Rethinking Mothers' Day

It’s that time of year again: the day when care, compromise, sacrifice and love are reduced to sentimentalism and cliched tokens of appreciation. It might not come as much of a surprise to learn that Mothers’ Day, as conventionally defined, kind of makes me cringe. 

Before I became a mother, I found the idea that families’ emotions were manipulated for commercial gain somewhat cynical (which is not to say that I neglected my mother on Mothers’ Day - I’m not totally heartless!). After becoming a mother myself, I’ve become even more troubled by it (although gifts and general spoiling will be appreciatively received). What troubles me now is less the tokens of gratitude and sweet home-made cards - there are, of course, many ways to show appreciation without lining the pockets of florists and confectioners - than what I see as the sentimental notions of motherhood being peddled to justify it all. 

I personally find these notions constricting because I don’t think having a baby made me less able to work and make a significant contribution in my chosen career (especially when compared with my imputed ability to do laundry and make apple pie). Nor do I think it made me less able to see that many of the systemic inequalities that women experience are closely linked to becoming mothers and raising children. Nor did it cause me to forget that becoming a mother nearly caused me to lose my life. While there are plenty of positive moments to offset this, motherhood is a also a serious business and, to me, luxury soaps don’t quite do justice to it.

Last year, I wrote about the history of the Mothers Day celebrated in New Zealand and some other western countries as a day which began as rallying call for pacificism in the context of the US Civil War. It was soon transformed into a paean to the cult of domesticity (y’know like ‘I love you mum, because you wash my socks’).  I also wrote a little about an international campaign aimed at decreasing maternal mortality around the world. For some women, becoming a Mama is much less about booties and bassinets than life and death. In 2008, for example, Oxfam estimated that half a million women die in childbirth each year. This year, the Huffington Post similarly profiled a range of global issues affecting mothers and encouraged people to donate to charities that support families to survive and thrive. 

And then I came across a series of stories that caused me to re-think how I see Mothers Day.  

This week, while reading one of my favourite blogs, I came across this Mama’s Day campaign targeting immigration reform in the USA, a part of the Stronger Families initiative. As part of their campaign aimed at encouraging decision-makers to rethink discriminatory polices that cause immense hardship to women and their children, Stronger Families is running a blog carnival in which bloggers from a range of different viewpoints share what motherhood and mothers mean to them. The posts address mothering from many different subject positions, including gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, class, immigration status, (dis) ability, and age. They are well worth a read to not only counteract the sugary narratives often presented in the mainstream media, but also as a reminder that one’s own story and way of being is not the only one, that families do not always equally enjoy their human rights. I was particularly affected by this story, this one and this one. 

On a different website, this story from a lesbian parent reminded me that while I might cringe about Mothers' Day, others celebrate the hard-won privilege of being able to be included in the narrative of the day. In turn, it reminded me of the story which New Zealand MP Louisa Wall told during her speech for the third and final reading of the Marriage Equality Bill. Wall’s story told of a lesbian mother whose partner had to have her name struck off her daughter’s birth certificate when she died, because only one person in a gay couple could be recognised as a parent or guardian. The law change now allows for both people in a gay couple to be legally recognised as a parent of an adopted child (see Wall’s speech in full here). Elsewhere, Michelle Obama's self-description as a Mom-in-chief has been interpreted as a revolutionary act for African-American women.

These stories reminded me that some groups of women have been denied the privilege of sharing in the narrative of socially sanctioned - and sanctified - motherhood. What makes me cringe about Mothers’ Day are the constraints it imposes on women like me who occupy a position of relative privilege - e.g. white, middle class, in a heterosexual relationship socially- sanctioned by marriage - but that this position is one not universally shared by all mothers. Many of these mothers continue to fight for their recognition as mothers, and for the legitimacy of their ways of mothering, as these Indigenous women do. Hearing the stories of women who do not share the privileges I do reminds me that we still have a long way to go to see mothers as fully-rounded people managing different pressures, desires and needs, and to support them accordingly.

Perhaps, after all, Mothers’ Day is a good day to reflect on re-evaluating and re-valuing what motherhood means.

review: Origins

It was with some trepidation that I picked up this book. 

Written by science journalist Annie Murphy Paul, Origins: How the nine months before birth shape the rest of our lives (2010) threatened to be another ‘blame the mother’ - even before she’s given birth! - tome, this time in the guise of a popular overview of the latest developments in the study of fetal origins of adult disease. ‘Fetal origins’ is a burgeoning field of scientific research, as more and more studies have produced suggestive - but not necessarily conclusive - findings that indicate that some diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, as well as mental health problems, may get their start in utero. Other research has suggested that other aspects of our lives may also be affected by our pre-natal life, including educational attainment and material wellbeing. These are novel - and potentially controversial - claims. 

Intrigued, but with spider senses heightened for anti-feminist or overly deterministic polemic, I decided to delve in and see what the boffins were saying.  I was relieved to discover that Paul shared some of my concerns, and gestured to them in various parts of the book. Moreover, her narrative style was personal and accessible. 

