Hanging in the Balance?  Modern Mums and Top 10 Tips to Boost Wellbeing

16 May 2007

Today’s mum is a new breed.  It’s easy to forget that, as you shove the clothes in the front-loader, have a quick check of your emails, whiz the kids off to child-care or school or wherever, put on the professional cap, think of tonight’s tea, tomorrow’s shopping, and this weekend’s birthday party while packing the dishwasher and talking about ABC kid’s Jane and the Dragon with your 4 year old in what can only be described as a multi-tasking miracle!  Oh, and did I mention trying to fit in a Pilates session – or at least do some pelvic floors?

Today’s mum, more than ever before, is likely to be juggling paid work with caring responsibilities.  She has also probably secured an education for herself in her chosen field prior to motherhood, is well-travelled, cyber-savvy, devoted to her children, health-focussed, ambitious, highly organised, and well, quite frankly…. exhausted!

Bernard Salt in his recent book The Big Picture (2006) comments that Australian values have shifted dramatically in the last 50 years in relation living habits, employment patterns, relationship trends, and social taboos.  It’s commonplace now for women to be having children later in life, after having travelled and developed a career, and then returning to paid employment in some capacity once they are a mum.  It’s also more common for the blokes to be pitching in on the home front (yeah, I know, the bathroom’s a bit mouldy but hey, the washing’s on the line). 

But the fact of the matter is that despite a greater acceptance of the principle of equality on the surface, the reality is something different.  In June 2005 the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) released a discussion paper Striking the Balance: Women, men, work and family aimed at tackling the big issues on how families, especially mothers, are struggling to stay afloat as they combine paid work with family commitments.

Central to the discussion was the pressure created when social expectations that women can become working mothers clashed with equally strong expectations that women carry most of the unpaid responsibilities.  It noted that, “Despite decades of social change, many women are still working a double shift in paid work and at home.” 

The paper was also concerned about the potential that this pressure could be having on women’s health and observed that, “married women, mothers of preschool children and lone parents experience the greatest time pressure”, making it more likely for their sense of wellbeing to be affected.  In particular, working mums were cited as being most at risk of “leisure time poverty”.

If you think that all of this points the finger fairly and squarely at the blokes, then you might be disappointed.  After receiving 181 submissions and conducting 44 community consultations, the HREOC released it’s final paper recently this year and declared, “Successfully managed time is not only a result of individual choices; it is also a consequence of the support that exists within families and communities, government policy, workplace policies and practices and social attitudes.”

In It’s About Time: Women, men, work and family the catch cry is ‘shared work – valued care’. This final paper argues that individual families will continue to struggle achieving balance unless radical policy reform is implemented, and issued 45 recommendations including:

·  new anti-discrimination legislation allowing workers with family responsibilities the right to ask for flexible working hours.

·  encouraging the development of quality part time work in both blue and white collar industries largely in a bid to allow men greater ability to share home duties.

·  a government funded 14 weeks paid maternity leave scheme.

·  phasing in a paid paternity leave scheme.

·  introducing initiatives to create family-friendly cultures within workplaces such as a “daddy go home on time” day.

It’s About Time picks up on the voices of the modern mum.  One exasperated mother says, “I end up doing the bulk of the unpaid work at home…. It’s just tiring.”  Another wedged between working, looking after her daughters and juggling the care of both her parents and grandparents sighs, “You do as much as you can.  You’re either cooking, doing homework, taking them to school [or] dancing, cleaning the house, doing the finances….”

Sharing the work is fundamental if the modern mum is to feel supported.  But equally important is valuing time spent with family and unpaid caring responsibilities.  This notion is supported in the HREOC report when it says, “A truly prosperous society is one that values time as well as money…” and argues that  “caring” work should have a more elevated place in society because it, “creates broader social capital from which families and communities benefit.”  Valuing the unpaid work involved in raising a family (irrespective of who delivers it) is a human resource issue and one that is fundamental to the health of our society.

Promoting the wellbeing of today’s mum is just another important aspect of creating a healthy and balanced society.  It’s something that is getting an increasing amount of attention from authors and researchers.  For instance, The Weekend Australian’s columnist Susan Maushart released her ground-breaking book in 1997 The Mask of Motherhood: how mothering changes everything and why we pretend it doesn’t.  She blew the whistle on how women can get caught up in a shroud of secrecy about the realities of motherhood, instead of telling it like it is and being supportive of one another. 

Maushart suggests that the mask women wear only adds to the problem when new mums are faced with a total life change, loss of control and individuality, anxiety, pressures related to shrinking family sizes and diminished family support, and society’s underrating of motherhood.  She believes that working mums are most at risk of wearing the mask because, “..they have grown up believing that they are not entitled to any [special privileges].  Motherhood, they now believe, is not supposed to make a difference.”

Researchers have also tackled the issue of wellbeing for the modern mum.  Authors Brown, Lumley, Small and Astbury in their 1994 book Missing Voices: the experience of motherhood, and Wendy LeBlanc of Naked Motherhood (1999) drew on their extensive conversations with women to paint a picture about how today’s woman experiences motherhood.  What both studies found was that there was a mismatch between expectation and experience of motherhood which had some mothers feeling overwhelmed, unsupported, pressured, and missing the control they once had over their life.  Links were made to these experiences and the trends for first-time mothers to be older (average = 28years) and having already established a ‘life’, fledgling family support, the need for most families to have two incomes just to survive, and the stigma attached to being honest about the stressors that motherhood can bring.

There are a lot of reasons why today’ s mum could be feeling more than a little stressed, overwhelmed, and at risk of not achieving that sense of balance and wellbeing that is rightfully hers.  So apart from addressing major changes to social policy and attitudes, how can today’s mum boost her wellbeing?  Getting practical support from relatives is one way but not everyone has an angelic parent or in-law who is bending over backwards to help out.  And even if they’d like to help out, they are probably working or have moved for that ‘sea change’ or off on that big once-in-a-lifetime holiday….twice.

Here are my top ten tips for you to stay afloat (and hopefully thrive!):

10 tips to boost your wellbeing

1. Allow yourself to feel whatever it is that you feel

2. Reclaim your identity by listing your achievements before children (especially if not back in paid work)*

3. Make some time to think about what is most important to you – in the short term and the long term – and let this inform your life decisions

4. Validate your journey as a mum so far by writing it down*

5. Make a list of all the things that help you recharge your batteries

6. Make it a priority to do 2 of these things each week without feeling guilty

7. Review who does what around the house – can you delegate anything?

8. Let others learn to take responsibility even if they don’t do a perfect job

9. Talk honestly about the ups and downs without feeling like a failure*

10. Listen to what your body, mind and soul are saying to you

To get your copy of the HREOC’s final paper It’s About Time, click here and go to the bottom of the page for a download or to get a free hard copy.

* you can do these things on this site

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