BY JO WILLIAMS
Australian women are having less children than ever before. Not only are more women childless, the one-child family is the fastest growing family type in Australia.
While much of the resulting talk of a "fertility crisis" is based on racist assumptions about the need for Australian-born children, the discussion about why women are choosing not to have children is a useful one — if it examines the very real difficulties faced by mothers in contemporary Australian society.
In the 1970s, masses of women (and many men) took to the streets in defence of women's rights. Not only did they win material gains such as affirmative action, equal pay for equal work, childcare and maternity leave, they changed society's attitudes towards women and motherhood. Gone were the days when women expected their "public" lives ended when their first child was born, and life for the next decade would consist of domestic work, chat sessions and daytime television.
Nowadays, women have higher expectations from life — motherhood, a career and a satisfying personal life, for example. But there is a contradiction between what women want, and what capitalism, still dependent on the unpaid domestic work that women carry out, has to offer.
For many mothers, it feels like you cop it no matter what you do. If you stay at home — you're selling yourself short and denying yourself the right to be an independent woman. But if you go out to full-time work, and dare put your children in childcare, you are supposedly not fulfilling your role as mother. Such attitudes put enormous emotional and physical pressure on women.
While a lot more women are working, they're still doing most of the domestic work. According to a recent study conducted at the UNSW Social Policy Research Centre, Australian men in childless couples do about half of the domestic work that women do. Adding one or more kids to the equation sees that figure drop to about 38%.
This is still justified by the unspoken argument that a woman's role as a mother and homemaker is as natural and inevitable as the birds and the trees. But, really, it is pretty difficult to believe that a woman is better set up biologically to push a vacuum.
Mothers' instinct
We are told that a mother's instinct is an innate ability shared by all women as a result of our biology. We are supposed to be good listeners, nurturing, caring — all the skills required to be the better choice for parenting. This argument might seem dated, but is reinforced today through image after image of mum coming to the rescue, mum loving the new housework product and mum ingeniously coming up with a new, and easy, meal idea to placate a disgruntled family.
Baby-change rooms in shopping centres are often still located inside the women's toilets and parenting magazines and resources, while including the odd message for dads, are invariably aimed at women.
Young children are fed the stereotypes early. Christmas is coming up, and no doubt as usual the catalogues will be filled with blue pages for boys with cars, super-heroes and ball sports, and pink pages for girls complete with mini-ironing boards, dolls that feed and wee and the impossibly absurd Barbie.
The family 'glue'
The flip side of the innate ability of women to parent is the belief that men are hopeless at it. It is the role of mothers to reconcile the tired, over-stressed "breadwinner" father with the children he has no time or energy left over for. In Channel 10's Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray is the useless, insensitive husband, constantly letting his wife down. Debra, while frustrated, ultimately accepts his weaknesses and the fact that he makes absolutely no contribution to the running of the house and care of the kids.
With, in effect, Ray as just another kid, Debra must harmoniously bring her family together with inherent wisdom and patience. Or in other words — Debra gets dumped with all the shit and has to solve all the problems.
And what problems mothers are expected to take responsibility for! There is enormous pressure to be a "successful" parent — one who brings up kids with "good morals", who succeed at school and are driven to achieve in a competitive and hostile world. But the alienating, competitive and uncertain world that young people live in can make that very difficult to achieve. Parents, which often means mothers, must not only provide the funds needed for the "best" childhood, but must counter the devastating emotional impact of capitalism.
When things go wrong, families are the first to be blamed by a government intent on deflecting attention from failed government policies and the lack of attention to social problems and needs.
Working mums
Women's relationship to work has changed dramatically in the last three decades. The 1970s saw women's access to the workplace increased with affirmative action policies introduced, anti-discrimination legislation put in place, formal equal pay for equal work recognised, and childcare centres more available and accessible.
Now women are told by such "experts" as Cosmopolitan magazine that a satisfying career is ours — if only we are prepared to work hard enough to get it. Apparently the only reason we may not find ourselves successfully participating in the job of our choice is lack of will.