Pregnant with her second child at the time of writing the book, Paul, preoccupied with the usual pregnancy concerns (‘what should I eat?’ ‘will this affect the baby?’) decided to explore further into what really happens in the those first nine months. The book, structured into nine month chapters each exploring a different field of research, also traces her own altered feelings and perceptions as she passes through the stages of her pregnancy: how she (secretly) wishes for another boy; how she starts to see everyone around her in a doubled way as both person and fetus simultaneously; how she experiences ‘Mommy Despair’ (not quite ante-natal depression but in the same spectrum). We also follow her to obstetric appointments, and hear her try and explain to her three-year old son about the new baby inside her tummy (his reaction: ‘that’s silly, mummy’). 

Going through the experience of pregnancy herself as she researches and writes this book enables Paul to steer a middle ground between interest in the research and a slightly distancing skepticism (does fetal origins research equal determinism?). She writes:

But science can’t tell us everything we need to know about this new perspective; there’s always a gap where the hard evidence of the laboratory meets the soft flesh of our bodies. So I’ll also embark on this exploration as a pregnant woman, someone who is living what she’s learning about. (pp 9-10)

Among the topics she covers are: the effects of both traumatic and everyday stress (three months); the effect of chemicals and pollution in the environment on a developing fetus (four months) the impact of environment on sex preference (five months); and the impact of diet and lifestyle in the context of concerns about determinism (seven months).  

In the course of exploring the latest research in these areas she muses that the difference between nature and nurture is not as simple nor as binary as people think: poor health may not only be a result of genes and/or environment, but also a result of the complex interplay of developing fetal biology and the intra-uterine environment (also biological). For example, some researchers have studied data from such ‘natural experiments’ as the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-45 or the famines caused by the Great Leap Forward in China to explore the impact of maternal malnutrition on babies born after the time period. In each case, researchers found evidence that infants born after these events had higher rates of still births, birth defects, low birth weights, and infant mortality. Furthermore, these infants grew up to have higher rates of obesity and heart disease than those born under ‘normal conditions’ (pp 23-4). These findings seem a little counter-intuitive to the lay reader: why would the effects of malnutrition - caused by deprivation - lead to poorer health outcomes that are more commonly thought to be the result of affluence?

This was a question that bothered British doctor David Barker, one of the earliest of the current wave of fetal origins researchers. In his own research into birth records in the UK, and the subsequent lives of these infants, he found similar patterns in some of the poorest areas of the country, and was led to the inescapable conclusion that low birth weights meant a higher risk of heart disease in middle age (p 25). Barker explained what he thinks these findings mean:  ‘I think the fetuses are actually taking cues from the intrauterine environment and tailoring their physiology accordingly. They’re preparing themselves for the kind of life they will encounter on the other side of the womb.’ (p 27)

When Barker’s findings were first published in 1989, they were not well-received - even ridiculed - as researchers at the time were focussed on the environmental and lifestyle factors in disease. Since then, however, fetal origins research has taken off in a number of different fields, including the medical, psychological, and economic. 

The results of the research Paul summarises are very interesting, but also alarming, particularly given that I am also pregnant with a second child. I’m already conscious of the slightly sanctimonious lists of things I should and shouldn’t be doing, and still can’t quite over the feeling that the aggregate of all this fetal origins research may be to position the rights of a fetus over the rights of a pregnant woman in a more coercive way. Some medical researchers have also sounded a similar note of caution. Physician Darshak Sanghavi, for example, is concerned that if people become convinced that destiny is determined in the womb, societies will no longer invest in the welfare of individuals: ‘why bother funding children’s health initiatives or universal preschool, if physical and cognitive functioning have been set in utero?’ (p 195). 

Nowhere is this concern about the possible ends to which fetal origins research could be put more palpable than in the contentious area of abortion. In one chapter, Paul cites evidence of the impact of ‘wantedness’ on a baby’s post-natal life: one study found that an ‘unwanted’ child born due to abortion restrictions was as much as 50 per cent less likely to survive into old age than the average child born in the same era (p 219).

Paul, to her credit, does address the minefield of abortion,  She asks all the researchers she interviews about the impact of their research on debates over the legality and morality of abortion, and notes that virtually all of them are uneasy about this topic:

They grow uneasy, shifting in their chairs and hesitating over their words. Fetal origins is concerned with the relationship between prenatal experience and postnatal life, they say at last, leaving me to complete the thought. For the aborted fetus, there is no postnatal life, so the matter of fetal origins is moot. (p 217)

Paul, rightly I think, believes this response side-steps the issue of the political ends to which fetal origins research could be put, not least in the United States where there have been some high-profile court-cases that have upheld the right to life of the fetus over the wishes of the mother.  In societies still dominated by patriarchal values, fetal origins research could well be pressed into service in future court proceedings of this nature. 

