The Mask of Motherhood: How Mothering Changes Everything and Why We Pretend it Doesn't
By Susan Maushart
Random House
345 pp., $17.95
Review by Pip Hinman
At last! A book on mothering which isn't a how-to, but a how-is. Susan Maushart's The Mask of Motherhood dispels a lot of the myths surrounding pregnancy and the raising of young children with both anecdotal and more scientific information.
She makes short shrift of the glamorised, glossy magazine-type descriptions of what it's like to become a mother and, in her quirky and often humorous way, sends up the stereotypes that predominate, and to which first-time mothers are still especially vulnerable.
This book has rapidly become a best-seller in inner-city Sydney, and it isn't hard to see why.
Maushart is speaking to predominantly middle-class, professional thirty-something women who have postponed having children and, up to now, have lived an independent (financially and socially), relatively carefree existence. The arrival of the first child transforms their lives completely.
Not only do they feel a loss of individuality, of "professional identity", but their world is now out of control. Nothing can be planned, and what is invariably has to be changed. None of the oversupply of how-to books provide enough warning or support.
The results of one survey of new mothers, cited by Maushart, are typical: a majority said they did not have time to pursue their own interests; did not have an active social life; needed a break from the demands of the child; and were less confident since becoming a mother. More than a quarter said "they did not like their lives".
From "morning" sickness, which lasts all day and all night, the indescribable pain of labour, finding that breastfeeding is something that has to be learned, like juggling work and family, Maushart tells it like it really is.
Despite the generally accepted view that women are innate nurturers and instinctively know how to care for a helpless and totally dependent human being (whose only method of communication is a variety of ear-piercing screams at any time of the day or night), Maushart makes the case that women, in particular this generation, often have little idea of how to cope and very little help (from outside or from their partners).
Women are five times more likely to be diagnosed as mentally ill in the year after their child's birth than at any other time of their life.
And why are new mothers so much in the dark? According to Maushart, women's "collective conspiracy of silence" is the main culprit. However, her thesis that women are largely to blame for upholding the mask of motherhood is not convincing.
Compared to our mothers' generation, these days women are less prepared for motherhood — and perhaps therefore more easily prey to the myths — because of such practicalities as families no longer living close together and women being employed outside rather than just working at home.
While Maushart acknowledges these are factors in women's lack of confidence, she doesn't deem them critical in the maintenance of the mask.
Neither does she weight the enormous barrage of ideological propaganda in women's magazines and the establishment press, reinforced by church, judicial and other powers that be, which serve constantly to reinforce the unrealistic family ideal and women's crucial role within it.
Women are not responsible for maintaining the "supermum" myth; they are its casualties.
While it would be utopian to expect plain sailing through pregnancy and the first year, I suspect that mothers are finding it harder today for a number of reasons, the least of which is that they are obsessed with maintaining the fiction that all is well. Apart from women not having the same amount of extended family support, funding cuts to professional public support systems are having a more fundamental impact on their ability to cope.
Added to this, women's lives are a lot more complicated. For most, work is not an option but a necessity. This complicates women's lives, but may also, according to data cited by Maushart, help prevent mental breakdown in mothers caused by "excessive responsibility" for their children.
One of the book's strengths is its strong opposition to "exclusive care" motherhood, something Maushart describes as a historical and cultural anomaly:
"Throughout most of human history, in most places in the world, most mothers have worked outside the home — and choice has had nothing to do with it. This remains the case today ... Although in our own society we refer to exclusive-care motherhood as 'traditional', the term is clearly a misnomer."
The Mask of Motherhood is an appeal to women to say it like it really is. This follows in the genre of Debra Adelaide's Motherlove, which contains accounts by women of their birthing experiences.
But while there is nothing wrong with exposing myths to better prepare women for the reality of childbirth and early parenthood, Maushart accepts the myth, as do other "do-it-yourself" feminists, that this will be enough to change women's lives fundamentally.
Knowledge is power, but the mask of motherhood will be shattered only when the majority of women are free to make real choices about their lives. While the family remains the fundamental instrument by which women are made second class citizens, the "mask" of motherhood will remain an important, if not integral, component of this sexist system.