Stay-at-home versus working mum--how has it come to this?!

Divided Heart artist Sarah Tomasetti once told me that when she became pregnant for the first time, one friend’s response was: “Congratulations! From here on in, everything you do will be wrong!”

We all know that motherhood and guilt may as well be interchangeable terms, but this seems to be doubly true when it comes to the issue of work.

A while ago I was chatting to Charlotte Young, co-editor of Barefoot Magazine, who admitted to me that she used to be pretty hard-line on the issue of whether or not women with young children should work. She wouldn’t be alone, among the educated middle-class women I know, in feeling that babies and toddlers should be at home with their parents and not in childcare. More than that, I would say there’s a largely unspoken but palpable disapproval of preschool-aged kids being in full-time care at all.

Like breastfeeding, the modern ethic says that thinking, conscientious parents will stay home with their babies — and with good cause. I too have felt the terrible pang when seeing tiny babies at childcare centres and the sense that it is just not right. But I also understand that it’s highly likely they are there because their parents feel they have no choice.

This absence of choice, though, is something I think we tend to reserve for the battling working class.

What of the woman who is on a strong career trajectory and feels she can't drop the ball? Or one who simply finds she's climbing the walls at home with small children? In my experience, this is often treated not only as short-sighted and un-evolved, but a definite moral failing.

When talking to Charlotte, she seemed a bit surprised by the fact that I, as a middle-class woman, might not have a choice about whether or not to work. Which got me thinking about whether I would still work, given the choice.

I held off going back to work for as long as my family could afford it (basically, until my kids were in turn at least two), and then have worked part time. But, within my immediate circles, I have found myself to be in a minority of women whose families actually rely on their income (in my case, it would be that or sell the house).

Since my son has started school, I have become increasingly conscious of the gap between those mothers who are in the paid workforce and those who are at home full-time. (And believe me, I know that caring for children and running a household is a huge workload in itself — one which unfortunately doesn’t go away whether you are also in the paid workforce or not.)

Something I have noticed myself doing, when talking to mums in the playground, is to play down the fact that I actually enjoy my work — as if this is some terrible admission that I don’t value mothering enough, or that I have taken a selfish path. Sometimes I wonder whether, in the (generally positive) push to reassert the value of mothering as the very important thing that it is, we haven’t lost sight of the fact that work is also meaningful in women's lives — and that that’s ok.

We still seem to be on a bit of a pendulum swing away from the (equally important) feminist push for women’s right to work, which had the unfortunate fallout of leaving some women feeling ignored or shamed for wanting to stay home. I don’t know that we’ve got the balance right yet.

Surely it’s a great thing that most women now feel they can make a genuine and active choice about whether or not to work when their kids are very small. And that those women who need or want to work have access to meaningful jobs.

So why are we still in this place where women feel so guilty, no matter what they do? Who do they perceive to be judging them — their partners, friends, children, society as a whole?

Women are beset with such an avalanche of mixed messages — from the media, politicians, our mothers, our workmates and friends — that it can be almost impossible to dig our way back to our own intuition on things, or to feel solidly confident in our decisions.

A shame, when there’s so much to celebrate — like the fact that I can sit here musing on this subject while my washing machine chugs away, a pot of soup is bubbling away on the stove, my daughter will soon return from a playgroup which is today being hosted by a dad, and my son is down the road at the great local school where his teachers last year got a big fat pay rise in recognition that what they do is not “just women’s work”.

It's 3.30...

It’s 3.30, and I'm imagining my son leaving his classroom and making his way out into the schoolyard. He will find his way to after school care, or they will find him. He is an autonomous being. His own person, with his own life to live.

I know that. So why am I so frequently struck by this notion and so destabilised by it — the thought that my children are at this moment out there in the world where I can’t see them?

It makes me feel like a constantly unravelling ball of string — the further the kids roam, the more diminished I am, but the more liberated also. I find the levels of trust and faith I have to employ as a mother overwhelming sometimes. If only freedom — mine and theirs — didn’t seem to come at such a price!

Yesterday my daughter’s kinder teacher told me she was being targeted for bullying by a little boy she’s known her whole life. That day he had tipped a vase of flowers over her head, and when he was told that it was now his responsibility to clean it up, my daughter offered to help him.

