Conference on mothering

Hi,

Just a note to let you know that an Australian branch of the Association for research on mothering has been established and there is a forthcoming conference at Qld Uni in July 2007 - see site for more details: http://www.uq.edu.au/mothering/

Also, link to the Assocation for research on mothering, York university, Toronot - very active - loads of conferences, journal and books published see: http://www.yorku.ca/crm/index.htm

its great to talk but there are also some wonderful books out there - and you wouldn't know by just walking into a bookshop - will post some titles at a later date that members may like to follow up - some personal favourites at least - also good to look out for relevant movies .....

all the best, Ginalol

Last edited by ginalol : 07-01-2007 at 06:39 PM. Reason: advice re protocol

  #2      

Quote upon quote...

This would be an interesting area to research and I hope that the studies are being conducted by women who know what being a mother 'today' is.
I am amazed at how little I knew of motherhood until 'living' it for real. Our early perceptions and how we are conditioned to view things impact greatly on how we adapt to the role of being a mother.
I have thought that if mothers were regarded more highly and afforded the 'professional' development and 'personal' development that other areas of the working community are provided with, that our community overall would benefit greatly from. It would be a completer turn around re 'work' value and would lead to vast improvements in contribution, creativity and growth. There is so much that can be done, yet isn't. Many older women entering motherhood, and those of celebrity status, are communicating that 'raising children is the most demanding job' (quote).

  #3      

mothering

Hello Jennifer,

There is loads of research happening around topics related to mothering - there is a hub around a place called the Association for research on motherin, York uni, Toronto see: http://www.yorku.ca/arm/

My kids are now 14 and 12, but for years I have found solice in reading others experiences and takes on the subject. I've become interested in understanding how mothering has been structured within the family and recently made this post on a blog for a listening tour for the HREOC - if you were interested you could either make a post or just have a look at what others were saying -

Hello,

There are so many parallels in the stories above and I’m afraid that these messages speak for thousands of families. I have been researching into the social structuring of the family and have come across two important and relevant texts: the first is Love’s Labor, by Eva Kittay and the second The Autonomy Myth by Martha Fineman. The essential argument is that the state and the market are dependent on the family as a repository for care and dependency (infants, the infirm aged and the incapacitated). If there is to be real change policy and practice needs to be reformulated so as to accommodate the caring needs of families within the wider social system. We are continuing to operate as if the traditional and gendered family form were still the case, even though there have been huge changes in both the workplace and the education system. There is a significant need to reformulate family policy and practice across the board (government departments) recognising contemporary aspirations.

best, Joan

see: http://hreocblog.com/2007/11/21/have...y/#comment-243

anyhow, take care and best, ginalol

  #4    

blog link

hi Jennifer and Ginalol, like your comments. Ginalol, thanks for the HREOC link and good on you for having a say. I'd heard about the listening tour but didn't know that they had a blog about it.

cheers,

__________________
mbhadmin

Mothering and ambivalence

Hi,

Have just been reading an excellent book called: Mothering and Ambivalence (ed) Wendy Hollway and Brid Featherstone, 1997

The introductory chapter gives an outline of movements within feminism that have often skirted issues and topics related to mothering and the many attempts that have been made to come to grips with some real life issues!!

Here is a quote from it that I thought very interesting and would like to know any thoughts that arise out of it:

"'Whereas history has recognised maternal work almost exclusively in terms of its impact on the child, contemporary culture is beginning to articulate the mother as a subject in her own right' (Bassin, Honey and Mahrer Kaplan 1994:9). Through theorising the central importance of mutual recognition in mother-child relationships, Benjamin has argued that, in order to achieve an autonomous sese of self, a child needs a mother who is also autonomous. This is because a child cannot experience recognition by someone that he or she controls. Understanding children's developmental need for an autonomous maternal subjectivity is a far cry from early psycho-analytic tendencies (themselves probably overstated in feminist critiques) to posit a mother whose identity is entirely constituted through her child's demands. Benjamin's formulation does not magically reconcile the constant tensions between the mothers' own and their children's desires which mothers have to contain on an everyday basis, but it does point out the need to recognise the inevitable tension between autonomy and dependence: 'at the very moment of realizing our own independent will, we are dependent upon another to recognize it' (Benjamin 1995b:37). In order words, we need to maintain the paradox between our earliest desires for a mother who is a need-satisfying other and our desires to be in control of our own lives. An emphasis on intersubjectivity also reminds us that our desires and pleasures are not separate from those of others, that helping to promote the pleasures and desire of children is part of the pleasure of mothering. Mothering is not all joy, but it is not all sorrow either. Let us hold on to both; let us not deny the ambivalence, either in practice or in theory". (11-12)

