Motherhood

Jessi

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I am a mother, so “where are the kids?” is apparently a better way to greet me than the word “hello”. Even while I was still living with their father, and the person asking knew this, people would greet me by asking where my kids are. As if they couldn’t possibly imagine that they would be with anyone else other than me. Since I’ve broken up with my kids’ father and now have time to myself, I purposely try to meet new people without my kids around because it’s nice to have people actually see me as a person in my own right, rather than just as my children’s chauffeur. This is a deliberate strategy because almost everyone who has ever met me for the first time with my children present asks this stupid question when they see me alone. And trust me, it is a stupid question. And it is asked in the stupidest of contexts. On a quick trip to a convenience store. While at appointments. While sitting in a bar. People will even ask this question in the middle of a school day… you would think that any adult with half a brain could easily guess where my school-aged children are during the school day. I mean, I can understand if I’m at a park or a beach or someplace where I definitely do take my kids… but even then? It is a very different question than asking “HOW are the kids?” Asking HOW my kids are is showing an interest in my children themselves and, since they are a part of my life, my life in general. Asking WHERE my kids are… For starters, why do you care/need to/have any right to know? These are adults asking me this so presumably they weren’t actually hoping to hang out with my children. It implies that I am the one solely responsible for them and, at the same time, that I must be shirking that responsibility. Like their father would be the last person they would expect to be caring for his own children. It also kinda sounds like they think I am incompetent. Sometimes I like to look really shocked and exclaim, “oh no… that’s what I forgot!!” I’ve come to think of it as one of the ways society works to enforce the status quo… Someone has to remind me of my place. That once I had children I was no longer supposed to exist in spaces in a childfree state. No longer supposed to exist in childfree spaces at all. “Where are the kids?” is not actually asking where my kids are. The person asking has no legitimate reason to ask that. What this question is really asking me is to justify my presence, my actions, and my existence outside of the performance of motherhood.

Kaye

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When I was depressed a few years ago and having serious doubts about my studies and career choices, instead of encouraging alternative careers that suited my skills, goals, and interests, my mother suggested that my calling was to become a housewife and mother.

Ms S

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Since becoming a mother I have experienced so much sexism that it would take me an essay to write it all down fully! I really wish that everyone talked more openly and honestly to girls, and boys, about the reality of parenthood particularly for women. I think that parents are pretty good at doing that amongst themselves, but I wish so much that I had been told about the realities before I took the decision to have a child. I love my son and wouldn’t change him for the world, but I just wasn’t properly informed or prepared. And the change to a woman’s life is so massive. The biology of parenthood is not fair on women, but neither is the way that mothers are treated and the things expected of them. I believe that we are not told the truth because if we were, it would put us off becoming mothers. To start at the start of the process, I now find the term ‘morning sickness’ hugely problematic. It should be called ‘pregnancy sickness’ because it lasts all day. It is like having norovirus for weeks without a break – I am not exaggerating at all as I have experienced both. It is horrible and utterly exhausting. And yet we minimize it, don’t treat it (I know that there are good reasons for not trying new medications here, but there really is no help available). And it’s not generally considered something you can take time off work for. Labour is obviously massively painful and physically destructive to the mother, that is just how it is. But I’ve come to notice now how women in labour are often a subject for humour in television and film, and our wider culture. It makes me think, when is it ok to laugh at somebody in agony and distress? And the answer is, when it’s a woman. Postnatal care is below the standard needed for new mothers to maintain decent mental health. This was my experience and there are many articles online documenting this. After 40+hrs of labour, during which I had been physically unable to sleep or eat, I was left in sole care of a newborn baby (who wakes up at least every 3 hrs for a feed) for the first time. This is also when I was expected to learn to breastfeed, which despite being a very natural thing does take some practice to get right. This is the norm, but how is that sensible, for the best care of the baby or the mother? Women, including myself, are put on wards where people come and go, babies and women cry all day and night. I ended up going home with a newborn having lost two nights’ sleep. When this is the way that new motherhood begins – and there is no break from that crying, waking baby once you get home, 24/7 – I feel it is no wonder that postnatal depression rates are so high. I believe that things could be done differently too, it is just a question of money and resources. My grandmother spent a week in hospital after the births of her children, my mother several nights, and for both, the baby was cared for by midwives who woke the mothers only for feeds so that they could rest and recover. That was the norm then. But providing that care costs money, I guess, and women’s mental health is no longer a priority here. I could go on, about postnatal discrimination in the workplace, unequal burdens of childcare and housecare, the different standards expected of parents’ bodies (‘dad bod’ made me so mad – fathers’ bodies have done no work in the process of childbearing yet are allowed to stop caring for their bodies, while mothers are expected to ‘get their body back’ after pregnancy and labour). But I don’t have all night!

Laura

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My stepdad sexually abused me when I was 12 – 13 years old. I tried to tell my mum a couple of years later and she thought I was lying and told me not to repeat it to anyone incase social services took my little brother away, all because of my lie. I’m 32 now and she finally realised the truth after I repeatedly refused to let my daughter have contact with him. Turns out she was sexually abused by her father for years and is now struggling to live with the fact that she didn’t help me when I needed it. My reaction to my abuse was so different from hers she thought it wasn’t real. Because people didn’t talk about stuff like that. It took her until her 50’s before she began to speak about her experiences to anyone. Thankyou for helping to bring these subjects out into the open and show women across the world how they might begin to come to terms with their experiences, understand eachother’s and, I hope, change the culture in which they can go unnoticed and unchallenged. We stand together.

Carrie

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I own my home which is co-located in a set of townhouses. We have a Body Corporate committee that handles general activities like shared gardening and maintenance services. Three weeks ago I sent a formal request to the Body Corporate committee notifying them of my intent to renovate my own home, and replace a bath with a shower. The response that came back floored me: I was strongly advised not to remove the bath because how would any small children I have be bathed in future? I was told that it is easier to bathe kids in a bath. OK, maybe, but I choose not to have kids. My sister does not have kids. My brother has teenage kids. I have no other friends or family with young kids. My siblings and I are all in our40s but somehow my home must be renovated to suit other people’s assumptions about the “proper” state of my uterus and the purpose of my life as a female. I don’t want to slip and fall yet again while I get out of my bath but the Body Corporate wants me to retain a bath for kids I don’t have and will not have. It drives me almost insane that my home is still controlled by other people’s assumptions about what is the right way for a woman to behave, even in her own bathroom!