MOTHERHOOD IDENTITY
by Meggan Hartman
A dissertation
submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN
PSYCHOLOGY
Meridian University
2015
MOTHERHOOD IDENTITY
by
Meggan Hartman
A dissertation
submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PSYCHOLOGY
MERIDIAN UNIVERSITY
2015
This dissertation has been accepted for the faculty of Meridian University by:
______Lisa Herman, Ph.D.
Dissertation Advisor
______Melissa Schwartz, Ph.D.
Dissertation Chair
______Aftab Omer, Ph.D.
President iii
ABSTRACT
MOTHERHOOD IDENTITY
by
Meggan Hartman
The purpose of this research was to explore the ways in which the American culture influences the development of the maternal identity. It focused on the research question: in what ways does the shame that Western, postmodern parenting ideologies can evoke in mothers impact the development of the maternal identity? The target population was mothers with children three months to four years old.
The research hypothesis was: The shame that some mothers feel as a result of following popular parenting ideologies can impact the development of maternal identity by diminishing her confidence, instilling feelings of ambivalence towards her child[ren] negating her own needs, and limiting her ability to improvise solutions to perceived problems on the spot. The study’s guiding theory was Rubin and
Mercer’s “Becoming a Mother.”
The literature illustrates that the process of developing a maternal identity mirrors the rites of passage model. At pregnancy, a woman actively imagines who she will be as mother. After the baby is born, she begins to test her reality against her idealized image. In these stages, some new mothers adhere to guidelines provided by the Internet, media, books, and professionals. Over time they use guidelines less as they gain confidence in their abilities. However, some struggle to make the transition away from these guidelines. Current research has yet to investigate the impact these resources have on the development of the maternal identity.
Participants were screened for low confidence. Data was collected through the participant responses to journaling questions and through group discussion of their responses to hearing professionals talk. Co-researchers helped to analyze key moments. Integration occurred upon the presentation of the hypothesis and the preliminary learnings. iv
Learnings are summarized as follows: mothers turning away from their own mothers towards the
Internet, media, books, and professionals for mothering guidance can experience shame when prescribed methods fail or when they feel judged for deviating from them. Although information sources are designed to help, the shame they can evoke diminishes mothers’ confidence to improvise, increases maternal ambivalence, negates personal needs, and prevents integrating mothering identity into larger self-systems.
Given the range of symptoms experienced when maternal identity development is compromised, it is important for professionals to offer a multidisciplinary approach, understanding unique needs and ways that help build confidence in maternal identity. CONTENT
ABSTRACT ...... iii
CHAPTER
1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1
Research Topic
Relationship to the Topic
Theory-In-Practice
Research Problem and Hypothesis
Methodology and Research Design
Learnings
Significance and Implications of the Study
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 20
Introduction and Overview
Becoming a Mother
Shame and Motherhood
The Mother Archetype, History, and Current Ideologies
Obtaining the Motherhood Identity
3. METHODOLOGY ...... 82
Introduction and Overview
Participants
Four Phases of Imaginal Inquiry
4. LEARNINGS...... 103
Introduction and Overview ii
Learning One: Loss of the Maternal Line
Learning Two: Are You My Mother?
Learning Three: I Am Not the Martha Stewart of Motherhood
Learning Four: When the Bough Breaks
Conclusion
5. REFLECTIONS...... 148
Significance of Learning
Mythic Archetypal Reflections
Implications of Study
Appendix
1. ETHICS OF APPLICATION ...... 173
2. CONCEPTUAL OUTLINE ...... 188
3. CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE...... 192
4. INFORMED CONSENT...... 196
5. APPENDIX A: PARTICIPANT SCREEN ...... 197
6. APPENDIX B: RECRUITMENT FLYER...... 199
7. APPENDIX C: JOURNALING QUESTIONS...... 200
8. SUMMARY OF DATA...... 203
9. NOTES...... 225
10. REFERENCES...... 248
1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Research Topic
For well over 100 years, American culture has defined the job description and role requirements for mothers. Each generation has established new parenting practices, and most of these practices place mothers at the center of being responsible for the care and well-being of their children. Mothers are charged with raising children who are “self-disciplined, responsible, and emotionally healthy,” 1 as well as being physically healthy and well-socialized.
In the course of researching this topic, I have seen the goals of motherhood evolve from
Bandura’s idea that any responsible adult can raise the child and condition them to do anything, to being a “good enough mother,” to being the “perfect mother.” Donald Winnicott describes the good enough mother as “One who makes active adaptation to the infant’s needs, an active adaptation that gradually lessens, according to the infant’s growing ability to account for failure of adaptation and to tolerate the results of frustration.” 2 In today’s American culture, even this often cited definition holds some inherent risks for the mother. Janice Doane and Devon Hodges summarize that “the discussion of the maternal role always exists in an ideological framework in which they [mothers] are purveyed to particular groups at particular times.” 3 They go on in their assessment of Winnicott’s theory that in, “Winnicott’s construction of mothering, all the mothers are married, at home, and happily defined by their maternal capacities.” 4 They review
Winnicott’s cases that he presented and argue that the women he described are near depression, which reveals the strain put on the “good enough mother.” 2
Today, we are far from this concept of being good enough; postmodern women now have entered what Judith Warner calls “Parenting in the Age of Anxiety.” She developed the concept of the Mommy Mystique to describe the current state of motherhood. She states:
The Mommy Mystique tells us that we are the luckiest women in the world — the freest, with the most choices, the broadest horizons, the best luck, and the most wealth. It says we have the knowledge and know-how to make “informed decisions” that will guarantee the successful course of our children’s lives. It tells us that if we choose badly our children will fall prey to countless dangers — from insecure attachment to drugs to kidnapping to a third-rate college. And if this happens, if our children stray from the path toward happiness and success, we will have no one but ourselves [mothers] to blame. 5
In this concept, one can see the undue stress that is placed on the mother. The idea that Warner is presenting is that it is solely the mother’s responsibility to steer her child through the multiple mazes that culminates when her child achieves academic brilliance, is socially well-adjusted, is physically healthy, and is well-attached to her family of origin.
When I step away from the potential pressures that the cultural mandates can evoke and look at the simplest process of becoming a mother, the perennial theme of rites of passage emerge. Aftab Omer describes this process in terms of identity transformation. Omer emphasizes that there is an initiatory threshold, liminal space, and then formation of a new identity. He states that the importance of this process is to shed old belief structures that have constricted our experience in order to gain new states of being that expand one’s awareness. 6
During the postpartum period the mother enters her liminal space where she sheds her imagined selves, which could be constricting her experience, and moves into expanded states of being.
Robbie Davis-Floyd ties this liminal state of being to the process of becoming a mother.
She discusses how one could find profound meaning and potency in the formation of the new identity within the liminal state. She describes this state of being lasting three to six weeks postpartum. Virginia Nemetz expanded this time frame. She contends that a second birth must 3 happen. This second birth takes place after “the honeymoon is over and that intense and nearly psychotic union has taken place, [then] there comes the next step that is a renewed search for the sense of self while in a state of emotional communion.” 7 This process can be potentially ongoing.
Recent research delves deeper into the development of the maternal identity. Reva Rubin was one of the first researchers in the Western world to recognize that women do undergo psychological change when they become mothers. She notes that women have to develop an identity as a mother. Ramona Mercer develops Rubin’s ideas further as she coined the term
“motherhood identity.” She defines the Maternal Identity as being the point where “the mother has established intimate knowledge of her infant such that she feels competency and confident in her mothering activities and feels love for her infant; she has settled in. . . . She has expanded herself to incorporate a new identity and assume responsibility for her infant and her infant’s future.” 8
Taking a more in-depth look at the process of obtaining the Maternal Identity reveals that the new mother has to develop a unique understanding of her relationship with her child, as well as comprehending her role in context of family and culture. This idea is captured in the concept of Maternal Role Development. Mercer understands this as “the development of a new mother’s ability to understand what is expected of her and what the new mother sees as responsive mothering.” 9 Reva Rubin, and then later Lorraine Walker, et al., further refines the concept of
Maternal Role Attainment. Walker defines it as “a complex cognitive and social process which is learned, reciprocal, and interactive. Maternal role attainment involves confidently enacting the culturally defined behaviors associated with the maternal role.” 10 Once the maternal role is obtained, maternal identity has been achieved. 4
The definition of Maternal Identity holds two facets: maternal competency and maternal self-confidence. This research focuses on the development of maternal confidence as one of the key indicators that the maternal identity has been achieved. Mercer defines Maternal Confidence as “The perception mothers have of their ability to care for and understand their infant.” 11
Maternal Competence is defined as the “process of acquiring the necessary skills and behavior to care for her infant.” 12 These definitions demonstrate the significance in choosing maternal confidence to study. As Rubin states, “As a mother evolves her own style of role performance
[role competence], an accompanying increase of self-confidence in her role takes place.” 13
I chose maternal confidence over maternal competency for two reasons: 1) a significant component of gaining maternal competency is having confidence in what you are doing, and 2) the subjective nature of self-perception can allow a person to be significantly swayed by external authorities. Maternal confidence is the core concept that other concepts build upon.
Becoming a mother is an imaginative process. When a woman becomes pregnant, she begins to actively imagine her baby and how she is going to be as a mother. Once the baby is born, the mother naturally starts testing her reality against what she imagined. As she comes to terms with the potential discrepancy and finds ways to be in a successful relationship with her child, her identity is said to have achieved. This identity-building project holds great potential for mothers to creatively respond to the multitude of unique moments that she has with her child.
It also holds great potential for feeling incompetent, overwhelmed, and alone. 14
Mothers often look to external resources as a way to help guide them to mitigate negative feelings and develop an understanding of their parenting role. These sources can be the Internet, media, books, movies, television, magazines, professionals, family friends, community, and her immediate family. This research focuses on the effects that the Internet, media, books, and 5 professionals have on the development of the maternal identity. The literature shows that there are numerous ideologies that exist within our culture today, and the ideological step-by-step guides, images, and support groups do have a strong representation within our culture.
Additionally, there is a significant body of research that shows that new mothers do look to these materials to help them define who they are going to be as a mother. These resources can help a mother learn how to take care of her little one in a way that supports her idealized image of motherhood. They can also lead to greater frustration because the methods do not always work.
Inherent in the concepts described thus far, there exists the idea that women develop their maternal identity based on their understanding of their role as the cultural prescribes. American culture has a rich history of describing the maternal role and how a mother should perform her duties. These descriptions have been based on the current scientific understanding of infant/child development combined with the prevailing cultural biases. Today there are several competing parenting ideologies. Ben Halpren defines ideologies as “(in terms of individual and group interests) to procure advantages for specific social positions and (in terms of social structure) to segregate and consolidate competing groups around rival ideas.” 15
The research indicates that these ideological philosophies do influence a new mother’s process of developing her idealized image of motherhood. In their seminal study Diane Ruble, et al., indicate that “the advent of the first pregnancy makes salient information [books, web, magazines] relevant to attractiveness and parenting self-definitions, respectively. A major implication of this approach to socialization is that individuals may be viewed as maximally susceptible to certain kinds of information during relatively circumscribed time periods. Thus the consequence of these self-socialization processes may be quite significant.” 16 6
Once the baby is born, the idealized image of mothering comes into contact with reality.
Sometimes the image and reality are in alignment, and other times they are not. If this comparison reveals a stark contrast, then a mother’s self-confidence may not develop. Shame is one mechanism in this process. Helen Lynd, in 1953, wrote, “…shame is a multifaceted word.
It includes the subjective feeling of the person and the objective nature of the act. Shame is defined as a wound to one’s self-esteem, a painful feeling or sense of degradation excited by the consciousness of having done something unworthy of one’s previous idea of one’s own excellence.” 17 Within this definition, one can see how shame can affect the mother’s
“subjective feelings,” that she has done something “unworthy” in relation to her idea of excellence — her vision of the perfect mother.
Although there is no direct research on the way shame has an impact on maternal confidence, it is known that shame can lead to low confidence. 18 Researchers are starting to understand how shame specifically affects mothers. Shari Thurer points out, “As a psychologist
I cannot recall ever treating a mother who did not harbor shameful secrets about how her behavior or feelings damaged her children.” 19 In Jean-Anne Sutherland’s recent article, she states that “a mother’s experience would be labeled shame if she described herself, in relation to others, as having not met an idealized self-image.” 20 Here she is referencing the “good mother” as current culture defines her. Brene Brown makes the remark that, “Shame is the primary weapon used in culture wars. We are constantly threatening mothers with the shame of ‘not doing what’s best for their children’ or ‘making selfish or ignorant choices.’” 21 This research is looking at the ways shame, dealt by current parenting ideologies, impacts the development of the maternal identity.
7
Relationship to the Topic
I came to this research through my own journey into motherhood. When I was pregnant with my first child, I was still in graduate school. One of my professors said that I was going to undergo a great transformation. Cognitively, I understood this but did not know where the transformation was going to take me or how deeply I was going to be affected. My firstborn was a very sensitive, high-needs baby who had to be held all the time. I had the constant feeling that something was not right, that I was missing an important piece of information. The books never helped and only made me feel bad. When I talked to the pediatrician, he told me my nerves were causing the issue. Never mind the fact that my son, while being weighed, had a projectile bowl movement across the office, and the nurse said that she had never seen that before. The doctor said, “Only you can cause your anger.” He then followed up by telling me that my child was going to be obese, so I should not breastfeed him as much.
I did not walk into that appointment angry nor had I felt anger up to that point, but I left that office storming and totally devastated. I was scared that I might be causing my child’s discomfort and potentially making my two-month-old obese. In the doctor’s mind, I was the problem, and nothing was wrong with my son. Fortunately, I had many family members who were medical doctors. They confirmed I was not a bad mom and that there was no research that said breastfed babies become obese. The pediatrician was fired the next day.
After that, I started thinking about the women who would believe this type of advice and not have any external sources as touchstones to reality. I saw the potential damage that receiving this type of information could be for so many women who were trying so hard to do the right 8 thing. The books I read soon became a joke to me. These books made parenting seem so dire, and I was saddened that this was how the information was being shared.
The other piece to my puzzle was that I did not feel as though I could turn to my mother for information. I thought her parenting styles were outdated — after all, she was from the Dr.
Spock generation, and my parenting cohort was the Dr. Sears generation. I also wanted to be more present to my child than I perceived my mother was for me. Without my mother, fundamentally distrustful of the books, and a little suspicious of the pediatricians, I felt as though
I had to become a self-made mom.
The culminating event that really focused my research problem happened about two years ago. I was contracted by the local doula association to train them on infant sleep. Congruently, I was in the infancy stage of this dissertation, deep into the literature about the effects of culture on mothers. The evening was a wreck. Throughout the first half of the lecture a group of lactation consultants were whispering with one another, rolling their eyes at me, and making overt physical gestures that expressed some sort of agitation. Halfway through the lecture, I could not ignore them anymore and asked them directly if they had any questions. They launched into a stream of condemnation words that I was totally wrong about night feeds for six-month-olds, saying that mothers should only on-demand feed throughout the night. They accused me of causing tremendous damage by having babies sleep outside of the family bed and disrupting the bonding and on-demand feed cycle. Finally, they expressed deep anger that I involve husbands in the sleep training process.
During that exchange I felt like I wanted to be swallowed up by the earth. I started second-guessing everything that I was talking about even though it was fully researched. I had trained with the best sleep consultant in the United States. The following day, I sat on the couch 9 and ate a whole bag of chips reflecting on that experience. The felt sense was shame, and in that moment I came to understand that my research was about the ways culture uses shame on mothers to make them conform to standards that do not necessarily work. This process has a tremendous impact on mothers.
In my private practice, I work with mothers, helping them establish their baby’s or toddler’s sleep patterns, milk supply issues, and a host of other parenting matters. Often, I get mothers who are taking wonderful care of their children, but they have little to no confidence in their abilities. They are fearful, reluctant, and sacrificing themselves to the extent of harming themselves both psychologically and physically. One case that highlights this well is that of a practicing midwife who was firmly committed to being an Attachment Parent (AP). This was the practice she instructed all her clients to follow. She advised that there was no other way to parent if they wanted to raise successful children. The reality of her situation was that she was suffering significantly because of her attachment to this ideology.
She had used in vitro fertilization to become pregnant and had given birth to triplets. As with most mothers who have triplets, keeping up with the breastfeeding demands can be an impossible task. This mother had to turn to formula. She was so ashamed to be seen in public giving her babies a bottle, let alone formula, that she did not leave the house for the first six months of her babies’ lives. She was so committed to the attachment parenting belief of not letting your child cry that she and her partner had severe sleep deprivation, and the biological mom was diagnosed with Postpartum Depression (PPD). In just one night, the mothers would wake up 20 to 22 times to attend to all three of the babies. She admitted that she was very sleep deprived and anxious as she cried throughout the call. In the end she did not utilize my services because, as she stated, “I feel too ashamed” to even think of having her babies cry at all. In 10 addition she did not feel comfortable bringing someone else in to be the third person to help lessen the crying.
This call, and numerous others, furthered my questioning process. I was curious about why a mother would put herself through that experience knowing that there were other ways to perform these parenting tasks. Having my own experience of shame and hearing so much shame-based language while in dialogue with mothers, a host of questions emerged: In what ways does shame inhibit a new mother’s ability for self-care? In what ways does shame inhibit a new mother’s ability to read her baby’s cues? In what ways does shame inhibit a new mother’s ability to develop confidence in her style of parenting that is based on her reality of her given situation?
I read blog after blog about similar experiences. Parenting blog Holistic Squid posted on
Nov. 15, 2012 a personal account of a mother rigidly following a particular parenting style. She reported waking up dizzy due to dehydration from nursing all night, she had severe back pains due to carrying the child everywhere, and her son had behavioral issues due to lack of night sleep and naps during the day. In the comment section following the blog, there were over 100 posts that either praised her for stepping away from this ideology or condemned her for not doing the method properly. 22
The new momism has become unavoidable, unless you raise your children in a yurt on the arctic tundra, for one basic reason: “Motherhood has become one of the biggest media obsessions of the last three decades, exploding especially in the mid-1980s and continuing unabated to the present. We have been deluged by an ever-thickening mudslide of maternal media advice, programming, and marketing that powerfully shapes how we mothers feel about our relationship with our own kids and, indeed, how we feel about ourselves.” 23 11
Theory in Practice
The theory in practice for this research is Becoming a Mother. The origins of the theory began with Reva Rubin and has been deepened and expanded upon by Ramona Mercer. They successfully built the Become a Mother theory from Charles Mead’s original works on identity development. Through their close observations of mothers, they found that mothers pass through distinct phases as they acquire their maternal identity.
