own expectations, but she is able to recognise the strengths that mothers must find to fulfil this role in the face of society’s judgement, and the lack of support from the community:

“At the most vulnerable time of their lives, mothers are repeatedly failed by the community.” (p24)

This disconnected, tech-obsessed world is the one we have, and I would rather read a manifesto for the future than a polemic moan about the state of the present, suffused with nostalgia for a rose-tinted past. This is an interesting, challenging read, which left me with much to reflect on.

[Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of Mama by the publishers Pinter & Martin]

10 Apr

ME time!

There’s no doubt that becoming a mother is a transformational experience. Initially absorbed in your new baby, obsessing over feeding or nappies or sleep, spending more time with new friends who are also new parents, evolving into a family instead of a couple: so many new things, so many changes. Some of us rail against it, fighting to get back to a long-lost ‘normal;’ others let it flow over us, knowing they won’t be small for very long. But all of us are fundamentally changed by the experience, whether we intended that to happen, or not.

One mother’s sense of lost identity is another mother’s sense of growth. We might mourn our freedom, high heels, spontaneous nights out, spare cash, hot cups of tea and the chance to finish a thought. And becoming a mother changes the way you are in your existing roles: you’re a different daughter, once you’re a mother. You’re a different wife or girlfriend. You’re a different sister, and a different friend.

For some people, going back to work renews one’s identity. For me, it brought it home to me how meaningless my work really was – and this despite working in the social compliance industry, which really does do a certain amount of good in the world. But paying to leave my baby with someone who didn’t love him as much as I do never felt right; trekking into Reading on a train with a hundred other miserable faces didn’t fill me with joy; the pressure to achieve miracles in a job that was both too easy and too hard was soul destroying. In the end I had to admit that I didn’t want my old identity back, I wanted to create a new one.

Maternity leave felt like a limbo between one state and the next: not enough time to adjust, and the looming return to work with its tantalising promise of a return to my old, easy life. Except it didn’t give me that, because all the mothering remained to be done outside my working hours, and I was still a different person in all my relationships, except my working relationships where motherhood seemed to count for nothing.

A few weeks after my return to work, I answered an ad in the NCT newsletter to train as a Breastfeeding Counsellor, not realising at the time that this was where my new identity would finally make sense. It’s now eight years since I sent that email, and I can barely recognise my pre-pregnancy self in the me that I am now.

Working in breastfeeding support appeals to my contrary nature (it’s controversial), my social and political conscience (breastfeeding is undervalued – and feminist), and my desire to do something good in the world. I like to be busy and it certainly meets that need. There’s a lot of interesting science stuff to know about. And with the addition of my work as a postnatal doula and other small related roles, I’ve been able to scrape a self-employed living at it, so I no longer have to answer to an employer. Nothing could make me happier.

My training with NCT and my ongoing reflective practice have helped me to develop empathy, listening skills, and a love of working with people instead of spreadsheets and schedules. I feel like a bigger person, a nicer person, and a person with more going on in her world than ever before. My whole life is so varied, and full of people; and for me, life since becoming a mother is glorious technicolour compared with the grey I can remember from before.

Views expressed here are my own, and do not represent the views of NCT.

03 Jul

Book Review: Life After Birth, by Kate Figes

Kate Figes seems to make a living writing about how awful things are. According to her, birth is awful, and motherhood is awful, and if you haven’t done either of these things yet, this book is pretty certain to put you right off. Reading it during pregnancy would be an extremely bad idea.

In keeping with the genre, Figes presents her rationale, which is that motherhood is difficult and lonely and nobody tells you that beforehand. Here she is in good company; Rachel Cusk‘s slightly depressing motherhood memoir comes to mind. In fact so many authors have written about how nobody tells you how awful motherhood is, that I’m starting to suspect that it might not be true.

