The isolation of Motherhood

Press, 26 February 1983, Page 16

The isolation of Motherhood

Inventing Motherhood: The Consequences of an Idea. By Ann Dally. Burnett Books, 1982. 334 pp. Index. $22.25. (Reviewed by Ruth Zanker) Ann Dally, history graduate, mother of six and practising psychiatrist, believes it is very hard to be a good mother under present conditions in our society. Her book hopes to expose what she calls the “crisis of motherhood in Western society.” To this end she has sifted evidence ranging from diaries, biographies and

social histories, to recent case-histories of some of the many depressed, neurotic women and children who have consulted her psychiatric colleagues. Her gloomy conclusion is that present patterns of mothering will have profound and unhappy consequences for future generations. She agrees with. Simone de Beauvoir who, 30 years ago, said: “The greatest danger which threatens the infant in our culture lives in the fear "that the mother, to whom it is confided in all its helplessness, is almost always a discontented woman.” Why have things changed so critically for mothers today? Dally suggests that never before the twentieth century have so many women had to rear their children so isolated from the rest of society, or embarked on motherhood so ignorant of what it means. For example, Gavron’s survey of English middle class mothers showed that 81 per cent had no experience of babies before they chose to have their own. She argues that although politicians pay lip-service to children’s needs, they ignore the mothers’ needs. To idealise "mother-love,” she says, is a subtle plot to institute a very cheap, but short term child-care system. How bizarre that women have accepted increasing isolation as though it were a scientific fact that children need the exclusive presence of mothers, and that anything separating them is destructive and psychologically damaging to the child. How, Dally asks, did such a notion ever become vogue? “Motherhood” became an idealised concept in England during the Victorian period, she finds. Since then, fashions in child-care have been influenced by a few enormously influential books written by men. For instance, most middle class white members of the British Empire born between 1915 and 1950 were reared as "Truby King” babies. Then came the “Spock-generation,” and thereafter Dr John Bowlby. This animal-researcher is not well known, yet his research on bonding between monkey mothers and babies has been uncritically applied by child-experts to human behaviour, and their influence has been pervasive. Dally finds the extremes of this school absurd, "exposing vast numbers of infants to the exclusive

care of women who are incapable of satisfying an infant's needs, but who happen to be its mother.” According to her view, just as a whole generation felt guilty if they fed and cuddled their babies outside Truby King’s four-hourly schedules, so now a generation feels guilty if they leave their babies to another's care or feel unable to be good mothers 24 hours a day. Those who are not good mothers have no escape — especially when government sanctions the theory through stingy child-care alternatives. Those women (or men) who are good at mothering are not using their important skills as widely as possible. Dally declares a nostalgia for nannies. She then turns on the women's movement, accusing it of ignoring motherhood and children. She finds this omission strange since a large part of Betty Friedan’s “problem with no name” was discontent with affluent suburban motherhood. Of course few of the early leaders of Women’s Liberation were mothers, but Dally suggests that it is time that the movement thought sensibly about motherhood (beyond the beautiful childbirth and communal creche cliches) and hints that otherwise it will become peripheral to the actual concerns of women, shunned by most, and supported by those who' dislike motherhood and children. Dally concludes that we have created impossible conflicts for mothers and an environment unsuitable for them or their young children. She says that “in order to save public money in the present we ensure that vast numbers of people will drain public resources in the future” through crime and mental and physical ill-health. Mothering is at a primitive stage in our society and until child-rearing is done by those who enjoy it and are talented at it, there will be no improvement. This is gloomy news indeed, especially during a recession amidst the 3 per cent cuts and unemployment. I only hope that those powerful enough to change conditions for mothers and children will read this book and take heed. For us mere mortals, the mothers, it should allay any guilt at not measuring up to the mawkish goddesses of the telly advertisements.