Ramona Mercer’s research on Becoming a Mother showed that there are stages that a new mother passes through “(a) pregnancy; (b) acquaintance, learning, and physical restoration
(two to six weeks following birth), (c) moving toward a new normal (two to four months) and (d) achievement of the maternal identity (around four months).” 24 Later, Mercer expands the time frame through which a mother can obtain her identity. The works of Gweneth Hartick shows that mothers’ work at self-definition is a continual process. She finds that mothers of 16-year- olds were still working on defining themselves. 25
Mercer provides the definition of the Maternal Identity. She states that:
In the achievement of maternal identity, the mother has established intimate knowledge of her infant such that she feels competent and confident in her mothering activities and feels love for her infant; she has settled in. A new normal has been reached in her relationships and her family. The woman experiences a transformation of self in becoming a mother, as her self expands to incorporate a new identity and assumes responsibility for her infant and her infant’s future. 26
This definition incorporates several key concepts that Rubin and Mercer, as well as other researchers, developed: maternal self-confidence, competence, and a transformation that highlights a new normal that includes life with children. These concepts are discussed in the
“Research Topic” section, and they build upon each other to create the Becoming a Mother theory. 12
Research Question and Hypothesis
Drawing from the research that concludes that the development of the maternal identity is a socially driven process, one research question emerges: In what ways does the shame that
Western, postmodern, parenting ideologies can evoke in mothers impact the development of the maternal identity? This leads to my hypothesis: The shame that some mothers feel as a result of following popular parenting ideologies can impact the development of maternal identity by diminishing her confidence, instilling feelings of ambivalence towards her child[ren], negating her own needs, and limiting her ability to improvise solutions to perceived problems on the spot.
Methodology and Research Design
Imaginal Inquiry is a research methodology that is nested within the Participatory
Paradigm. 27 As described in Meridian’s Dissertation Handbook, “The participatory paradigm recognizes participants’ consciousness as our true nature. Imaginal Inquiry seeks to draws on active imagination, phenomenological, naturalistic, and art-based research methods. Researchers using this method are called upon to access and create knowledge which is ordinarily restricted by dominant ideologies and our normative personal identities.” 28 These interactions include evoking an experience for the participant, having the participant express how they are affected by the stimulus, creating a shared meaning with the participants, and helping them integrate what they learned. The main drive behind these four stages is to gather data about current human issues that exists below the persona or false selves that we create for ourselves.
Potential participants underwent a 30- to 45-minute phone interview. The participants were screened and selected based on two criteria: 1) They expressed low confidence in two or more childcare categories as defined by Lina Zahr’s Maternal Confidence Questionnaire 13
(MSQ)29, and 2) A questionnaire asking about sources of parenting information, parenting philosophy, and childcare/breast milk pumping necessities for that day. (See the Appendix A for the screen actually used.) Eleven mothers were screened into the research.
Evoking the experience began with a five-minute video that highlighted how today’s culture portrays motherhood. These images ranged from well-balanced working mothers to beautiful stay-at-home mothers and everything in between. After the clip participants were asked to make a collage that best represented what it meant to them to be a good mother. Then they were asked to respond to a series of questions in a journal with which they were provided.
Upon completion of their writing, they were asked to share how they were affected up to that point.
Additional stimulus was presented after this opening. The main experience that I hoped to evoke was shame because this lead me to understand the ways that shame and low confidence could compromise a mother building her identity. As per the literature review, shame can be a socially-induced emotion. This concept drove my decision to use the social setting called a forum. Within this forum, they were shown quick clips of parenting professionals giving advice about how to raise children. After each video clip, the mothers expressed how they were affected in the larger group setting.
After lunch the larger group was divided into two smaller groups for the second round of forums. This allowed the mothers explore and express their reactions to the professionals and their self-created images of the perfect mother in a more intimate setting. I asked them a series of questions that examined how they felt they were doing as a parent in relation to what the professionals were discussing. It also was designed as a way to help mothers begin to gain some perspective on the good things that they were naturally providing for their children. 14
At the end of the first session, I gave the participants a homework assignment: to journal at least four times over the following two weeks. They were asked to track their perception of how they were doing as moms. After two weeks of at-home data collection, they rejoined and shared their experiences, again in a focal space. At that time, I presented the initial findings and solicited their reactions to those findings.
At the end of each group meeting, I sat down with the co-researchers. We went through the day, and each of us shared our key moments, why we felt that way, and discussed any discrepancies between how we felt. This process required the researchers to look inward to reflect on why they were affected. The co-researchers helped with the mutual exploration by highlighting likenesses and differences. The preliminary insights that came from this discursive practice were shared with the participants for two reasons: 1) to hear what the participants’ key moments were and 2) to hear differences and parallels with what the researchers distilled.
This data presented well for a combination of the Condensation Approach with the
Narrative Approach. Within the presented stories, the researcher and co-researchers saw repeating themes emerge. These themes happened at varying points throughout the two group meeting as well as in the journals. The salient themes formed a strong narrative.
The final step within the data analysis phase was to contextualize the findings with theory and myths. The important aspect of this step is that myths and theories expand understanding of the self, not constrict or marginalize aspects of the self. We often see theories that contain myths and vice versa. An example of this is Joseph Campbell’s book A Hero with a Thousand Faces. It illustrates the plethora of myths that exemplify a human initiatory process. The myth that best captured this narrative was “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen. 30 15
Integrating the experience was the final phase of Imaginal Inquiry. It focused on
“helping the participants integrate their experience” and allowed me to consider how I “imagine bringing my study’s learnings out into the wider community.” 31
Learnings
The overarching narrative described a journey in which mothers who have turned away from their own mothers and turned towards media, books, the Internet, and professionals for guidance can experience shame when the prescribed ways do not work or they feel judged
(internally or externally) as not thoroughly following the correct ideology. Paradoxically, even though these sources of information were trying to help, the shame these mothers felt by not living up to those standards diminishes their confidence in their ability to tend to their child.
This manifested in maladaptive behaviors and taxing emotional and physical states.
In presenting the data, the first learning that emerged was the Loss of the Maternal Line.
This learning illustrated the beginning steps of how these mothers began to consider going to the
Internet, media, books, and professionals for information, guidance and help. Most of the mothers in this study craved knowledge of how to care for their child, but none of them actively sought out or appeared to trust information from their own, actual mother, which may indicate broader implications for a cultural pattern. In this learning, the data showed that the majority of these mothers did not feel comfortable going to their own mother for information. There were a variety of reasons for this.
The second learning that emerged from this research addressed the void that these mothers felt by not obtaining the information from their mothers. They knew they needed some kind of information, so instead of turning to their own mothers, they turned to books, Internet, 16 magazines, professionals, and media. The learning was, with the loss of the maternal line, the
Internet, media, books, and the barrage of professional advice can become many mothers’ surrogate mother.
As they progressed through their stories, they discovered that they were not the “Martha
Stewart of Motherhood.” As much as they tried to live up to the images and “how to’s” that the culture prescribed, they found it hard to obtain that goal. This decreased their confidence. The propositional statement was, as mothers interact with external sources of information, instead of gaining confidence in their ability to care for their child, they may paradoxically experience a fundamental decrease in their confidence.
The story concluded by the mothers demonstrating that there were significant consequences to this series of events. When they did experience a decrease in their confidence to meaningfully care for their child, they adapted their behaviors in such a way that led them to unnecessarily try harder and have a paucity of self-care. On an emotional level, these mothers experienced fatigue and emotional dissatisfaction, feeling constricted to just being a mother and not allowing other identities to exist, feeling stuck and out of options, feeling they could not parent the way they would naturally parent, and have a level of such ambivalence towards their child that they had the (fleeting) sensation of not wanting to be a mother anymore.
These learnings were supported by several different considerations. The participant’s expressions generated the most influential case. To a lesser degree, their journal entries substantiated their verbal expressions. The final validity point was my parallel process along with my co-researchers’ expressed key moments. My own journey into motherhood did follow a similar path. These comparable journeys could have skewed my interpretation of their experience, or through my reflective process, I was able to hear their story with greater detail. 17
Co-researcher Brody Hartman’s affective experience mirrored mine, which added greater credence to the learnings.
Significance and Implications of the Study
To date Amazon.com lists some 59 books on how to get your baby to sleep, over 900 books on potty training, and over 6,000 books on how to discipline your child. There are sleep consultants, new-parent coaches, baby-proofing consultants, lactation consultants, low-milk- production support groups, postpartum doulas, parenting classes, and mommy and me classes, to name a few. Each of these sources has the desire to help mothers navigate their way through parenthood. What I find interesting is that with all the accessible information, economic gains, and increased equality that have accompanied women since the 1970s, the General Society
Survey of 2008 found that women’s happiness has decreased steadily since 1972, and the unhappiest group is women with children. 32
Becoming a mother is a perennial rite of passage that holds the potential for women to establish an expansive endearing identity that can serve in a multitude of situations. This research looks at how this blanketing of information can trivialize one of the last rites of passage left in our culture, leaving women in a difficult situation. Some women are at the brink of a confidence crisis. The cultural withdrawal of meaningful support through this passage, which was traditionally given by other mothers and grandmothers in the village, has created an unbearable strain on the mother as she struggles to figure out what is going to work best for her.
Shame is one of the driving forces that leave women culture-bound to ideals that she is unable to obtain. 18
The shame effect has been associated with numerous psychopathologies and issues related to self-esteem and confidence. There are studies that indicate that the pressures that mothers feel from external sources can lead to postpartum depression and anxiety. Ed Tronick,
Peter Fonagy, Jay Belsky, John Gottman, and others have discussed in length the impact a compromised mother can have on attachment and the health and well-being of children.
There is importance for mothers to understand the ways shame affects her confidence and her ability for self-care. Aftab Omer states this point well: “If experiences of shame can be fully faced, if we allow ourselves to realize their importance, this experience can inform the self and become a revelation of oneself, of one’s society, and of the human situation.” 33 Omer goes on to state that when “we turn towards shame with reflective awareness, it is transmuted into dignity, autonomy, and humility.” 34 This statement shows the importance in understanding the influences of shame on the developing identity. It is imperative that mothers gain confidence in their parenting choices.
This research shows the ramifications of mothers internalizing the shame that oozes out from our culture. Helping mothers understand this can help them develop the confident, flexible, and reliable identity that can meet the multiple demands of parenting. In the bigger picture I see this as a part of the development of the Soul of Motherhood. Thomas Moore provides the definition of the soul as: “intuitively soul has to do with genuineness and depth….experiences that stay in the memory and touch the heart. Soul is revealed in attachment, love, and community, as well as in retreat on behalf of inner communing and intimacy.” 35
Becoming a mother is a soul-expanding experience, and this experience stands in stark contrast to the images and stories that our current culture is telling us. Being a mother is not about being happy all the time, that there is not one solution or toy that will solve every issue or 19 satisfy the child at every moment. Parenting is messy, spontaneous, ecstatic, and heartbreaking.
It calls us to expand into a more pluralistic identity, one that is able to meet multiple situations. 20
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction and Overview
This literature review is a comprehensive analysis of our current understanding of the development of the maternal identity. It begins with an overview of how a woman becomes a mother psychologically. Pregnancy marks the official beginning of this transformative process during which the woman is steeped in the imaginal world of envisioning what life is going to be like. Naturally, the process flows into the postpartum period when women are faced with numerous challenges ranging from Postpartum Affective Disorders to reconciling the difference between what they imagined motherhood would be like and their reality of figuring out the mundane daily activities. The literature shows that the psychological process of becoming a mother is challenging, chaotic, exhausting, elating, over-whelming, and the list goes on. The
Becoming a Mother process has numerous parallel concepts with Victor Turner’s research on rites of passage and Aftab Omer’s identity transformation theory.
The review then turns to literature that discusses the potential vulnerabilities for a mother during this transition. In this disordered state of being, a mother is especially susceptible to the shame affect. The literature demonstrates how the American culture can use shame as a tool to coerce mothers into conforming to certain parenting ideologies. In general, there is a significant body of research that illuminates the potential ramifications of shameful experiences. One consequence of shame is that it can diminish a person’s confidence. This points to a gap in the 21 literature. No research exists showing the fallout of mothers who experience the shame-induced low confidence and how that compromises the development of their maternal identity.
The literature review then turns to incorporate the Mother Archetype. When one takes into consideration the complex and powerful nature of the Mother Archetype and how it can influence culture and the personal unconscious, one can begin to understand the full nature of motherhood. The Mother Archetype has the tender, loving, life-producing aspects. It is also the destroyer, enmeshed, wicked witch. American culture has come to thrive on and heavily promote the aspect of the life-giving nurturer, and this comes through strongly in certain ideologies such as the Super Mom, the Natural Mom, the Attachment Parenting Mom, the Soccer
Mom, etc. All the while, American culture marginalizes the ideological Welfare Queen and
Waitress Mom. The section closes by providing a rich history of how culture has constructed the current mothering ideologues over the course of the last 100 years.
The literature review ends by culminating all the information to discuss how this can impact the development of the maternal identity. There are three prominent indicators that her identity has been achieved — competency, confidence, and an expansion self to include the mothering identity. This study focuses on confidence because of its subjective nature. It also focuses on how a mother incorporates this new identity into her larger self. A mother can be doing every “right” but still feel as though she is not doing enough. She does not have confidence in her capacities to care, support, nurture, etc. This points to the literature that describes the necessity of developing confidence in her abilities. She can also feel limited and constrained in her role and at a loss as to how to care for her self.
The literature closes by highlighting articles that show that PPD is not just a hormonal change — there is a greater shift that is happening within the woman. This is a true rite of 22 passage. If the surrounding environment and community do not contain this passage, negative symptoms can manifest within the person. It is my belief that the shame that can stem from these parenting ideologies can impact the development of her identity by diminishing her confidence, compromise her ability to care for herself both emotionally and physically, and impact her ability to improvise on the spot.
Becoming a Mother
The process of a woman becoming a mother consists of numerous stages that a mother has to transition through. It requires her to imagine herself as a mother, to move into a stage of disordered chaos as she learns her role, and, as she becomes confident in that role, to incorporate this newly emerged identity into her greater self. This process is called Becoming a Mother and has numerous parallels with the traditional rites of passage model and the identity transformation theory. This section reviews the research that illustrates this process as well as reviews the research on how socially driven this developmental process can be. It starts with the definitions of motherhood, mothering, and maternal identity. The research shows that mothers develop their identity by passing through phases, and there are markers that indicate the completion of each stage. In closing this section, the review of the literature describes the impact of culture and social influences on the development of the maternal identity and, more specifically, confidence.
Sheri Thurer offers one of the simplest definitions of motherhood. She states that it is
“the way we perform mothering.” 1 The Oxford English Dictionary defines motherhood (in noun form) as “a woman in relation to a child or children to whom she has given birth; a female animal in relation to its offspring,” and as a verb, “bring up (a child) with care and affection. . . look after kindly and protectively, sometimes excessively so.” 2 23
Andrea O’Reilly defines motherhood as: “Becoming a mother means a woman enters into the expectations of idealized motherhood: self-denial, self-abnegation, inherent goodness, unwavering love, duty-bound presence.” 3 Bassin, Honey, and Kaplan explain that the
“constructs of motherhood is tied to infantile experience and relates to complex, ongoing, deeply personal feelings.” 4
Mothering is what women do as a function of motherhood. This leads to the definition of mothering. Anne Phoenix and Ann Woolett define mothering as “the daily management of children’s lives and the daily care provided for them. Incorporated within the term ‘mothering’ is the intensity and emotional closeness of the idealized mother-child relationship as well as notions of mothers being responsible for the fostering of good child development.” 5
Within these definitions there is the consistent theme of care-giving, nurturing, and close connection to the child. Also contained in these definitions is the notion that women need to conform to the idealized mother-child relationship. Of these definitions, Phoenix and Woolett’s is the most relevant to this research. These three key points are germane to this research: 1) daily management of children’s lives, 2) intensity and emotional closeness of the idealized mother- child relationship, and 3) mothers are responsible for the fostering good child development. The daily management refers to the plethora of daily responsibilities that mothers tend to such as feeding, cleaning, scheduling, disciplining, praising, and getting the child to sleep. The intensity and emotional closeness refers to the attachment piece where mothers are responsible for being emotionally attuned with their child.
Their use of the term “idealized mother-child relationship” is a strong point of interest in this research, the idealized versus reality. This is a critical point that, as the subsequent sections will highlight, can cause a lot of anguish for mothers. The other point that was made in these 24 definitions is that within the American social framework, the mother is responsible for “fostering good child development.” This point will be expanded upon as well in later sections as I review the literature that covers the good mother versus the bad mother and mother blame.
These definitions talk about the tasks that mothers have to do and the relationship that a mother has to establish, but they lack the aspects that define who the mother is, her identity.
There are numerous “how-to” books that can walk a mother through the tasks, but she still has to decide what is relevant to her, and who she is going to be as a mother. This leads to the key definition for this research, Maternal Identity.
Ramona Mercer defines the Maternal Identity as the point in which “the mother has established intimate knowledge of her infant such that she feels competency and confident in her mothering activities and feels love for her infant; she has settled in. . . . She has expanded herself to incorporate a new identity and assume responsibility for her infant and her infant’s future.” 6
This definition differs from Woolett and Phoenix’s in that Mercer’s definition illustrates more of the process that a woman goes through as she develops her identity. She has to learn, through trail and error, the intimate details of her child, and she has to fit this new aspect of self into her other existing identities. As following sections will show, the process that a woman can undergo to obtain this identity is potentially arduous and tumultuous.
Pregnancy
The development of the Maternal Identity begins during pregnancy. Pregnancy is steeped in fantasy with the mother-to-be spending a great deal of time imagining the type of mother she is going to be. She gathers information from books, websites, magazines, and professionals to help aid her in this process. As Arthur Coleman and Libby Coleman, “This is a 25 period of fantasizing about who she is going to become and who the baby is going to be.” 7
Daniel Stern and Nadia Bruschweiler-Stern discuss the seeds of the motherhood identity being planted when the woman begins to imagine her baby. The mother’s projection into her future is guided by her hopes, fears, and past history. It reveals much about her priorities and values.