As a result, I’m not so convinced by Paul’s assertion that fetal origins research discomfits both sides of the abortion debate:

Advocates of the right to abortion, for example, have at times portrayed the fetus as no more than an inert blob of tissue. Fetal origins research, with its emerging picture of a learning, adapting, responding fetus, makes that evasion less tenable. For their part, opponents of abortion have sometimes preferred to consider the fetus in splendid isolation, relegating the pregnant woman to the role of human incubator. Fetal origins research, with its elaboration of the intimate interplay between pregnant woman and fetus, does away with the imaginary separation (218).

In this effort to strike a middle path between two extremes, I think Paul creates a false dichotomy. While some advocates for a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and control of her own fertility (whether that means access to legal and safe abortion, or the ability to have children without being coerced into an unwanted abortion or sterilisation) may have represented the fetus in this way, I think the larger issues in feminist discourse on abortion have been both ‘choice’ (in the sense of self-determination, a fundamental human right) and the notion that ‘every child be a wanted child.’ I do not see how learning more about fetal origins undermines those basic principles. Far from it, the importance of fetal origins could be held up as further underscoring the importance of women being able to fully control their own fertility, of ensuring that every child they have is wanted, and will receive the best care - both pre- and post-natally - they can provide.

In framing the issue this way, I think Paul inadvertently reproduces (pardon the pun) the notion that abortion is an easy and frivolous ‘lifestyle’ choice for promiscuous women. By contrast, I can easily see how fetal origins research could be high-jacked by conservative opponents of women’s rights: already, the ability to detect fetal heartbeats at just seven week’s gestation has led to emotive anti-abortion slogans like ‘abortion stops a beating heart’. When there have not only been cases of women forced by court order to have children against their will - and what will the health outcomes of those children be like? - and, recently, a woman left to die because her rights were seen as secondary to that of her dying fetus, I think there are some serious ethical and political questions that need to be asked about the implications of this research. To be clear, I am not at all suggesting an anti-science approach and the abandoning of these research lines. Rather, I am suggesting that such research take place in the context of enhanced and protected women’s rights.

Paul may say all the right things about avoiding fetal determinism by ensuring programmes to address pre-natal risk indicators (like low birth-weight) are meant to support women and their children, rather than co-erce or label them. I’m a little more cynical, however, about the ways such programmes might be targeted and deployed in societies still dominated by patriarchal values. 

And, of course, much of the fetal origins research Paul highlights could lead to policy changes that would benefit everyone, not just pregnant women: in these cases, fetal origins research could lead to greater regulation of pollutants, toxic environments, food additives and so on. Paul also looks at the most recent work of economist Amartya Sen (already famous for his work on global poverty and the positive impact women’s empowerment has on children, families and communities). Sen’s latest work has focussed on the ‘hidden penalties of gender inequality’: the effects of pregnant women’s disadvantage on their fetuses. Sen argues that ‘women’s deprivation in terms of nutrition and healthcare rebounds on the society in the form of ill-health of their offspring - males and females alike.’  He comments further on the ironic implications of this: ‘We in India treat ... women so badly that most are undernourished and give birth to underweight babies. It is known that cardiovascular diseases hit men much more than women. So when you mistreat ... women, the men eventually suffer.’ (p 222)

So what I am left with at the end of this by turns fascinating and frustrating, but always compelling, book, is that motherhood is crucially important right from the moment of conception, whether one is a man or a woman; a mother or a child-free woman; a fetus, child or adult. This means that everyone has a stake in better supporting mothers and families: protecting women’s rights only threatens ideology not people.

Conserving energy

You know that saying about the road to Hell? Yeah, well I had all sorts of good intentions after my long period of radio silence of getting back into my regular blogging habits, but ... I got a little derailed by a full-on couple of weeks, which have been personally capped by the likelihood of losing my job (it has been ‘disestablished’ under a current proposal for a new organisational structure, which is due to be finalised at the end of May) and a bout of lurgy that took me back to my sick-bed just as I was finally getting over that pesky morning sickness. Hmmm, I know, first world problems, right?  

To put it in perspective, this was the same fortnight that saw the Boston marathon bombings, a series of bombings in Iraq ahead of provincial elections, the death and funeral of divisive former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a major industrial accident in Texas and, more positively, the passing of legislation to ensure marriage equality in New Zealand and then France (the 13th and 14th countries to pass such legislation). Among other things. All things considered, being a bit sick, but otherwise reasonably healthy, and still having a pay-check while my organisation settles on and into a new structure seem like things worth being thankful for. 

All of this perspective then got me thinking about energy. More specifically, about how to conserve and renew it. Not in the environmental and economic sense of energy sources, whether fossil or renewable, clean, green or fracked-up. Nor in the sense of excess energy that needs to be expended, as in Georges Bataille’s Accursed Share ... or in the case of an over-active toddler.