Ambivalence - interesting to explore I think. It seems to me that even by defining ourselves as mothers we may be locking ourselves into that trap of objectifying our subjectivity, surely we are more than our relationships with our children. We gave up defining ourselves as wives long ago, why are we finding it even harder to drop the labels and take hole of our full humanity, which inclues all our relationships, interests, needs, desires, etc etc. And in taking hold of our humanity, subjectivity, or autonomy we are also making way for our children to be more fully autonomous - what do ya reckon??

cheers, Ginalol

  #2      

awesome!

that's an amazing exerpt and u raise some really interesting issues ginalol. I think u r right - i think that once women become mums all of a sudden our identity and our reason for being seems inexticably linked to our children. maybe this is compounded when u are a stay-at-home mum. i try a keep as sense of identity but, especially being at home, it's hard to have conversations with people - especially mums - without things coming back to my kids.

i think that obectifying the subjective nature of motherhood begins in the womb where the concepts of our needs, their needs, and the notion of mother all get morphed into one. And i think it's funny that with all the stuff the feminists have stood for, and despite mums finding an identity in paid work, there still seems to be a resistance in society to consider the mum as having needs as a woman - maybe in relation to being a mum, but maybe not.

I don't know if this is related or not, but i also find it interesting that the term 'to mother' has so much more intensity to it than 'to father'.

__________________
poppyg

Me - 37
DH - 39

Link to amazing site - women's literature

importance of free play - report

Hi,

Just came across this link - good to know about research outcomes I think when there is quite some pressure to make sure that your kids are having access to all that is available in sport, music, culture, dance and what have you .... we know lots of people who have opted for the cultured approach and I would feel better if my kids were engaged with something more than they are - but they are both adamant they don't like classes or kids programs (even those lovely crafty holiday programs that I would just love to do - or to have done I think). No, they say, they'd rather be at home, and or playing with friends. Mind you they are both very much into computer and electronic games - though we have fought with them for years to have time limits (which means more time than we would like but less than they would like). Anyhow, heres some research on the importance of free, unstructured time - I wonder if they would consider computer or electonic games as play?? I certainly don't think it is an open and shut cames against the games - I often watch the kids at play with them - what an adventure park! And they share A LOT with their friends about strategies etc etc. can't be all bad.

cheers, love to hear your thoughts on this (ps my kids are now nearly 11 and 13)

2. The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds

Jan. 2007

American Academy of Pediatrics

A new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says free and unstructured play is healthy and - in fact - essential for helping children reach important social, emotional, and cognitive developmental milestones as well as helping them manage stress and become resilient.

The report, "The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds," is written in defense of play and in response to forces threatening free play and unscheduled time. These forces include changes in family structure, the increasingly competitive college admissions process, and federal education policies that have led to reduced recess and physical education in many schools.

Whereas play protects children's emotional development, a loss of free time in combination with a hurried lifestyle can be a source of stress, anxiety and may even contribute to depression for many children, the AAP report states.

At http://www.aap.org/pressroom/play-public.htm

PS: here also is a link to a media guide for parents - from the US Pediatricians assocation - strategies to help children select content

http://www.aap.org/pubed/ZZZGVL4PQ7C.htm?&sub_cat=17

Last edited by ginalol : 22-02-2007 at 08:30 AM. Reason: added link worthwhile

  #2    

close to my heart

I discovered this research recently too - a great link ginalol, thanks. This subject is close to my heart. I'll post about it in the forum about our children.....

__________________
mbhadmin

  #3      

right on....

I am so with you on this one........free play is so important.

I just love it when my kids do their own thing. We have a box of dressups: a serious quantity of the most wonderful items I've assembled over the years, always had a sandpit and our kids have had lots of unstructured time.

The screen time is monitored and allocated apart from on school holidays when the time is increased.