Despite the age (2000) of my edition, Life After Birth sets out the context with an explanation which remains topical today, explaining how birth has become so safe for women, that the focus is now almost exclusively on the wellbeing of the baby (see our review of Optimal Care in Childbirth for the bang-up-to-date, academic version of this). However, in a tone of thin sarcasm, most of the book delves into all the things it is possible for a mother to do wrong, and presents motherhood as unfeminist and slightly idiotic.

On the front cover, a quote from The Times describes Life After Birth as a manual; but it would be disingenuous to describe this as a manual, since nowhere does it contain suggestions, strategies or support for the wide range of unpleasant experiences she describes. What comes across is a series of rather peevish attempts to justify her own feelings and decisions; for example in her attempt to debunk the well-evidenced attachment theory on page 63, and her language when referring to authors with whom she clearly disagrees, namely Deborah Jackson (“Leaving a child to cry himself back to sleep apparently teaches him to be resigned to his impotence” – my emphasis – p.117) and Sheila Kitzinger, who “believes” that certain babies are more likely to have sleep problems (p.119). It’s a shame she doesn’t adopt this same circumspect tone when advocating homeopathy to aid recovery from a Caesarean birth, on page 32.

Each chapter contains enough references to give the impression of academic authority, and these hang together with a long string of generalisations and personal anecdotes, rendering the whole thing fairly meaningless. For example, pregnant women “are unlikely to have close friends who are also pregnant.” (p.143) and “Women on the other hand find themselves suddenly defenceless and dependent on a man they may not altogether trust.” (p.145).

Reading this makes me feel sad for whatever complex awfulness this woman went through in her relationships when she became a mother, but it is hard to identify with much in this book, even having been on my own rollercoaster of motherhood only a few years ago. Naomi Stadlen shows that it is possible to be honest and realistic about motherhood without painting an entirely bleak picture. As for Kate Figes, the positive aspects of motherhood finally get a whole paragraph on the last page, but I’m afraid these fears of “being labelled ‘selfish,’ ‘immature’ or ‘not fit to be a mother,'” (p.245) are far from universal, and if these are your fears, this is not the book to help resolve them.

15 Mar

Book Review: Birth Matters, by Ina May Gaskin

Ina May’s new book is a manifesta setting out the philosophy of natural birth, and therefore nothing that has not been said by wise women (and men) countless times before. The value of this work is its comprehensive, detailed, and clear presentation of the information, such that surely no rational human could disagree. It is The Politics of Breastfeeding for birth, and it is a scientific celebration of what nature has achieved and what women are capable of.

The first chapters set the subject in its global context, and birth stories are scattered through the text to remind the reader that while these are global, political issues, they have personal, individual impacts.

I have learned about the cultural loss of breastfeeding knowledge, and it makes a sad kind of sense to me to be reading the same description of society’s attitude to birth: the loss of skills among health professionals and the consequent loss of positive birth stories. This cycle will be perpetuated and added to, and will spread beyond the US increasingly rapidly, as we lose touch with and confidence in our own bodies.

Ina May Gaskin discusses the role of feminism in driving an ‘escape’ from pregnancy and motherhood, a push towards equality between men and women instead of a celebration of the important differences between us. Why should power be measured only in masculine terms and defined by the choice NOT to do something? Ina May’s positive, empowering feminism offers a far wider range of choices.

It seemed crazy to me to take on the belief that the human female is the only mammal on earth that is a mistake of nature… it’s our minds that sometimes complicate matters for us. (p.23)

She quotes Simone de Beauvoir describing the pregnant women as inciting fear in children and contempt in young people, ensnared: “life’s passive instrument.” De Beauvoir, the great feminist intellectual, writes as though she believes what men have said for centuries about women’s bodies: that we are disgusting, inefficient, and inferior to men (who cannot, normally, grow or feed babies); and seems unaware that historically speaking, medical men who profit from managing birth have had personal and financial interests in telling women that it is a dangerous and painful process, that requires the presence of a qualified doctor. Again the parallels with the unethical practices of formula manufacturers undermining women’s knowledge of and confidence in breastfeeding are clear.