No, I mean, energy in the sense of the life-force - or lack of it - that each person draws on to get through the day. You know how some days you feel like you can do anything, and if you get a few extra tasks to do, you can take them in your stride, no problem? (I dimly recollect these kind of days). Or some days you just feel so ground down that everything, no matter how small, seems like a chore and an imposition? Objectively, there may be little difference to tell between the kinds of things a person has to do on each of these days. The difference between them lies in the reserves of energy a person can draw on in order to get through them. Those reserves of time and energy can be eroded by any number of things: for example, a decline in physical health, over-committing oneself, lack of support, abuse.  On the other hand, they can also be built up: for example, by enjoying your work, having a supportive network of family and/or friends, volunteering, exercising.  

Each person occupies a series of roles that require some of this energy: for example, as a family member (and most people occupy more than one role in their families), a friend, community member, person with interests and activities (I hate the word ‘hobbies’), workers and so on. For these roles to be active, each requires some of your time and energy. Most days, it’s a question of making sure those are as in balance as it’s possible for them to be, given the range of other factors going on in people’s lives. Some of these roles are energising: it can be fun to relax with friends or family or to feel like you’ve made a bit of a difference in a piece of work or in community activity. Other roles can suck your energy: a proposed job-restructure is incredibly de-motivating and de-stabilising to an organisation and its workers, even if their jobs aren’t on the line.

One of the things that was absorbing my energy recently was feeling bad that I wasn’t able to contribute to the care of my daughter while I was experiencing morning sickness in the way that I had before I got pregnant. In order to get out the door in the morning, my husband and I had previously split the jobs that needed to be done to do this. Even though it was obviously great that my husband took over nearly all the toddler-related wrangling while I was sick, I felt bad that this was the case. I also felt bad that the increased level of care he gave her meant that she increasingly turned to him if she was upset or wanted something, or started saying things like ‘I don’t want my mummy’ when she passed by on her way to breakfast. (Sidenote: this was also the period when she started saying things like ‘I don’t want my feet’ so I didn’t take her words too much to heart, even though they stung a little.)

It was while thinking about energy and how much each role needs, that I started to think more about the new role that I was (and am) assuming: that of mother-to-be. Not that anyone was accusing me of malingering or anything and my sense of feeling-bad was entirely self-imposed, but I realised that I hadn’t yet made the mental switch to the fact that I am now no longer ‘just’ the mother of one child. That second child might not yet be born, but it was definitely making its presence felt and demanding energy from me. And I am currently the only one who can provide that energy. While I was struggling to keep my breakfast down, I was also growing a foetus and a placenta, and various other parts of my body were changing too to accommodate them. Thought about this way, the energy my husband is directly investing in the second child is minimal at present, even as the energy he is putting into the care of the first is increasing. This shifting of energy, of trying to find the ideal balance between all my (and our) roles, is only going to become more necessary once the baby is actually born. 

In one sense, this is all kind of obvious. But, for me, it actually required me to sit down and think about how and where I use my energy to realise that feeling bad about being unable to care for my daughter in the way I’d like while having ‘morning’ sickness is a waste of time and energy. Not least because she doesn’t care that I feel bad that I didn’t get her up in the morning, she only cares that I get her up in the morning or, if I don’t, that someone else does. So, instead, I have come to feel glad that she is spending more time with her dad in the mornings, that I have a husband who’s happy to step up, and that admitting to myself that I don’t have the unlimited energy resources of a fictional Superwoman is both a good thing and a good way to embark on this latest stage of motherhood.

Taking the plunge

It’s been a long time between drinks, both literally and metaphorically. The last time I had an alcoholic beverage - a very nice glass of gewurztraminer - was sometime in early January. And the last time I posted to this blog was shortly after the national census in March. Why this combination of abstinence and radio silence?

Well ... drum roll please ... because I have once  again taken the plunge and am nearly four months pregnant, with the baby due in early October. Woo .. hoo?

The main reason for my fall-off in motherhood-type musings, then, is that winning combination of marrow-deep exhaustion, endless nausea and frequent vomiting that characterise the first trimester (well, mine, at least). In this physical state, I’m feeling ahead of the game if I can get out of bed without being sick, drop off the child to her carer and get through a day of work.  

It’s been interesting - well, it’s passed the time anyway - to compare last time and this time, and I imagine the comparisons will continue all the way through the rest of the pregnancy to birth and beyond. Given that this blog was started well after my last pregnancy and birth experience, which I wrote about with the benefit of hindsight, I thought it might be fun - for me at least - to write about the second time round as it happens. Well, I won‘t be live-blogging the actual birth, but you get the idea.   

This time last year, I was still feeling pretty ambivalent about going through it all again. But time passes, and the idea of having another baby became more appealing. Or maybe I got to the point where I'd forgotten just enough of that very intense first year for it to seem like a good idea to take the plunge again.

So what’s happened so far? What’s the same and what’s different?

Having changed GPs, this time round I was congratulated on being pregnant, given a confirmation pregnancy test as well as comprehensive information on lead maternity carers ... and have not yet been compared to a car. Already this is a drastic improvement on how my previous doctor handled the news last time.