Stern and Stern discuss in length that the pregnancy period is a time when the mother really imagines what kind of baby she will have and that this imagining starts to inform the ideas of what kind of mother she will be. Her story of the imagined baby and a woman’s entrance into the realm of motherhood are entwined. 8
Subsequent research supports the importance of the imaginary process. Each of the studies reviewed indicate that pregnancy sets the tone for attachment and creating space for the new child in her life. Paul Trad states that “the physiological and psychological transformations experienced by women while pregnant exert a significant impact on the relationship forged with the infant after the birth.” 9 Reva Rubin, as a result of her analysis of numerous case studies on the maternal identity, states that, “Pregnancy is a period of preparation for becoming a psychosocial mother, for receiving a child into the woman’s self-system and into her life space.”10 Francine Deutsch, Ruble, Fleming, Brooks-Gunn, and Stangor claim that “the preparatory and self-definitional processes during pregnancy may be an important influence on subsequent postpartum adaptations.” 11
This imaginary, self-definitional process is not just about the beautiful images of the mother in our dreams. It can also be stressful for the pregnant woman. Myra Leifer finds in her exploratory research on nine pregnant women that during pregnancy women had a full range of emotions. It is a time of “turbulence and difficulty. . . . Most women experienced considerable stress when confronted with the emotional change evoked by pregnancy. . . . The most common 26 reactions included increased anxiety; increased self-preoccupation and a corresponding decline of emotional investment in the external world; intensified needs for succorance; increased emotional lability; and, paradoxically, an intensified sense of well-being.” 12
As the woman comes closer to her due date she starts to expand her envisioning beyond herself to her baby and partner/husband. Stern and Stern discuss this further as they state,
“Moms have lived with an imaginary baby for the months of pregnancy, but around the time of the real baby’s birth, mothers draw up mental blueprints for the future in which they assign specific identities and roles not only to their babies, but to their husbands and themselves.”13
During this creative process of imagining who they are going to be, women start to become influenced by the cultural expectations of motherhood. Leifer finds that the mother-to- be became more intellectually involved in many facets of her pregnancy by actively reading about pregnancy and child development and spending more time with friends who have had children.14
Benjamin Gottlied and Mark Pancer’s work echoes this previous finding. They state that
“Throughout the course of the pregnancy, the new parents’ social network was actively engaged in providing feedback about the significance of the mother’s and baby’s health, of certain somatic and emotional symptoms she experienced, and in recommending certain health practices to avert or accommodate these symptoms. It also shaped the couple’s expectations about the effects the newborn’s arrival would have on their lives and, generally, smoothing the transition from a childless domestic context to parenthood.” 15
The interaction with other families or with media outlets can help the woman’s transition to motherhood. Jonathan Smith’s phenomenological analysis of three women’s transition into motherhood suggests that the social nature of how one creates her identity, as developed by 27
George Mead’s theory of identity development, applies to the development of the maternal identity. He states, “(A) The conception of self and other are dynamically interdependent, (B)
This psychological relationship of self and other is facilitated and accentuated during the pregnancy by social occasions, (C) A convergence of conception of self and significant others occurs developmentally during pregnancy, and (D) The increasing psychological engagement with significant others can facilitate psychological preparation for becoming a mother.” 16
Women not only seek information from social interactions, but they also lean heavily on books, media, social networking, blogs, and such. Deutsch, et al., conducted a comprehensive quantitative study of 670 pregnant women, and through this study they found that pregnant women actively seek information about motherhood from books, and they incorporate this information into how they build their identities as mothers. Rachel Thomas, et al., echoed this finding through their qualitative study of 62 pregnant women in England. They state, “When they [the researchers] went into the homes of pregnant women to interview them, the women often showed them piles of books and magazines that they had gathered in order to help themselves imagine their way into motherhood.” 17 Through these two studies one can see that, from the early seeds of motherhood, media informs women of the culturally prescribed ways to raise their child. These sources begin to form a woman’s idealized image of motherhood. Omer contended that we build our identity out of identification. The message comes in as imagery, and then one identifies with it and incorporates it into one’s identity. 18
Postpartum Period
When the baby is born, the development of the maternal identity moves into another phase. If all goes well, this phase will mark a shift from a mother’s imaginary idealized self to 28 her reality. Within this shift, her ability to negotiate her imagined self in context of her new reality will allow her unique maternal identity to develop. This process involves letting go of the aspects of her imagined self that are incongruent with her reality. Ritualistically, this process mirrors the traditional rites of passage model, and the postpartum time period is the transitional or liminal space of identity transformation/formation. Biologically, her shifting hormones have the potential of influencing emotional states of being as well. This is a time of great expansion, confusion, feeling overwhelmed, and trial and error as she figures out a multitude of tasks. The uniqueness of this particular identity transformation is that she not only has to tend to her experience, she must also tend to a vulnerable second person.
Ramona Mercer writes about the tasks that a new mother must adapt to: “resolving the gap between reality and her expectations for the birth, her infant, and her body; identifying and placing her infant within her family context; assuring acceptance of the infant by other family members; developing competence in caring for the infant; learning to care for the infant while meeting other role requirements (e.g., wife, employee, mother of older child); and redefining her roles in relation to her mate, her infant, her parents, her career, and other roles.” 19 Cowan and
Cowan add to this conversation when they discuss the obvious yet neglected fact that the mothers work is two-fold: she has to tend to her own recovery and transition into motherhood as well as tend to the baby’s transition into this world. 20 Kathryn Rabuzzi’s term “motherself” explains the mother’s experience, “which suddenly includes the duties, responsibilities, wonder and awe of having become a mother. A fundamental shift has occurred, and the woman initiate is left to incorporate a new way of being into her life.” 21
Andrea Buchanan goes on to describe this postpartum period as “mother shock.” She compared it “culture shock where suddenly the woman finds herself in unfamiliar and foreign 29 territory, disoriented and lost, and yet all the while, she is expected to adapt immediately.” 22
Discussed in the TIP section, Becoming a Mother has a predictable pattern — sequence of events — that most mothers naturally flow through as they begin to define who they are as a mother. Mercer discusses this process as starting during pregnancy where the mom is attaching, preparing, and committing to her baby. Once the baby is born, she is getting acquainted with her child, learning about the child’s temperament and how to care for it, and healing herself physically. The data that Mercer uses shows that period normally last two to six months. The mother then starts to normalize her experience, and, finally, her identity is achieved. Mercer states that the length of time for a mother to pass through the last three stages has high variability. 23
The rites of passage model adds a time-honored richness that can deepen one’s understanding of this phenomena. Victor Turner states that “life-crisis rites display a three-stage sequence: separation, transition, and incorporation.” 24 As a woman goes through her initiatory experience of becoming a mother, she has to separate from her old self, go through a transition, and then hopefully incorporate her new self back into society. Aftab Omer describes this process in terms of identity transformation. He states that there is an initiatory threshold, liminal space, and then formation of a new identity. He adds that the importance of this process is to shed old belief structures that have constricted our experience in order to gain new expanded states of being. 25 Overlaying the mother’s process of becoming a mother into this model, one can considered the postpartum period as being in the liminal state. A woman has to shed her imagined selves that might be constricting her experience and move into expanded states of being. 30
Lisa Herman described the liminal space as a “disordered place of engagement with the unexpected and surprising, outside the norms of one’s culture.” 26 The mother’s experience in the liminal space is important because of, as Omer states, the potential for expansiveness that one can find there. These potentials are the seeds that, if cultivated within a safe container, can grow into capacities. These capacities are what we rely upon to be responsive and impressionable to life’s experiences. 27
Susan Maushart’s description of the postpartum experience deepens our understanding of this time period and how it closely related to the liminal states of being. She states:
Most women who become mothers experience … little sharp stabs of extremes with a lot of gray space and tedium in the middle. Almost inevitably, the bearing and rearing of children precipitates an identity crisis for women. After the initial trauma of transition come the painful process of reevaluating life choices, of bringing to consciousness our most deeply embedded assumptions about the way things ought to be. In this sense there is no doubt that for today’s young women motherhood presents unsurpassed opportunities for personal growth and development. 28
In 1992, Robbie Davis-Floyd directly tied the liminal state of being to the process of becoming a mother as she came to understand that within the liminal state one can find profound meaning and potency in the formation of the new identity. Davis-Floyd describes this state of liminality beginning in pregnancy and lasting until three to six weeks after her baby’s birth.
During this phase the pregnant woman fully experiences cultural overlays on her physiological process of becoming a mother. 29 In contrast, Virginia Nemetz, talks about a second birth that must happen. She describes the second birth as taking place after the “honeymoon is over and that intense and nearly psychotic union has taken place, there comes the next step that is a renewed search for the sense of self while in a state of emotional communion.” 30 Nemetz’s understanding of this second phase is important because it starts the conversation that 31 motherhood identity continues to develop well beyond three to six weeks after the birth and even beyond the four months that Mercer originally describes.
Subsequent research reveals that the maternal identity does not stop developing and growing after the first four months of a baby’s life. Mercer revamps her Becoming a Mother theory after reviewing Gweneth Hartrick’s research. Hartrick research on mothers with children ages three to 16 finds that mother’s work at self-definition is a continual process. She describes this process as “a non-reflective doing (taking on roles and acting out a life modeled by parents and others), living in the shadows (a transitional period as their secure foundation crumbled), and reclaiming and rediscovering the self.” 31
This leads to Mercer’s statement that “The woman’s transformation and growth of self in becoming a mother is congruent with psychosocial developmental and transition theories . . . An expansion of her maternal identity continues as she rises to new challenges in motherhood by making new connections to regain confidence in the self.” 32 Of course, Arnold Van Gennep’s groundbreaking research on the rites of passage held the seeds of this revelation all along. He describes “The return to ordinary life is rarely made all at once; it, too, is accomplished in stages reminiscent of initiation steps. Thus the mother’s transitional period continues beyond the moment of delivery, and its duration varies among different people.” 33
These three references point to the fact that a mother does constantly redefine, expand, and develop her identity as her child continues to develop. Her initiatory experience does not end after the first year, and it seems as though researchers are just learning how long this process can take within American culture. In the Postpartum Affective Disorder section, I discuss the rise of postpartum depression (PPD) in American culture in conjunction with the fact that researchers are finding that women are being diagnosed with PPD up to four years after the birth, 32 not the traditional thinking of PPD issues ending after one year. This additional piece of information indicates that the transition is longer than the originally thought three to six weeks after the birth of the baby. Postpartum depression can be one symptom of unsupported identity transformation.
Postpartum Affective Disorders and Relational Context
A woman’s postpartum experience exists within a wide spectrum of experiences. On one end of the spectrum, a new mother can blissfully enter motherhood and feel that nothing has changed in her life. On the other end of the spectrum, a new mother can experience severe psychosis. The majority of women experience what is called “baby blues.”
The literature states that up to 90 percent of new mothers experience some emotional disturbances, anxiety and depression, and symptoms of baby blues after childbirth. The current numbers show that about 80 percent of mothers do have some level of baby blues. 34 Miller and
Rukstalis state that “Postpartum blues peak three to five days after delivery, often coinciding with the onset of lactation and usually last only a few days.” 35 Dunnewold and Sanford describe the blues as a, “period characterized by mood labiality, tearfulness, and irritability.” 36
Affective states can progress from there and evolve into postpartum depression.
Symptoms of PPD include those associated with the blues: mood labiality, tearfulness, irritability, insomnia, restlessness, and confusion. Postpartum depression also includes marked diminished energy, multiple physical symptoms, anhedonia, feelings of inadequacy, irritability, excessive concern for the baby’s health, feelings of hopelessness, disinterest in the baby, self- doubts, ego-dystonic thoughts of harming the baby, negative feelings about being a mother, extreme guilt, anger, or anxiety. 37 Changes in appetite, sleep patterns, attention, concentration, 33 and tearfulness are common. The change in sleep pattern is characterized by difficulty sleeping even when the infant is asleep or others have agreed to care for the infant. A high percentage of women with PPD have ego-dystonic thoughts of harming their infants. 38 The American
Psychological Association’s website list show’s that symptoms of PPD lead to:
Affected ability to function in everyday life and increase risk for anxiety, cognitive impairment, guilt, self-blame, and fear; lead to difficulty in providing developmentally appropriate care to infants; lead to a loss of pleasure or interest in life, sleep disturbance, feelings of irritability or anxiety, withdrawal from family and friends, crying, and thoughts of hurting oneself or one’s child; be particularly problematic because of the social role adjustments expected of new mothers, which include immediate and constant infant care, redefining spousal and familial relationships, and work role. 39
A recent study conducted by Dorothy Sit finds that one-in-seven women are affected by postpartum depression. 40
The relevance to this study is the words that are used to describe PPD: self-blame, guilt, feelings of hopelessness, self-doubt, and feelings of inadequacy. These are important to note, as they will be further mentioned throughout this study because these words are indicators of shame and low maternal confidence.
In a revolutionary study that was released June 2014, the researchers Hannah Woolhouse, et al., found more women being diagnosed with PPD at year four postpartum than in the first year. In this quantitative study, that was conducted on 1,507 women, the authors conclude that
“Maternal depression is more common at four years postpartum than at any time in the first 12 months postpartum, and women with one child at four years postpartum report significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms than women with subsequent children.” 41
This new finding corroborates the idea that the maternal identity continues to develop well after the first three months of a baby’s life, and that a mother can still experience the internal struggles well past the first year of a child’s life. 34
Postpartum Anxiety has recently made its way into the literature. There are several manifestations of anxiety that are directly related to the postpartum experience: postpartum generalized anxiety disorder, postpartum OCD, and postpartum PTSD. Postpartum depression and postpartum Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) are normally seen together. Because of this, it is believed that the PPD portion of this dual diagnosis has overshadowed postpartum
GAD. Although there is no clear idea of the percentage of mothers who are affected by postpartum GAD, Amy Wenzel et al., find that women in their population experienced higher rates of anxiety and PPD. 42
On the other extreme end of what can emerge psychologically for postpartum women is postpartum psychosis. This diagnosis is extremely rare. It affects 0.1 to 0.2 percent of mothers.43 In 2006, Dorothy Sit et al., conducted a comprehensive review of the existing literature and found that:
The onset of puerperal psychosis occurs in the first one–to-four weeks after childbirth. The data suggest that postpartum psychosis is an overt presentation of bipolar disorder that is timed to coincide with tremendous hormonal shifts after delivery. The patient develops frank psychosis, cognitive impairment, and grossly disorganized behavior that represent a complete change from previous functioning. These perturbations, in combination with lapsed insight into her illness and symptoms, can lead to devastating consequences in which the safety and the well-being of the affected mother and her offspring are jeopardized. 44
In the late 1980s, the research regarding how to help mothers with postpartum issues began to emerge. Those preliminary studies indicated that antidepressant medication was the most viable solution. In the 1990s, social scientists start to challenge the medical model of treatment. For example, Natacha Mauthner argues that positivist studies create the idea that postpartum depression is a pathological response to being a mother. 45 She puts forward a relational reframing of postpartum depression. She states, “From this perspective, postpartum depression occurs when women are unable to experience, express, and validate their feelings and 35 needs within a supportive, accepting and non-judgmental interpersonal relationships and cultural contexts.” 46 This type of study gives rise to the necessity of support groups to help with the transition. It also begins the conversation that postpartum depression is not just a hormonal imbalance. Postpartum depression can originate from cultural influences as well.
Karen Kleiman points out how culture can push a mother towards PPD. She states:
When clinicians, healthcare practitioners, and psychotherapists begin to sufficiently understand this pretense of perfection, perhaps they will be better able to assess the emotional state of the women they are treating. If we can challenge the cultural myth of the perfect mother, we can begin to understand why so many women feel imprisoned by their secret thoughts and feelings of shame …. After all, who doesn’t feel better when things are put away and in their proper place? But for women who struggle with depression, the margin of error is quite small. The line between keeping things in control and behaving compulsively to keep things from falling apart is a very fine one. In the process, women often lose sight of what is motivating this constant struggle for excellence and perfection in the first place …. Their fear of failure is making them sick. 47
This quotation shows how culture, by putting forth images of the Perfect Mother, is making women sick. She tied this quest to achieve Perfect Mother status to postpartum depression. She does not describe any other ramifications of this pursuit and does not provide any reasons why mothers feel such a strong need to obtain this status. The concept of the Perfect
Mother will be discussed in length in future sections.
The Social Nature of the Developing Maternal Identity
In this place of uncertainty, the liminal state, most new mothers do reach out for help, guidance, and support. Researchers such as Rubin, Ruble, Deutsch, et al., and Jean-Anne
Sutherland discuss in length the social nature of motherhood. They all find that as mothers attempt to figure out what they need to do and how to go about it, they rely heavily on social interactions. Ruble states that this process may be described as “self-socialization” because 36
“individuals are assumed to actively construct their identities by seeking out relevant information and testing self-definitions.” 48 Deutsch et al. find in their research that “information obtained from indirect sources (e.g., books, advice, etc.) or from direct experience with the new baby after the birth are potentially both important in the development of their new self-conception.” 49
Sutherland’s research begins to illustrate how the social interactions start to create mother identity. She draws on Urie Bronfenbrenner’s work to create the concept of self-as-mother. She defines this as, “the process whereby the individual is able to reflect on herself as object, and to attach meanings to the self, as a result of social interaction, and group membership. A woman does not experience self as mother individually, but only through her interactions with others, and others’ reactions to her.” 50
Rubin combines her findings from observational research on eight prima-or multiparas to her clinical cases studies. She discusses how mothers do reach out and search for “models” as they try to figure out how to mother their baby, but at some point the mother leaves the prescribed models behind as she begins to find her bearings. She states:
The formation of the maternal identity that binds the woman to the child and to becoming the mother of this child is gradual, systematic, and extensive. The progression in development is in replication by close adherence to models and by essays of role play, to exploration in fantasy of the nature of this child and her experience with it, to loosening established bonds to accommodate the new bond and the new personage, to the final stage before identity is achieved by dedifferentiation from models. 51
Here, when she discusses the models, she is referring to what the mother has gleaned from her surrounding environment. She also finds that mothers are not very discerning in their search for information. Mothers will attempt to mimic an action, behavior, or an event in hopes to produce a similar outcome. 52
Due to the unpredictable and chaotic nature of the liminal state, mothers do reach out for help and guidance. Rubin states that, “The literal copying or mimicry of the behavioral element 37 of the expert or successful model provides a probabilistic certainty in a stage of great uncertainty.” 53
Subsequent studies illustrate that there can be inherent issues when mothers use media, etc. as a main source of information about how to raise a child. The indiscriminate process of obtaining information, in hopes that something will prove beneficial with parenting, has the potential to lead to greater issues. Diane Ruble suggests that “The advent of the first pregnancy makes salient information [books, web, magazines] relevant … parenting self-definitions. A major implication of this approach to socialization is that individuals may be viewed as maximally susceptible to certain kinds of information during relatively circumscribed time periods. Thus the consequence of these self-socialization processes may be quite significant.” 54
Amy Rossiter argues that in our culture most of the support for mothers comes in the form of books:
Our public discourse on the subject of motherhood tells us simultaneously “everything” and “nothing” that we need to know. On the one hand, today’s mothers are virtually flooded with ‘information’ on subjects ranging from pregnancy and childbirth to toilet training and preparation for preschool – in virtually every mass medium from books, magazines, and pamphlets to hotlines, videos and websites. For all the information that we have amassed on “how to do it,” we remain more clueless and insecure about what we are doing and why we are doing it than perhaps previous generations. 55
In theory, as a mother tests her reality enough, she begins to establish her identity as a mother. Mercer describes the term Motherhood Identity the best: “The mother has established intimate knowledge of her infant such that she feels competency and confident in her mothering activities and feels love for her infant; she has settled in . . . . She has expanded herself to incorporate a new identity and assume responsibility for her infant and her infant’s future.” 56
The key phrase for this research study is “feeling confidence in her mothering activities.” The 38 final section of the literature review, Obtaining the Maternal Identity and Maternal Self-
Confidence, covers this in much greater detail.