This broke my heart — even more so, somehow, after a full morning of such appalling tantrums that I was driven to think: ‘Jeez, you’re lucky I love you so much, because this is the kind of thing that drives less adoring people to murder children!’ (Can anyone describe those unbearable hours when a child won’t stop whinging and screaming and throwing things at you? At those times, some part of me is forced to shut down, just in order to cope.)

I still worry that I haven’t got the guts for it. That I don’t have what it takes to override my own desperate fears in order to give my kids the space and trust they need to grow. That I haven’t got the discipline to avoid succumbing to lazy strategies — or rivalling my children’s behaviour with equally juvenile behaviour of my own.

Nothing rang more true for me than the wonderful Mindy Sotiri’s notion that parenting requires “a superhuman effort. Sometimes a more than superhuman effort.” Oh, how I agree with that! Superhuman effort — on a daily basis. And I have the great luck of having children without significant problems.

This is a very sentimental post, isn’t it? Must be the afternoon light…

Who's in Control?

I re-watched Control recently, the biopic about Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis.

I've watched a lot of films about male artists, and it is always fascinating to look at the impact of their obsessiveness — and their fame — on their family. This one is no exception.

In Control, which tracks the short life of cult figure Ian Curtis, there is a party scene where a woman talking to Curtis's wife enviously acknowledges how famous he has become. “Not to me,” Deborah Curtis smiles. “I still have to wash his underpants.”

Here, the music scene is a masculine world; Deborah is the long-suffering, marginalised wife, bearing the brunt of her husband’s creative talent, while he winds up the tragic hero, despite his domineering behaviour towards his wife and almost total negligence as a father.

Although the teenaged Deborah was also writing poetry when she met her future husband, he was always the focus of the relationship, she has said. “I don’t remember him ever asking to see what I was writing. That’s partly my own fault — I stopped writing after we got married. But I think he was so powerful that our lives were sort of centred around his art, and what he was going to do.”

In her response to the film, British novelist and art critic Bidisha argued that: “Great men attract subservient women and are forgiven for their unkindness because of the marvellous gifts they present to the world”.

She accuses recent artist biopics, such as those celebrating Bob Dylan, Jackson Pollock and Ian Curtis, of passing off acts of rebellion, arrogance and cruelty as reflections of greatness in men, while female artists are “neurotic nut-jobs … called by their first names” — think Sylvia, Iris, Frida — almost always in thrall to some more famous (though, history shows, not necessarily more talented) man.

Do you agree with this? Can anyone recommend some positive biopics about artists who wove their art into full lives as partners and parents?

One wonderful antidote is The Beaches of Agnes, French New Wave filmmaker Agnès Varda's film-memoir (currently showing at the Melbourne Film Festival) about her very full life as an artist and mother.

Placing herself amongst extracts from her films, and images and interviews recalling her past, the unstoppable Varda offers a fascinating and playful account of her creative work, her feminism and her family life.

Save Aussie Books

Between homebirthing, uranium mining and whether or not Michael Jackson was murdered (oh, sorry, everyone was over that one before it began, really, weren't they?), there's a lot to be fired up about at the moment.

But top of my list right now is the issue of parallel imports for books--because there's still a chance we can do something to stop the Government going ahead with these ridiculous changes.

If you haven't heard much about the proposed changes to local laws on the importing of books, I urge you to take a look at Saving Aussie Books to find out more about the devastating impact these new laws will have on the Australian publishing industry.

Despite an outspoken campaign by authors, publishers and even many booksellers, the Productivity Commission last month recommended the Federal Government lift all restrictions on parallel importation of books on the basis that it will result in cheaper books for Australian consumers.

Publishers and authors would retain territorial copyright on works for only the first 12 months of a book's life, after which time booksellers could purchase any edition from any source in the world. Foreign editions characteristically pay a much lower royalty.

The US, Britain and Canada all support territorial copyright for books--so why would we put our own authors and industry at risk?

Writer Sally Rippin told me she was talking to a NZ author recently who said the independent bookselling scene has been annihilated there because of the introduction of these same laws.

One of the other risks of this new globalised market is that publishers will probably prefer bland books that can easily cross borders.

As writer Sheryl Gwyther has said: “Do you want to see Australian children reading books without Australian content and Americanised with Mom instead of Mum or faucets instead of taps, and vacation instead of holiday?”

Children’s writer Mem Fox agrees: “It’s tantamount to firing the entire writing workforce in Australia and outsourcing it to other countries, who will in turn change the vocabulary and cultural references that the outsourcing country finds difficult to grasp.

