…is a very bitter woman’ is what I first thought when I started reading her book ‘A Life’s Work: On becoming a mother’.  She seems to be fuming that she’s pregnant, fuming at what pregnancy/birth books say, fuming at the health care professions, fuming at the whole world, despite the fact she chose to become pregnant.  Once her baby is born, despite the fact she professes her great love for her child, she proceeds to bemoan nearly everything she experiences of motherhood.  Her book angers me because it is so negative - it probably did her an awful lot of good writing it, but I can’t imagine what good it could do to any mothers or potential mothers reading it, except to learn that motherhood is one of the biggest sacrifices you can possibly make, and you will probably hate it, whilst simultaneously experiencing desperately profound feelings of love and awe for your child.  I’m sorry to say that, having had a rather depressing first trimester, I didn’t feel up to continuing to read past the first four chapters - maybe the book doesn’t continue this way and I’m doing her a great injustice!  However, despite how much I disliked reading the book, I have learnt a huge amount from it and can understand why it is one of our ’set texts’ for the BFC training.

Cusk is clearly illustrating fairly common feelings for modern mothers; mothers who maybe have delayed motherhood in order to pursue a career; mothers for whom Gina Ford is the most important baby ‘expert’ since time began.  The mothers I am imagining appear to have such trouble reconciling themselves with the concept of not having complete control over their lives that they need the desperately strict routines that Ford encourages them to enforce.  And it’s hardly surprising…whilst clearly there are many exceptions (and I’m sure that this is also an experience of some young mums), most women having children in their mid- to late-thirties have experienced a relatively long adulthood so far, being in near-complete control of their lives.  They have spent the last 17+ years deciding when and what to eat; where to go and when to go there; how their schedules will pan out for the next year, let alone the next day!  Speaking as a young mum, who spent only 5 years in this way, I can’t really imagine what it must be like to realise that the minute you become pregnant you effectively ‘lose control’.  No wonder some women find it so hard to feel a part of their body move without having asked it to do so.  No wonder some women feel overwhelmed at the prospect of having no idea when or where labour will start, and not knowing how long it will take, or how close it will be to what you plan.  All this we have to somehow learn how to cope with and then comes the baby!  How can you plan what time you will eat, or leave the house if your baby is fed on demand and poos or sleeps at unpredictable times?  How does one easily change one’s lifestyle so totally?  Gina Ford offers a way out: force your baby to fit your life.  Make him sleep when you want him to, leaving him to cry if that’s what it takes; feed him when it suits you; wake him when the timetable says it’s time.  All this also apparently makes it easier when your nanny arrives to take over care when it is time for you to go back to work.  Unsurprisingly, a lot of mothers find that Ford’s routines don’t actually have much basis in reality and they soon learn that their hormones simply won’t allow you to strictly follow what Ford says. 

However, I’m digressing a bit here.  From what she says, Cusk wasn’t a Ford-follower, but she does come from the same group of mothers that are more likely to turn to Ford.  Cusk admirably breastfed for a few months; gave up work to be a full-time mother; and tried to be led by her baby’s needs.  However, the difference between the Cusk-style mother and the ‘earth-mother’-style mother is vast, and it boils down to one thing, I think: where the main motivation for mothering comes from.  I think that Cusk-style mothers have children primarily because of their ‘biological clock’ - because it is what is expected of them, and because they feel the distant calling of their hormones, whether or not they realise that that is what it is!  They get married or move in with their partners (must be PC here ) - the next step is to procreate.  This is what is known among psychologists as ‘extrinsic motivation’ - motivation to do something based on rewards, or something done for someone else out of the goodness of your heart.  ‘Earth-mother’-style mothers, on the other hand, primarily choose to have children not just for the sake of the children, but for themselves - they hear the calling of their bodies and want to birth and mother children just because they want to.  This is known as ‘intrinsic motivation’. 

Before I go on, I just need to clarify that a lot of psychologists and educationalists and other experts, believe that a job or task is easier and learning is more effective, the more intrinsic motivation features in one’s reasons for doing or learning something.  This has clear parallels in the philosophies of most home educators: children will learn more and better if they are learning because they want to; not because they feel they ought to.