At this point, it is important to note that historically, within traditional societies, the grandmothers have been a source of information in how to care for the child. Van Genneps tells stories of multiple cultures of how the new mother is sequestered with her own mother for a least one month. In this time mothers are taught how to breastfeed, care for the child, and are allowed to physically heal. Once this time period is over, there is a ceremony that officially welcomes her back when she rejoins the rest of her family. 57
Naomi Lowinsky fleshes this idea out further when she discusses how the stories that the grandmothers tell create a deeper meaning of what it is to be human and to be a mother.
Lowinsky states that little of this knowledge surfaces in print or arises in our collective understanding of what it means to be a mother. 58 This information stands in stark contrast to the modern way of obtaining information. This contrast begins the formation of my hypothesis.
What are the consequences of turning away from the grandmothers towards culture for information?
This section illuminates the reach that explains the transformative process of becoming a mother. Becoming a mother starts with the preparatory imaginal phase during pregnancy. Once the baby is delivered the mother enters the liminal phase during which she begins, in earnest, to build her identity as a mother. During this stage she is actively testing her reality against the mother she dreamed of being. For some mothers, this transition goes smoothly, and for others it remains challenging for an extended period of time. As the research indicates, women do actively utilize the Internet, books, media, professionals, and social groups as a point of reference for information about parenting, from the mundane aspects such as how to change a diaper to the 39 more complex aspects of discipline and socializing. The next section specifically looks at the consequential influences that books, media, social groups and professionals have on the development of the maternal confidence — maternal confidence being one of the key indicators that the maternal identity has been established.
Shame and Motherhood
It is known that culture can evoke feelings of shame in mothers. What is not known are the ways in which shame can impact a mother as she works towards developing her maternal confidence. To date, there is no specific research looking at the relationship between shame and its impact on the development of the maternal identity and, more specifically, how this affect influences how she defines herself as mother, her care-taking practices, and how she tends to her own well-being both physically and emotionally. The previously reviewed literature showed that the development of the maternal identity is affected by culture through various media outlets, the
Internet, books, magazines, and professionals. Certain situations can elicit affects that influence her decision making process. One of these affects is shame.
This section begins by reviewing several definitions of shame and studying the conforming effects of this affect. This is followed by highlighting the leading research that indicates how shame impacts normal identity development. The review then flows into the research on how shame influences self-esteem/self-efficacy. It concludes by taking a comprehensive look at the current research on shame and motherhood. This becomes the launching point for my research questions and hypothesis. 40
Shame, as a concept, has been discussed since Darwin. It is labeled as a socially conscious affect, meaning that it is evoked through social situations. One of the first psychologists to write in-depth about shame was Helen Lynd. In 1953, she writes:
Like honor, shame is a multifaceted word. It includes the subjective feeling of the person and the objective nature of the act. Shame is defined as a wound to one’s self-esteem, a painful feeling or sense of degradation excited by the consciousness of having done something unworthy of one’s previous idea of one’s own excellence.59
Brene Brown has recently brought shame back into conversation within the general public. She defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.” 60 A different researcher, Gerhart
Peirs, adds, “Shame occurs when a goal is not being reached. It thus indicates a real shortcoming . . . . Shame equates to failure.” 61 This can directly relate to mothers in that the
“goal” that Peirs describes is the idealized image that mothers are working so hard to obtain.
The definition that I will be using for this dissertation is one that Jack Katz presents. He states that shame is:
(1) eerie revelation to self that (2) isolates one (3) in the face of a sacred community. What is revealed is a (4) moral inferiority that makes one (5) vulnerable to (6) irresistible forces. As a state of feeling, shame is (7) fearful, (8) chaotic, (9) holistic and (10) humbling. 62
The descriptions that he uses describes the “scared community” of motherhood; the moral inferiority that comes with not fitting into cultural ideologies, and the vulnerability that comes from these “irresistible forces.” He includes the feelings of shame as well, which is an important piece of what can happen to mothers when they feel shame.
Shame as a Social Phenomenon and Conformity
As in the case of other socially bound affects, such as pride and humility, it is useful to 41 introduce a framework within which the manifestations of shame can be pinned down with some clarity. The next set of research illustrates the notion that America is a shame-based culture, and how American culture can use shame as a tool to enforce conformity to some pre-approved standard.
Gabriele Taylor talks in length about shame-based cultures. She establishes her framework based on what anthropologist, psychologists, and sociologists call a “shame-culture.”
She states that:
The distinguishing mark of such a culture, and that which makes it different from a so called ‘guilt-culture,’ is that here public esteem is the greatest good, and to be ill spoken of is the greatest evil. Public esteem for the individual, or the lack of it, depends on that individual’s success or failure judged on the bases of some code which embodies that society’s values. Whoever fails to meet those categoric demands engendered by that code ruins his reputation and loses the esteem of the other members of that group. He loses his honour. 63
Gershein Kaufman supports the idea that America is a shame-based culture and adds additional information about how shame exists within our culture. He writes that “American society is a shame-based culture, but here shame remains hidden . . . . Even our language denies shame or masks it from view.” 64 He argues that culture, in general, is the fabric that bonds people together, and that people within specific cultures share common stories, rituals, beliefs in order to identify with one another. Through this process people create “scripts” [ideologies] that consist of rules for predicting, controlling, responding to, and interpreting one’s experiences. He goes on to say that in America we have three cultural scripts that can activate shame: “compete for success, to be independent and self-sufficient, and to be popular and conform.” 65 These scripts can compete with one another, and they have been crafted for different genders. “Men have been told to be self-sufficient and successful, and women have been scripted to be popular and conform.” 66 42
Thomas Scheff supports this notion of “script making” and talks about myth creation as a way humans avoid shame. In one of his articles he states “modern societies have developed two defenses against feeling the loss of secure social bonds; the myth of individualism and a simplistic understanding of the relationship between individuals and the social environment.” 67
Gershen supports this theory as he writes:
Deeply imbedded in our cultural consciousness are images of the pioneer, cowboy, and, more recently, the detective and astronaut. These archetypal figures mirror how to stand proudly alone, never needing anything, never depending on anyone. Needing becomes not a source of strength, but a clear sign of inadequacy. To need is to be inadequate, shameful. Crying and touching are expressions of personality which are heavily shamed in this culture: we are shamed for being human. 68
Sheff’s conceptual paper takes the archetypal scripts and ideological concepts to illustrate how, through the use of shame, they are used for the purposes of conformity. He states:
Social influences implies a deference-emotion system in which conformity to exterior norms is rewarded by deference and feelings of pride, and nonconformity is punished by lack of deference and feelings of shame. In this analysis, social control involves a biosocial system, that functions silently, continuously, and virtually invisible, occurring within and between members of a society. Cultural taboos on the acknowledgement of pride and shame seem to lead to pathological states of shame, which give rise to rigid or excessive conformity (to these archetypes/images). 69
Daniel Fessler echoes the theory of shame and conformity but brings in the positive aspects of shame. He writes, “Shame functions to enhance conformity to cultural standards,” and his theory pushes the reader to think that shame helps establish successful communal behavior in that “(shame) behavior forms the basis for much cooperation; this perspective sheds light on the relationship between shame, the self, and decision making.” 70 This positive aspect of shame should not be ignored because there are standards of care that parents need to adhere to such as not physically hurting one’s child, yet, there remains an aspect of shame that is far- reaching and does have a negative impact on confidence.
Paul Trad begins to touch on the influences of shame as he writes about the experience a 43 mother is supposed to have within the American culture, but he falls short of using the concept of shame. He writes:
Not surprisingly, women may feel anger, fear, and grief, as well as pleasure, at the experience of motherhood: but can these feelings be safely voiced? The cultural induction a woman receives, with the emphasis on the expression of positive emotions towards the infant, may make it impossible for her to express her conflicts and ambivalent impulses, because such feelings are perceived as unacceptable and inappropriate for new mothers. 71
Here we can see that culture and conformity are interrelated and that shame is the affect that binds these together. This section highlighted the masculine images. In the subsequent sections, Good Mother ideology will be further discusses and research will show how it fits into this model. The research in the “Development of the Maternal Identity” section highlighted the ways mothers are influenced by culture. This subsequent section will tie the idea that cultural scripts of the Good Mother ideology and the shame that stems from this can have a negative impact on maternal confidence.
The Impact of Shame-Induced Conformity
Culturally-induced shame can have significant impact on the person who is being shamed. Research has shown that the effect that shame can have on a person can range from impaired identity development to psychopathologies. Paul Gilbert states:
Shame is now regarded as one of the most powerful, painful, and potentially destructive experiences known to humans. The avoidance (and repair) of shame has been linked to social practices as diverse as honor killing, inter-male violence to ‘save face’, domestic violence, Chinese foot binding, the expression and meaning of sexuality, and dysfunctional families and institutions. . . . Shame has been seen as the major contributing contributors in psychopathologies such as depression, alcoholism, hostility, social anxiety, suicide, and personality disorders, especially narcissism. 72
Kaufman leads the conversation about the effects of shame on the development of identity. He concludes that “Shame is central to the development of conscience, dignity, 44 identity.” 73 He goes on to state that there is no “other affect is more central to identity formation.” 74 Erik Erikson names shame specifically in his theory about identity development.
He discusses this in this writing on autonomy versus shame. He states, “if there is too much shaming coming from the parents, then the child’s ability to develop autonomy will diminish.” 75
Gershen notes that when we look at all the “versus” that Erikson uses in his developmental theory, Erikson uses words such as basic mistrust, shame, doubt, guilt, inferiority, role confusion, isolation, stagnation, and despair. The most critical aspect in the feelings of mistrust, guilt, inferiority, isolation, and so on is shame. 76
Omer describes the shame affect as one source of tension that plays strongly in the development of adaptive identities. He discusses how the adaptive identity is created out of a series of successes and failures. When people have an overwhelming experience (as a new mother can have) they unconsciously adapt their identity as a way to manage and mitigate any painful and sometimes overwhelming experiences. Starting from early infancy or childhood, children develop what Omer terms gatekeepers. Gatekeepers are “the mechanisms that one consciously and/or unconsciously creates in order to restrict or prohibit experiences in order to protect oneself from feelings of being inadequate, inferior, insecure, having inabilities, etc.” 77
Feelings of being inadequate, inferior, insecure, etc. are shame-based feelings.
Kaufman ties the feelings of inferiority to shame when he states that “There is a strong correlation between shame and feelings of inferiority.” 78 He goes on to say, “Shame is the affect that is the source of feelings of inferiority. The inner experience of shame is like a sickness within the self. A sickness of the soul.” 79
Gilbert, in conjunction with Sue Proctor, discusses two different experiences of shame, internal and external. This is an important distinction to make because a person may experience 45 shame without having a specific incident. They define this as internal shame. Gilbert and
Proctor start their discussion by defining external shame. They find that:
External shame is marked by thoughts and feelings that others view the self negatively with feelings of anger or contempt and/or that the self is seen as having characteristics that make one unattractive and thus rejectable or vulnerable to attacks from others. To experience ‘self’ as ‘living in the minds of others’ as a rejectable person can make the social world unsafe and activates a range of defenses such as wanting to hide, conceal and ‘not be seen,’ and can have a powerful inhibitory effect on information processing such that a person can feel his or her mind become blank or confused. 80
Gilbert and Proctor discuss further the difference between external and internal shame:
Internal shame emerges with the development of self-awareness and how one exists for others. The focus of attention is on the self, with self-directed attention, feelings and evaluations of self as inadequate, flawed or bad. A key component of internal shame is thus self-devaluation and self-criticism. 81
They conclude that “External and internal shame can be fused together. The consequence is that in an episode of shame, the person experiences the outside world turning against him or her, and his or her own self-evaluations and sense of self (internal world) also become critical, hostile, and persecuting.” 82 This is a crucial point for this dissertation. This research binds together the concept that both external and internal sources of shame can have a negative impact on a person’s internal states of being. The focus of this dissertation is to look at the ways that both of these forces can debilitate a mother’s confidence in her ability to care for her child.
There are general studies that look at the ways in which shame does affect self-efficacy and self-esteem. Kim Baldwin et al., in their quantitative study of 198 individuals, find that both shame and self-efficacy are strongly correlated, and that both are constructs that closely tie to the foundational construct of the self. Both emerge at the same chronological time, and both impact people’s perceptions of themselves. 83
Rhonda Derline’s research on shame and self-esteem, reveals a small correlation between self-esteem and shame. She concludes that “frequent and repeated experiences of shame are apt 46 to ‘chip away’ at one’s general level of self-regard over the long haul.” 84 She goes on to say,
“Feelings of shame pose the most serious threat to self-esteem because it is the self, not a specific behavior, that is the focus of negative evaluation.” 85
Shame and Motherhood
The research that has been reviewed for this dissertation points to the ways in which shame can degrade a person’s self-esteem and self-efficacy, distort and/or impair the development of a person’s identity, and fuel feelings of being inferior. In respect to mothers, research is just beginning to show that culturally-induced shame is something that mothers are experiencing and show that it has a negative impact on the mother. Brene Brown starts this conversation when she writes: “Shame is the primary weapon used in culture wars. We are constantly threatening mothers with the shame of ‘not doing what’s best for their children’ or
‘making selfish or ignorant choices.’ ” 86
Jean-Anne Sutherland’s dissertation on shame and motherhood was the first to investigate the intersection of culture, shame, and mothers. She interviewed 26 first time mothers, and she specifically looked at how the ideology of the “good mother,” as defined by
Michael and Douglas, affected their emotional states. She looked at the good mother ideology from three different contexts the macro-context (books and media), the meso-context (peer/social groups, neighborhood, family and work), and micro-context (her individual experience) and studied how it affected mothers. From the standpoint of this research project, the results from macro and meso-context are the important ones to review.
She finds that the macro-context impinged on the mother’s life in three ways:
First the macro can encourage a person to make decisions that contradict the self. Second, the macro can encourage one to make conclusions on issues to which there is 47
little to no actual evidence. Third, the macro can provide a road map for life choices and strategies.87
She discusses the ways shame is the driving force for these occurrences but does not discuss about why shame would lead to these outcomes.
On the meso-level she finds that “At the community level, mothers are affected in three ways: social comparison, enactment of identity, and sense of control.” 88 Furthermore,
Sutherland finds that mothers did compare themselves to other mothers and felt “guilt” when they perceived themselves as not performing as well as the other mothers. She specifically looked at the good mother ideology and how it affected different ethnicities. She finds that
African-American women are much less affected by the good mother ideology. Finally, she did not find any implications that the meso-level affected a mother’s sense of mastery.
Sunderland’s last finding has direct implications on my hypothesis because sense of mastery (i.e., sense of self-confidence) was not found to be correlated with shame. This finding stands in contrast to the findings of a body of research that concludes that there is a correlation between shame and general self-esteem and self-efficacy. This conflicting result might be due to the quantifying method used, a shortened version of the Pearlin Mastery Scale. This scale measures whether or not the participants felt in control of their lives, not how the mothers perceived their abilities to mother. This discrepancy might account for this contrasting finding.
She was able to conclude that “The experience of guilt and shame is caught up in a host of other unpleasant conditions (fatigue, anger, stress, anxiety, and fear).” 89 All these conditions can be related to loss of confidence, but, again, in her study, there was no direct correlation.
In an extensive study by Glenda Wall, she interviews 24 mothers of toddlers and finds that “Mothers took a great deal of responsibility for enhancing their children’s intelligence and future changes for success, and clearly felt that the failure of their children to excel suggested a 48 lack of good parenting on their part. The increasing toll on mother’s mental, emotional, and physical health resulted in increased stress, anxiety, guilt, and exhaustion.” 90 She does not suggest that shame played a role, but these descriptive words do indicate that shame could have been present.
To show how these descriptive words can be shame related, Brown describes some of the physical reactions to them as “stomach tightening, nausea, shaking, waves of heat in their faces and chests, wincing and twinges of smallness.” 91 Anecdotally, she describes one woman’s experience of having these feelings because of a situation at work and consequently, loses all confidence in her abilities at work. Donald Nathanson highlights some words or phrases that one tells themselves in shameful moments: “‘I am weak, stupid, incompetent.’ ‘I am a loser.’ ‘I am ugly.’ ‘There is something wrong with me…’ ” 92
Brown further discusses two major scripts for shame. In her TED talk she describes the first script as feeling like one will never be good enough. The second script that she describes is the line that one can hear either internally or externally, “Who do you think you are to be trying that or doing that.” 93 She refers to the internal voice of shame as being the voice of the critic.
These two scripts, as well as several others, can be found in Omer’s talks about the voice of the Gatekeeper. Both Brown and Omer state that as we go through transformative moments we can hear the voices of the critic/gatekeeper. It comes from our fear of failure. 94 In this case, mothers can experience fear of failure when it comes to their child, and culturally there are several scripts/ideologies that she must follow in order to avoid failure.
Several researchers such as Miriam Liss et al., Sutherland, and Anna Rotkirch find that mothers who did not live up to their idealized images of motherhood experienced guilt and/or shame. Rotkirch’s qualitative research on 63 mothers finds that the “Myth of Motherhood” is 49 used to guilt mothers into giving higher levels of care. The concept of shame does appear frequently in the mother’s descriptions of their experience, but Rotkirch places shame together with guilt and does not discuss the difference. 95 Liss’s team’s quantitative research expands
Rotkirch’s research as they study the relationship between the role of self-discrepancy, fear of negative evaluation, and shame. Their findings indicate that mothers who reported that they failed to live up to their idealized image of motherhood did experience higher levels of shame.
They also reveal that with these women, the fear of potentially being negatively assessed in their performance as mothers led to feelings of shame. 96
Sutherland echoes this point when she writes in her dissertation that “A mother’s experience would be labeled shame if she described herself, in relation to others, as having not met an idealized self-image.” 97 This idealized image can be heavily influenced and enforced by culture. Taylor states that public esteem for the individual is based on a person’s public successes and failures and is judged from a script that is created from society. 98 Barbara
Almond takes the public scrutiny point further when she discusses that maternal perfection is only proven by the perfection of her child in the eyes of others. 99 This scrutiny can be true regardless of the child’s temperament. None of these studies are discussing how shame influences the development of the maternal identity and the potential fallout of the loss of her confidence (a key component of identity).
