Provided by the author(s) and University College Dublin Library in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title Motherhood in Ireland, Creation and Context Authors(s) Kennedy, Patricia Publication date 2004 Publisher Mercier Press Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/9080 Downloaded 2021-10-01T10:58:36Z The UCD community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters! (@ucd_oa) © Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. Motherhood in Ireland; creation and context Edited by Patricia Kennedy 1 Table of Contents Introduction Creation 1 Chapter One: Creation and Context: The symbolism of Motherhood in Irish poetry Patricia Kennedy Chapter Two: Childbirth in Ireland Patricia Kennedy Chapter Three: Infant -feeding patterns Pauline Dillon Hurney Chapter Four: Mothers dying Mary Moynihan Chapter Five: Infertility: The Silent Period Flo Delaney Creation 2 Chapter Six: Motherhood in Irish language literature Máire Mhac an tSaoi Chapter Seven: Motherhood and fiction Áine McCarthy, Writer Chapter Eight: Mothers and creativity Róisín de Buitléar and Maree Hensey Context Chapter Nine: Motherhood and political symbolism Valerie Bresnihan Chapter Ten: Maternity Confined: The Struggle for fertility control Pauline Conroy 2 Chapter Eleven: Motherhood, sexuality and the Catholic Church Betty Hilliard Chapter Twelve: Inside a Magdalene laundry Patricia Burke Brogan Chapter Thirteen: The Crime of Motherhood; Infanticide Alexis Guilbride Chapter Fourteen: Motherhood Interrupted: Adoption in Ireland Eileen Conway Chapter Fifteen: Mothers in a disabling society Goretti Horgan Chapter Sixteen: Poor mothers Anne Coakley Chapter Seventeen: Mothers in prison Celesta James McCann Chapter Eighteen: Mothering in Northern Ireland Margaret Ward Chapter Nineteen: Teenage mothers Valerie Richardson. Chapter Twenty: Traveller mothers Women from Pavee Point Travellers centre. Chapter Twenty-one: Mothers and emigration Grace Neville 3 Introduction In this book I bring together creative and critical writing on motherhood in Ireland in an attempt to understand its complexity. I am conscious that motherhood has been used as a symbol in Ireland in political, cultural and social life. In the course of editing this book I met many men and women who told me that they did not feel qualified to write about motherhood, and some expressed a fear of speaking on the subject. This they all agreed was because they had not experienced physiological motherhood. I found this very disturbing, as it seemed to imply that a whole section of the population had been silenced. I thought again and again of Rich’s words: All human life on the planet is born of woman. The one unifying, uncontrollable experience shared by all women and men is that months-long period we spent unfolding inside a woman’s body (Rich, 1977: 11). We are all born of women. We have all had mothers even though we may have had very different experiences of motherhood. This alone I feel qualifies us all to speak on the subject. Also, I felt that it is necessary to see motherhood in much broader terms than physiological reproduction. We need to look at social reproduction, which does not have to be the work of the physiological mother only. We need to look also at the institution of motherhood. Rich writing in Of Woman Born distinguishes between biological motherhood and motherhood as an institution. The latter she claims is subject to male control and “…has been a keystone of the most diverse social and political systems” (1977: 13). In Ireland the institution of motherhood needs close examination, the different powers, which have constructed and controlled the institution of motherhood need attention. Unfortunately what emerges is not a very pleasant picture. While motherhood undoubtedly brings women much pleasure and happiness what we see in this book are the struggles of many women in a society, which claims, to value motherhood. While women are often confined and constrained by their reproductive role and in fact their potential to become mothers by a patriarchal state and Church, they are often unsupported in that role. 4 The role of mother was even institutionalised in the 1937 Constitution. This status of the family hinged to a large extent on “woman” or “mother” who was also endowed with a particularly “favoured” status, which she was expected to live out within the home. Article 41.2 1. In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. 2. The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home. These articles find resonance in Rich, who states that there …has been a basic contradiction throughout patriarchy; between the laws and sanctions designed to keep women essentially powerless and the attribution to mothers of almost superhuman power (of control, of influence, of life-support) (1977: 263–264). Women have been seen primarily as mothers. There are good mothers and bad mothers. There are physiological, birth mothers. There are adoptive mothers. Mothers who leave and mothers who stay. Mothers who breastfeed and mothers who don’t. There are mothers who work and mothers who don’t. Mothers who live, die, nurture, mothers who commit crimes. There are mothers of different abilities, race and culture. The chapters in this book are based primarily on original research by the contributors who coincidentally are, in most cases mothers. However, they were selected because of their writing and not because of their ‘maternal status’. I was anxious to include men’s voices in the book and the voices of women who may not have reproduced in the traditional sense. Often these voices were best heard through poetry. There is a huge wealth of poetry and song on the subject, which evokes very strong emotions. I have matched a poem or a song with each chapter as I feel that they address the same subject but through different forms, one creative, the other critical, both evoking strong images and emotions and together giving a more complete picture. Chapter one consists of 21 poems which I hope the reader will read as a complete entity before embarking on the rest of the book because I feel that the body of work presented there presents the essence of what motherhood in Ireland means. It elucidates the symbolism of motherhood in Ireland. 5 References Bunreacht na hEireann (Constitution of Ireland), (1937) Government Publications, Dublin. Rich A. (1977) Of Women Born, Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Virago. London. 6 Chapter One Creation and Context Patricia Kennedy This chapter consists of twenty-one poems which I hope the reader will read as a complete entity before embarking on the rest of the book because I feel that the body of work presented here gives a holistic view of what motherhood in Ireland means in relation to both the experience and the institution. It is an attempt to bring critical and creative thinking together to encompass the complexity of the subject. Many of the poems and songs are written by men and by women who have not experienced physiological motherhood. Each of these poems reflects the central theme of the corresponding chapter and in a different written form relay a similar or related message. I begin by presenting Seamus Heaney’s poem St Kevin and the Blackbird because it reinforces my belief presented in the Introduction that everyone has a right to speak on motherhood as we are all born of woman. I feel that this poem captures the essence of nurturing which man or woman can do, yet it also captures the discomfort and pain of birth which on this occasion is felt by St Kevin rather than by a mother. In this poem St Kevin is presented in a midwifery role and the blackbird the fruit of his labour. To me this reminds us that motherhood has a variety of meanings tied up with creativity and nurturing and not solely the physiological labour of women as mother. St Kevin and the Blackbird Seamus Heaney And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird. The saint is kneeling, arms outstretched, inside His cell, but the cell is narrow, so One turned –up palm is out the window, stiff As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands And lays in it and settles down to nest. 7 Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked Into the network of eternal life, Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand Like a ranch out in the sun and rain for weeks Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown. And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow, Imagine being Kevin. Which is he? Self-forgetful or in agony all the time From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms? Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees? Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head? Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river, ‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays, A prayer his body makes entirely For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name. Opened Ground Poems 1996-1996, (1998), Faber and Faber, London. The first section of this book concentrates on creation in the physiological sense. Chapter two challenges some of the myths, which exist in relation to childbirth in Ireland today. It presents statistical data on the women who do give birth and looks at the increase in medical interventions.