But it is the double burden of work in the home and on the job that causes a lot of women to opt out of the workplace. Women are also still highly concentrated in the more poorly paid (and often low-skilled) part-time and casual work. Full-time workers are working longer hours than ever before, while part-time workers are paid less, proportionally, than in decades. Mothers must choose between not seeing their children and taking a low-income, often boring, job.
The difficulty of getting quality, affordable childcare continues to be a major barrier to mothers entering the workforce. Centres are increasingly being privatised and/or corporatised, fees are escalating and are simply out of reach for most average wage earners. Social stigma around childcare makes women underconfident in considering it as an option. The government's disinterest in childcare is reflected in the appallingly low wages childcare workers receive and in staff and resource shortages in general.
Just go home
On October 27 in the Sydney Morning Herald, anti-feminist commentator Bettina Arndt mentioned a book suggesting that families living with 1 or 1.5 incomes have more economic security under PM John Howard than dual-income families. Arndt concludes that this is welcome information for families, proving that "the good sense shown by most Australian families in choosing to leave slack in the system to make time for their children, may also be providing some with greater economic security".
The book argues that two-income families commit to many things such as "homes in safe areas with good schools, cars, college fees and health insurance". But single-income families have the built-in safety net of a non-working (almost always female) parent to care for a sick kid or grandparent, and able to enter the workforce to cover the slack should dad lose his job. Arndt argues that struggling families should just aim lower so they have less far to fall if crisis hits.
Arndt's arguments are indicative of the "new" anti-feminism. Aware that a "return-to-the-1950s" call is unlikely to resonate with women who value their public lives, much anti-feminist argumentation today is aimed at undermining mothers' confidence.
There are endless books claiming to be a mother's best friend, which really just aim to make women feel guilty and unconfident. They argue: Motherhood is an innate skill. If you can't do it with minimum fuss, what is your problem? Heaps of women are successfully combining motherhood and work so why can't you? By the time you've finished reading, you're not even sure you can cope with motherhood.
Lookin' good
From the often alienating experience of childbirth, women face motherhood largely unsupported, but highly criticised and certainly judged. Women are five times more likely to be diagnosed as mentally ill after the birth of their child than at any other time.
On top of the pressure to be a perfect mother, women are still subjected to sexist attitudes that require them to look like Britney Spears. So, motherhood is sacred and as natural as Mother Earth, but "for god's sake don't reveal that misshapen body to anyone and get rid of those unsightly stretch marks immediately".
Women's bodies are still regarded, and judged, as sexual objects designed for male pleasure. The debate over whether women should breastfeed in public or not relates in part to this: breasts are so sexualised that many find it offensive and uncomfortable to see them feeding a child.
One big competition
While some books and services preach the importance of women sharing experiences positively, and working through things together, the reality is that motherhood becomes one big competition under capitalism. Who has the best pram, who has the quietest (i.e. "best") baby, who has heroically chosen to not give their child a dummy, who has maintained a perfect size eight figure, who still frequents groovy cafes and designer shops.
It's no wonder more women are deciding that one child — who must be raised "perfectly" — is all they can handle.
Some books do discuss the stressful and scary times mothers face. But their solutions? Everything from baths with cucumber on your eyes, to explaining how you feel to your partner and hoping that he (it's always a he in the books) will notice and offer you some more help.
The solutions are always personal, never social. It is never admitted that it is hard to be a mother when doing so means taking responsibility for everything from fixing toothache and heartache to washing the dishes, while doing paid work and looking "a million dollars".
Real solutions would involve socialising much of the domestic tasks that women do, including broadening the base of people who care for children, materially and emotionally. They would mean breaking down the barriers that lead women to struggle alone with insecurity and doubt.
Having children can be a beautiful experience — a mirror on the possibilities of unfettered human development. But with the current social structure, having and raising children will continue to be a mixed blessing.
From Green Left Weekly, November 12, 2003.
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