Educated for Motherhood: natural instincts versus expert advice

1
Educated for Motherhood natural instincts versus
expert advice

• Gayle Letherby
• University of Plymouth

2
Introduction

• Every Girl's Dream . . . Inevitable Destiny?
• Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?
• Further Final Reflections on Good Mothers and Bad
  (M)Others

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'
• question. (Letherby 1994 525)

4
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable Destiny?

• Thus The 'right to choose' means very little
  when women are powerless. Women make their own
  reproductive choices but they do no make them
  just as they please they do not make them under
  conditions which they themselves create but under
  social conditions and constraints which they, as
  mere individuals, are powerless to change
  (Petchesky 1980 cited by National Bioethics
  Consultative Committee 199048)

5
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable 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
• even inappropriate.

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
• to be a mother?

7
Every Girls Dream . . . Inevitable 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
• scientific so did childcare. . .

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 authorized and experiential knowledge.

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 20th century
  felt that womens 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 industries . . . . Many women running homes
  havent even the fundamentals of house management
  and dietetics. They raise children in the
  average, by a rule of thumb that hasnt altered
  since Abraham was a child (Canadian Home Journal
  1932) (Arnup 1994).

10
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• 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 20th century schools for mothers set up by
  voluntary agencies to give advice and training to
  working class mothers.
• And now - NVQ childcare qualifications often
  childcare classes alongside sex education
  classes focus on childcare/refeminisation in
  prison. . .

11
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• Not necessarily a bad thing but aimed at
  particular groups and individuals e.g. working
  class, non-white, single, young . . .and
  continues today. . .

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 http//www.coventry.ac.uk/researchnet/d
  /181)

13
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• 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
  expected to be grateful and find motherhood
  completely fulfilling. Thus, there is no room
  for ambivalence.

14
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• 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 hes 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
• and make him a welcome member of your family
  circle. . .
• (cited by Arnup 1994 89).

15
Natural Instincts. . . Expert Advice?

• Dr Benjamin Spock whose advice dominated
  womens 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 themselves,
  but in the application of advice for an average
  baby to all babies.

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
  http//www.drspock.com/home/0,1454,,00.html)

17
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• Trust yourself. You know more than you think
  you do . . . Bringing up your child wont 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.
  http//www.drspock.com/home/0,1454,,00.html

18
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• Not just Spock of course
• At present there are so many gaps in the average
  womans 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 advisers of the present
  generation (Jolly, Book of Childcare 1986 cited
  by Marshall 1991 73)

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 (Bourne,
  Pregnancy 1979 cited by Marshall 1991 68).

20
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• 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
  paranoia and is often misplaced
• (Furedi 2001).

21
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• 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 which holds the individual mother as
  primarily responsible for child-rearing heightens
  the tensions between work and mothering which
  women manage (Hays 1996).

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 Id already got parenthood wrong and
  she wasnt even born yet . . . I decided to keep
  a diary (Walters 2008 262).

23
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• Yet women themselves have not been completely
  passive in all of this and we have evidence of
  resistance. For example, Jocelyn Cornwells
  early 1980s research in the East End of London
  demonstrated that women do resist
  expert/authorized knowledge Cornwell talked to
  people about their understanding of their own
  health and illness and found that it was in the
  area of antenatal care that there was the most
  resistance to the medical model when women had
  kin close by they listened to them and not to the
  medics when pregnant and preparing for birth . .
  . Clearly then whatever doctors and others say
  there is value in old wives tales . . . . .

24
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• Elizabeth Murphys (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.
• Yet, here too evidence of resistance . . .

25
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• 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 childrens 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/represen
  tations of motherhood.

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 theculture of fear both from
  external and internal threats in a way that
  they were not in the past.
• In addition womens magazines, alongside other
  Western media, frequently feature celebrity
  mothers.

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) children . . . What is
  new is that the women are not otherwise very
  different from their non-pregnant or non-maternal
  selves in what they wear and in looking sexually
  attractive. Successful motherhood is encoded as
  well-off and sexually attractive . . . .
  (Woodward 2003 23-30 see also Douglas and
  Michaels 2004 for similar
• examples from North America).

28
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?

• And what of the current advice in addition to
  plethora of books. . .

29
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice?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
• A phychotherapist
• A health visitor

30
Natural Instincts . . . Expert Advice? 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 neighbourhoods and encourage mums-to-be
  to breastfeed. . .

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 an
  associated website askamum.co.uk . . .

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 Blogging but as in Blooms study
  likely that some women will lack the confidence
  to judge between difference information
  available. . .

33
Further Final Reflections on Good Mothers . . .
Bad (M)Others

• Evident then that mothering is not something that
  women do without external comment and censure and
  womens mothering is defined as good or bad.
  Good mothering as noted earlier is intensive
  mothering (Hays 1996) where the individual
  mother is primarily responsible for childrearing
  and which is child centred, expert-guided,
  emotionally absorbing, labour-intensive and
  financially expensive.

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 desires of the young infant, who
  rejects and abandons her child when she
  withdraws the breast. Ultimately she is
  associated with death she is the despised CRONE,
  for each child she gives birth to is destined to
  die (Mills 1991 169).

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
• Friedman, May and Calixte, Shana L. (eds) (2009)
  Mothering and Blogging The Radical Act of the
  Mommy Blog. Toronto Demeter Press

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
• The National Bioethics Consultative Committee
  (1990)  Surrogacy report 1  April 1990

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) Thats 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-Resu
  lts/?N190555NsP_Publication_Date7C1
  accessed December 2008