My current GP sent me for a 7-week dating scan. Having a lived appreciation of what is involved in bringing up one child, I spent much of the time beforehand convinced that I was going to have twins ... or even triplets. After drinking a litre of water in under an hour, so the radiologist would be able to find their way to the relevant bits, I sloshed my way to the ultrasound room. Again, we saw a shadowy egg sac and heard a beating heart. Fortunately, like last time, it was just the one. Phew. 

I have been for an optional 12-week scan, the principal reason for which is to screen for suspected chromosonal ‘abnormalities’. I had decidedly more mixed feelings about this scan this time round. Last time, I was excited about any opportunity to see what was going on in there, and the reason for actually having the scan felt very abstract and unreal. But this time round, I have a greater awareness of why the scan is offered and what it might mean for us, if the initial scan indicates that there might be a problem. I could’ve chosen not to have it, but at the same time I want to know even if if means facing more difficult choices further down the track. I’ve yet to receive the results, which are due next week. Fingers crossed.

While having the 12-week scan, the radiologist had some trouble trying to get a decent view of the embryo. While he focussed on getting a good image, he didn’t say much to me. In a state of heightened anxiety, I over-interpreted his silence to mean that he must’ve seen something concerning. Instead of the excitement of last time, I started feeling really upset watching the strange blob on the screen move around. I was on the verge of tears when he finally spoke, announcing that it’d taken him a while to get a good view. For the future, communication helps dude. Especially after my scan-o-rama experience last time.  

Even though I have been very tired and sick over the last few weeks, I’m fairly sure it hasn’t been quite as bad as last time (or maybe I’m just trying to kid myself this is the case). I’m starting to feel more like myself now, though some days are still better than others. I always go out with a trusty plastic bag or three with me: these came in handy the times I was sick right outside a core government department (on more than one occasion, I might add),  and at my desk just before a big meeting. On the plus side, I was less concerned with what might happen at the meeting, than with trying to look like I hadn’t lost my breakfast immediately beforehand. I think this is called perspective.

With a child around already whose needs and wants are very real and pressing, this baby - who I am yet to feel moving around - still feels very abstract and faraway. I’m finding it really hard to imagine having two little people around the place. The best I can come up with is a kind of clone of the one we already have ... only smaller. But, as I continually hear, babies are all different, and I’m wondering what new and special tricks this little one will have up his or her sleeve. Difficulty breastfeeding? All night feeding marathons? Reflux? Who knows...

Also in the abstract - and it’ll be interesting to compare what I write now to what I experience after the baby’s birth - I’m feeling like I might be a little more prepared this time round. Or, at least, that I have more of an idea of what to expect: how time-consuming a newborn baby is, how much they feed, how they might disrupt your sleep, the potential for feeling isolated, how you have to scale back what you can reasonably expect to do in a day and so on. But perhaps this is a comforting illusion? Time will tell ...

Finally, in quieter moments, there is one thing that I hope will be very different this time around. The birth experience itself. After last time, the doctors at the hospital assured us that there was no reason I couldn’t have another child and that it was very unlikely what had happened then would happen again. Unlikely ... but not impossible, says a small voice in my brain, who is still not entirely convinced that another baby is a great idea. For me, then, taking the plunge a second time round is about the triumph of hope over experience, of feeling more informed and preparing myself as much as I can (including specifying a preference for an emergency caesarean over forceps, if the need arises), and of feeling the fear and doing it anyway. 

Who counts?

Tuesday last was Census night in New Zealand. Delayed for two years because of the devastating Canterbury earthquake of 22 February 2011, this census is expected to provide an up-to-date and accurate stocktake of New Zealand and its people. The main reason given for this $72 million exercise is to gain better, more recent information in order to inform government policy and the allocation of government funding, as well as assisting in business planning.

The last time I filled in a New Zealand census form was in the late 1990s. I recall struggling over some of the ill-fitting questions then, but - if I’d thought about it all - had expected the questions would be a little more nuanced this time round. 

Wrong.

There were three sets of questions that gave me pause: those relating to sex, number of children, and unpaid work. The Statistics NZ (SNZ) spokesperson reminded those of us inclined to ‘over-react’ to poorly framed questions that the census is not designed to get a picture of us as individuals, but rather to create an overall picture of what the mass of individuals looks like. There is an incentive to keep the questions broadly similar in order to make meaningful time comparisons between censuses. But, I wonder, how accurate can that overall picture really be if the instrument designed to depict it is a little on the blunt side? 

I first stumbled over the apparently straightforward sex option of male and female. Why were these the only options provided? Even soap operas have heard of intersex and trans people. Apparently, though, some of the leading boffins in the country haven’t. Or, worse, apparently didn’t think this information counts. And, by extension, are there no policy or funding implications for this information, in health for example?  

