The Supporting Cast
Motherhood is a highly personal experience. However, a myriad of external elements lies beyond the mother/baby bond, with the potential of impacting or complicating a mother’s life. Marta Santi explores the supporting cast of people who guide women through those difficult early days, weeks and months.
That “the personal is political” is no ground-breaking idea. We’ve known this since the 1970s when second-wave feminists started rallying crowds under the banner that “women’s personal problems are political problems”—asking the world to open an eye to the fact that women’s experiences are rooted in a system of power relations.
Fast forward fifty years, and feminism has massively evolved, growing into a much more inclusive movement. Yet, it’s easy to gloss over this personal/political slogan and see ourselves in isolation from the vast constellation of institutions, legislation, and individuals surrounding us—especially when we think of intimate experiences such as love, sex, and motherhood.
I’ve tried to disentangle this complex web by speaking directly to three women who participate in the motherhood journey of dozens of people every day.
Celyn, a 24-year-old midwife from Wales, explained to me that “the mother-child bond develops seconds after the birth when the oxytocin hormone is released,” during a moment “needing no outside interference” and “requiring skin-to-skin contact between the mother and the baby.” It’s a bond that will not only morph into a life-long relationship but also be “necessary for the baby’s immediate care, starting from breastfeeding.”
Therefore, motherhood is an extremely personal experience, a bond engendered by a chemical reaction. However, there’s more to it than that; a myriad of external elements lie beyond it, with the potential of not only impacting but also complicating mothers’ lives.
“You can be the most committed, loving mother and still be affected by external factors that hinder your ability to protect yourself and your child from harm.”
Adisat, a safeguarding professional working in refuges across Greater Manchester, explained that “of course, we speak about a very intimate bond when we think of motherhood—which is amazing to witness strengthening even during tough times—but it is more than just ‘the mother and the child.’” She goes on to say that you can be the most committed, loving mother and “still be affected by external factors that hinder your ability to protect yourself and your child from harm.” Adisat’s job has shown her that “motherhood is not only about having good intentions”— there’s often a lot more at play and at stake.
In the case of Adisat’s workplace, this is domestic abuse—which she explained is often invisible and a lot more subtle than physical harm. Spanning from emotional to sexual and financial, abuse doesn’t only see a partner as a perpetrator; this could be anyone who may is close to a woman–be it a relative, a colleague, or a person working in institutions, such as an employer or a teaching staff. It’s a much more complex issue than many understand. Police recorded domestic abuse-related crimes in England and Wales rose 6% in the year ending March 2021 to 845,734*, but this doesn’t account for the unreported cases, which are understood to be much higher.
Motherhood cannot be viewed in isolation from concerns around childcare, employment, or housing either. Ruth, a mother from London and founder of the Single Parents Rights campaign, has spoken about how the motherhood journey is “always impacted by the policies and structures surrounding the mother.” According to the research of Ruth’s campaign group, single mothers—who make up a massive 90% of the lone parent population—are “directly discriminated in finding work, progressing in their careers, and renting properties. If not experiencing direct discrimination, the vast majority of them perceive discrimination on various levels and suffer a triple whammy of prejudice, bias, and lack of legal protection.”
And again, motherhood is closely dependent on healthcare systems. The amount of State investment into maternity services and the guidelines on medical procedures dictated by public bodies directly interfere with what is often conceived as a “uniquely intimate relationship.” Celyn explains that she often feels fearful about negatively impacting women’s lives. This is due to the pressure of making the right medical decision and the result of systemic failures that range from broken or missing equipment on labour wards to the tragically low staff-to-women ratio. Celyn told me, “Not being able to provide the best possible service to a patient to whom I’ve promised assistance, perhaps they are in pain following a C-section, or are frustrated due to having difficulty breastfeeding, is the worst possible feeling.”
“Not being able to provide the best possible service to a patient to whom I’ve promised assistance, is the worst possible feeling.”
While looking at these issues is essential to understanding the wide-ranging motherhood issues, the complexity can often feel frightening or even paralysing. Therefore, we must shift our attention to the micro, celebrating the individual people, whose own agency resists macrosystems of oppression, facilitating the motherhood experience on different levels.
Celyn explains that “as a midwife, you can make a real, positive change to a woman’s life. Not only medically but also by improving their diet and their emotional wellbeing. You can become their advocate and the promoter of a supportive, positive birth. You can assist them with the intricacies of motherhood such as breastfeeding—which can be extremely daunting to first-time mothers.” Adisat shares a similar view, explaining that in safeguarding a woman beyond her giving birth, “you provide both practical and emotional help: from registering children to schools and staying in touch with the teachers, to helping mothers sign up for benefits.”
Keeping a woman and a child safe from harm is a collective job, with a host of specialists involved in this challenge. ‘We use a community-based approach,” Adisat continues, “meaning that we operate collaboratively with different experts, be it GPs and police officers or teachers and local authorities, because this allows us to share resources and information about the women’s wellbeing and spot hidden signs of abuse.”
“Seeing motherhood as a public and private matter means discerning it from the systems that interfere with it and identifying where oppression stems from.”
Finally, facilitating the motherhood journey also means eradicating discrimination that disadvantages all mothers but hits certain groups particularly hard. Ruth has been lobbying the government to end direct and perceived discrimination towards single mothers. She wants to include single parents as a protected characteristic in the 2010 Equality Act, which would mean making it illegal to discriminate against single parents because they are single parents. On a practical level, it would mean that single parents would be able to file a legal claim when discrimination does occur. In the long-term, it would reduce the likelihood of landlords openly rejecting single parent tenants or employers introducing professional development policies which inadvertently exclude single parents. Finally, it would mean that government institutions must consider how planned changes will impact single parents before implementing them without due consideration.
Seeing motherhood as a public and private matter means discerning it from the systems that interfere with it and identifying where oppression stems from. It means being able to point the finger at a system that often obstructs mothers’ lives.
But politics is also visible on a small scale.
It’s visible in the acts of daily devotion and resistance exercised by people who care. People like Celyn, Adisat, and Ruth, who’ve shown me a much more hopeful side of the often-unacknowledged politics of our intimate lives.
*Figures from the Office For National Statistics, November 2021.