Mothers do experience a fear of failure, and that is partially driven by culture and the mother blame continuum. Stella Chess and Chris Bobel were the pioneers in developing the mother blame continuum. Chess summarizes this concept well when she states, “To meet
Johnny’s mother is to understand his problems.” 100 Chris Bobel looks at this concept further in relation to the Continuum Concept by Jean Leidloff. The Continuum Concept is one of the 50 foundational pieces for the current AP ideology. Here she states, “In Leifloff’s view, children who mature into healthy, independent and well-adjusted individuals do so solely because [of] the mother . . . . it is only the mother who makes the mistakes. The errant mother is characterized as selfish, cold-hearted, foolish, and naively reliant on parenting experts’ advice.” 101 Naomi
Lowinsky embellishes on this idea. She states, “Mothers get saddled with cultural baggage or with archetypal expectations. Because the gods are dead, mothers are expected to stand in for them, taking the blame for much that more truly belongs to fate.” 102
Paula Caplan writes that “In our society, it is acceptable to blame mother. Then add the
Perfect Mom and the Bad Mom images, and, when she does something not so terrific, then blame her for being horrible rather than only human . . . . Mother blaming is like air pollution.”103
Sutherland writes about this in her journal article that, “Living in a culture such as the
U.S., with strict mandates encapsulated in the contemporary ideology of ‘good mother,’ results in women held to unrealistic standards. Work-place norms fuel mothers’ imbalances with work and family. Interactions in communities and in the family perpetuate the ideals of motherhood that hold mothers fully accountable for the nurturance, care, health, and overall well-being of their child.” 104
Currently one can readily see these Blame the Mother statements. As an example, a quick Internet search on parenting websites and a review of two mainstream books produced these statements. The first example comes from Dr. Sears, the leader of the Attachment
Parenting (AP) ideology. He states that, “Attachment parenting immunizes children against many of the social and emotional diseases that plague our society.” 105 He quotes research that states: 51
AP babies are smarter. AP babies are healthier. AP babies grow better. AP babies behave better. AP children become ‘response-able.’ AP makes discipline easier. AP promotes intimacy. AP parents and children work together better. AP promotes empathy.”106 He goes on to say, “If you are not practicing Attachment Parenting then you are practicing detachment parenting.” 107
Published on the parenting blog HolisticSquid.com, a mom writes in response to a mother’s question about sleep and reflux:
Have you ever considered that the reason she choked and vomited was because you spent the whole first year holding her upright so that her body never adjusted to lying . . . . Some of you parents really make parenting so much harder than it is or needs to be, just by not exercising basic common sense. Surely you had to know that sitting in a chair for a year so your kid could sleep was not very smart when you could have just put her down in bed the first night. What you do in the beginning to appease your children is what you usually have to do the first 4 yrs. So to the parents who drive their new babies in the car around the neighborhood to get them to sleep ask yourself will this be ridiculous in 3 years and the answer is yes just like sitting in a chair all night holding your baby. 108
Finally, Gary Ezzo and Robert Buckman state in their book Baby Wise that:
Month five through 12 months is a critical period of brain formation and adaptation. It is a time when parents are intentionally or unintentionally imprinting learning patterns that will stay with the child for many years to come. This type of learning needs to be ‘Parent Directed.’ If you are ‘hands off’ and not continually directing their experience, then they can foster developmental deprivation. 109
The presented literature indicates that there is a strong prevalence of shame towards mothers in our culture. It comes from a variety of sources and it acts to contain mothers into certain parenting ideologies or social constructs. My hypothesis runs counter to Sutherland’s dissertation in that this source of shame does lower a mother’s confidence in her ability to care for her child to the detriment of her developing maternal identity. This idea is based on the literature that demonstrates shame can lower self-confidence in the general population. It is my belief that shame is a tremendous impact on mother’s confidence, and this lowered confidence leads to several maladaptive behaviors and feelings such as postpartum depression, unnecessarily trying harder, loss of creative parenting ideas, etc. The next section will discuss current 52 parenting ideologies and how they came into existence.
The Mother Archetype, History, and Current Cultural Ideologies
This section explores the history of motherhood from the turn of the 19th century to current times. The literature will highlight that the turn of the century marked the beginning of what Shari Thurer calls the “age of scientific motherhood.” This begins the formalization of motherhood and the notion that mothers need to be trained for their job of being a mother. With this shift in public perception of the mothering role, one can begin to learn the ways in which culture influenced and transformed the “job” that women have to do in order to sustain the good mother image. The literature shows that there has been a strong move away from the intuitive mother and the passing down of information from generation to generation, to a perception that a woman alone does not know how to properly raise a successful child.
The section then turns to contrasting the current state of motherhood with the formation of certain ideologies. These ideologies can become the cultural scripts that mothers use as a guide to learn their roles at each stage of their child’s development. As the review of the current literature will point out, these current ideologies, espoused through the Internet, media, books, professionals, and mother support groups do have a profound influence on the choices a mother makes in her parenting role.
The Mother Archetype and Myths/Ideologies
Jung defines archetype as an “irrepresentable, unconscious, pre-existent form that seems to be part of the inherited structure of the psyche and can therefore manifest itself spontaneously anywhere, at any time. Because of its instinctual nature, the archetype underlies the feeling- 53 toned complexes and shares their autonomy.” 110 He goes on to describe archetypes as a
“universal human characteristic. It is not a question of inherited ideas, but of a function disposition to produce the same, or very similar, ideas across cultures. I call this disposition the archetype.” 111 Mother is an archetype that crosses cultures.
Anthony Stevens brings in the concept of the collective unconscious as he defines archetypes. He states, “The collective unconscious is an image of the world that has taken aeons to form. In this image certain features, the archetypes or dominants, have crystallized through the course of time. They are the ruling powers.” 112 He goes on to say, “There are archetypal figures (e.g., mother, child, father . . . ), archetypal events (e.g., birth, death, marriage . . . ), archetypal objects (e.g., water, sun, moon, fish, snakes . . . ) . . . . Each finds expression in the psyche, in behavior, and myths.” 113 Here we can see that motherhood is both an archetypal figure, and becoming a mother is an archetypal event.
Jung describes, “The qualities associated with the Mother Archetype are maternal solicitude and sympathy; the magic authority of the female; the wisdom and spiritual exaltation that transcend reason; any helpful instinct or impulse that is benign, all that cherishes and sustains, that fosters growth and fertility. The place of magic transformation and rebirth, together with the underworld and its inhabitants, are presided over by the mother. On the negative side the mother archetype may connote anything secret, hidden, dark, the abyss, the world of the dead, anything that devours, seduces and poisons, that is terrifying and inescapable like fate.” 114
Erich Neumann writes one of the most comprehensive reviews of the mother archetype.
He discusses the mother as the “vessel . . . .the Great Mother can be terrible as well as good, she is not only a giver and protector or life but, as container, also holds fast and takes back; she is the 54 goddess of life and death at once.” 115 He describes three general constellations of motherhood:
“Terrible Mother, Great Mother, Good Mother.”116 Some characteristics that he ascribes to the
Good Mother are “bearing, releasing, giving, transformation, inspiration, wisdom, ecstasy, fruit, development, immortality, birth, and rebirth.” 117 Some characteristics that he ascribes to the
Terrible Mother are “rejection, deprivation, holding fast, selfish, fixating, ensnaring, diminution, devouring, madness, ecstasy, dismemberment, death, extinction, sickness, and transformation dissolution.” 118
Lowinsky writes that the:
Mother archetype is a primordial image that expresses our instinctual, mammalian nature. It takes many cultural forms, from images of the Virgin Mary to those of the death- dealing goddess, Kali, in India. But the female form with breasts is recognizable in all cultures. We are all born of woman. Her breasts and her womb permeate all times and all cultures. 119
These aspects of the mother archetypes are expressed through myths. The Oxford
University Press defines them as:
Myths contain images or “archetypes.” They are the traditional expressions of collective dreams, developed over thousands of years, of symbols upon which the society as a whole has come to depend. These myths, revealed in people’s tales, establish patterns of behavior that can serve as exemplars, e.g., the lives of many heroes and heroines share a remarkable number of similar features that can be identified as worthy of emulation. Similarly, other kinds of concepts are to be classified among the many and varied types of Jungian archetypes embedded in our mythic heritage, e.g, the great earth mother, the supreme sky god, the wise old man, and the idealistic young lover.120
Sibylle Birkhauser-Oeri illustrates some of the classic motherhood myths that are told as fairy tales. She states, “All the characters in fairy tales — good fairies, dragons, witches and dwarfs — are archetypal images present at the deepest level of the psyche. Whether or not we are aware of them, they have their effect, since they are psychological realities.” 121 She goes on to talk about certain fairy tales that highlight specific dimensions of the mothering archetype:
“The Terrible Mother, The Jealous Stepmother, The Fire Mother, The Imprisoning Sorceress, 55
The Indifferent Mother, the Mother as Fate, The Life-Giving Nature Mother, The Healing Nature
Mother, The Self-Renewing Mother, and The Transforming Mother.” 122 Of these myths,
Birkhauser-Oeri states that it is only the positive ones that are being reinforced. She states that,
“Of course, it is the dark side of the Great Mother which Christian [cultures] find the hardest to accept.” 123 These positive myths are being illuminated in images as story lines of the Good
Mother, and as the previous section has indicated, mothers are susceptible to them.
At this point, it is necessary to draw a distinction between mythology and ideology. The terms mythology and ideology are often used interchangeably within the motherhood literature but have different meanings. The review of the definitions will highlight that within the term ideology there exists a greater potential for shaming mothers.
David Minar defines ideology in the following way: “Ideology often seems to be taken to mean thought that fulfills a certain function in the psychological economy of the individual as he relates to his social world. More specifically, under this conception, ideology is composed of those ideas which are developed, either consciously or subconsciously, to rationalize either life condition or action.” 124
Ben Halpren furthers this distinction as he critically reviews the origins and current contexts in which these terms are used. He states, “We find parallel distinction when we consider the functions of myth and ideology. It is frequently suggested by theorists that mythical images function as integrating values around which individuals or societies become organized and exist as coherent entities. On the other hand, the function of ideologies, as theorists of the subject agree, is (in terms of individual and group interests) to procure advantages for specific social positions and (in terms of social structure) to segregate and consolidate competing groups around rival ideas.” 125 Because of the segregating and consolidating quality contained in the 56 concept of ideologies, I will be using the term ideologies.
Both of these concepts contain archetypal images, and these images are used for certain gain, whether it is to highlight certain aspects for learning or to highlight aspects for political gain or to obtain a social position/status. These seeds tie into the imaginal process that mothers undergo as they form their identity. Joseph Campbell talks about this when he states,
“Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the search of vocabularies of reason and coercion.” 126 The symbols of the good mother that are portrayed in our media and are supported by some parenting professionals become the building bricks of the human psyche.
Stephen Larsen continues this theme in his discussions about the ramification of these mythic symbols and myths. He writes:
Lacking the formal context of traditional mythologies, our psyche still is responsive to mythogems — the ‘bricks’ of which mythologies are built. These elements, being the stuff of psyche, are far from inert building material, they structure the living processes in which they participate . . . . If they are not monitored, myths can seize behavior, as well as consciousness itself, in inadvertent or compulsive ways. 127
As the next section will demonstrate, the good mother myth or particular parenting ideologies can “seize” and modify the behavior of the mother.
The literature presented here shows how the mother archetype has been encapsulated in particular myths. American culture promotes only the good mother myths, and from that, certain ideologies emerges. These ideologies do have a way of segregating themselves. This research shows how these ideologies, encapsulated groups, can use shame in an attempt to make mothers conform to their beliefs. The next subsection will review the competing mothering ideologies.
The ideologies that I review are the most salient within American culture.
57
Current Parenting Ideologies and Myths
This section reviews the current ideologies within the American culture. As a reminder, some theories use the term “myth.” The way that these writers encapsulate myth holds some of both of the definitions described in the previous section. Some of the ideologies highlight the strong aspect of the mother, and some review the disparaging aspects of being a mother.
Psychologist Shari Thurer provides a thorough overview of the myth of motherhood. She formulates her current ideas of the mothering myth based on her observations of her clients. Her description is a general overview of the current expectations for mothers:
Today, mother love has achieved the status of a moral imperative. Our current myth holds that the well-being of our children depends almost entirely on the quality of their upbringing . . . it is considered fundamental that children have the continuous and exclusive presence of at least one devoted adult, and that anything separating children from their loving caretaker is psychologically damaging, and mothers are supposed to be totally fulfilled and happy the whole time. 128
In 2002, Laurel Parker West, in her working paper, makes the first inroads into defining the modern terms that describe specific mothering ideologies. She defines four categories: Super
Moms, Soccer Mom, Welfare Queen, and Waitress Mom. West states that “The battle between the Super Mom and the Soccer Mom is ultimately an elite battle between white, upper-middle- class mothers for whom working or not working is a ‘choice.’ Low-income mothers, single mothers, teen mothers, minority mothers, and welfare mothers are rarely, if ever, included in the
Mommy Wars, as they typically ‘have to work’; their ‘deviant’ status makes such mothers invisible in this gender role debate.” 129
In summarizing the first two, more elite, ideologies, the Super Mom and the Soccer
Mom have similar backgrounds and income brackets. The demographics that mark this ideology 58 are white, middle to upper class women. The Super Mom is the modern version of June Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver. Villani and Ryan state that the Super Mom:
Gets up in the morning and wakes her 2.6 children, feeds them a grade-A nutritional breakfast, and then goes upstairs and gets dressed in her Anne Klein suit, goes off to her $25,000-a-year job doing work which is active and socially useful. Then she comes home after work and spends a real meaningful hour with her children because after all, it’s not the quantity of time, but the quality of time. Following that, she goes into the kitchen and creates a Julia Child 60-minute gourmet recipe, having a wonderful family dinner discussing the checks and balances of the United States government system. The children go upstairs to bed and she and her husband spend another hour in their own meaningful relationship. 130
The Soccer Mom is differentiated from the Super Mom in several ways. For starters,
“the soccer mom label was constructed purely for political gain. This label was a by-product from the 1996 presidential election between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, and it was the pollsters and political pundits who shaped the definition.” 131 Even with this beginning, the formulation of this ideology took hold. Currently, she is unquestionably mother first; all other roles come second. She is the full-time mother who has separated from the “housewife” or “homemaker” role of June Cleaver. 132
West describes the politically weaker categories as the Welfare Mom/Queen and the
Waitress Mom. The Waitress Mom is seen as more deserving of services. In contrast, the
Welfare Queen does not deserve social services. West observes that the Waitress Mom is seen as having to work because she has no other choice and because of this she is see with pity.
Politicians, such as Al Gore in his 2000 presidential election, use the image of the Waitress Mom to garner sympathy for the fact that he came from humble beginnings. Gore describes his mother as a Waitress Mom working two jobs. She acquires greater compassion than the Super Mom, because the Super Mom is seen as choosing her career over being a parent. Demographically speaking, the majority of working mothers, of multiple ethnicities fall into this category. 133 59
The final category that West categorizes, one that numerous other institutions actively use, is the Welfare Queen. Ronald Reagan coins this term in his first presidential election against Gerald Ford. The typical Welfare Queen is characterized as a low economic class, Afro-
American woman. She becomes a mother as a teenager, and, while she does not put mothering first, she is a stay-at-home mom with no income. Although Reagan did not assign race to this description, it is understood as a derogatory term for Afro-American women. Diane Eyer studies this term and found that the stereotypical description is “those promiscuous, lazy, TV-watching, imagine-them-to-be-black-and-overweight from eating so many tax dollars (nonvoting) ghetto females provided the perfect scapegoat.” 134
Journalist David Zucchino follows several unwed mothers who were on welfare to find out how they spent their time and taxpayer dollars. He reports that the Welfare Queen is a destitute woman, fending for herself because the biological father is nowhere to be found. She is left to find food (sometimes in trash cans), clothing (in thrift stores), and shelter (that was typically unsafe). On top of this, the welfare checks are cut at any given moment, leaving her with little to no income. 135 His findings stand in stark contrast to the term used for political reasons.
There are several other current parenting ideologies that hold strong aspects of the perfect mother. An ideology that is similar to the “The Life-Giving Nature Mother” myth that
Birkhauser-Oeri describes, is the idea of the “Slow Parent.” As Rachel Thomson and Kehily state, this model of parenting is “gaining currency among a substratum of middle-class parents.
As a riposte to the accelerated speed of urban life and work-based practices, slow parenting advocates country living, home cooking, de-schooling, green everything and an unhurried approach to family life that values spending time together.” 136 60
There are other ideologies that mirror the Slow Parenting ideology: Attachment
Parenting, Natural Mom, Simplicity Mothering. Thomson and Kehily state overall that these parenting philosophies “involve total commitment to your baby, breastfeeding and sleeping together to enable mothers to become attuned to the needs of the child.” 137 Chris Bobel took a sociological look at the interplay of these ideologies. She interviews 25 mothers and finds that there is an overlay between parenting styles of Attachment Parenting (AP) and Simplicity
Parenting that create the Natural Mother. She states that “AP specifically addresses the specific concerns of parents who seek to depart from what they believe is the norm in a changing, alienating, and child-decentered culture, and voluntary simplicity dictates a lifestyle that derives meaning from relative austerity and minimized consumption.” 138
These ideologies are all captured in the overall belief of the Perfect Mother. Jane Swigart describes this as:
Imagine the woman who wants only what is best for her children, whose needs she intuits effortlessly. This mother adores her offspring and finds them fascinating. She is exquisitely attuned to her children and is so resourceful she is immune to boredom. Nurturing comes as naturally as breathing, and child rearing is a course of pleasure that does not require discipline, or self-sacrifice. She is the perfect mother. 139
Judith Warner describes the consequence of these ideologies in her satirical description of the “Sacrificial Mother.” She states:
Remember Shel Silverstein’s classic children’s book The Giving Tree? In it, a tree loves a little boy and he loves her back. He takes her leaves, climbs her trunk, swings from her branches, eats her apples, and sleeps in her shade. When he grows up, he sells her apples for money, cuts off her branches to build a house, and cuts down her trunk to make a boat. And then, when he’s old and too tired to move, and she’s nothing more than a stump, he sits down on her and rests. 140
In other countries there are cultural scripts that guide mothers towards the best mothering practices. These scripts vary from the ones in the United States for several reasons: infant mortality, nutrition, illness, values of the community, and needs for supervision. For example, a 61 study completed in Afghanistan, which has one of the top three infant mortality rates in the world, showed that infant mortality had a strong correlation to economic conditions, access to water and sanitation, and the low status of women in the culture. The prevalent culture, which is currently in transition, places a strong emphasis on women not being educated. This leaves women with little knowledge about how to care for their children’s health and safety. Since there is a high mortality rate, women tend to have more children to compensate for the loss. This lack of education has lead to higher infant mortality rates. 141
The book World of Babies tells numerous stories about parenting practices from around the world. One of the chapters describes how Balinese parents are supposed to raise their child.
