Attitudes to Babies, Young Children and Their Upbringing
Penelope Leach
Somehow the idea that bringing up children is a boring, time-consuming and restrictive activity which gets in the way of the important and exciting business of being a female person, has got to change. As I have said, I believe it to be a set of attitudes off the froth of society rather than from its roots. But the froth is what people see and it is not enough for children to be important, they have to be seen to be so, too.
New people are a creation, biologically and socially. They are, ultimately, the point of everything else that anybody does and rather particularly the point of those activities which are most generally respected. Without new generations coming along there would be no point in any long-term efforts: no point in painting pictures, devising more equitable laws, developing medical treatments or conserving the countryside. Nobody has to undertake the particular form of creative activity which is the rearing of children, any more than anybody has to undertake the creative activity of any other profession. But those who choose to do so should be made aware that they stand with other creators.
Being somebody's mother is far more than 'just a job'. But the present social situation puts so much emphasis on the self-fulfilling aspects of working outside the home that mothering is actually seen as something less. Yet if one compares low-status mothering with 'a job' whose high status is generally accepted, many of the accepted grumbles about child-care fall into a new perspective. They begin to look silly.
Suppose that you are an architect. You are commissioned to produce a building which you see as potentially your 'great work'. Your prideful pleasure in the commission is shared by everyone around you. Nobody doubts the value of the work and just embarked upon it neither you, nor anyone else, expects you to be able to devote much time or energy to anything else until it is finished. The building will take the lion's share of three years of your life but, because the end-product is seen as worthwhile, your single-minded devotion is accepted and acceptable.
Architecture is part of the 'real world of work' so, committing yourself to those years, you do not expect to enjoy every moment of them. You know that the periods of creative inspiration will be brief compared with the periods of sheer hard work. You know that only a little of your time will be spent doing what only you could do and that the rest will be spent coping with tiresome, repetitive detail and the tedious temperaments of your team. You know that there will be muddy site-visits on wet Monday mornings and endless delays when your ordered roofing-tiles fail to appear... You do not expect it to be non-stop pleasure.
Everyone needs breaks: the architect-you will need them and so does a mother. Everyone grumbles from time to time about their working conditions: the architect-you will yearn for a bigger office or a different firm of builders just as a mother does for an easier house, a garden or a washing machine. But as an architect you will not moan that it is intolerable of society to expect you to shoulder this responsibility. You wanted it: being given it was an honour. You will not seek a state employee to do some of it for you because sharing it would reduce your status and share of the credit. Doing it well is worth every effort you make. The game is worth the candle.
Why is it that we cannot encourage people to feel the same about their children? Why are we able to accept that a building (or a novel, a sculpture or a business) is worth the slog when children are not worth the nappy-washing, the broken nights, the repetitive conversations? Why, when we accept elements of boredom or even old-fashioned duty in the working world, are these seen as offensive and retrograde in child-care?
The principal complaint of mothers who want out of child-care is that they are bored. The principal jibe at those mothers is that what they are doing is boring and bound to make them into boring people. Having enjoyed my own children when they were small as much as I enjoy them now that they are bigger, (and now that they are grown!) I am always tempted simply to dismiss such idiocy. I truly find it difficult to understand how anyone can find a developing new member of our race boring overall or how facilitating that development could make the facilitator into a bore. Yes; people who are mothering are likely to want to talk about what they spend their days and their thoughts in doing. But that architect yammers on about her job, too, and that is socially acceptable dinner-party talk even among people who have no especial interest in site-subsidence or building regulations.
But if people feel bored it is no use simply telling them not to. When I look at the undoubted advantages which I enjoyed (and still enjoy) in my role as mother, the one which outweighs all the rest -- even the decent income, the housing and so forth -- is information. It was this, more than anything else, which prevented me from being bored in an all-encompassing and soul-destroying way, even when a particular afternoon or whole week contained no highspots.
