A thought provoking read that leaves me unsure of how to react but then I've only known mothers and can never be one.

Motherhood has fascinated me throughout my life, for what is female has fascinated me throughout my life.

Perhaps stupidly, I feel relief that I can never be a mother for the thought of childbirth is terrifying to me, perhaps because at the moment of my birth, the bedroom window, (weakened by bombing during the war), chose that moment to collapse and fall to the earth outside. [So I'm told.] Or perhaps it is because I've participated in and witnessed, to the extent that any man can, several births that have left me in awe of the strength & endurance of the mothers concerned and I am certain that I do not possess such fortitude.

I have also witnessed, mainly beyond the immediate perinatal stage, a not uncommon change in attitude shown to mothers, more often in a direct sense by women than by men but as disturbingly by society in general. This seems to have worsened with the 'liberation' of women to the extent that should a mother choose to stay at home and care for her own children, she becomes invisible to society and her efforts and contribution are ignored as far as social production is measured.

Introductions on meeting new people become an ordeal, for the most common ice-breaker seems to be, "... and what do you do?" - referring, of course, to an occupation. To admit to being an at home 'mother', appears to be a rapid entry to a state of invisibility and irrelevance in a society where materialism and status rather than caring and sharing have become king - or queen.

I have no quarrel with those who choose to work and entrust their children at the start of life to others. I understand very well that for many women with or without partners, their very survival depends on the income produced.

I do, however, find it hard to understand why a mother would consider that another is better placed to care for her children than herself and allow it when there is no necessity to do so. Perhaps I have this view because I've always been a primary and usually single bread-winner and because my partners have preferred to raise their own children.

Of course, reasons for decisions of this sort can be as complex and difficult as a decision to have children at all. I am also very aware of the power of modelling and can appreciate that many mothers may be persuaded by inequities in treatment of the sexes to feel that obtaining a career and the status and financial independence it can confer as being an important example to present to their offspring.

Regardless, of the reasons or otherwise for a mother to choose to work for wages and find or fund childcare or to care for her children herself, why is it that the external child carer receives financial reward for undertaking this task and yet the at home mother does not?

Isn't this a basic and major inequity? Yet it is one I rarely, if ever, see mentioned by either working women or the media or other social commentators.

When I began working, it was normal for women to raise their children in the home and married men received a greater wage than single men for the same job in recognition of this. No, it wasn't anywhere near a double wage and certainly not a perfect system because that extra was not paid to directly to the wife but it was to some degree a recognition of the demands, both in terms of effort and cost, of raising a family.

There are many more issues raised, for me, by this topic but I will stop here and perhaps write separately about some of them. I apologise if the length of my comment is seen as inapproriate by some readers.

When I began, I was simply intending to make a one line comment: 'Not much seems to have changed", followed by what is below. Some apposite quotes from the Australian context:

"Henry Lawson's mother, Louisa, describing her grandmother: ... she had worked hard all her life, poor soul! - she could reap her three-quarters of an acre of wheat in a day - and when she felt herself going to die, she got out of bed and washed herself, dressed in clean clothes, lay down again, and folded her hands on her breast - "so as not to give trouble", she said. " (The Bulletin October 1896)

...

The cruel girls we loved

Are over forty,

Their subtle daughters

Have stolen their beauty;

And with a blue stare

Of cool surprise,

They mock their anxious mothers

With their mothers' eyes.

(C.H. Percival c. 1930)

...

Meeting little Evelyn Bigfamily in the street, she informed me of the birth of yet another little sister. "And what is your mummy calling the new little baby?" I gooed. "A blooming nuisance," was the frank reply. (Australian Woman's Mirror July 1953)

....

I was told today that I was an uninterested miser of a mother who did not want her three children to have a higher standard of education than I had received. Was I told this by my worst enemy? No, by a man trying to sell me $600 worth of encyclopedias.

(H.G., Brisbane. in New Idea October 1976)

...

“To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.” (Maya Angelou)

...

Acknowledgments to The White chrysanthemum: changing images of Australian motherhood. / Nancy Keesing.