Mothers are told to never let their child cry, for that will cause illness. To accomplish this a mother will sleep with their baby, breastfeed on-demand, wake up earlier than the child and begin to feed so the child will not cry for food in the morning. The child’s temperament is solely the mother’s responsibility. They encourage babies to be naked and not use diapers. The mother washes herself often during the day to wash away the urine that eliminates from the baby onto her. Stray dogs clean up the feces. The child baths twice a day, and the mother puts a red onion in the water to ward off evil spirits. Newborns are not to be fed the first milk from the mother.
They are fed rice cereal and chewed banana. Once the mother rids herself of the first milk, the newborn is fed a combination of breast milk and solids. If the child becomes ill, the mother has the option to take the child to the traditional healer, the Balian, or to a medical clinic. The Balian assesses the child’s bayu (spirit) and treat accordingly. They teach the child emotional control as early at 21 months. The mothers can borrow another child to breastfeed which elicits jealousy within her child. This type of exposure allows the child to build equanimity in the face of provocations, disappointments, or frustrations. 142 62
As one can see, there are several contrasts between the United States and the Balinese, and each culture around the world highlights differing beliefs based on the factors described above. Nicholas Day quotes Ed Tronick's views on how culture influences how mothers raise their children: “Different patterns of care taking and parenting may violate norms we hold as vital, yet children are still developing and learning. Those differences work for their culture. The point is to raise a child who can be competent and successful in the culture they live in.” 143
This research focuses on the ideologies that mothers are striving to obtain such as Soccer
Mom, Super Mom, Natural Mom, Slow Parenting Mom, Attachment Parenting Mom, or other descriptions that mirror this type of intensive parenting. There are several reasons for this.
Within American culture there is a strong emphasis on obtaining the upper-middle-class image.
Not many mothers strive to be the Waitress Mom or the Welfare Mom. In Warner’s review of images in mainstream media, she saw that it is the “upper-middle-class homes that we see in movies, upper-middle-class lifestyles that are detailed in our magazines, upper-middle-class images of desirability that grace the advertising destined for us all . . . . It is why so many of us turn ourselves inside out trying to parent to perfection, so that our children will be ‘winners’.” 144
For these reasons, I am focusing primarily on the ideologies that portray the middle-class perfect mom.
As one looks around the supermarket checkout, magazines in the pediatricians’ office, commercials during one’s favorite sitcom, these images and story lines are everywhere.
Descriptions and images of the ideological mothers are portrayed through media, how-to books, support groups, professionals, etc. Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels searched through 30 years worth of news reports, women’s magazines, celebrity journalism, etc. to conclude that there is a growing obsession with an idealized ever-giving mother. They state: 63
Our main point is this, media imagery that seems so natural, that it seems to embody some common sense, while blaming some mothers, or all mothers, for children and a nation gone wrong . . . . Especially troubling about all this media-fare is the rise of even more impossible standard of motherhood today than those that tyrannized us in the past. For women in their twenties and thirties, the hypernatalism of the media promotes impossibly idealized expectations about motherhood that may prove depressively disappointing. 145
Harriette Marshall’s discourse analysis on seven popular British parenting manuals that focused on how language use in the manuals/books actively construct a particular version of the social world. The books that she reviews are also widely in use in the United States. She finds that the books state, “The responsibility falls onto mothers for the ‘normal development’ of a well-adjusted individual. To mother adequately, a woman needs to be present with her child 24 hours each day and to be continually and actively engaged, providing stimulating and attentive company.” 146 This is a theme that is carried over into media and movies.
Lara Descrates and Conrad Kottak’s anthropological study on a middle-class town in
Michigan explores media consumption, its impact on work/family patterns, and the families’ feelings and rationales about the choices that they make. They find that “Parents derive meaning not just from current media sources but also from media sources from the past including those of their childhood. Media representations were among the ‘script’ and comparative narratives our informants used to understand and evaluate who they were, and what they might or should be and do.” 147
Aftab Omer also mentions this notion of culture and how culture plays out in the personal experience. He defines culture as:
the web of practices through which a group submits to . . . . aligning or submitting to the way things are done. Either we align and flourish, or we do not. Culture is archetypal and mythologically infused. Culture is deep inside the personal and sometimes it is too close to see. 148
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He continues in a different lecture to talk about, “Putting on the TV, there is a great deal of energy placed into keeping the culture the same.” 149
Lowinsky brings this normalizing effect of culture into the complexity of the intergenerational parenting. With the shift towards moving away from instinctual parenting and more towards the science presented by professionals and books, there is a rift between grandmothers and daughters around the passing down of intergenerational knowledge. She states:
Because we have lost our historical sense of how culture shifts, we are outraged that our mothers did not raise us according to the standards of our times but had the effrontery to be shaped by the values of their own generation. Thus painful intergenerational rifts and misunderstanding arise. Women whose mothers love them feeling feel estranged and unmothered. Women whose daughters long to know them can find no language of mutuality. 150
In Sutherland’s research, she finds a discrepancy between a white mother’s experience and the African-American mother’s experience of social pressures. She writes that African
American women are not as affected by the culture’s idealized good mother. 151 She does not discuss the possible reasons for this but does make this distinction.
As illustrated within American culture, there are particular motherhood ideologies.
These ideologies are constantly on display through media sources and enforced by professionals.
These ideologies can be difficult for new mothers to obtain and sustain. The research in the next section provides a detailed historical account of how culture came to intervene in how mothers parent their children.
The History of Motherhood Within American Culture
Within the United States, there is a long history in shaping and constructing the ideology and myths of motherhood. The materials in this section begin in the late 1890s and the 65 early1900s, when mothering and infant development were becoming a topic to research and best practices were beginning to be prescribed. The overview continues until current times where theorist and psychologist describe motherhood as the “age of anxiety.” This section points to an increasingly complex and demanding stress placed on mothers by American culture.
With the birth of the industrial revolution in the late 1800s to the early 1900s, more and more families moved into the cities. Medical researchers and authorities on child development start defining what it means to be a good mother. Thurer writes, “The culture which had endowed her (the mother) with a maternal instinct now told her that her instinct alone was no longer sufficient for raising a happy and healthy child.” 152 There is a shift in the economic forces that moved the family from the farm to the city. Thurer goes on to state, “The farmer, who had occupied a favored place in American mythology since the time of Thomas Jefferson, rapidly gave way to the industrialist, the capitalist, and the entrepreneur.” 153 Mothering, as a full-time job, starts to take shape. With the decline of life with servants, living close to extended family, and the reduced birth rate decreasing the amount of sibling help, mothers had to put more time into the child-rearing process.
Peter Stearns concludes that by the beginning of the 19th century, children are seen as being essentially good and they can be lead astray and corrupted by bad examples. 154 This change in perception about children also contributes to the shifting the cultural mindset about how parents should raise their child[ren]. In 1894, Luther Holt publishes one of the very first parenting books, The Care and Feeding of Children. It is a simply written books that walks parents and nurses through the ins and outs of caring for babies and children.
In 1897, the National Congress of Mothers is established. The direct objective of the
Congress was to: 66
Wipe out the strongholds of maternal ignorance; to make of every household a home by educating the mothers and fathers in true parent-hood, and by bettering its conditions, multiplying its pleasures, and creating more ideal surroundings for its children; to purify the fountains of evil, and render reform needless; to forestall philanthropy by securing more healthful living, better housing, more economical planning, purer amusements, more means of self-support; to lead mothers to thought on their own responsibility, to the end that the evil resulting from ignorance, indifference and neglect be eradicated; to arouse mothers to a full appreciation of educational methods, to the duty and necessity of investigating methods, and to their responsibility in the matter of choosing the best educators for their children. 155
It is important to note that around the time that the National Congress of Mothers was founded, women’s rights start to expand as well. Images of the repressed Victorian woman give way to the New Woman who had just won the right to vote, can have a job, and is gaining control over her reproductive rights. In 1922, Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth
Control league, which later evolves into the Planned Parenthood. 156 In this period of time, the birthrate starts to drop.
Due to the declining birth rate, a rise in racism, and a war, there is a push for women to start having babies again. Abortions are made illegal in 1900 in efforts to raise the birthrate. 157
Books and guides are given to women to help them find the strongest mate. 158 This birthing campaign is aimed at encouraging middle-class wealthy women to have babies. Poor women are encouraged not to have children. In the early 1920s to the1940s several states passed a eugenics law largely targeting low-income women for sterilization procedures. 159
The generation born between the 1920s and 1940s is the first generation to be raised by parenting books and child experts. Stearns writes that “During the 1920s and 1930s, experts established a host of classes for parents, not only through schools but also in women’s clubs, settlement houses, and other agencies, reaching rural and immigrant populations, as well as the urban middle class. The movement reflected a deep concern on the part of experts that many parents did not know their job and that parenting was hardly a natural act, save in the most 67 rudimentary biological sense. But the movement also reflected, as well as stimulated, beliefs among parents themselves that old habits and assumptions had to be revisited in a context in which not only parenting but also children themselves became more problematic.” 160
In the 1920s, Arnold Gesell is the first psychologist and pediatrician to start charting developmental norms for children, giving parents a pattern which they attempt to fit their children into. The United States Children’s Bureau publishes Infant Care in 1924, and John B.
Watson pioneers the behavioralism movement that “rejected introspection and self-revelation and dealt only with external acts.” 161 It was noted that “he never kissed or held his children; at bedtime he only shook hands with them.” 162 In the preface of his book The Psychological Care of Children, published in 1928, he questions whether or not children even need to know their parents. 163 The general perception emerges that children were still seen as innocent in a sense, but their nature is unreliable. They have inner psychological demons and even physical failings that can bring these children down. 164 These books and studies encourage mothers to provide rigid structure and discipline at an early age, and the mother is the one to administer these techniques.
Mercer states, “Maternal behavior was of interest only for its effects on the developing child during the first half of the 20th century; research and advice were from a patriarchal perspective based largely on psychoanalytic theory. Advice offered to mothers by early experts has little research as a basis; fads and prejudices were presented as expert opinion, along with the scant knowledge available about physical growth and childhood diseases.” 165
Between the years 1950 and 1980, there is a major shift in how culture dictates mothering. Society at that time instructs the mother that whatever she does to her child in the first couple of years lays the path for the rest of the child’s development. In the early 1950s and 68
60s John Bowlby and Renee Spitz “suggested that the emotional disorders and intellectual retardation observed in institutionalized infants were the result of the deprivation of a continuous relationship with mother.” 166 This finding is the bases for the attachment theory.
Noted later in this chapter, the Attachment Parenting Movement forms its ideology on Bowlby’s original work.
By the 1960s and 1970s, the emerging counterculture begins to reshape and change the way mothers are supposed to raise their children. The new ideal mother is cuddly and 24 hour permissive. She is to “respond to baby’s emotional needs, gratify its wants, tolerate its regressions, stimulate its cognitive development, and above all, to feel personally fulfilled in carrying this out.” 167 In the 1960s, a revolution in the social sciences rejects the view that children are born with an innate set of traits that evolve into their adult personalities. They favor the belief in the power of the environment having the greatest influence over the child. 168
During this time comes a greater awareness of the work of Jean Piaget and others, which sheds new light on the cognitive development of children, early learning, and the potential for parents to enhance their young children’s intellectual abilities.
Research from John Bowlby, Mary Ainesworth, and Rene Spitz begins to emphasize the importance of the mother in creating attachment with the child and identifies the behaviors of what a securely attached child should looked like. There is a strong emphasis on the need for the mother to be with the child and not to return to work. Spitz develops the concept of mother absenteeism. This concept promotes the idea that a mother creates extreme emotionally depriving anxiety in the child if she returns to work. He goes on to claim that babysitters would produce an emotionally crippled child. 169
As the decade advance, best-selling authors of child-care guides like R. Fitzhugh Dodson 69 and Dr. Spock become influential writers and popularizers of the new science of how to raise your child. According to Warner, these doctors push the notion that children were not just born bright and successful, they are taught; they can be made that way. If they have a mother with the necessary degree of devotion and brilliance, she can bring her children’s gifts to light. 170
Fitzhugh Dodson, in his 1970 bestselling book How to Parent, states, “Armed with the accumulated knowledge of science about what goes on inside the mind of a child, a loving and concerned mother can learn how to raise her child to become a happy and intelligent adult.” 171
Similarly, Spock explains, “We have learned from psychoanalytic studies that the influence that makes a very few individuals become extraordinarily productive or creative in their fields is, most often, the inspiration they received from a particularly strong relationship with a mother who had especially high aspirations for her children.” 172
With all the emphasis on the mother being well-attached to the child, the 1970s ushers in a conflicting cultural shift for the modern woman/mother. Gloria Steinem’s groundbreaking work for women on equal rights in the workplace and in American in general give women greater impetus to enter the work force. The Pew Research on Social and Demographic trends show that from 1948 to 1970 there is a 10 percent growth in mother’s who work with the greatest portion of that growth happening from 1960 to 1970. “Drastic shifts in sex roles seem to be sweeping through America. From 1890 to 1985 the participation in the work force of women between the ages of 25 and 44 soars from 15 to 71 percent, with the pace of change tripling after
1950. Since then, mothers of preschool children have thronged the job market. By 1985, the census had classified more than half of these young mothers as participants in the work force.”173
This begins the seeds of the mommy wars. Do women stay at home and nurture their child, or join the feminist movement and go back to work? 70
Rachel Hare-Mustin et al., find in their research that, “Although women may work, the common view is that their jobs should be subservient to their principal child bearing/rearing function. It is not surprising that the vast majority of American working women are in fields that conflict least with this essential role, via teaching, nursing, social science, and secretarial work.”174
In the 1990s, the image of mother shifts again and looks very different from the 1970s mother. The dramatic change in the composition in the nuclear family is the primary driver of this shift. Louis B. Silverstein states that “In 1990, fewer than seven percent of families reflect the two-parent model of husband as breadwinner and wife as homemaker. One in every two marriages end in divorce, and the rate of families headed by never-married mothers 1983 was
25.2 percent. Thus, in the 1990s sixty percent of the nation’s children will spend some part of their childhood in a single-parent family.” 175 Social standards raise new issues about the social meaning of the adult identity for women. Many women are marrying later, having fewer children, and having them later in life than their mothers or grandmothers did. There is also an increase in women having children outside of marriage, and talk of childlessness starts to become a valid option for women. 176
Through all the changes in the American culture there have been the constant mounting of issues/problems that mothers need to be concerned about. Stearn summarizes this well as he describes the explosion of concerns by parents about the modern dangers of society during the
1970s and 80s. He points to cases such as kidnapping and abducted children that come to consciousness in the 1970s when the milk carton campaign begins. There are groups stating that
50,000 abductions by strangers take place each year, when the actual number is between two and three hundred. 177 Then come the reports about sexual predators. One report shows that one in 71
220 children are affected, but the reports that went to Congress doubled that amount. Finally there is the Halloween scare in 1982 where children were receiving poisoned candy and apples with razor blades. The only truly recorded incident is pins pushed into three candy bars in Long
Island. These incidents have the effect of increasing parental control of children’s activities outside. 178
Stearn goes on to say that with every modern invention there comes a new potential danger to the child. With the invention of electricity, the child can electrocute himself or herself.
The development of high-rise apartments leads to children potentially falling out the window and dropping many stories. The car increases parental concerns about children getting hit by one and in the later years, their teenagers driving them. With the invention of television there comes the exposure to violence through television programs and other problems associated with watching too much TV such as obesity. The advent of the Internet brings in an additional host of issues that require monitoring. The pressure of continual parental monitoring keeps building as the threats just keep layering on top of each other. 179
The new demographic of the modern mother has changed since the 1990s. Women are having children later, and many more single women are having children. The Pew Research
Center cites that the percentage of women above 35 years old having a child has jumped from nine percent in 1990 to 14 percent in 2008. A record of 41 percent of births was to unmarried women, with Hispanics and white women having the largest gains in this area. The study also points to a shift in what the general American public approves of in regards to the changing demographic. The public is softening its view on women using IVF or having children past 40 years old, but the majority of Americans still disapprove of unmarried parenthood, stating that it is bad for society. Fifty-seven percent of younger Americans age 18 to 29 say that single 72 motherhood is bad for society. That percentage significantly increases with the older population;
74 percent of people 64 years of age and older believe that single motherhood is bad for society.180 Here again, we see that culture has an opinion on who should and should not be a mother at the expense of the individual’s preference.
With the change in the profile of the modern mother, there has also been a significant increase in the number of published books available. When you go to Amazon.com and type in
“Motherhood” as a search word in the books section, the result is 11,839 books. When you type in “Parenting,” the search produces 87,877 books. As previously illustrated in the motherhood mythology and ideology section, there are numerous points of view about the correct way to raise your child. The baby product industry is reported to be a $44.70 billion industry worldwide. 181 Consequently, I wonder what effect all of the products and information in circulation, have on a mother as she develops her identity. It is my belief that as mothers journey through the liminal stage and attempts to rejoin the larger society, the volume of “supportive” information and the welcoming into motherhood is not supportive. This flood of information can actually diminish her confidence in her ability to care for the child.
Obtaining the Maternal Identity and Maternal Self-Confidence
This section of the literature review focuses on how mothers develop their maternal identity and concentrates on one of the key indicators of this development process, maternal confidence. The primary reason for the selection of this term is that maternal confidence is a subjective, self-evaluative process that evolves over time based on how a mother perceives herself performing her role as mother. Because of the subjective nature, maternal confidence can be influenced by external forces, which in return can trigger the shame affect. The other key 73 piece that is explored, which was referred to throughout the preceding sections, is if or how the loss of the maternal line effects the development of the maternal confidence. Are these two concepts related? And if so, how do they fit together?
This research studies the ways culture can diminish maternal self-confidence.
Additionally, this section studies the ways that culture can prohibit a mother from incorporating the mother identity into the greater self-system. This directly relates to Mercer’s definition of maternal identity in how she expands herself to include this identity. It also relates to the rites of passage model in how mothers are accepted back into society after being in the liminal states.
This section starts with the definition of maternal confidence. Then it reviews the literature showing its relationship to the formation of the maternal identity. It closes with the literature that explains the factors that can influence confidence. Within the literature there are concepts that parallel maternal self-confidence: maternal self-efficacy and maternal self-esteem.
