Abstract
A woman’s experience of pregnancy is influenced by a range of factors, including her physiological responses, the cultural beliefs of her society, and her personal emotional history. This chapter considers the Australian history of pregnancy since 1945, drawing upon oral histories about experiences of becoming a mother, which I call ‘maternographies.’ Changes to the historical context surrounding pregnancy are firstly examined, before focusing on the stories which women construct about gestation. Narrative themes recurrently emerged which I have termed stories of conception, preparation, suffering, generation, anticipation and transition. Although these nine months of waiting for maternity are often overshadowed by the intensity of birth and early mothering, I argue that first pregnancy is most meaningfully understood as an apprenticeship for motherhood.
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Notes
- 1.
All of the narrators quoted in this chapter have been given pseudonyms. All interviews are in the possession of Carla Pascoe Leahy. Where nominated by the narrator, interviews have entered Museums Victoria’s collections. Interview with Tessa conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 3 October 2016.
- 2.
Philosopher Iris Marion Young calls this a sense of a ‘splitting subject’ in ‘Pregnant Embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation,’ in Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory, ed. Iris Marion Young (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 160–174.
- 3.
For an anthropological discussion of the rituals accompanying different stages of matrescence, including pregnancy, see Dana Raphael, ‘Matrescence, Becoming a Mother, a “New/Old” Rite de Passage,’ in Being Female: Reproduction, Power and Change, ed. Dana Raphael (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975).
- 4.
Paola Mariotti, ed., The Maternal Lineage: Identification, Desire and Transgenerational Issues (London and New York: Routledge, 2012); Daniel Stern and Nadia Bruschweiler-Stern, The Birth of a Mother: How Motherhood Changes You Forever (London: Bloomsbury, 1998).
- 5.
I use the term ‘narrator’ in preference to ‘interviewee’ or ‘participant’ as I feel that the word gives the person being interviewed a greater agency and authority in relation to the life story being presented in interview.
- 6.
Lynn Abrams defines the term ‘feminographies’ in ‘Heroes of Their Own Life Stories: Narrating the Female Self in the Feminist Age,’ Cultural and Social History (2019), doi:10.1080/14780038.2018.1551273. For a longer explanation of my term ‘maternographies,’ see: Carla Pascoe Leahy, ‘From the Little Wife to the Supermom? Maternographies of Feminism and Mothering in Australia Since 1945,’ Feminist Studies, 45, no. 1 (2019), 100–128.
- 7.
For a thorough formulation of matricentric feminism, see: Andrea O’Reilly, Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism and Practice (Bradford, Canada: Demeter Press, 2016). For a psychoanalytic account that argues that mothering can be the expression of a woman’s authentic desires see: Daphne de Marneffe, Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life (New York: Little, Brown and Co, 2004).
- 8.
I discuss the reasoning behind the creation of my sample in detail in Carla Pascoe Leahy, ‘Selection and Sampling Methodologies in Oral Histories of Mothering, Parenting and Family,’ Oral History, 47, no. 1 (2019), 105–116.
- 9.
For examples of research into mothering that employ a psychosocial approach, see Lisa Baraitser, Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption (London and New York: Routledge, 2009); Wendy Hollway, Knowing Mothers: Researching Maternal Identity Change (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Petra Bueskens (ed), Mothering and Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives (Toronto: Demeter Press, 2014).
- 10.
Kerreen M. Reiger, Our Bodies, Our Babies: The Forgotten Women’s Movement (Carlton South, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2001). However, the extent to which women can freely choose their antenatal care remains limited by cost, availability and knowledge: Stephanie Brown et al., Missing Voices: The Experience of Motherhood (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 41.
- 11.
Catherine Kevin, ‘Subjects for Citizenship: Pregnancy and the Australian Nation, 1945–2000,’ Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 12, no. 1/2 (2006): 131–142; Meredith Nash, Making ‘Postmodern’ Mothers: Pregnant Embodiment, Baby Bumps and Body Image (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
- 12.
Ultrasound examination was ‘almost universal’ by the early 1990s: Brown et al., Missing Voices, 34.
- 13.
Ann Oakley, From Here to Maternity: Becoming a Mother (London: Penguin, 1986), 46–58; Emily Martin, The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), 145.
- 14.
Interview with Julia conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 5 July 2017.
- 15.
Interview with Joanna conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 1 December 2016.
- 16.
Carla Pascoe, ‘Mum’s the Word: Advice to Australian Mothers Since 1945,’ Journal of Family Studies 21, no. 3 (2015): 218–234.
- 17.
Mira Crouch and Lenore Manderson, New Motherhood: Cultural and Personal Transitions in the 1980s (Yverdon, Switzerland: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1993), 90–92. See also Susan Goodwin and Kate Huppatz, eds., The Good Mother: Contemporary Motherhoods in Australia (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2010).
- 18.
Nash, Making ‘Postmodern’ Mothers, 154–160, 175–176.
- 19.