“This, in its turn, would mean in our case that particularly Australian books would not be published. … No go for a book like Possum Magic, then, with a huge loss to readers and local cultural capital.”

Fox earns 5% for each book sold — 64¢ on a $12.95 paperback of Possum Magic. Losing territorial copyright would reduce her royalty to 29¢. “It makes my old WorkChoices contract look like a gift from a fairy godmother,” she says.

Australian publishers including Text’s Michael Heyward, Scribe’s Harry Rosenbloom and Hardie Grant’s Sandy Grant have all defended the current system, crediting it with creating the “energy” in the nation’s most successful cultural industry and encouraging publishers to nurture their writers.

The changes would transform Australia from a publishing centre to a marketplace, Grant has warned.

Gwyther is leading the Saving Aussie Books campaign to increase the pressure on the Federal Government to reject the commission's report. “This corporate campaign to do in Australian authors and small independent publishers and bookshops is being ably run and organised by the giant corporations,” she says.

“Are we prepared to let Coles and K-Mart monopolise the economic, political and cultural agendas?”

Please get involved. This issue is too important to ignore.

Counting our Blessings

Ana Kokkinos’s upcoming new feature, Blessed, is a film that gets under your skin. In fact, it is easily one of the most powerful documents on motherhood that I have witnessed, and for days afterwards I was sucking in my breath and fighting back tears each time it came to mind (which was often).

Adapted from the award-winning stage play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?, the film tracks seven children from five different families over 24 hours as they roam the suburbs and backstreets of Melbourne. The film then switches to the mothers' stories, following them across the same day as they work to keep their families intact and their children safe. All these characters are disempowered in some way, but universal is that each is bound by the force that connects mothers and their children.

Each young person is in some form of danger or distress due in part to their mothers’ distraction as she struggles with her own issues. As for the children, there can be no real understanding of the impact of their actions on their families. The storylines intersect tenuously but with powerful results.

While some will experience this as a film about poverty, or about racism, or the perils and confusion of adolescence — all of which are true — to me, this film is ultimately one about motherhood — in all its overwhelming pain, tenderness, ambivalence, fear. And profound love.

Writers Andrew Bovell, Melissa Reeves, Patricia Cornelius and Christos Tsiolkas have adapted the play for the big screen, and while its history is at times detectable, it did not take away from the compellingly gritty cinematic experience. The film replaces some of the more overt polemics of the play with deeper psychological portraits of the characters, with Frances O’Connor, Miranda Otto, Deborra-lee Furness and Victoria Haralabidou leading an exceptional ensemble cast.

Be warned: Blessed is a film which will make you feel like someone’s cracked open your ribcage, taken hold of your heart and tried to wrench it from your chest (or at least given it one almighty twist). There are moments I found literally painful to watch. But like all good art, it leaves you with a profound sense of what it is to be human.

(Sorry, bit of a formal review--but that's one of the things I do in my other life as hack for hire...)

Blessed is on as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival and opens nationally 10 September. Hurrah for the recent/current spate of great Australian films! I will be doing interviews with some of Blessed's cast and crew later in the week and will post links…

Who said 'footy mum'?

I have recently discovered that I've been keeping some of my friends amused by the fact that I can now talk football.

I have to admit, on this matter, I have been a bit surprised by my own capacity to adapt. But what do you do when you have a seven-year-old who is so utterly obsessed with football (in our case, AFL, being Melbourne), your only hope of a decent conversation is to start talking shop?

My son is now a walking encyclopaedia of footy scores. Perhaps he’ll hit 13 and we’ll suddenly be plunged into the ins and outs of his favourite music (bring it on!). But for now, it’s all “So, Mum, who is your fourth favourite footy player?”

May as well have an answer.

Even more amazing (to myself and others), is that I have now completed my first Auskick training certificate. Yes, I actually know how to put spin on the ball. It was that or stand around shivering on a frost-encrusted oval at 9am on Saturday morning. (Goodbye weekends…)

I have to admit, this Auskick set-up is impressive. I understood what one of the other mothers meant when she said: "We could learn something here, Rachel. Us lefties — if we were as well organised as Auskick we'd have kicked out Kennett two years earlier."

When our son first started showing an interest, my partner warned me about mothers like me. "You'll have to hang out with those footy mums...". "Oh, God, you're right," I thought. "Shit, no."

