The mother of all questions

Should feminism be fighting the long-hours work culture? Sylvia Thompsonreports.

HAS FEMINISM failed Irish mothers? This was a key question that arose at a conference exploring motherhood held in University College Cork last weekend.

More specifically, Maria Quinlan from the school of social work and social policy in Trinity College Dublin asked if so-called choice feminism had failed Irish mothers by presenting staying at home with the children as just another option. Quinlan argued that mothers were now the most discriminated group within the workforce. "There is no denying that women who have children face a problematic and challenging relationship with the workforce," she told the conference.

"Management positions are effectively 'gendered male' with last-minute meetings, urgent requests and unscheduled business trips hurdles in the race to trip up the woman manager with family responsibilities." Acknowledging figures that show how Irish men work an average of 43 hours per week while Irish women work 31 hours, Quinlan said that when unpaid domestic chores, including childcare, were taken into account, women in the EU in full-time positions worked 12 hours more than men each week. So is the real glass ceiling at home, she asked.

According to Quinlan, the Irish workplace does not take account of the non-linear nature of how women's careers develop. So, should feminism now be more to the forefront in fighting the long-hours work culture that, interestingly, hasn't been found to be more productive than more flexible working hours? And, should feminism fight for a more adaptable workplace which suits people with families and those who want a more flexible work/life balance? These questioned hovered unanswered as debate and discussion moved on. The aim, after all, of this conference, was to explore motherhood and encourage research into the experiences of Irish mothers.

Maire Leane, conference organiser, senior lecturer in the department of applied social studies at University College Cork, is keen to develop a politics of motherhood that will "redefine the [private] isolation of pregnancy, childbirth and parenting as issues of public concern". She believes birthing and caring for children have become increasingly individualised and private activities in our culture, with increased reliance on medical knowledge and professional expertise. "This results in mothering practices which are increasingly monitored and judged in professional and cultural contexts," she argues.

According to Leane, this approach also feeds into notions that "good mothering is mothering that is child-centred, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing and labour-intensive, which is carried out by mothers who are nurturing, thoughtful, loving and selfless." Coupled with media idealisations of mothers (yummy mummies and celebrity mothers), is an explosion of mother and baby consumerism.

Other speakers explained how in African and Asian cultures, mothering is much more a shared practice. "In Sri Lanka, the mother is never left alone for the first three months of the baby's life. She's looked after so that she can look after the baby," said Nilmimi Fernando. "What I find in Ireland is that people are interested in these shared mothering practices on an academic or intellectual level. But on a practical level, when people from these indigenous cultures speak about them they are unheard and carry no weight."

So, are Irish mothers afraid to face the loss of shared mothering that was undoubtedly part of our history too? And, perhaps more importantly, are Irish mothers - and Irish feminists alike - afraid to emphasise the strong emotional connections and maternal bonds that drive many mothers to seek wider definitions of themselves than that of a full-time paid worker striving to live out equality legislation?

Meabh Smith, qualified engineer who works full-time in the home, walked boldly into this space with her paper, entitled To Work or Not to Work? "It's easy not to ask yourself should I give up work," says Smith, who worked full-time, then part-time and is now on a five-year career break to look after her three children.

And while she acknowledges that decisions to give up paid work to look after your own children are rooted in a political and economic landscape, Smith argues it is ultimately a personal dilemma.

Another point, which arose in discussion about the perceived loss of status of being full-time in the home, was that of the unacknowledged value of the voluntary work carried out by mothers. One suggestion was that, if some of these mothers were placed on State boards and policy forums, we might get broader definitions of productivity and the true value of human capital in society today.

Smith argues that caring for one's children needs to be conceptualised as work if it is to be properly valued socially, legally and economically. "Those who provide care, unpaid as well as paid, must be seen as productive citizens who deserve the same social rights as all other workers and citizens," she says.

Taking up this theme, writer, journalist and mother working in the home, Victoria White said, "We need to liberate the home by which I don't mean dividing household tasks between couples, but to make the home a workplace which is subject to the same norms as other work. In doing so, it will have status and state support and not the devalued role it is now seen to be." In her paper, White spoke of how Irish feminists in the 1970s and 1980s "infused their feminism with a fear of marriage and children . . . so that a grotesquely capitalist repression of motherhood and suppression of children has become the least attractive offshoot of Second Wave feminism."

After a day filled with much theorising on motherhood, one mother's comment at the end was refreshingly sincere. "We have to be careful what we say and examine our assumptions about work to tailor them to meet our needs. I'm so proud of what I've done with my children by being in the home for the last 12 years. For me, it's been the biggest, best and hardest thing ever."

For conference papers and more details about the Association for Research on Mothering - Ireland, see www.armi.ie