Back to mothering: How about feeding choice?  BF helpers are well aware that women are more likely to succeed at breastfeeding if they have decided to breastfeed, or to continue to breastfeed, if they are doing it not just for the baby.  Mothers who decide to breastfeed primarily because it’s ’best for baby’ often don’t get past the first hurdle.  On the other hand, mothers who don’t consider how they will feed their baby to be a choice, who just know they will breastfeed because that’s what they want to do, usually perservere through the tough early weeks (or months if they’re unlucky!) and go on to enjoy a very mutually satisfying breastfeeding relationship.  Indeed, Cusk says she had to give up breastfeeding when her daughter was 3 or 4 months old (I can’t remember exactly which!) - a common time for primarily extriniscally motivated breastfeeders.

Cusk also decides to stay at home with her children rather than go back to work and this decision, I believe, sets the whole tone of the book.  Cusk is extrinsically motivated to make this decision, believing that it will be better for her children for her to care for them herself.  The consequences of this decisioncan be disasterous for mothers: Cusk feels isolated and resentful of her child, experiencing desperately conflicting emotions when she considers the depth of her love for her child.  She is becoming a martyr, sacrificing her fulfilling career for the benefit of her children, and she can’t enjoy her job as a mother because she doesn’t value it - all she values are the incredibly self-less sacrifices she has made.  Mothers who choose to be full-time mothers not only for the benefits they believe it will give their children, but also for the benefits and rewards they believe they will recieve, are less likely to experience these feelings.  They are primarily intrinsically motivated and are therefore more likely to enjoy their new job.  Cusk talks about how hard she finds it to move between her self as a mother and her self as an independent being.  But intrinsically motivated mothers don’t see the two ’selves’ as separate.  Their self as a mother is just a new improved version of their self pre-motherhood.  They enjoy motherhood because they genuinely value it as a job in itself, and they allow themselves to experience the joys motherhood can bring. 

This long-winded rant is not intended to be a ‘I think some mothers are better than others’ post.  It is leading me on to saying that what I have learnt is that, while I have long believed isolated parenting decisions to be right for some families and not for others, and that that should be respected and accepted, I had not realised the depth and importance of this fact.  I had not realised that parenting decisions not being right for a family, might actually mean that they are down-right wrong for that family!  Cusk gave up her job believing that her children would benefit from being brought up full-time by their mother: I suggest that maybe she’s wrong.  Maybe they would benefit only by being brought up full-time by their mother if their mother actually wants to be doing it.  Maybe Cusk’s children would be better off being cared for by a nanny or other childcare for some of the time.  If you ask someone to do you a favour, and they do it, but they really don’t want to be doing it, you feel uncomfortable and guilty.  I wonder if the same thing is true for children.  Children aren’t stupid, they pick up on minute changes in mood and atmosphere - why wouldn’t they be totally aware of their mother’s reluctance to mother them, however careful she is to hide it from them?  And these thoughts could be applied to any parenting choice you could think of.  We are taught, in our training, to offer to mothers certain ‘core conditions’ (a counselling thing), one of which is known as unconditional positive regard, or non-judgemental warmth.  Up until now I have been working on this core condition by looking at my own biases and prejudices, acknowledging them and putting them to one side when supporting a mother.  I now believe, having read Cusk’s book and come to the conclusions I have, that I can offer this core condition even easier just by accepting that, whilst I am able to change a mother’s extrinsic motivation for doing something, by offering her accurate and un-biased information, I can do nothing whatsoever to change her intrinsic motivation for her decisions - only she can do that.  Occassionally mothers come to our groups complaining of a common breastfeeding problem, and whatever we suggest they reject, often without even trying.  They are not coming to the group to try to remove the problem, they are coming hoping that we will say ‘you’re right, your nipples are too sore/you don’t have enough milk/your breasts are too big etc. - you probably need to stop breastfeeding’ - they want permission to stop.  They are breastfeeding primarily for the baby’s benefit, and they don’t want to be the one to make the decision to stop, understandably.  They want to be able to say ‘I had to stop’. 

Ok, I’m rambling now - trying to untangle the mass of thoughts in my head that I haven’t spent any time working out lately.  Will post a bit about my darling girls soon!