Now look at me. There is that simple thing that, as a mother, I want to be enthusiastic about whatever my kids are enthusiastic about — to genuinely engage with their interests and support their endeavours. It's just that when I thought about having babies, I stupidly envisaged that they'd be a bit like me — bookish and introverted.

Ha, ha, parenthood 101 — your kids will be their own going concern.

At this stage my son is too young too be aware of the suspect culture that exists on (and all too often off) the field. But it doesn’t take much to know that aggression is inherent to the game — exactly the thing that has always made me rail against it.

I can admire the athleticism involved, but what of the masculine (read, sexist) culture so evident in a sport like AFL? How do I counteract this at home when it is so much a part of the scene?

We don’t have a TV, thankfully, so I don’t have to deal with my son coming across programs like the Footy Show (so aptly described by the fabulous Catherine Deveny as hosted by pigs in suits for pigs in suits).

And fortunately my son has chosen to support a team that is on a serious losing streak, which not only makes me a tad more sympathetic but, for him, has enforced some useful lessons in humility.

The other great thing about my son’s age group is that there are still girls doing the Auskick training alongside the boys and this so far goes unquestioned. I am full of admiration for those fearless girls in their pink trackie-pants who can cut it with the best of them. What a shame all their visible role models have to be male.

In Melbourne, being part of the footy culture is like joining a club ('scuse the sort-of pun) — one that almost everyone else has already signed up to but to which I was almost completely oblivious, before now. Everywhere we go, if Griffin has his footy gear on (which is most of the time), people will tussle his hair and mumble: “Go, tiges!” (For those in the know, he is a Richmond Tigers fan, if that wasn’t already clear.) I can find this ridiculously endearing.

Right now I feel torn between wanting to support my son in his genuine love of the sport — which to him is about physical striving and personal achievement — and my concerns that the dominant culture in AFL is one that is in strong part to blame for the conduct of so many of its players. Even if it is working to change its ethos.

Plenty of women do love footy, I know. Funnily enough, on the fan front, AFL seems a pretty egalitarian sport. But just like I think it’s a form of denial to say that women’s magazines are just a bit of fun that don’t impact on women’s self-esteem, I think footy culture has problematic implications for our broader culture.

Anyone else out there confronting how to raise a son who loves footy and respects women? It was not a challenge I was expecting...

Doctor knows best, sweeties

Yesterday I received a text from the darling Clare Bowditch to tell me her blood was boiling.

The source of the heat was this unusually soft interview on Radio National's Life Matters yesterday with the first female president of the National Association of Specialist Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (NASOG), Dr Hilary Joyce.

I suppose there was no point expecting that a female gyno would suddenly be transforming the entrenched, male-dominated attitude of the profession. But Dr Joyce may as well be a man, considering the paternalistic attitude she has towards “our women”. So much for the milestone.

Statistics must be maintained at all costs, it seems — after all, women can’t be trusted to make sensible, considered choices about the kind of birth they want to have.

“What is important is that the wonderful obstetric safety record of this country is not undermined by any … alteration in delivery of models of care.”

The fact that we enjoy the safest services in the world is directly attributable to the majority of births being medically led, according to Dr Joyce.

Homebirths are chosen by a “tiny percentage” of the Australian women, she claims, but receive undue attention largely because “of the over-representation of tragedies that occur”.

She has "grave concerns" about those “willing to put themselves and their unborn children at such risk” by avoiding medical intervention.

“We mustn’t be looking at turning the clock back in any way to perhaps more so-called natural childbirth…. It’s essential that there’s a doctor in the loop.”

And then the hypocrisy to complain that the Government is taking away a woman’s right to choice in getting rid of the safety net for private hospital birthing!

Medical intervention is not required in the vast majority of births, and midwives are trained to assess the risks. To imply that a return to “natural births” would be a return to the mortality rates seen at the turn of the century is misleading in the extreme.

While occasionally a baby dies during a homebirth — and this is desperately sad — is this a good argument for ruling out homebirths altogether as an option? Babies also die in hospitals.

I have had one of each — a homebirth and a hospital birth. Both have their place. Surely what’s most important is the right for women to make informed choices about how and where they give birth.

It is taking away this right that will send us back to the turn of the century for women.

You can read Clare's very eloquent open letter to Minister Nicola Roxon here. And if this issue matters to you, please sign Homebirth Australia's petition.