Some of the practices resulting from this basic assumption of women’s inferiority and ignorance are barbaric, and many persist in 21st Century western healthcare. The book describes a bleak outlook for maternity care and motherhood in a world where politics and economics are everything. Yet the short-termism of the idea that labouring women must be cured or rescued from themselves costs far more in terms of money, life, and quality of life. How can this be an acceptable situation?

I was struck by the anecdote in which a couple kissed to raise oxytocin levels and aid relaxation and the progress of labour. It helped me to think about the way I talk to antenatal groups about the role of oxytocin in breastfeeding. And also of the way the idea of sex to bring on labour has been reduced to the role of prostaglandin, when everything about it promotes skin contact, eye contact, and a feeling of well-being. In this, I find yet another example of the big picture being reduced to one male-orientated detail.

I was aware that birth in the US was highly medicalised, but the details and the implications of that, as clearly laid out by Ina May Gaskin, are horrifying and depressing. At the same time, the positive birth stories are affirming, empowering tales, a contrasting picture of the good that is possible when women are informed and respected.

***

To order Birth Matters with a 25% discount, just follow the link and use the discount code KH25 at the checkout.

29 Dec

The Incompetent Mother

The majority of breastfeeding mothers stop breastfeeding before they are ready, and long before their babies are ready. I will bore you with only one statistic: the World Health Organisation recommends exclusive breastfeeding until the age of six months, but in the UK, fewer than 2% of babies are breastfed for that long, whether exclusively or not.

The knee-jerk response to this is actually not to blame the mothers who stopped before six months, or indeed who never started (although those mothers perceive blame anyway, because feeling guilty is what parents do); but to blame healthcare professionals and volunteers for failing to provide adequate support, to blame employers and economics for forcing women back into a workplace ill-equipped to facilitate breastfeeding; and to blame “society” for disapproving of breastfeeding in public.

These factors do play a part, particularly where the people supporting mothers in the early days with their newborn babies fail to help, and put the blame on the mother by telling her she will never feed, because her breasts are too small, her nipples are the wrong shape, she hasn’t got enough milk, etc etc. A mum I’ve been supporting, despite having such copious milk that she was able to hand-express it prior to giving birth, was then told that she couldn’t feed because she had inverted nipples. One wonders why she had never noticed this before. A few days later another midwife advised her that that was rubbish; in fact her child doesn’t latch on because she has a tongue-tie. But what a great way to make the mum feel responsible for not being able to feed her baby, just because the original midwife couldn’t find a way to help her.

But there are deeper reasons, higher barriers, which are much harder to tackle, not least of which is the guilt that makes open discussion so difficult. But most mothers are not responsible for the difficulties they encounter in breastfeeding, and therefore it is inappropriate for them to feel guilt. Anger, sadness, and more anger, and perhaps acceptance that they can’t change what has happened, but not guilt.

“Guilt is only appropriate when, with full knowledge and free consent, you deliberately chose something detrimental to your baby for some trivial selfish reason.” – Maureen Minchin

The very existence of artificial milk undermines mothers’ belief in their own abilities to feed their babies. The fact that we believe we must have our babies weighed and checked regularly erodes our confidence, and allows an opening for doubts to creep in, widened by the conviction that artificial milk will cure all ills: it will make your baby sleep [research does not show this]; it will help your baby gain weight [so will effective breastfeeding]; it will resolve lactose intolerance [just plain nonsense; what do these people think the sugar in cows’ milk is?].

Added to this is the assumption at policy-making level that there is a widespread need for artificial milk, which at its worst has prevented – in America – publicity about recalls of faulty products. Apparently it is better to maintain the status quo, avoid panicking parents, than to tell people the truth about the nature of the food they are giving to their babies. Surely they have a right to know?

