A political history of motherhood

Motherhood is a political act. That’s the theory behind the first political history of motherhood in the UK and Ireland, published at the end of this month. The book, Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood, is written by Cambridge academic Dr Helen Charman.

It argues that motherhood poses a serious challenge to the status quo and catalogues mothers’ roles in fighting back against recent government policies, from opposition to everything from nuclear power and austerity to support for the striking miners in the 1980s. It shows how mothers have not only been the victims of cuts to state infrastructure but have been at the forefront of fighting for alternative futures.

Charman begins by questioning what motherhood is. She says too much attention has been placed on the biological act of giving birth when motherhood is more about the long haul of caring for children. The daughter of a single mum who has chosen to not have children herself, she argues that her mother’s knees [which, as a physiotherapist and cleaner, she spent a lot of time on] were more symbolic of motherhood than her womb. She writes: “It seems to me that it is my mother’s knees that are the true record of mine and my brother’s existence: yes, we began our lives in her uterus, but nine months pales in comparison to the long years her care for us was performed through those complicated joints.”

For her, motherhood is not restricted to a one-to-one relationship between mother and child, with cuts and state policy putting ever more pressure on individual women,  but is about the possibility of positive change through structural reform and more support from the state. She says that nurture, care and the creation of human life – and who does them and how they are valued or not valued – are reflections of power, status and the distribution of resources, making motherhood intrinsically political.

From childbirth to cutbacks

Starting with childbirth and suffering, Charman looks at women’s right to choose to be mothers or not and at attitudes to infertility and family planning. She then tackles the role of the state and mothers’ fight for resources and to challenge notions of what motherhood is. The book charts the impact of Thatcherism [who Charman describes as a kind of oppressive and bellicose matron-nanny-mummy figure], her ‘rebuke to the communal caring practices that had been built in preceding decades’ and her attack on women who claimed benefits, were single, unemployed, feminists, LGBTQ+ or went on strike.

It deals in detail with the Women Against Pit Closures movement and describes how mothers passed on to their children a spirit of resistance, with the Greenham Common protesters and the impact of the Troubles on mothers and daughters in Northern Ireland. Then come the New Labour years, when Charman grew up, the impact of reality tv and soap operas such as Eastenders and their portrayal of teen mothers, followed by austerity parenting and the demonisation of benefits claimants and punitive approaches to single parents during the recent Conservative years.

Charman ends by talking about three babies, starting with a baby she helped deliver as a voluntary birth companion, who made her believe for a moment in the future [“I could see it,” she says]. The second case is more a return to the discussion of the role of gender in mothering and an argument that mothering is about more than biology or even gender. The third is her own experience of doing a pregnancy test when she was writing the book which suggested she was pregnant and how she felt about that – ‘profound alienation’. In fact, it turned out to be a false positive. Charman then questions the pressure to be a mum and returns to her earlier point that she learned from her mum not by being in her womb, but by “repetition, proximity, commitment and desire”. She says: “I learned not at my mother’s knee, but from it”.

She finishes by saying that she will do the work of mothering in her own way and in her own time. The point about mothering being a lifelong thing and not just about pregnancy is one that many will agree with and, of course, many mothers adopt. The idea that motherhood is and has always been political and that it should be a collective effort and not one that is wholly individualised, placing huge pressure on women, is well made.

Where some may challenge the book is on the idea that mothering is such a broad category as to encompass almost anyone with nurturing responsibilities or desires. Mother State certainly makes you think, but it also feels like a very personal book in places, which is perhaps in itself a mark of the judgement passed on those who choose not to give birth and of the often unrealistic way we depict that act and the profound biological, psychological and other impacts, both positive and negative, that it has.

*Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood by Helen Charman is published by Allen Lane on 29th August, price 30 pounds.

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