Christmas conversations
What our conversations tell us about the value of ‘motherhood’, Emma May Lang reflects on her own experience for Women’s Agenda.
In the wild lead-up to Christmas and over the holiday period we jumped from party to party with friends, family and colleagues across the city. We spoke about holiday plans, new jobs and of course, the usual spits about political leaders.
But amidst the conversation, not once was my partner or I asked about our experience as new parents.
What had worked for us that year, what had worked for us, what had pushed us too far. The topic seemed off limits. Possibly too dull to venture. Perhaps, too contentious. Likely, both.
I recall being asked plenty of questions about when I was taking leave from work and with a wedding only weeks prior, I was asked plenty about that too. But when it came to the very serious stressors of child-raising, sleep deprivation and co-parenting – radio silence.
As a 35-year-old among friends and family, it’s safe to say that we weren’t the only ones navigating parenting experiences and seeking social debriefs over the holiday season.
The absence of parenting conversation left a hell of a lot of our work and struggles unseen.
After a year of feeling ample pressure to have paid work and be an income earner to help feel valued and relevant to our community, it was both validating and disheartening to clock this absence in conversation.
Over the past year, my partner and I had both juggled professional and carer duties, have felt burnt out as we worked to take on career progressions, managed interrupted sleep, and all the while angling to raise the securely-attached, confident child.
My lord, has the pressure been high and close to breaking point as we pulled ourselves to the end of the year.
Diving into the works of others on this dilemma, from leading gender and motherhood academic Professor Andrea O’Reilly, anthropologist Dr Sophie Brock, and Australian author, Amy Taylor-Kabbaz, I’m conscious that these competing pressures on mothers are common in western neo-liberaral communities.
And in this, it gave me the language and permission to consider what pressures I had absorbed in microdoses on what it meant to be a good mother, a valued member of society and whether the work of ‘mothering’ would ever be seen as merely enough.
When we don’t discuss domestic and parenting work, explore the approaches and theories around it, and pay interest to it as a community, we, in practice, don’t value it.
As my partner reflected at the end of our third Christmas lunch (yes, there were many), not everyone has the language to discuss matters of childbearing and childraising in an accessible and inclusive way.
Given the pressure-cooker in which we put new families, it’s no wonder we avoid the subject altogether. Not wanting to press someone’s buttons or place any further pressure on an already over-judged and oppressive subject.
If we are to truly start understanding the full pressures that parents face, and importantly the barriers women face re-entering or excelling in the workplace, we need to have a language to discuss motherhood and what it entails.
It’s no wonder systems to support parents and carers through their experience are so often lacking. It’s no wonder we don’t have the childcare quality, affordability and flexibility that parents and children need, or the conditions and cultures in our workplaces to support mothers to excel, and fathers to fully invest in the caring and domestic space.
It’s no wonder that our systems and professional cultures fail to see the interventions that our mothers need when our society and social spaces don’t see or have language for them either.
So next Christmas or social celebration with friends and colleagues, ask parents and carers what that work involves. Ask what the challenges and stressors are. Find a language to explore the grief of losing past expressions, and the joys of finding new ones.
And through this, let’s put mothering and its value firmly on the social agenda.