on conspiracy theories

Happy New Year 2013 - according to the Gregorian calendar at least! I’ve been struggling to think of a suitably innovative post that would reflect ‘new year’s resolutions’ or ‘turning over a new leaf’ in some way to kick off the blog for the year, but it’s just not happening. So, in a new twist on the new leaf cliché I’m going to leave it un-turned and jump right back into blogging as usual.

Which brings me to conspiracy theories.

‘Gosh, that was a big jump,’ you might think. Or, if you were less charitable (and also well-read), ‘that was a complete non sequitur.’

Why conspiracy theories?

Well ... it all started when I was eating my lunch at work last week. One of my colleagues is seven months’ pregnant, so, naturally, the subject turned to babies, bibs and ... giving birth. Luckily, my colleague had attended births before - something she described as the best form of contraception there is - and had some idea what to expect. In good spirits, she was pretty clear that she would have an epidural as there was no way she wanted to go through the kind of pain that her sister experienced (and she witnessed). She did, however, ask me the dreaded question ‘what was it like for you?’

Now, as I’ve blogged previously, my birth experience is not really something you’d want to share to rally and support an expectant mother. While a traumatic birth is certainly a possibility, what I experienced was far from routine. I have therefore struggled on a number of occasions to think of what the best response would be to someone about to give birth who asked me this very question.

It's tricky. You don’t want to to sugar-coat, but you don’t want to scare the bejesus out of someone either - especially, as in this case, at seven months pregnant, the die is pretty much cast. Not to mention the fact that women are different, their babies are different, and their experiences will be different. ‘Telling the truth’ about childbirth might be the catch-cry of any number of books on motherhood from Kate Figes to Eleanor Black, but it’s also a lot harder than it seems. One woman’s truth is another woman’s fiction.

I 'ummed' and 'aahed' a bit before saying something ineffectual like 'it's good you've been to births before - that should give you an idea of what to expect'. This searing insight was followed up with something like ‘mine didn’t go so well, so it’s probably not a good guide as to what might happen.’ 

The understatement of the century.

But what is the thing to say?  It’s harder than you might think. One friend did have a straightforward natural birth that went pretty much as she wanted it. If I’d had that experience, I’d gladly tell anyone who asked. Other times, I’ve more obviously dodged the subject and said little to nothing at all. The so-called conspiracy of silence is less ‘government cover-up’ and more ‘if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’

The double bind I found myself in at lunch the other day reminded me of the scene in The Deer Hunter (1978), where Michael, Steven and Nick encounter a Green Beret at the wedding reception. The three friends are just about to leave for Vietnam and they encounter the returned Green Beret drinking quietly - and heavily - by himself in the bar, as everyone else carouses in the main hall. In high spirits - both literally and metaphorically - Michael, Steven and Nick try to connect with the returned soldier. They tell him that they too are soon to 'go airborne' and ask ‘what’s it like over there?’ He tries to ignore them, preferring to deal with his demons privately. The more he does so, the more they want him to answer. Eventually, surrounded, he turns to them, raises his glass, and toasts them with a wry ‘f*** it.’

Caught between the desire to warn and be helpful, and the desire not to scare someone and potentially impact the positive frame of mind they’ll need to get through the experience, mothers have been accused of perpetuating a conspiracy of silence, particularly in relation to childbirth and the relentlessness of parenting. 

In 1997, Australian researcher Carol McVeigh published the results of a study of 79 first-time mothers, many of whom spoke about the conspiracy of silence, bewailing the fact that no-one told them what to expect, (as I myself did in an earlier post). Since McVeigh published her research, there has been an explosion of mummy-literature - books and blogs, academic research and novels - that not only exhort us to ‘tell the truth’ about motherhood, but also proceed to ‘tell the truth’ about the author’s own experiences. With all the truth-telling going on, it’s a wonder that the idea of a ‘conspiracy of silence’ still persists. 

Perhaps it's as my midwife said, that ‘women just don’t want to hear it.’ I know when I sat down to read Kate Figes’ Life After Birth while I was still pregnant, I quickly abandoned it after reading the back cover, as it just seemed too depressing. I also know that recommending her book to me was one way that a mother I knew had tried to break the conspiracy of silence for me. 

This blog is, I guess, my way. 