And one of my favourite placs for free play is actually the beach: any beach any time of year! We often go there with no agenda and dig, walk, beachcomb, dip and play. Just great!

and it's FREE

myths and motherhood

Hi,

Being mothers day on Sunday (and the incredible outburst by Bill Hefferman about Julia Gillard) there has been a little more in the papers. Today an article I would celebrate and wish I could buy the authors some kind of drink, be it a coffee, a tea, or something more substantial.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...6-7583,00.html

I've got a girlfriend who loves children and because of physical problems wasn't able to her her own. When it was my daughters birthday recently, we took the cake to her place (as she usually comes to us but couldn't make it this time), sang happy birthday and did the rituals. We need to break down those barriers between other peoples children and our own, and assumptions that somehow our children belong to us. I love what Gibran wrote on this - I'll see if I can find it on the net and do a cut and past and see what you think.


On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.


PS: I am not religious so don't subscribe to beliefs in the archer - but I would put - life itself and the children's aspirations, hopes and desires are what set the arrow into the future ....

cheers, ginalol

  #2    

go the myth busters

great article by Giuliana and Sarah; thanks for sharing that with us ginalol

__________________
mbhadmin

  #3      

Kahlil Gibran was on the right track there...........we provide children for the world to teach. We can only hope to guide them ever so gently onto the path that is right for them.

Mothers Movement in the US

This is something I wrote recently about the political power of mothers in the US - perhaps a taste of Australian mums' future if we keep heading towards a US model of society.

THE POLITICAL POWER OF MOTHERS


It is clear is that our society has been moving towards a US model, by implementing WorkChoices, through privitisation of health insurance, by following the US into the war on Iraq and by refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol. It is worth considering how US policy affects US mothers, and what mothers in the US are doing about it. This could be our future.

In the US there is a growing Mothers Movement. Women are dealing with the effects of no maternity leave, inadequate public health care, a culture of work that ignores any care responsibilities of its workers, inadequate child care places and standards of care, and lack of social welfare for women with children. Mothers are questioning the consequences of intensive mothering, the representation of mothers in the media, and the impact, be it financial, environmental, or developmental, of goods and services marketed to parents and children. Overworked and unsupported mothers, acknowledging that things could be better and citing socially progressive European countries as examples to be followed, are taking on the work of being politically active for change. In fact, they are trying to claw back the rights Australia has recently forsaken in the name of economic growth.

The number of female politicians in the US is disappointingly low. As Kristin Teigen writes in her essay 'Why Be Political' for The Mothers Movement Online, 'The number of women working in the West Wing has declined a whopping 17 precent in the past six years. We rank just slightly better than Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with the number of women in government, and far behind most European countries. Even the new government in Iraq has 19 percent women, and South Africa, still recovering from a government based on discrimination, has 46 percent women. These numbers can translate directly into a different life for women and children. Out of the top six nations that Save the Children has ranked as the best for maternal and child health, (Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany and Austria), each one outperforms the United States with the number of women in government. The more women leaders, it seems, the healthier we are, and the healthier our children are.'

At the moment the mothers' organisations in the USA are rallying to protest President Bush's veto of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which would have provided health care to the one in eight children in the US who have no health care insurance. While the US has spent more than $400 billion on the war in Iraq, the infant mortality rate is rising in Mississippi and neighbouring states. All the mothers action groups have banded together to call an end to the media beat up that is 'The Mommy Wars', which serve only to stereotype and divide women when they could celebrate diversity and unite mothers in their need for certain provisions. Mothers are talking about the longterm financial penalty women suffer when they take time off work to bear and raise children. Mothers are noticing the wage disparity between women with children and women without, and that motherhood is the single biggest risk factor for poverty in old age.

According to feminists, addressing these issues is the unfinished business of the women's movement.

Gimmicks are being used to gain media attention for the causes. Momsrising, a very organised group which was founded by Joan Blades of MoveOn, is using The Power of Onesies. Mothers are creating a chain of onesies to represent the work of mothers and that mothers need to have a say in devising policies that affect families. Mothers Acting Up, an organisation that lobbies to protect children around the world living in poverty or war, and press the US government to honour its promises regarding third world aid, stage their protests on stilts. Other groups, which include Mothers Ought to Have Equal Rights, Mothers and More and The Motherhood Project, fight to have mothering work valued, while many mothers, from artists to economists to stay at home maternal feminists, write books, contribute to websites and blog about their lives and concerns as mothers, and so raise consciousness and start discussions, both private and public. The latest book doing this in the US is Taking on the Big Boys: Or Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business and the Nation by Ellen Bravo, showing a way forward by structuring work places based on socially progressive European countries, whose economies, incidentally, have not collapsed.