I am aware that SNZ, in other non-census guises, have met with a variety of advocacy groups in this area. Increasingly, in other contested areas of identification, such as ethnicity, SNZ are relying on a method of self-identification. And there is even now a facility for those who do not wish to record M or F on their passports to now use an X (indeterminate / unspecified) designation. So why the insistence on binarism in the census? 

SNZ have been advising those spearheading a campaign to tick both M and F options in the census that they will impute ( i.e. guess) their sex from their other answers (number of births, for example), and that the best method for answering the question is to select the sex that relates best to how you live your life now. While this may solve the problem for trans people, where does that leave those who are intersex, those have the sexual characteristics of both sexes?

Unimpressed, I moved on.  

Then I came across the question that has hurt and offended many parents of children who were not considered to be ‘live births’.  The question asks women for the number of children they have had who were born alive. The only other options are ‘none’ or ‘object to answering this question’. I guess option 3 was some attempt at sensitivity, though interestingly the only other question that offers this option is the one on religion. I also wondered what policy functions were served by this question: everyone has to have an individual census form - including babies just born on the day of the census - and birth, deaths and marriages data would contain a much more accurate picture of stillbirths, infant mortality and live births. Presumably it is this more accurate information that informs health planning and funding. So, I’m genuinely interested to know, why do we have to answer this question?  Being paranoid, I almost wonder if it is to catch out the people who put two ticks on the sex question ...

But the highest raised eyebrows of the night - and the questions most pertinent to this blog - were reserved for the questions on paid and unpaid work. For the question on paid work, you were asked to specify the number of hours you worked. You were even asked to include the hours under this question if you engaged in unpaid work for a family business. There was no facility under this question on employment to specify that you had a full-time unpaid caregiving role in the home (whether of a child, disabled family member or elderly family member).  Several questions later, however, there was a question on unpaid labour. It asked all respondents to identify whether they engaged in unpaid labour in the form of: household chores, childcare (in your own household), care of the ill or disabled (who are part of your household), childcare (for someone not in the household), or care of the ill or disabled not in your household, or voluntary work in the community.  It did not ask for any specification of hours. 

I’m sure I’m only not the only peeved and under-valued parent who filled in this question by noting the number of hours I worked unpaid on my form and writing a note to the effect that SNZ would only get a proper appreciation of the labour force, if they sought hours for both paid and unpaid labour. For the 1.7 million people who filled in their census forms online, there is unlikely to have been any facility to register issues with any of the questions.

Other censuses do ask further questions about unpaid work. The 2011 census of England and Wales, for example, asked respondents to specify the hours they worked without pay, giving a hourly range to select from. The catch? The unpaid work specified was for elder care or care of the disabled. In this census, childcare is not only unpaid, but also rendered invisible.

No doubt SNZ would point out that there are not one but two post-censal surveys that capture more detail about the nature of unpaid work. One, the General Social Survey, asks about voluntary work in the community and about care for those not in your own household. It is based on a series of survey questions put to a  large random sample of people. The other, the Time Use Survey, includes an activity diary for its participants, so does incorporate whatever unpaid work people are engaged in. The last Time Use Survey revealed the not-at-all surprising fact that women do more of the unpaid labour in the home, and that the women who did the lion’s share of this labour were in their child-bearing years. Funny, that. So what policy is being implemented on the basis of these time-use surveys?  This is a lot harder to discern.

In spite of these two surveys, which provide a fuller picture of unpaid work, my issue with the fact that there is a disparity placed on the value of paid and unpaid work in the census is that it sends a clear message about who and what counts. And that is money earned, rather than time spent. This is ground covered, famously, by Marilyn Waring in If Women Counted, later made into a documentary, Who’s Counting? which you can watch here in its entirety. Waring makes the point that if a person is not visible as a producer in a nation’s economy then they will be invisible in terms of receiving any benefit from that economy. For women, this can be seen in loss of retirement savings, risk of poverty in the event of marital breakdown, and a wide range of gender inequities.

Elsewhere, Waring comments that ‘unpaid work relieves expenditure by the State.’ This was demonstrated in a recent New Zealand case where the government was found to be discriminating against the parental caregivers of adult disabled children who were not paid for their care compared with external caregivers who were. The government contested the caregivers’ case saying the care they provided was part of their ‘natural familial duties’ and therefore not eligible for funding. The costs that would be involved in both paying them adequately and changing policy were also included as reasons for not doing so in the Crown case. Fortunately, the Courts accepted that these unpaid workers were not only working but were also being discriminated against on the basis of family status. The government appealed the decision, which went to the Court of Appeal, who again found in the caregivers’ favour. Reluctantly, the government accepted the verdict without further appeal but made it clear that it didn’t think ‘its’ money was best spent in this area.

Given that such a clear case of discrimination for unpaid workers was met with a tough fight by the government - who based part of their case on the false premise that the caregivers weren’t working at all, but rather engaged in a familial duty of care as part of a so-called ‘implied social contract’, it seems unlikely that the unpaid work of love that other parents engage in will be recognised in any form anytime soon.

