Motherload

I was absolutely delighted to be asked to write a guest post for a blog I follow, on combining creativity and motherhood. The blog is called Studio Mothers : enjoy! The Sugar Log

And now this. Mumsnot . This is a very clever title for a very upsetting debate. The way it's framed is particularly saddening: if a woman doesn't have children, what value does she have, and indeed, does she have any? HELLO? EXCUSE ME? Of COURSE a woman, like any other person, or animal, or flower, has value, simply by existing. OK, evil people, flowers and animals have perhaps less value, and usually do more damage. Value — now there's a word. What on earth does it mean to "have value"? In economic terms, it means "be tradeable". I'm not sure that that's what the Mumsnot debate means. After all, women have been traded for centuries, and it's usually the idea that they're not virginal that prompts the idea of their loss of value. When did tradability shift to the post-partum female? And who is assigning that value? It used to be men, on the basis of dowry or chattels. What is it now? An index of male fertility, or capacit...

So I'm driving along, having just come out of a meeting, towards the end of last week. I hear the phone go, and when I have a moment look to see who the caller is. It's the children's school. The only reason the school calls me is if something bad has happened. I brace myself, and listen to the message. "Your son has been stung by a bee. Could you come into the school and take out the sting, as we're not allowed to do it." What? What ? So you're able to take my son and teach him, feed him, demand that he go to the toilet on time, tell him off for not paying attention, let him play in the enormous playground, tell his friends off for being rowdy, tell me off for somehow not teaching him at home enough ... but you're unable to administer basic first aid if he is stung? I go to the school. My son is sitting on his tiny chair, whey-faced, blotchy with shock, clutching a bear, and streaked with tears. He sees me and goes completely to pieces. He is ...

Ah, at last, a subject for a mothering blog to really sink your teeth into. Maternal negligence. So, I took the two children to the supermarket with me. I had only managed this by virtue of agreeing to let my son go to the toy section. He knows this particular supermarket stocks a brand of some unspeakable tut, which appears to be a 'trash monster'. Delightful. We now give our children replica waste disposal units, presumably to prepare them for a lifetime of cleaning up the environmental disaster we've caused. Anyway, I delivered both the children to the toys, and instructed my oldest, who is about to turn 9, to keep the youngest in sight at all times, and then walk up the central aisle and look down the side aisles for me when they'd had enough of window shopping. I peacefully got on with my shop, congratulating myself that we had at last got to a point where I could let my daughter be responsible, give her a little independence, and not have them trail after me, whin...

I have been horribly aware of exiting the blogosphere without warning (to myself as much as anyone else) in the middle of last year. The fact is that much of last year was spent in a job that did not allow much time for anything else -- but I actually had to do a LOT else. Writing fell by the wayside, its wheedling, needy claims outstripped by the claims of children, other activities, and frankly, depression. Now I'm back in the saddle, and have been for a month, but have found myself afraid to try writing again. Don't get me wrong, I write all the time, but so, so often for other people, within frameworks, controlled, contained, unferal. This is so much easier than writing for myself. So, in coming back to the blog, at first it seems to me that none of my concerns have changed: I am still reading, and dying to express my unasked-for opinions on what I read ( The Tiger's Wife is jolly good, by the way; and did you see the Richter retrospective; and I'm struggling a li...

Why Love Matters (Susan Gerhardt, Routledge, 2004) was first published when my daughter was about one year old. I heard about it, but could not bring myself to read it. It sounded like the kind of argument I was already struggling so hard with that it could only cause pain -- it sounded as though it would tell me that my place was in the home with my baby, and that only mothers could provide the kind of affection and attention that their babies need to thrive. When I finally sat down with it, because of the reading list set by a School of Life course on the family, I could not put it down. Yes, it does in large part advocate a social organization in which it is possible for caregivers to stay at home with their babies, solely focused on their needs, delights, demands and neuro-cognitive development. And that's fine, because it's pretty much the conclusion I came to during my own early-years development experience. Gerhardt would love to live in a society without conflict, ...

Last night I had an argument. Among many other things, my husband and I discussed what we each wanted in our lives that we don't already have. I said repeatedly that I had what I wanted, and that the happiness of the children came first. He accused me of being dishonest about my real needs and wants, which were to keep writing and publish. He said that he thought I would be a better mother if I were a happier mother, satisfying more of my career aims. I pointed out that I would be doing this, were it not necessary to bring in an income. This meant failing my ideals on two counts: not being there for the children, and not being there to write. Three counts: I really hate it when the house gets messy. I explained that this was a conflict which I had to live with, but maintained that I care more about the children's development and happiness than my own ambition. He said that if all there was to look forward to was living with one's conflicts, then what was the point of tryin...

I've just finished two books that in equal and opposite ways have left their mark. One is Singled Out, by Virginia Nicholson, the other Can Any Mother Help Me ? They are both social histories, aimed at exposing the state of marriage and womanhood in the first half of the twentieth century (now ripe for memorialization). Both books take unimpeachably admirable subjects as their themes: Singled Out looks at the 'Surplus Women', the some two million women left behind when all the young men died in France and Belgium in the First World War. Can Any Mother Help Me? looks at what is known as a 'correspondence magazine', a pre-email round robin between invited members, in which each adds articles dealing with subjects close to their hearts (children, husbands, work, illness, loss and so forth). From the outset then, we are prepared for a great deal of Fortitude, Dignified Suffering, and Achievement Despite (a) Housework, (b) Lack Of Housework. I did enjoy both books, an...

Having spent my time recently haring about to interview men and women for the book I'm working on, I felt like sitting back with a glass of wine and some good TV the other night. I had taped the current series running on BBC4 entitled Women , and lo and behold, our Lovefilm account spat Enchanted through our letterbox. I ended up glutting on a programme about who really does the UK's domestic work, followed swiftly by Enchanted , Disney's deconstruction of the very figure it has itself created: the cartoon version of the fairytale princess. The Women doc was about how men and women divide up domestic labour, and whether it has become equally shared -- posited as 'one of feminism's central goals' (I'm not sure it really was a goal, more an object of critique). Enchanted is about how A. N. Fairytale Heroine comes to question her faith in the ideal of 'Happy Ever After With A Prince'. She learns to value reason, and to listen to her own emotions, ra...

A Good Childhood is a report for the Children's Society. I'd never heard of it, but my husband got it for work. I think he was in part inspired to buy it by the terrible UN report back in around 2006, which put the UK at the bottom of the heap for good places to raise kids. The report's been put together by Richard Layard and Judy Dunn, although they are really only the final adjusters, synthesizing an absolutely huge amount of research, that has been done on the state of childhood and all that contributes to it (ie the whole of British society, saturated in consumerist capitalist ideology). Richard Layard is the economist who wrote Happiness , and the report is written in a delightful avuncular style, which just makes my heart melt. It's very tough: we hear about the dreadful state of the UK education system, about mental ill-health in children and young people, and the terrible impact of consumerism, substance abuse, violent games, and overworked parents. Yet because ...