Social policy directly impacts mothers' lives. If public education isn't good enough, mothers take on paid work to pay for private education. If public health isn't good enough, mothers work to pay for private health care. If public transport isn't good enough, mothers drive their kids around. If housing is unaffordable, mothers work to pay the mortgage, and their kids stay at home longer. If any system falls down, mothers, or fathers or grandparents if they are the main caregivers, do the research, the fundraising, the voluntary work, the paid work, to keep families and communities running. Mothers are seeing issues such as post-natal depression and childhood obesity, ADHD, and childhood depression, not as personal problems but as existing in a social and political context. Imagine if mothers lived in a society that valued care work, that supported families, that invested in sustainability and wellbeing, respected childrens' needs and gave women real choices, including the choice to hold political positions.

Our society is how we construct it. Motherhood is experienced according to circumstances and societal constructions. How we vote at the federal election is an opportunity to help take our country in another direction. Voting may be the most politically active thing most mothers do. All the work mothers and other caregivers do for children comes to nothing if we can't give our children clean air, clean water, a healthy planet, and show them that care work is valued. The result of the federal election will impact on the type of work mothers do, and on their motivation for care work.

When Bono appeared on Andrew Denton's Enough Rope he said that politicians are more afraid of soccer mums than of rock stars. And so they should be. If only mums realise their power.

  #2      

mothers movement and taking on the big boys

Hey Catherine,

what a great article!! Please let us know if it is published somewhere.

I recently bought a copy of one of the books you mentioned, Taking on the big boys .... its an inspiration - not because of the title - but because of their vision of the future for change, valuing care, valuing children, suggesting ways in which couples might manage to share the care and get on, both in families, and in the workplace - aspirational change.

I recently wrote to some of the pollies (for what its worth) suggesting that they tap into a vision of family that does not perpetuate gendered roles - gender equal families - could become something of a slogan - and/or - sharing the care - what do you think?

take care and best, ginalol

PS: I ordered the book through amazon and got it within a couple of weeks - it was published in 2007 - so really recent

Equality and difference - some articles

Hi all,

I come across some terrific articles from time to time and thought I should link a few more for anyone who might be interested, or have the time to indulge themselves. Some of them might be the basis for a discussion with some friends - see what you think.

best, ginalol

sorry I didn't get the articles to attach - I let felicity know and she'll see if she can link them up, fingers crossed

Last edited by ginalol : 12-03-2008 at 01:37 PM.

  #2    

here are the attachments

there you go ginalol. i've expanded the size for regular users to attach pdf files now so shouldn't have any problems in the future. these look like interesting articles.. thanks

__________________
mbhadmin

UN report - women's equality advantages children

Hi again,

I posted this report separately because I don't see it as a necessary part of an argument against what has been called in the literature - biological foundationalism - we have breasts therefore we should mother. Though there is obviously a link to the topic. Here below I have linked a recent UN report on the welfare of children and yes, it argues that women's equality is a key determinant for better outcomes. If women have money they generally tend to spend much of it on their children. Its 160 pages so watch out if you have dial up system maybe you could access an abstract.

see:

The State of the world's children 2007: Women and children: The double dividend of gender equality

Eliminating gender discrimination and empowering women will have a profound and positive impact on the survival and wellbeing of children, according to this UNICEF report. 'The state of the world's children 2007' examines the discrimination and disempowerment women face throughout their lives, and outlines what must be done to eliminate gender discrimination and empower women and girls. Gender equality produces the 'double dividend' of benefiting both women and children and is pivotal to the health and development of families, communities and nations. However, despite progress in women's status in recent decades, the lives of millions of girls and women are overshadowed by discrimination, disempowerment and poverty. The report discusses how gender equality will move all the Millennium Development Goals forward, and shows how investment in women's rights will ultimately produce a double dividend: advancing the rights of both women and children. The report lists 7 key interventions to enhance gender equality, relating to education, financing, legislation, legislative quotas for women, women empowering women, engaging men and boys, and improved research and data. 'The state of the world's children 2007' costs US$20.00. (Source: UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_36587.html viewed 18 April 2007.)


best, ginalol