I am choosing to use the term “maternal self-confidence” because of the literature that ties this term to the development of the maternal identity.
In the previous section, “The Development of the Maternal Identity”, the motherhood literature demonstrated the process of becoming a mother. It starts with imagining whom she is going to be, then moves into the liminal state of disorganized chaos, to finally emerge confident in her ability to care for her child. As a mother comes through the state of confusion, she has established a unique harmony between her and the child. Stern and Stern describe this established mother has having the ability to:
Improvise on-the-spot, those unexpected behaviors that come from within; of spontaneously creating and changing temporal patterns and behavioral sequences that have never been performed exactly like that before and yet are seen a million times over; of flexibility altering pitch and tone and speak and modality unthinkingly as you go along, of the basis of cues that flash by and are only vaguely experienced and partially 74
identified, but enough perceived to lead to a new and unknown direction of action . . . .This system of variability within structure is one to which both infant and caregiver bring the necessary behaviors and responsitivities so that it is set to run with the surety and robustness. 182
This statement is a strong description of a mother who has obtained her identity. It brings three ideas together nicely. First, it touches on the time-honored rituals that mothers have done with their child: the feeding, loving, and tending to. It also allows for the uniqueness of the mother to be present in the mother-child relationship. It closes by incorporating the concept of confidence when they mention surety.
Proceeding deeper into the concept of maternal self-confidence, Loraine Walker et al. state that “The experience of becoming a mother is developmental and appears to follow a chronology related to increasing maternal confidence and experience.” 183 Mercer observes that a mother becomes a mother when she experiences “a sense of harmony [with her baby], confidence, and competence in how she performs her role.” 184 These two descriptions highlight the interconnectedness between maternal confidence and the development of the maternal identity.
Lina Badr in her article “Further Psychometric Testing and Use of the Maternal
Confidence Questionnaire” defines maternal confidence as, “the perception mothers have of their ability to care for and understand their infants. Maternal confidence is closely related to maternal identity and maternal role competence and attainment.” 185 Mercer gives a more comprehensive definition of maternal confidence. She states:
The mother’s skill, sensitivity, empathic responses, and nurturing behaviors that promote the infant’s health and development reflect her maternal role competence. Because all behavior originates in the mind, the mother’s attitudes and values influence her behavior. Achieving maternal synchrony with the infant’s behavioral state and responses is central to competence. The mother’s perception of her competence in the maternal role reflects her confidence in the mothering role. 186
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Other researchers use the term maternal self-efficacy to describe a similar phenomenon.
Susan Reece defines maternal self-efficacy as “the confidence a new mother has in her ability to meet the demands and responsibilities of parenthood.” 187 As one can see within each of these definitions, confidence plays a central role in the development of the maternal identity. In order to achieve her maternal identity, a mother has to develop confidence in her own interpretation of her mothering role.
Based on their quantitative analysis of 374 postpartum Taiwanese women, Lui Chien-Chi et al. conclude that “Maternal confidence has been shown to facilitate maternal role development and to promote positive infant nurturing and development. When a mother successfully adapts to the maternal role, she gains confidence in her ability to nurture and to ensure her infants’ physical, emotional, behavioral and social development.” 188 Although this research was conducted in a different culture with potentially different cultural influences, Walker et al. echo
Chien-chi’s findings in their research on American women. Walker states that, “Maternal self- confidence in caring for infants provides an indicator of attaining the maternal role/identity.” 189
Tannis Williams et al. conducted a two-year longitudinal study of 238 mothers. Their investigations examined how a woman evolves into motherhood. They followed the mothers from eight months pregnant to two years postpartum. One of their major findings is that
“Parenting confidence seems to play a central role in adaptation to motherhood over the first two years . . . . By one month postpartum, parenting confidence, attachment, the mother’s emotional state, and adaptation to the maternal role are strongly linked.” 190 In this study as well as the
Mercer article on “Becoming a Mother,” one can see that it is not just the first year that women have to develop confidence. Women constantly have to redefine their mothering role as their 76 children mature and require different parenting needs. Williams’ research can only conclude what happened within the first two years, and Mercer discusses the ongoing process.
Walker, Lorraine O., Helen Crain, and Earl Thompson state in their article “Maternal
Role Attainment and Identity in the Postpartum Period: Stability and Change,” that the
“Maternal role attainment/identity involves confidently enacting the culturally defined behaviors associated with the maternal role . . . . A new mother progresses through several stages in role attainment/identity; including among these are rigidly adhering to rules and directives of others and finally evolving her own interpretations of the maternal role. As a mother evolves her own style of role performance, an accompanying increase of self-confidence in her role takes place.”191
The key points from this research are as follows: 1) mothers first rigidly follow the rules and directives of others of the culturally defined behavior, and 2) they evolve their own interpretation of their role. That transition point relies heavily on mothers having confidence in their abilities. This research studies that transition point and asks the questions, What happens in that step between rigidly following external rules and coming into one’s own perception of what is needed for her baby and/or child? What are the influences that can prohibit a mother from making this transition smoothly? In what ways do the external rules hinder her confidence in her ability to meet her baby’s or child’s physical and emotional needs?
These findings raise an additional question: If a mother obtains her identity by enacting the culturally defined behaviors with confidence, and her confidence increases when she finds her own style of role performance, then what happens when her own style is in contrast to the culturally defined behaviors? The following reviews of published research will discuss the 77 impact that current ideologies can have on a new mother as she strives to incorporate the
“culturally defined behaviors” that Walker discussed into daily practice.
Several studies show how quickly a mother can build her self-confidence when the information that she receives is congruent with how she is caring for her child. This external information can confirm her imagined idealized mother, thus further developing her confidence.
Deutsch et al. states, “The more women incorporate the characteristics of ‘good mothers’ into their self-views, the more self-confident they will be. Likewise, after the birth women’s success with their babies enables them to increase their self-confidence as they incorporate specific characteristics of mothering into their self-definitions.” 192 Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross discuss in length how “confidence concerns a mother’s self-concept, information that strengthens her confidence or contributes to her uncertainty about her infant’s care is very important.” 193 Here one can start to see that, when the information is incongruent with the mother’s self-concept, there can be significant consequences.
Mercer finds that:
At 4 months, one-third or more of the 250 primiparous mothers had an image of an ideal mother as one who responded to her infant’s needs, taught the infant, and provided unselfish love, nourishment, cleanliness, stimulation and an appropriate environment. Two-thirds of the mothers rated themselves from 7-9 compared with their images of an ideal mother (rating of 10); 18% rated themselves at 10. By 8 months, 72% were in the 7-9 range, and 19% rated themselves at 10. At 1 year, 69% rated themselves from 7-9 and 23% as 10. Thus, mothers increasingly saw themselves as ideal or near-ideal mothers.
She concludes that “Failure to live up to one’s ideal image in a role [as culture helped influence in its creation] may lead to role strain and depression.” 194
Mauthner’s qualitative study on 40 women focuses primarily on women who were diagnosed with PPD. Her major finding is “All the women in the study experienced some kind of conflict between the mother they felt themselves to be and the mother they wanted to be. 78
Faced with this conflict, they found it difficult to accept their feelings and their actual, concrete mothering experience. They silently struggled to fulfill their ideals while at the same time concealing their needs and feelings from other people.” 195 Mauthner concludes that, “PPD occurs when women are unable to experience, express, and validate their feelings and needs within supportive, accepting and non-judgmental interpersonal relationships and cultural contexts.” 196
Barclay et al. research echoes Mauthner’s findings. In their analysis of women’s experience of early motherhood they find that “Some mothers described the support of health professionals very positively . . . . Other mothers found that midwives made becoming a mother more difficult or unnecessarily uncomfortable. They were perceived as reducing the women’s self-esteem further, confusing them with conflicting advice or providing intrusive, rough, or insensitive care.” 197
Precilla Choi et al. interviewed 24 primiparous and multiparous women to understand the impact that cultural ideologies has on the actions women took while developing their mothering identity. Their key finding shows that:
The women’s expectations were very strongly influenced by the myth of motherhood and it would seem that there is a lack of alternative motherhood discourses for women to draw on in constructing their experiences. Conflict occurred as a result of the discrepancy between myth and reality. Our findings show that feelings of inadequacy are likely as a result of this conflict . . . . Women are reluctant to be seen to have failed as perhaps this would threaten their sense of self and their identity as woman. 198
What I find most interesting with their research is that “so strong was the fear of being seen to have failed, the only option was to work harder at the performance.” 199 This finding supports the idea that some women become stuck in adhering to the ideological rules, and, instead of finding a different way of performing the task, they just try harder. This finding adds 79 another layer to my hypothesis: the perceived judgment from others creates shameful feelings that hold these mothers in fixed positions.
Although these findings do not specifically use the term maternal self-confidence, they do use words such as feeling of inadequacy, reducing women’s self-esteem, and uncertainty.
These articles clearly illustrate the principle that culture can lead to unrealistic ideals to the detriment of the new mother’s well-being. These terms listed above are related to the shame affect as well as being connected to self-confidence.
A differing point needs addressing in this section as well. In Mercer’s definition of
Maternal Identity, she states that the mother “… has expanded herself to incorporate a new identity.” 200 Her use of the word “identity” and how one incorporates it into the larger self draws from Mead’s conception of identity. Researchers Charles Mead and Robert Cooley pioneered some of the beginning concepts of identity theory. Both men strongly emphasized the importance of society in forming identities. Mead states that, “The self [identity] is something which has a development; it is not initially there at birth, but arises in the process of social experience and activity, that it develops in the given individual as a result of his relations to that process as a whole and to other individuals within that process.” 201
Within Sheldon Stryker and Peter Burke’s definition, one can see that persons can develop multiple identities as they encounter a multitude of situations. They state that the most used definition of identity is, “Parts of a self composed of the meanings that persons attach to the multiple roles they typically play in highly differentiated contemporary societies.” 202
Peggy Thoits’ well-aimed study focuses on the well-being of people when they have multiple identities. She finds that having multiple role-identities has been shown to lessen psychological distress because the person can manage different social situations. Conversely, 80 losing an identity due to an important event [becoming a mother] does have psychological consequences. 203 At this moment, no one has related this study to mothers.
Rozsika Parker defines maternal ambivalence as, “the experience shared variously by all mothers in which loving and hating feelings for their children exist side by side.” 204 The concept of maternal ambivalence can be a symptom of the loss of other identities or an inability to “expand herself to incorporate a new identity.” Parker only discusses this in terms of the relationship between the mother and child, but if one expands this definition further, it may apply here — that if a mother feels locked into the mother identity, and she does not feel permission or supported in having other experiences, will she have feeling of regret or remorse for having her child, i.e. maternal ambivalence?
In Sutherland’s recent opinion piece in Sociological Compass, she states that “A mother’s experience would be labeled shame if she described herself, in relation to others, as having not met an idealized self-image.” 205 This idealized image can range from labeling herself as a specific type of mother (i.e., a natural mom, an attachment parenting mom, etc.) or feel like mother is the only thing she can be. As stated earlier, the idealized image that mothers create for themselves can be heavily influenced and enforced by culture. This leads me to the broad question: Since it is known that shame does have an impact on the development of identity, self- esteem and self-efficacy, and it is known that shame can come from external sources that maintain specific mothering ideologies, what bearing does culturally constructed shame have on mothers? The Research Problem Statement is: In what ways does the shame that Western, postmodern parenting ideologies can evoke in mothers impact the development of the maternal identity? The Research Hypothesis is: The shame that some mothers feel as a result of following popular parenting ideologies, can impact the development of maternal identity by diminishing 81 her confidence, instilling feelings of ambivalence towards her child[ren], negating her own needs, and limiting her ability to improvise solutions to perceived problems on the spot. 82
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
Introduction and Overview
This dissertation is taking an in-depth look at one question: In what ways does the shame that Western, postmodern parenting ideologies can evoke in mothers impact the development of the maternal identity? Hypothesis: The shame that some mothers feel as a result of following popular parenting ideologies can impact the development of maternal identity by diminishing her confidence, instilling feelings of ambivalence towards her child[ren], negating her own needs, and limiting her ability to improvise solutions to perceived problems on the spot.
To research this hypothesis I used Imaginal Inquiry. This methodology, developed by
Aftab Omer, is nested within the Participatory Paradigm. This methodology has four stages: 1) evoke a specific authentic experience, 2) have the participants express their experience, 3) interpret the experience, and 4) integrate the participants experience.
Participants were selected based on an interview process. The participants were screened and selected based on two variables: 1) low confidence and 2) ensuring that they obtained their sources of information from the Internet, media, books, and professionals. In the original design
I used Lina Zahr’s Maternal Confidence Questionnaire for screening the confidence level. After screening 11 potential participants, I restructured the questionnaire to create open-ended questions. These restructured questions maintained the initial issue in question. (See Appendix
A) The minimum number of mothers needed to effectively explore the hypothesis was 10.
Eleven mothers were screened into the research project.
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Another change that occurred in the screening process was that originally I was looking at first-time mothers with babies three to 12 months old. As the screening process got underway, numerous mothers with children of multiple ages and mothers of multiple children were expressing interest in the study. Through the screening process, it came to my attention that the topic was not an issue just for mothers of babies and that low confidence can stem well beyond the first year and with multiple children. This phenomenon was well-documented within the literature review. With this in mind, I screened mothers who had children up to the age of four.
The first stage of the research, evoking the experience and data collection, was conducted in stages. The main experience that I evoked was shame, and, as related in the literature review, shame can be a socially induced emotion. In creating a socially safe environment to experience shame, the primary method I worked with was focal groups. There were two focal groups. The first one was big group discussion that solicited participants’ feedback about how they were affected when they heard the professionals in the videos talk. The second focal group was comprised of two smaller groups in which they discussed a variety of topics in greater depth.
The purpose of the first group was for the mothers to hear from “professionals” in the parenting field about the best practices on how to be a good mother. The aim was to evoke shame in the mothers. The purpose of the second group was to have the mothers explore and express their reactions to the professionals, the videos of the perfect mom, and their self-created image of the perfect mother.
In closing I gave them their homework assignment: to journal at least four times over the two week time period between the group sessions. They were asked to track their perceptions of how they are doing as moms. After two weeks of at-home data collection, they rejoined and
84 shared their experiences, again in a focal space. At that time I presented the initial findings and solicited their reactions to those findings.
The first step in Imaginal Inquiry was to evoke a specific authentic experience. The goal was to have the participants engage in an “activity” that took them outside of their normal identity or belief structures. This approach did not aim for them to share a retrospective review of their mothering events up this that point. It required the “evoking of fresh experience concerning the phenomena being studied.” 1 The belief of this approach holds that if a person does not step outside of their normal identity, then they will provide rote, scripted answers. In designing this phase of inquiry it was important to differentiate between the core evoking experience and everything else that lead up to or closed the core experience. The core experience was that moment that carried the participant outside of their normative identity.
Everything else helped set the stage, created the container, and established safety. In this research the core experience was the mothers watching the videos of the professionals.
The next step was to have the participants express what happened for them, and this was where the researchers did most of their data collecting. The primary goal was to have the participants’ internal experiences come out without the participants filtering what they express.
Some general examples of this is to have the participants create an art piece and dialog with it or have the participants do body movement and then write poetry with the words that come to them.
For this research they expressed through collaging, open forum discussion, and journaling. Data collection occurred through a variety of methods: videotaping, journaling, taking pictures of their collages, and taping the dialog.
The third phase was to interpret the experience or data analysis. Taking into account all of the aspects of the participants’ and researchers’ experience, including the parts that the
85 researcher and co-researchers wanted to dismiss and forget about, created the basis of the data interpretation. This required the researchers to be able to describe how they were affected throughout the entirety of their experience. The researchers needed to be able to identify the key moments that piqued their attention, what made them bored, and what made them feel uneasy or unsettled. An additional validity point was gained by having the participants identify the key moments. All of these sources supported the findings. In general, data can be interpreted through several different modalities: intuitive approach, narrative approach, and the condensation approach. This data presented well for the condensation approach and then was combined with the narrative approach. The researcher and co-researchers saw repeating themes emerge, and those themes created a narrative.
At that point in the data analysis process, the researchers began to respond to the key moments by reflecting on why those moments were important. This required the researchers to look inward to figure out how and why they were affected. The co-researchers helped with the mutual exploration by highlighting the areas where we thought alike and where we differed.
This type of analysis added depth and additional validity that provided a greater understanding of the experience. These preliminary insights that emerged from this discursive practice were shared with the participants. This was done for several reasons: 1) to hear what the participants’ key moments were and 2) to hear where they had differences and parallels with what the researchers distilled.
The final step within the data analysis phase was to contextualize with theory and myths.
By taking this step, the myths can expand the person’s understanding of himself or herself, not constrict or marginalize these aspects of themselves. Myths carry archetypal themes that can address multiple issues within the human experience. We often see theories that contain myths
86 and vice versa. An example of this is Joseph Campbell’s book A Hero with a Thousand Faces.
It illustrates the plethora of myths that illustrate a human initiatory process.
Integration of the experience was the final phase of Imaginal Inquiry. It focused on
“helping the participants integrate their experience and how I imagine bringing my study’s learnings out into the wider community.” 2 This research design helped the participants integrate their experience when I presented the initial findings and allowed them to share their reactions.
This research did require the use of co-researchers. Because of the size of the participant group and the fact that I divided the group into two subgroups, I used two co-researchers. The first co-researcher was Brody Hartman. Brody was selected because he has extensive knowledge of qualitative research and conducts focus groups for a living. As my husband, has indirect knowledge of the Imaginal Inquiry process through our on-going discussions at home. In addition to this, Brody has had extensive psychological training with professors such as Angeles
Arrien, Jean Houston, and Michael Meade.
The second co-researcher was Dr. Rebecca Withrow. She has her doctorate in
Psychology and is a professor for Lenoir-Rhyne graduate school. In her private practice she specializes in working with postpartum women. She was selected because of her work with postpartum women and her doctorate status. She added tremendous support in creating a safe sharing experience. Since she did not have any previous experience with qualitative research or previous exposure to Imaginal Inquiry, she did not add significantly to the overall findings.
Limitations: The design of the research held some limitations. From the very start the participant pool was shaped by the recruitment process. To recruit, I posted flyers at therapist’s office, preschools that would let me, YMCA, YWCA, restaurants (including fast-food bathroom
87 stalls), and grocery stores, baby boutiques, and coffee shops that had community bulletin boards.
I contacted the local doula association to spread the word to any of their clients, baby music classes such as Music Together, local Stroller Strides groups, and mothering support groups.