The more a mother knows about children's development, about the orderly processes of change, about the actions and reactions which are likely in this or that age-group, in these or those circumstance, the more interesting her own child becomes. The bricklayer who has no way of seeing beyond the wall he has been told to build, cannot share the architect's satisfaction. He is not creating, he is merely working. In the same way a mother who cares for her child without any picture of 'children' and of the potential of her creation, is far more likely to regard the whole business as sheer slog. Interested mothers change mucky nappies, make beds, sweep floors, pick up toys, cook meals and then do it all again, just as uninterested ones do. But they do these external things as a means to an end: to make a comfortable environment for the internal task of relating to the child. They are able to keep their priorities straight: to put themselves and their children before the house keeping; to keep themselves free of self-imposed domestic slavery.
Women who did not set out to have children because they were already interested in them are given little opportunity to get interested after the event. Most people carelessly assume that interest is not necessary because something called 'love' operates instead. Surely love is automatic in a blood-mother? Surely it is this which compensates for anything about mothering which may be at all difficult or tiresome? Of course most mothers do love most of their children; of course it is love which makes much of their mothering possible and enjoyable and of course this is why the parallel with any other creative career is far from complete. But interest and love go together; they support, create and replace each other so that when either one temporarily fails the other takes over and ensures that both mother and child still get what they need.
Interest in the processes of all babies' development makes a mother look and listen carefully to her own baby. It is by looking and listening that she sees the signs of his growing attachment to her and of his individuality. That attachment -- his love -- reinforces hers and makes her see him as her child because it is to her that he relates. That individuality makes him not just 'a baby' but himself; a unique person who will never be just any human being but will always be himself.
Interest in how babies and children react makes a mother wonder what will happen if she does this, that or the other with her child. That means trying to think herself into his non-existent shoes; and trying to see the world and herself through his senses is part of love. Interest makes her wonder why he cries and what will make him stop. Putting that wondering into experimental action is the same, from this point of view, as loving.
Interest and love do not only support each other on the positive side. They help each other along when everything goes wrong, too. A baby's behaviour suddenly seems unbearable and mothering him an insupportable burden. Love falters, but interest asks why does he carry on like that? Do many children? How do other people cope with it? What will have to happen in this, that or the other area of his development before he is likely to stop?...
These vital questions, concerned with the nature and development of children, are not the ones which are answered by the professionals, by the media or even by specialist books on child-care. The information which is poured out to mothers is heavily biased towards the peripheral externals of children's physical lives. Millions of words are expended on subjects like feeding, hygiene or home-safety, yet very few are used to describe this creature who is to be fed, cleaned and protected. No wonder many mothers truly believe that their yucky apricot-rice is more important than their conversation.
The implication is that children are objects to be served rather than people to be loved and enjoyed. The perfect mother therefore uses any time which may be left over from necessary domestic chores in activities designed to make her feel like a television mum and to make advertisers a lot of money. If she has done all the necessary washing, she can buy a special product to get that little sweater 'whiter than white'. If she has made her kitchen clean enough to cook in she can spend a happy afternoon putting special polish on the floor. There seems no limit to the space magazines and newspapers will give to knitting and crochet patterns or to ideas for lining and frilling cribs or making prune-jellies look like baby rabbits. But space for pure interest or for fun? A mass circulation woman's magazine recently asked me to contribute a series of articles on children 'from the psychological point of view'. The editor wanted 300 words per week. She was averaging 2,000 per week on cookery, 3,000 on 'home-making', 1,000 on household gadgets and a four-page pull out on knitting, crocheting or sewing 'for your family'.
In a society which so elaborates the chores of life with a child while ignoring the point of having a child at all, it is no wonder that mothers are predisposed to feeling fed-up. The old image of 'housewife' used to be similar and similarly destructive. We have long ago realized that the business of running a home is peripheral to a couple's happiness and manageable in an enormous variety of ways ranging from ten minutes per day each to dedicated full-time work by one member who happens to like it that way. It is high time that everybody realized that the introduction of a child to that couple does demand their presence but does not demand domestic slavery. I am typing this sentence while waiting for a batch of jam to jell. But that is because I actually like making jam. Doing so does not make me a domestic slave, a domestic bore or a better mother. I just makes me a person who happens to like cooking...