Oh, I hope so Don… And not just support, but value and cherish and nurture and celebrate. Our society as a whole doesn’t do this, our government(s) doesn’t/don’t do this. I’d love to feel that our schools were doing this - are they? I’d genuinely like to understand how these crucial life lessons can really fit into the curriculum. I can remember my Offspring doing babies as a topic way back in nursery, but even at that stage I was struck by how the opportunity to explore the concept of nurturing was shied away from.
A few years ago, in a newspaper review, Rebecca Abrams gave one of the clearest explanations of the value of secure attachment for children in the first two years of life. Spending most of their time with a primary carer who is genuinely devoted to them can make a fundamental difference to the way that child is wired up to respond to the rest of the world for their whole life, as Don discusses in his posting. But our society has moved away from supporting this process. New mothers are constantly asked about plans to go ‘back to work’ or how long they will be ‘off’ - a drip, drip of subtext that what they are doing with their baby is just marking time. In her seminal book “What Mothers Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing” (here’s another Guardian review, and I don’t even read the Guardian!) Naomi Stadlen makes the point that we have no words which actually describe or define the process of ‘mothering’ - we can only describe the tasks that a women does around the edge of caring for her baby - washing, cooking etc - so that a mother has no effective way to explain how her day has been constructively filled just by responding to her baby. And we talk of ‘full-time mother’ and ‘part-time mother’ - an abomination which treats this indescribably fundamental condition like a uniform to be shrugged on and off.
Making a choice between going out to work and being with their kids is always tough and for many different reasons mothers may choose work and still do a fine job of parenting. But feeling valued shouldn’t have to be one of the criteria which affects their decision. I could join a Women Returning to Work Scheme, which would pay a woman to look after my child so that I could get a paid job looking after women’s children. However, if I ’stay at home’ (another abominable phrase) to nurture my own children I receive no support or recognition from the state. When I first became a mother I felt as if I was disappearing from the world. How can we expect young people anticipate respect, recognition, validation by choosing to devote even a few months of their lives to parenthood?
And we over-value independence, mistaking detachment for strength. New parents can be so afraid of being so depended upon that they must surrender some of their own independence, that they can become obsessed with splitting themselves away from their baby almost from the moment of birth. Natural human needs for detachment are quickly marked out as ‘clinginess’. Our society’s ideas of a ‘good’ baby can define the sort of behaviour that would have an adult labelled as a ‘loner’ - “We are bent on weakening bonds in the name of growth and independence, then spend our adulthoods wondering why we have trouble getting closer to other people.”
Well, the Education System cannot provide state recognition for my role, but it could, as Don describes, enable this generation to have a more positive attitude to well-attached parenting. Don using the word ‘unashamedly’ - maybe in recognition that this work might not be understood by all? I fear that it could be a tough one, because so much of the subject is likely to sit uncomfortably in the modern classroom:
- Acknowledging parenthood as as valid a role as a salaried career
- Normalising nurturing opportunities such as breastfeeding - addressing it at all ages, to both boys and girls and outside of the topic of sex education
- Recognising that dependence has its place, as well as fostering independence where appropriate
- Valuing childcare as a topic for young people: I have no idea how this is or isn’t addressed in the current curriculum, but I remember that my school had a childcare option - universally belittled by teachers as a subject fit only for dull-witted, sexually-loose girls. I would have been moritified to even step through the door of the classroom.
Being a mother to my children is the most important work I have ever done. The discipline, the self-determination, the focus, the initiative, the organisational and multi-tasking skills which I developed while in education and during my career have all been stretched and tested far more in this role than in any other environment. I’d love to feel that this work will be more accepted and valued in generations to come.
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