Meanwhile the subtle negatives about breastfeeding appear in literature from supposedly pro-breastfeeding books (What To Expect When You’re Breastfeeding… And What If You Can’t?), to apparently supportive retailers (Boots’ nipple cream advert offers the information that the worst thing about breastfeeding is the inevitable sore nipples, therefore all mothers must need to buy their cream, which cures it. Wrong. No cream will cure pain that is caused by incorrect positioning of the baby at the breast; but correcting the positioning will); to – of course – the babyfood manufacturers (Aptimil follow-on milk, for “when you decide to move on from breastfeeding” – as apparently we all should do before one year, when a child can drink unmodified cows’ milk). The prevailing mythology is that a breastfeeding mother needs to eat more (500 calories extra per day is normally quoted), implying that breastfeeding takes something out of you.

The pressure to get our babies into routines that are usually incompatible with breastfeeding, which works best when the infant is fed on cue in the early weeks; added to the insistence that mothers need to be separated from their babies for their own sanity, and the idea that fathers and grandmothers can best bond with the new baby by being involved in feeding, makes a recipe for inherent difficulties. Routines, separation, and messing with the milk supply by expressing milk or giving the odd bottle of artificial milk are all contributory factors in mastitis and in perceived or actual loss of milk supply.

Finally, the pervasive images of bottlefeeding make that the normal way that people expect babies to be fed. The Richard Scarry book that I bought for Bernard, having enjoyed it myself as a child, shows one newborn being bottle-fed on her (rabbit) mother’s lap in hospital, and one naughty wakeful child being bottle-fed by her (doggy) father, to get her back to sleep. Meanwhile, how are breasts portrayed by the media in general? As sexual objects belonging to men.

Each of these points deserves far more than a paragraph in a blogpost (perhaps one day I will find the right PhD opportunity!), but surely even this brief outline of the huge barriers to making breastfeeding normal demonstrates one of the most important things I have learned over the last few months: that mothers themselves are the last people to blame for low breastfeeding rates.

Originally posted elsewhere on 15th May 2008

10 Nov

Book Review AND Giveaway: How Mothers Love (and how relationships are born) – Naomi Stadlen


I am a huge fan of Naomi Stadlen’s first book, What Mothers Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing, which I first read when my son was around six months old, and then again five years later when I had just completed my doula training. So I have been looking forward to getting my hands on her second book, How Mothers Love; and as soon as I did, I set about creating some space (ignoring the rest of my family!) so that I could read it.

This is a wise and compassionate book, with a pondering gentle tone and a very Plain English style. In its quest to describe and explain how mothers and babies relate to each other, and to examine the implications of this for the development of relationships in later life, the book provides another wealth of anecdotal colour that would sit alongside a more sciencey tome such as Sue Gerhardt’s Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain.

I read this book holding a pencil with which to annotate moments of epiphany and insightful remarks I would like to quote later. I have underlined something on nearly every page, as I repeatedly recognise something from my own experience or from talking with other mothers, including the idea of mothers as fellow travellers, the dread of disapproval, the feeling that motherhood is undervalued and misunderstood in wider society.

This last point led me to wonder if non-parents could even begin to understand this book, or grasp why it is so important. Stadlen describes herself, beautifully, as being ‘steeped’ in the conversation of mothers, and her frame of reference is highly accessible to me, being similarly steeped. But when trying to convey some of these concepts to non-parents (or even to parents for whom motherhood is not an important subject), I feel like I am speaking a different language. This is why Stadlen has to make up wonderful words to describe something like making ‘heartroom’ for our babies; and why she frequently laments that our language simply has no words for so many of the deeply significant but less tangible things that mothers do.