Rachel Thomson, Mary Jane Kehily, Lucy Hadfield and Sue Sharpe, Making Modern Mothers (Bristol: Policy Press, 2011), 60.
- 20.
Nash, Making ‘Postmodern’ Mothers, 84–92.
- 21.
Thomson et al., Making Modern Mothers, 197–234.
- 22.
Baraitser, Maternal Encounters, 122–150.
- 23.
Alison J. Clarke, ‘Maternity and Materiality: Becoming a Mother in Consumer Culture,’ in Consuming Motherhood, eds. Janelle S. Taylor, Linda L. Layne and Danielle F. Wozniak (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004) 55–71.
- 24.
Thomson et al., Making Modern Mothers, 197–233.
- 25.
In addition, a 2014 survey found that 49 per cent of Australian women experienced workplace discrimination during pregnancy, parental leave or on their return to work: Australian Human Rights Commission, Supporting Working Parents: Pregnancy and Return to Work National Review (Sydney: AHRC, 2014).
- 26.
Interview with Patsy conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 23 January 2017.
- 27.
Josephine May, ‘Secrets and Lies: Sex Education and Gendered Memories of Childhood’s End in an Australian Provincial City, 1930s–1950s,’ Sex Education 6, no. 1 (2006): 1–15; Joy Talukdar, Tania Aspland and Poulomee Datta, ‘Sex Education in South Australia: The Past and the Present,’ Sex Education 13, no. 1 (2013): 107–116; Claudia Nelson and Michelle H. Martin, eds., Sexual Pedagogies: Sex Education in Britain, Australia, and America, 1879–2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
- 28.
Shurlee Swain and Renate Howe, Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
- 29.
See Chap. 1 for a fuller explanation of ART access in Australia.
- 30.
Interview with Connie conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 7 April 2017.
- 31.
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Historical Statistics, Cat. No. 3105.0.65.001 (2008); Australian Bureau of Statistics, Births, Australia, 2012, Cat. No. 3301.0 (2012).
- 32.
Thomson et al., Making Modern Mothers, 231–233.
- 33.
Interview with Lucy conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 23 February 2017.
- 34.
Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern, The Birth of a Mother, 27–46.
- 35.
Interview with Sybil conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 6 April 2017.
- 36.
Interview with Katherine conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 30 November 2016.
- 37.
Dana Birksted-Breen, ‘Peaceful Islands and Dangerous Jungles—Pregnancy: Opportunity or Impediment. A Psychoanalyst’s View,’ in The Maternal Lineage: Identification, Desire and Transgenerational Issues, ed. Paola Mariotti (London and New York: Routledge, 2012): 67–84.
- 38.
Interview with Alison conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 9 February 2017.
- 39.
Leslie Cannold refers to ‘thwarted mothers’ in her book What, No Baby? Why Women are Losing the Freedom to Mother and How They Can Get It Back (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2005).
- 40.
Wendy Hollway, ‘Conflict in the Transition to Becoming a Mother: A Psycho-Social Approach,’ Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society 15, no. 2 (2010): 137, 142.
- 41.
Mariotti, The Maternal Lineage.
- 42.
Interview with Justine conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 3 April 2017.
- 43.
Some aspects of this shadow history are explored in Catherine Kevin, ‘Maternal Responsibility and Traceable Loss: Medicine and Miscarriage in Twentieth-Century Australia,’ Women’s History Review (2016): 1–17; Susannah Thompson, ‘“I’d Just Like to Die With a Bit of Peace”: The Role of Oral History in Reinterpreting Repressed Memories of Stillbirth and Neonatal Death in Australia’s Past,’ Lilith: A Feminist History Journal 16 (2007), 120–131.
- 44.
Interview with Petronela conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 4 September 2017.
- 45.
Interview with Ariana conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 5 April 2017.
- 46.
Interview with Sophia conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 4 April 2017.
- 47.
On the cultural myth of positive associations with pregnancy, see Susan Maushart, The Mask of Motherhood: How Becoming a Mother Changes Our Lives and Why We Never Talk About It (New York: Penguin, 2000) 53–55.
- 48.
Interview with Julia conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 5 July 2017.
- 49.
Interview with Amanda conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 15 November 2016.
- 50.
Interview with Ariana.
- 51.
Interview with Petronela.
- 52.
Interview with Heather conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 19 September 2017.
- 53.
Interview with Veronica conducted by Carla Pascoe Leahy on 22 August 2013.
- 54.
This evocative term comes from Monica Dux, ed., Mothermorphosis: Australian Storytellers Write About Becoming a Mother (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2015).
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the generosity of the women who shared their maternographies with me. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Petra Bueskens and the attendees of the Australian Mothering in Historical and Contemporary Perspective Symposium for their feedback on this chapter. This research is funded by the Australian Research Council DE160100817.
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Pascoe Leahy, C. (2019). Mothers-in-Waiting: Maternographies of Pregnancy in Australia since 1945. In: Pascoe Leahy, C., Bueskens, P. (eds) Australian Mothering. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_7
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