Ita Buttrose’s Motherguilt
Conversations cease and heads turn when, wearing a bright tangerine blazer, and blonde hair that reminds me of my wife, an in-command Ita Buttrose takes the podium at the Melbourne release of her latest book, Motherguilt, which she co-authored with Dr Penny Adams. Ita is one of Australia’s most famous mothers—she has two children—and Penny, a general practitioner, has expertise and interests that include women’s health and adolescent medicine among others.
Ita quickly puts her mainly older audience at ease with a jibe at the Melbourne weather, then herself, and they laugh, but then it’s down to serous business about a serious topic. Motherguilt looks at the conflict mothers experience in the 21st century, trying to juggle career, husbands and children (they need similar levels of care), and social expectations and norms.
n As one of few males in an overwhelmingly female audience, it’s nevertheless a topic about which I want to hear. It’s something every husband and father needs to be concerned with, for it affects the wellbeing of their families and success of their relationships. As such, I’m interested in what an expert in the field and communicator might have to say on the subject.
As Ita begins her exposition, giggles and murmurs from the throng tell me she is scratching where the motherhood thing itches. I begin to realise that the audience isn’t there just to be entertained, but to learn and experience empathy.
Ita is iconic among the working mums of Australia, just as she was the quintessential media personality, performing at the top level of numerous magazines and newspapers while giving birth to and raising two children. She is a busy lady, but somewhere found the time to research—and write—Motherguilt.
conflicted women
For Ita, as a mother, motherguilt began early: “The first time, 36 years ago [at the birth of her first child], nothing prepared me for the overwhelming burden of responsibility that swept over me as I looked at the small bundle for whom I now had care,” she tells us.
“I read every book on child care that I could lay my hands on; I went to baby classes; learned the breathing exercises . . . but while I was confident, I was also worried as to how would I know when to push . . . and immediately guilt began to niggle.”
“This is a book about guilt,” the introduction to the book begins. No surprises there. But what is, as Ita and Penny reveal, is the depth and breadth of it, no matter a woman’s circumstance. That’s why they felt the syndrome deserved a word of its own—“motherguilt”—to describe the phenomenon that afflicts a majority of Western mothers. It is not a guilt that is derived from doing the wrong thing; rather, it is an irrational guilt—completely different and unnecessary.
It turns out that if a mother is in paid employment, she feels guilty she’s not at home. But when she does choose to stay at home, then why isn’t she out there earning something for the family’s future, or advancing her career? But it’s more than just about work, it appears. Even a nursing mother, with no work-related hang-ups, who should be content to just enjoy the moment, will worry and—as Ita and Penny put it—“mentally accuse themselves of ‘crimes.’ Did I drink too much when I was pregnant? Did I do enough exercise? . . . Am I being a good mother? Am I being too good a mother?”
One could go on, and Ita and Penny do, looking at many aspects of motherhood where women feel conflicted, patronised and put upon by others, and self-indicted for their choices, among them breastfeeding, child care, discipline, sex and stepmotherhood.
Take the “not-so-perfect-child” problem, as one chapter is entitled. It’s not a chapter about misbehaving children but misborn ones—children who are born physically or intellectually disabled, despite the wishes and care of a responsible mother-to-be. Both Penny and Ita have personal experience with this, so write empathetically. In such circumstances, a woman has to make difficult decisions, and whichever way she goes, guilt follows. Even when you rationalise the guilt away, as one Down syndrome case study put it, “there will always be some sadness and some pain.”
what’s the problem?
Antipodean women are choosing less often to be mothers, a problem acknowledged at the highest levels of policy making, and although, it appears, women don’t actually feel guilty about that, they do struggle with maintaining the economic prosperity of the nation (via remaining in the work force and boosting GDP), and the competing need for child care. For a mother to hand over responsibility for and care of her kids can’t be easy, even for the most career-minded of women, I’m sure. For the working mum, this failure to fulfil her primary responsibility produces a mountain of guilt. And when something does go wrong, such as hiring an inept nanny, it’s overwhelming. And this is despite the fact that in Australia some 1.5 million children under the age of 12—that’s an awful lot of mothers—use some type of child care. So even sharing it around doesn’t help.
So you stay at home? That’s not a solution either, as it turns out. Staying at home with the kids creates its own subset of reasons to question the decision. As Ita and Penny acknowledge, our society undervalues motherhood, “placing little worth on the contribution of these unpaid volunteers.” In a word, it underrates them. “Quality time” is only that when it has an associated economic cost, and is measurable in time, not when it happens all the time, it appears.
Motherguilt is the consequence of unreal societal expectations, she says. It’s been around for some time, because, as she explains, most inherited it from their own mothers! It stems from “accepting the mandate that they must take responsibility for everything to do with their families,” she explains, “and making everything right for their children.”
Women don’t want to be perfect in this most important of biological roles. But when things do go wrong, as they often do, they blame themselves, and guilt is a natural reaction.
“Motherguilt thrives on unrealistic expectations,” she explains, “and crops up when she feels she somehow has failed in her responsibility to her children. It often occurs when a mother puts her own needs and desires first. Whatever mother does, whatever their circumstances, guilt crops up.”
For example, for a mother to hire a babysitter might be OK for a night out with your husband, but not to go and get your hair done at the mall while he’s at work or playing golf, as one cases study pointed out. More guilt. And when the kids are older and make a wrong decision, while the father asks. “‘How did my child get into this?’, women invariably ask themselves, ‘Where did I go wrong as a mother?’
“I don’t know what I didn’t do right [as a mother] that caused this to happen,” laments another interviewee, the mother of a daughter who died of a drug overdose. “I don’t know which is worse, the grief or the guilt.”
a positive prognosis
Motherguilt takes some getting over—especially for mothers—but apparently it is possible, and necessary. “Women can’t keep going the way they are,” Ita concludes, quoting women’s movement leader Gloria Steinman, who famously said, “Having it all doesn’t mean doing it all.”
So is it possible for a woman to deprogram herself and exit this oppressive, self-imposed regime? Yes, say Ita and Penny. Motherguilt is not a call to arms nor even a manifesto, more a 12 Steps, but Ita does make some suggestions about getting over it. She suggests beginning with something simple, like learning to say no. “Enjoy saying no”—is how she puts it. In fact all of the steps are about enjoying whatever state you find yourself in, be it sick in bed, on your own, and not surprisingly “being a mother.”
The concept of motherguilt was born out of the many letters Ita received as a women’s magazine and newspaper editor. Her point in writing was to rid women of it. “It has no place in the twenty-first century she says, to applause.
Guilt? “Regret requires no explanation, simply the realisation that a mother did the best she could in a situation,” say the authors on the last page of the book, “which is what all women do from the moment they give birth.”
“In order to conquer motherguilt a woman has to see themself not just as a mother, but as a person,” she says. “Motherhood is fun.”
Motherguilt, by Ita Buttrose, AO, OBE, and Dr Penny Adams,
is published by Penguin Books. It is available in all good book and department stores.
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