I had never previously considered the impact of Freud’s work on parenting (perhaps I should give my psychology degree back!) but it was interesting to add him to the pile of ‘experts’ undermining mothers’ instincts across the years. Equally, while I am well aware of the dichotomy in fashionable parenting styles, I had never thought of it in terms of Spartan versus Athenian, a description which really elucidates the fundamental differences between the two philosophies, and the resulting conflict in how mothers think and the ways in which they relate to each other.

For me the book throws up the stark contrast with one group of mothers (and fathers) who do not feature quite so strongly; that is, the expectant ones (and I quite understand why this is). In antenatal sessions, parents-to-be refer to ‘the baby’ as ‘it,’ and their expectations are often that a Spartan approach to parenting will work very well for them. The dawning of realisation that their baby is a person deserving of respect and warmth must be a huge epiphany for many first time parents, and I find it frustrating to have confidence that this almost always happens, but not to be able to convince them of that in the antenatal period.

How Mothers Love enlarges on the themes of What Mothers Do, and introduces new ones, going on to look at how the supply of love expands (like breastmilk, as one of the women in my own antenatal group once said), to meet the needs of the next child, and the next; and how being a mother changes one’s relationships with the other members of the family.

Towards the end there are suggestions about how mothers could co-operate to have their work recognised and valued more widely; but I feel that short-term financial interests will always work against this optimistic manifesto. As a Breastfeeding Counsellor, the work I do is a drop in the ocean. A book like this can make waves where I cannot. Reading this helped to reaffirm my approach to my paid work; but more importantly, to my unpaid work as a mother.

***

Naomi Stadlen’s publisher, Piatkus, has very kindly offered two copies of How Mothers Love as a giveaway to two readers of the Double Helping Doulas blog. I have never had a giveaway before, and I’m torn between holding an actual competition, or offering the books to the first two commenters. I have no idea if anyone even reads this thing, so to increase the number of comments, just let me know you’re there and you’re interested, and I’ll pick names out of a hat on Tuesday 15th November.

29 Oct

Book Review: What Mothers Do, by Naomi Stadlen


Naomi Stadlen has collated the views of new mothers from hundreds of interviews and conversations. From the women’s words she has defined numerous of the almost-intangible things that mothers do on a daily (and nightly) basis, even though it looks and feels like they are ‘only’ looking after their babies.

She points out that mothering is a unique experience, in allowing us to focus on how badly we are doing, simply because there seems to be no language to describe succinctly all the things we do well.

Some of the things that mothers do are defined as being ‘instantly interruptible;’ comforting; being responsible; coping with tiredness; figuring out what babies want; loving their baby; redefining their own identity; redefining their other relationships, particularly with their partner and with their own mother; and supporting other mothers.

The collection of insights opens one’s eyes both to the huge accomplishments of everyday mothering, and to the subtle pressures and unexpected challenges we encounter. It is so easy for a new mother to feel that she achieves nothing, until we take account of the thousand interruptions and her instant, unconditional availability for her child.

This book along with something on human babies’ normal emotional and psychological development, such as What Every Parent Needs To Know by Margot Sunderland or Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt, should be required reading (though perhaps in digested form!) for any new mothers, to give perspective and positive encouragement.

The value of this book for a postnatal doula is in helping her to step outside her own frame of reference and consider the huge variety of maternal experience. Every mother carries the emotional payload of her own birth and postnatal experience, and of course this informs our work with other women; but this book broadens one’s focus and understanding.

I originally read the book when my son was around six months old, and of course my perspective has been changed both by my own experience and by the stories told by the mothers I work with. I feel more removed from the subject matter now, and find it moving to be reminded of the importance of celebrating what seems like little achievements, and of the context in which we become mothers in our culture.

I particularly appreciated the description of how mothers learn about their babies: not from books or gurus, but from their own baby. Stadlen states that ‘Uncertainty is a good starting point for a mother’ (p45) because that is precisely what enables her to learn.

This reassures me that uncertainty is also a good starting point for a doula, and that our role is very much about listening to the stories, pointing out the achievements, and celebrating motherhood.