Next time, a bright-eyed mum-to-be asks me what my experience was like, I’ll know what to do. Instead of trying to capture the highs and the lows, the joys and the pain - while simultaneously trying not put them off all together - I’ll say, ‘It’s hard to sum up in just a few sentences. Here, read my blog instead. It’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Oh, and 70, 000 words and counting ...’

Or perhaps I should just offer the Green Beret’s toast instead?

review: Confessions of a Coffee Group Drop Out

On a typically blustery Wellington spring day, I had no choice but to take the baby to the local library so that we could get out of the house. If we had braved the playground there’s no telling if either of our hairdos would recover. Given that the baby has virtually no hair, this is really saying something. So, as she rampaged around the shelves, trying her best to get in the lift and upend the rubbish bin, I surveyed the Bestsellers shelf. In between the most recent Booker winner and Jamie Oliver’s latest offering, I happened upon Eleanor Black’s Confessions of a Coffee Group Dropout: Navigating New Motherhood, which was published this year. I had a quick flick through it and discovered that it was a New Zealand journalist’s reflections on new motherhood: wry, highly personalised, and sprinkled with soundbites from interviews with other new mums.

From the cover, you could be forgiven for thinking it was chick lit, especially given the predominance of (do I even need to tell you this?) Barbie pink. So much so, that I was kinda embarrassed to go and get it out. I had to get out Julian Barnes’ Sense of Ending as well, just to restore my credibility to myself (with Julian Barnes? Oh dear). Although I did start reading Black's book first.

It reads like a light version of both Life After Birth - but without the historical research and overt political agenda - and novelist Anne Enright’s Making Babies - but without her idiosyncratic brand of witty bleakness. Which is not to say it is all kittens and puppies. Far from it. Black’s book tackles such subjects as unwanted advice, dropping out of coffee groups, competitive mummy wars and trying to do it all. I can imagine her as an amusingly negative alternative mum, rolling her eyeballs behind the backs of the other mothers in her coffee group who are comparing notes about their favourite preserving methods. It was an entertaining read, despite the not-too-promising cover.

But, like Kate Figes, Black seems concerned with ‘truth-telling’, and trying to reassure both expectant and new mums that the perfect ‘supermum’ doesn’t exist and that everyone lies about childbirth and childrearing. Although she doesn’t overtly espouse a feminist politics, her myth-busting certainly seems to have a pro-woman agenda. She uses the trope of ‘lying’ a lot, which I found kind of intriguing. Black almost goes so far as to posit that there is something of a conspiracy about childbirth, where mums don’t tell expectant mums what to really expect. Even though childhood seems to be increasingly wrapped up in crass sentimentalism, I’m kind of wondering who these new mums are who really think that childbirth will be a piece of cake, and that doing the lion’s share of bringing up a baby is going to be easy. I mean, it’s not called labour for no reason, right?

There’s no doubt that the actual experience is not something you can really prepare for - whether it’s a birth that doesn’t go anything like you thought it would, or a child who cries all day for no apparent reason, or feeling like your identity has been eroded because you don’t have an income and no-one looks you in the eye anymore. But I’m not sure that the opposition of lying and truth really captures it. I wonder if the emphasis on ‘truth-telling’ is a - perhaps unconscious - attempt to construct a universal shared female experience (ignoring the fact, of course, that not all women have babies). If we were all honest about what having babies was like, then we would all be able to find that womanly solidarity that continues to elude is, and would just stop all these competitive mummy wars and dull domestic chitchat.

Nice as that desire is, I think it’s just as limiting as the more sentimental narratives around, because it attempts to erase difference at the same time as insisting on it. What I mean is that, on the one hand, Black tells us that there are many different ways to be a mother and you have to find what suits you (so far, so good), but on the other hand, she’s also kind of dismissive of coffee groups and various other activities that some women find essential to getting through the day.

I wonder if the crux of the issue is less about an opposition between truth and lies - which begs a lot of questions, not least who’s truth? - and more about embodiment. By that I mean both emphasising the material aspects of lived human experience, and remaining focussed on the differences that embodiment necessarily entails. And those differences - which could be related to class or race, or location, or support networks, or eduction (to name a few) - are determining. Something as profound as giving birth marks women’s bodies - which are already different - in different ways, and alters the ways in which they perceive themselves, and others. While the experience gives women things in common, it doesn’t make them the same, and never will. Perhaps the mistake is imagining that it might?