Perhaps that is why unpaid care work doesn’t count for much. Because to recognise caregiving as work that should be compensated - even if not at so-called market-value - is to recognise a fundamental shift in what societies value: time spent rather than money earned, nurture rather than exploitation, equity rather than competition, families (of all kinds) and communities rather than individuals.   

But aren’t those the things that really count?

Timing it right

A couple of years ago, when I was only just pregnant, I went to a birthday lunch attended by a range of extended family members who were, shall we say, of a significant age. At one point, I got talking to a woman who was I’m not sure how many cousins removed from me.  I don’t know how we got onto the topic of children - I was still within the 12-week wall of disclosure and hadn’t broadcast my condition - but she told me about her brood of children and how she’d had a fifth child  at the ripe old age of 40, well after her first four, who were evenly and properly spaced in her twenties. Bumping into an acquaintance at the doctor’s surgery while going to a routine check-up, she was told ‘Oh Mrs C_____, you’re the talk of the town!’

OK, it was a small town, but still. Clearly, even a married woman couldn’t avoid the gentle opprobrium of being the talk of the town for having what was thought to be an inappropriately-timed baby, a visible sign that the couple in question were still getting busy at an unseemly age.

This was, of course, a wee while ago now.  Mrs C______ was the talk of her town in the early 1970s, having had most of her children, as was the done thing, in her twenties in the early 1960s.

In New Zealand, as in a number of other western countries, the average age of first births has risen sharply since the mid-twentieth centruy. In the 1950s and 1960s, the average age of first births was much lower, averaging in the early 20s. In the 1975, the median age was 25. In 2012, Statistics New Zealand established, with the usual caveats that: "the median age of mothers giving birth to their first child is roughly 28 years, two years younger than the average across all mothers. The median age for both childbirth and birth of first child has remained steady since 2001. The median age of women giving birth to their second child is roughly 32 years.' Furthermore, women are, overall, having fewer children. 

Clearly, women’s consensus on when ‘the right time’ is to have  a baby has shifted in the last half-century. But this ‘consensus’ is not only the result of individual ‘choice’ (and biological capability), but also societal pressure. Teenage mothers are frowned on, as are mothers over forty. Even those past their early 30s receive some censure, not least in the description of their pregnancies. At 34, my first pregnancy was clinically described as “geriatric primigravida’ or, in other words, ‘way old at time of first pregnancy’ (humph!). Furthermore, societal approval or censure depends on who it is having children - if white and middle-class, you should be having children and are being selfish by leaving it late or not at all; if brown and poor, you should be having few to no children, so as to minimise bludging off the state.

But it is not simply societal pressure that polices ‘the right time.’ Finding ‘the right time’ - assuming a woman has some choice in the matter - to have children in order to balance the competing demands of career - and again assuming this is something a woman wants - and family has been a plank of second and third-wave feminism. And it varies from woman to woman, career to career.  Emily Monosson’s edited collection about the experience of women scientists, for example, traced the consequences for each mother in the timing of their children. Some had their children as graduate students, and several of those then had to negotiate ‘alternative career paths’ or effectively position themselves as unecumbered in order to fight for tenure (a couple had partners who took on the full-time care-giving role in order to do this).  Others had their children once they had received tenure, but had to either change the focus of their work - for example, pursuing a policy path rather than a lab-based path - or fight to be taken seriously by minimising the ‘distractions’ from their work. In no case did any of these mothers have an easy time of it.  Those who came closest were those whose partners shouldered the traditionally female role of primary care-giver.

There seems to be an idea that if only the magical right time can be found, women can plan their families and careers, with minimal financial and emotional penalties for motherhood.  But when is it?  Early, so you can physically recover more quickly, have more energy to parent, and years yet to decide on a career? Or later, so you can establish yourself in a career, negotiate good benefits and be a more mature parent?  There are pros and cons to both. On the web, parenting sites, medical sites, financial planning sites, life-coaching sites, and even respectable news sites too abound with varying answers to the question of ‘when is the right time to have children’?

It's a key issue covered by Anne-Marie Slaughter in her provocative 2012 article, ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have it All’, in which, among other things, she debunked the myth of ‘finding the right time.’ She comments:

The most important sequencing issue is when to have children ... the truth is, neither sequence is optimal, and both involve trade-offs that men do not have to make. You should be able to have a family if you want one - however and whenever your life circumstances allow - and still have the career you desire. If more women could strike this balance, more women would reach leadership positions, they could make it easier for more women to stay in the workforce.

A range of books by other feminist writers - Anne Crittenden, Madeleine Kunin, Marilyn Waring, to name but a few - have detailed exactly what these trade-offs are: loss of income, loss of status, loss of future benefits (such a retirement savings), increased insecurity in the event of marital breakdown. And an increasing percentage of women in western countries - up to 30% of women of child-bearing age - are apparently deciding - or failing not to decide - that the trade-offs are not worth it. 

Yet that still means around 60-70% of women still are having children, planned or unplanned, old, median-aged or young, rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, aware of the costs involved ... or not. These are for a range of reasons - familial pressure being a frequently cited one - but one could not really consider them ‘rational choices’ if the pros and cons were solely rationally weighed up. One of my husband’s former co-workers once said that ‘there would never be a right time to have kids if you ever really thought about it.’  Ensuring that both individual women and societies don’t ever ‘really think about it’ seems a given.

I mean, if a society really thought about what it takes to raise children then it would channel its tax dollars into measures that support families and encouraged the gun-shy (rather than coercing the downright ’nos’, of course) into parenthood: paid parental leave for all families, universal family support payments throughout childhood, paternity leave, properly subsidised and adequately remunerated childcare, and so on. 

Now, when is the right time to have that conversation?

Memories

Our girl appears to be learning to read. 

Well, to put it more accurately, she is in the early pre-reading stages. That is, she is learning to remember the stories that she hears over and over and can remember what lines go with which picture in which book. She has taken to sitting still - for a few minutes only, mind - open book on her lap saying to herself something like ‘On Monday he ate through one apple’ or "‘Don’t worry,’ cried Stickman. ‘I’ll soon set you free.”. She appears to remember things that happened in the previous days and weeks, but needs prompting for any longer time-period.

She is also approaching the age where she may well remember things that happen to her now in later life, particularly if they were outstanding or traumatic for some reason. Autobiographical memories sustained over a long time-period, though, are not thought to develop until around pre-school-age. Memory is not just one process, then, but a range. Various types of memory include declarative memory (such as facts or knowledge that can be consciously recalled), procedural memory (unconsciously retained skills such as holding a fork, drinking from a cup, getting dressed, going to the toilet), and episodic memory (specific personal memories organised cohesively into a narrative). Children are thought to have a dense amnesia for the first few years of life, and then a period of relatively sparse memories for a few years after that.

Some of the multiple explanations for the development - and, importantly, the retention - of memories include the development of fluent language skills and the development of a concept of self-hood. Of course, these processes are inter-linked. Subjectivity - a person’s sense of self - is defined in language. A subject is a person who speaks and says ‘I’, inhabiting that ‘I’ as their own real and discrete self. At the moment, our girl uses the variants of her name, ‘me’ and ‘my’ to describe herself. She is increasingly starting to use the pronoun ‘I’ now too, notably in the phrase ‘I want it.’ 

Very young children do remember things, then, but the things they remember don’t often become memories. What they forget - a process called childhood amnesia - also becomes part of the process of creating subjectivity. One of the processes that they forget - or, rather, it becomes unconscious to the point of seeming natural - is the process of becoming gendered.  This is why what children learn and experience when they are very young is so important to their subsequent development, as neuroscientist Lise Eliot has identified.

Memories can also be unreliable. Neuroscientist Karim Nader think this may be due to something called ‘reconsolidation’ or the recasting of early memories in the light of everything that has happened since. Editing in this way is part of the process of learning life lessons: remembering a difficult time in the past is tempered by the knowledge that things worked out all right in the end, for example. 

Memories are not only individual, but also collective. ‘Collective memory’ is sometimes used as another name for history, giving the later a sheen of naturalism. Collective memory becomes ‘common knowledge’, by which individuals - some individuals, at any rate - create social bonds and a sense of shared identity. Conventional histories, for example, have focussed on ‘great men’ and significant political events, rendering, for example, the domestic lives of ordinary people little more than a backdrop to the great concerns of the age. 

Since the middle of the twentieth century,  however, in response to the political concerns of a wide range of previously marginalised groups, historians (including feminist and post-colonial historians) started to dig deeper into these lives. One technique used to uncover previously excluded lives and pre-occupations is called ‘memory-work’. Memory-work actively seeks to question established narratives of the past, often by employing non-traditional methods, particularly oral histories, to re-establish the voices of those who have been excluded from traditional histories. Sue Kedgley’s account of the lives of Pākehā mothers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is one example of making visible the concerns and preoccupations of white settler colonialism from the point of view of women in the family.

As our girl increasingly displays her rapidly expanding feats of memory, she is consolidating her self-hood, a self that is anchored in a particular place in a particular time, with a particular cultural, linguistic, and historical inheritance. It is a self that is already gendered, and, as she becomes increasingly aware of how other people differ from herself, this process of becoming-feminine will intensify. The desire of other little girls in her class at kindergarten or school to exclusively dress in pink, for example, could well erase the memories that currently constitute her sense of self: that her favourite T-shirt is a grey one with a picture of a mountain on it, and that one of her favourite toys is a Thomas train set.  

But the memory process of reconsolidation means that she will also likely outgrow and revise her own past: in their turn, pink fairy princesses will become passé and baby-dolls will only be fit for babies. Memories might be the things that we remember from our pasts, but, in recasting them, they also might be what keeps us from living in the past, both individually and collectively.