These locations held some assumptions about who could participate. The only places that accepted my flyers and were willing to pass along information were the places that were primarily frequented by middle- to upper-class mothers. I attempted to recruit from lower income participants such as WIC, Headstart Programs, and low-income counseling, and health care facilities. None of these places would allow me to advertise for the study. The flyers in the fast-food bathroom stalls were taken down after a day. This process drove the particulars of the population who contacted me. Of the 33 women who responded, all of the mothers were middle- class, Caucasian women.
The other limitation in the screening process was the actual screen that was used. The original screen was the Maternal Confidence Questionnaire. This was a series of questions in which the participants responded by answering “Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Often, Always.”
Their responses were vague, and mothers commented that the questions were confusing. At some point they naturally wanted to provide more information to bring in the nuances of their situation. After five calls, I reformatted the questionnaire to allow for more open-ended discussion.
The research design in relation to the population also held some limitations. The research design required that mothers leave their child(ren) for a minimum of five hours. Babies between four and 12 months old, need to be breastfed roughly every three to four hours. For the exclusive breastfeeding mothers, leaving their baby for five hours was not feasible. This fact excluded that population. I would have liked to have their perspective included in the study.
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The images that I chose for the collage box did limit the research to some degree. I selected over 500 images from books, magazines, and the Internet. Roughly three-quarters of those images were directly related to motherhood, and about one-quarter were general images.
These images might not have included all of the possible experiences a mother could have. In fact one mom commented, in the course of sharing, that she did not see any images of sex and that she had wanted to include that.
The videos that I selected could have limited the research as well. I tried to capture differing points of view on parenting, and I might have missed a point of view that was most relevant to a particular mother. No mother directly commented on this, but it still could have been in their purview.
The closeness of the concepts of shame and guilt could have posed as a limitation to the research as well. Shame and guilt have a lot of similarities. They are associated with particular appreciations regarding self and others, aid in the development of self, and are both social emotions. There is a critical difference though. Guilt “involves a focus on a misdeed.” Shame
“involves a sense that the entire self is bad.”3 Mothers could have said guilt, when they meant shame, and vice versa.
The final limitation was in the reflection questions that were posed to the participants. In general, a lot of positive data came from these questions, but as I reviewed the data, I wished that there were some additional questions or that some questions were reframed. An example of this was that at three different points I felt like I asked the same exact question of, “If nothing changed, then how would you be affected?” For the most part, the answers were the same with little variation. The point of the question was to see how much self-blame there was and how shame related to that. This line of questioning could have been framed differently.
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Delimitations: The most pronounced delimitation that I placed on this study was the population. Initially, I was recruiting mothers with babies four to 12 months old. The reason for this selection was due to the research findings that months zero to four were already a time of confusion. By month four most mothers have moved past this intense state of confusion and have started to gain confidence in their abilities. I also was looking for first-time mothers. This held the assumption that mothers with multiple children had an easier time with subsequent children. This research was interested in why some mothers do not naturally evolve out the insecure beginning stages into having greater confidence over time.
As the screening process started, it became evident that I needed to expand the population to mothers with multiple children and with mothers who had older children. I did cap the age at four years old.
PARTICIPANTS
Mothers were recruited though several methods: 1) calls and posting flyers at pediatrician offices and therapist offices, 2) posting flyers within a 50 mile radius of Asheville in Western
North Carolina at any location with a community posting board, 3) Craig’s List, 4) contacts at
Mission Hospital and local doulas, and 4) various moms’ groups such as Momma Time, Music
Together, and Stroller Strides. The flyers instructed interested mothers to contact my cell phone or email account. The cell phone had a voice mail designated for this. Potential participants also emailed me at: [email protected]. (See Appendix B for Flyer.)
In the initial research design, the population that I was interesting in researching was first time mothers with babies four to 12 months old. As stated before, the population was expanded to include mothers with child(ren) up to four years old. These mother’s answers indicated low
90 confidence in at least two categories when answering the modified Maternal Confidence
Questionnaire (MCQ). In addition to this, these mothers stated that they relied on the Internet, media, books, and other various child-care professionals such as pediatricians, lactation consultants, and mother/child mental health professionals as their primary source of parenting information. Mothers who relied primarily on their family, spouse, and close friends were screened out. There was no maternal age limit or ethnicity requirement. The mothers for this research also had to be able to physically separate from their child for five hours.
Twelve participants had positive screens for the study. Eleven participants made it to the first research group. One of those mothers had last-minute child-care issues, so I provided money to cover the sitter. Eight participants returned to the second group. Of the three who did not return to the second group, one of them had a parent who had suddenly became very ill and the other two confused the time. Those two did show up at the end of the study. One of them chose not to add to the conversation. The other mother agreed to a follow-up conversation over the phone.
As a way to encourage mothers to participate in this study, it was advertised that they would gain access to the research findings, help develop the knowledge base regarding motherhood, receive $100 cash upon completion, and potentially gain insight into their own developing maternal identity.
It was not advertised, but a secondary benefit that that the mothers could potentially increase their awareness of shame and the ways shame had influenced the way they mothered their baby.
The participants were screened over the phone. They were asked 18 questions. Each call began with me framing how the screening was going to work. I stated, “I will be asking you a
91 series of open-ended questions. The aim of these questions is to see if your experience of motherhood fits the criteria of the population I am interested in studying for this research.
Everything you say will be held in confidentiality. Are there any questions before we start?”
Originally I had planned to screen the participants by asking the callers the questions straight from the Maternal Confidence Questionnaire (MCQ). This screen was developed by
Parker and Zahr in 1985. The MCQ asked mothers 14 questions that were specifically designed to assess how confident they were in enacting specific mothering tasks such as “I know when my baby wants me to play with him/he,” and “I can tell when my baby is tired and needs to sleep.”
This test has been used in 40 research studies and translated into nine different languages, and it has a reliability of r=0.82 to 0.91. After screening five callers, the callers reported that they did not feel like they fit neatly into a category and wanted to share more. The modified questionnaire that I devised asked nine of the 14 questions, and I added questions such as, “What makes you happy as a mother?”, “Where did you get your parenting information from?”, and
“What are your thoughts about all of the parenting information that exists?” I also asked if they were a stay-at-home mom or working mother and how that was for them. (See Appendix A.)
These additional questions that I posed were designed to gain a greater understanding of the major influences on them, where they got her parenting information, how they were affected by all the external influences, if work or staying at home compromised their confidence, and if they were confident as a mother or not.
The mother/baby management questions screened for the mother’s ability to separate from her baby. The first group session was five hours. The mother had be willing and able to separate from their child for that amount of time, be comfortable with someone else providing childcare, and to be able to manage her milk supply during that time duration. There was one
92 pump/breast-feeding break at noon, roughly 2.5 hours into the research. This time interval was sufficient enough to accommodate breastfeeding/pumping needs.
The screening calls lasted anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. I concluded each call by stating the date that I was going to start the research and how they would be notified if they were screened onto or out of the participant pool.
The participants were given limited information about the scope of the research.
Generally they were told that “This study is looking at the ways in which our culture affects you as a mother and the choices you make.”
Participants were accepted into the research project if their response indicated low confidence on two or more questions on the modified MCQ, and if they gathered information primarily from media and social group sources. They were notified by email, and the email read,
“I wanted to let you know that based on the responses you gave during the interview process, you have been selected for this research project. The first meeting will be held on Sat., Feb 22nd from 9-2 pm, with a lunch break from 11:45am to 12:15pm. The timing might change depending on the location of the meeting. The second meeting will be held on March 9th, which is Daylight
Savings. I have not determined the time of this yet. I am still working on securing a location for the meeting, and I will let you know as soon as I do. I do need to let you know that since this is a research project, you may or may not experience a psychological shift in the way you perceive motherhood. Let me know if you have any concerns or questions. Warmly, Meggan Hartman.”
Participants who did not meet the criteria were notified by email. I informed them
“Thank you for your time interviewing for this research project. Due to the specific nature of this research, some of the information that you provided did not fit into the participant profile
93 needed for this research project. Please let me know if you have any questions about this.
Warmly, Meggan.”
Upon their acceptance into the research process, I reviewed confidentiality. For the purposes of this research, confidentiality included 1) names will not be shared, 2) identifying features will not be shared, and 3) in publishing the research, names and specific identifying features will be changed. I specified that the design of the research project was in a group setting, and that confidentiality was required of each participant within the group.
Once the group was established, I sent an email covering all the logistical information.
For the sake of saving time during the research, I emailed a PDF of the informed consent for them to sign before coming to the first group. The email read, “Hello ______! Thank you again for agreeing to join this research project. I am very excited for it to begin! Enclosed in this email is information about the location, reminder of times, what to bring, my cell phone number in case you need to reach me, and the building security number in case you are having difficulty getting into the building. Also attached in this email is the informed consent. It covers generally what we are going to be doing, confidentiality information, the telephone number of my dissertation committee if you should have any concerns. Please read through it and bring a signed copy with you for the first meeting on Feb., 22nd. I cannot let anyone participate without signing the consent. [Information about food being served.] Finally, if you find that you cannot participate, please do let me know as soon as possible.”
The research was conducted in a conference room in the basement of the Grove Arcade.
They had a private elevator to the conference room, and the conference room had no windows for passersby to look in on us. This was to ensure confidentiality. There were bathrooms right outside the door. Inside the conference room there was a refrigerator for mothers who needed to
94 store pumped breast milk. I provided beverages, snacks, and lunch so the moms would not have to leave the room. This provided a secure and sound location for the research to be conducted in.
Each participant signed an Informed Consent from. There were several key features to this form. It covered, 1) general explanation of the research, 2) methods that were used, 3) confidentiality, 4) benefits for the participant, 5) generally how the research will be used, 6) option to withdrawal, and 7) contact information for me, the Dissertation Director, and Meridian
University. The contents of the informed consent were reviewed at the beginning of the research.
Four Phases of Imaginal Inquiry
Evoking the Experience
This phase of the research focused on evoking shame among the participants. This was done primarily by exposing the participants to a series of videos. The first video contained a commercial produced by Proctor and Gamble for the Olympics to thank mothers for their hard work. It was called the “Thank You Mom” campaign. 4 After that video Brody, my co- researcher, designed a video collage of “good mother” images. He found these images on the
Internet by googling search terms such as motherhood, working mothers, mother and daughter, tired mother, hero mom, mother and baby, celebrity mom, large group of mothers/moms, jogging/exercising moms, stroller moms, and mothers from around the world. The total length of these combined videos was 5 minutes 23 seconds.
All the images that were selected contained beautiful images of motherhood. Mothers of all races were represented as well as mothers of singletons and multiples. There were also
95 images of the super mom, the working mom, and the glamorous mom. They represented multiple versions of the idealized image of motherhood.
The next stage of evoking shame came from showing video clips of professional talking about various topics. The purpose of these videos was to have the participants sit and listen to mainstream topics being discussed by the professionals. The participants were asked to track the feelings that emerged as they watched the videos. The videos were periodically paused, and the participants were asked to share what they were feeling.
The first video clip was Martha Sears talk on the importance of breastfeeding. 5 The second set of videos consisted of short clips, pasted together, of various professionals talking about the importance of attachment. This series contained a clip from Andrew Meltzoff and
Patricia Kuhl. Then Martha Sears talked necessities of Attachment Parenting. 6 Next was a clip produced by Dana Greenbaum and Andrea Wilkinson called “The Role of Attachment in Infancy on Later Mental and Physical Health Outcomes.” 7 The final clip was Anderson Cooper’s series on the Attachment Parenting Debate on CNN. 8
There was a pause for expression after the attachment series. The next video was Ed
Tronick’s Still Face Experiment. 9 Then there was a break for expression.
The next series contained two video clips. First was J.J. McKenna talking about the importance of co-sleeping. 10 This clip was immediately followed by Harvey Karp’s Sleep
Video. 11 Then there was a pause for expression.
This section ended with an interview with Lenore Skenazy. In this interview she discussed her philosophy of Free Range Parenting. 12 Then, again, there was a pause for the participants to express their feelings. The total length of all of the videos was 23 minute 3 seconds.
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Expressing the Experience
There were numerous points throughout the research where the participants were asked to express their experience. The participants expressed their experience through collage, journaling, and forums. I collected data through video taping, photographing the collages, and collecting their journals.
Creating a safe space was necessary in order to have the participants accurately express their experience. Since I was attempting to evoke shame about a deeply personal and emotionally-laden experience (i.e., how they assess their performance as a mother), I ensured safety in several different ways. First, I reviewed and had the participants sign the confidentiality statement. I stated and reminded the participants that participation was voluntary.
Framing the experience was another way I created safety. I started the process of framing this research by stating, “This study is looking at the ways in which our culture, through the use of media, books, professionals, mom support groups, and the Internet, affects you.” The way the statement was framed put the focus on these external groups as opposed to placing the mothers as the focus of the potential problem.
Then I discussed the guidelines for group participation. They were as follows: “1) In group I will be asking you to share your feelings and reactions to various video clips and questions that the researchers pose. 2) There are no right or wrong answers; it is simply your experience and reactions. All viewpoints are welcome here. 3) Feel free to use whatever language that helps you best express your experience — even if it feels a little taboo to say certain words. 4) When someone is sharing, I ask the group to hold space and witness the person sharing. Probably one of the most honoring things we can do is to hold space for someone to have their own experience. What you can do is track how their words affect you. Does it make
97 you want to help them, give them advice? Does it make you sad or angry? Does it make you want to laugh? During break, please refrain from talking to other people. Also, please refrain from using your cell phone or smart phones. 5) Participation is always voluntary.”
The final element in creating a safe space was having the participants share why they were interested in participating in this research project. This gave them some time to share with one another and started to build comfort sharing within the group.
The first moment of expression happened after the “good mother” video series. The mothers were instructed to create a collage and journal after they created their collage. Due to the fact that there are some inherent limitations to these forms of data collection, this was not the major source of data. Journaling has the potential of “removing participants one step from their reaction and possibly dull their experience.” 13 Expression through collage work was somewhat limited as well due to the nature of the pictures. The images provided did not represent or fully capture the participants’ experience. Additionally, with collage work, I had the participants explain the meaning behind the images they selected.
The collage served as a way to capture how the participants defined what it meant for them to be a good mother. It also served the purpose of capturing the areas they felt they were falling short in. They were instructed to pick the images that “you feel best represents what it is to be a good mother.” The collage work was strategically placed before the series of professional videos. It was a way of capturing their idealized image before they could be potentially influenced by the professionals. It also gave them a moment to metaphorically put a “stake in the ground” which they could potentially stand, in contrast to when they heard what the professionals were saying.
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The journaling began to delve into the sources of information that helped form the participants’ idealized image of motherhood and began to tap into the shame they might be feeling because they interpret themselves as not achieving their idealized image. Journaling allowed them to express how they felt about the following four questions: 1) Why did you chose these images? 2) What do these images mean/represent to you? 3) In what ways do you feel like you are not living up to these images, and 4) If you don’t live up to these images, what do you imagine could happen to your baby/child?
The bulk of the expression and data collection occurred after the participants watched the particular video segments. This sharing was videotaped and digitally recorded. I used a GoPro video camera. I chose this camera because was small and unobtrusive. I used a Sony ICD-
PX333 digital recorder that recorded the whole meeting without my having to interact with it.
After each video section, they were asked to express how that video segment affected them.
When the participants came back from break, they were divided into two small groups based on their response to the video segments. My co-researchers and I decided to place the women who were more vocal with their sharing in one group. In the other group were the softer- spoken women. We did this to make sure the softer-spoken women had space to share. In these groups, they were lead through a series of three group discussions. I facilitated one group and
Rebecca facilitated the other group. The purpose of this was to witness and maintain safety for the participants. Brody sat in-between the groups listening in while taking notes. Originally I was going to be overseeing both groups, but after the first big group session Brody felt strongly that his male presence might influence the discussion. I agreed with his assessment.
The first round of questioning focused on summarizing their process to that moment.
They were asked to share their response to three questions: 1) Please describe what your overall
99 emotions were when you heard the professionals talk. 2) Please describe how you were affected when you heard the other moms express their responses. 3) Is there anything that you want to express now that you did not feel comfortable expressing in the larger group?
The second round of questions facilitated their exploration into what the possible consequences of their actions might be: 1) What do you feel you should be doing as a parent? 2)
What would it take for you to become your idealized picture of motherhood? 3) If you never obtained that missing piece, what would be the consequences?
The final small group topic of discussion was to have them take a moment and think about the reality of their unique situation. Inherent in this design, I was assessing if their situation was as bad as they initially reported. Due to the definition of low confidence, it is their perception that I was curious about. Their situation might not necessarily be as bad as they think it is. This also was designed so they did not go home in shame, that there was some expression that allowed themselves to objectively look at their situation. They answered a final series of questions: 1) What do you think your baby really needs and wants? 2) When you state what you think your baby really needs and wants, how does that make you feel? 3) What do you as the mother really need and want? 4) When you state what you, mom, really need and want, how does that make you feel? 5) Is there anything or anyone in your support system (either internal or external) that can help you?
There was a journaling homework assignment that aimed at gathering additional information about their experience during the two-week period between groups. I gave them a six-page journal. Each page had three questions. They were asked to complete a journaling page at least four times with an additional two times in case they felt moved to do so. The questions were: 1) Please describe how you felt you did as a mother today? 2) Did you feel like
100 you adequately responded to your baby’s needs today? Please explain. 3) How do you feel you did responding to your needs today? If you draw a picture, please describe the picture.
The second meeting began with the participants expressing through use of collage. The format was exactly the same as the first one. They were asked to “select five to 10 images that you feel best represent what it is to be a good mother. Arrange them however you want. Again pick five to 10 images that best represent what it is to be a good mother.” Once they were complete with their collages they were asked to journal about four questions: 1) What is the relationship between these images and you? 2) In what ways are you living or not living up to these images? 3) In what ways, if any, have these images changed from the first collage you did two weeks ago? 4) If you imagine into the future and your child became a deadbeat, a druggy, a failure in school, and/or did not achieve happiness (i.e., turned into your greatest fear), what would that mean for you as a mother?
Once the journals were collected I started the group discussion. I gave the instruction,
“For the next little bit, I want to hear from you if anything came up for you over the last two weeks, or if you want to share anything from the journaling.” After some discussion, I specifically asked them, “What was your take on the journaling questions, ‘If your child grew up to be a screw-up, what would that mean for you as a mother?’ ” This session was videotaped and voice recorded as well.
Interpreting Key Moments
After the first and second meeting, I asked my co-researchers to identify the key moments through various questions: 1) What where the moments that just leapt out at you? 2)
What were the key metaphorical phrases or turning points in their stories? 3) What recurring
101 themes or ideas did you notice? The information that my co-researchers provided was used as a validity point as I made meaning of all the data.
After transcribing the video and tape recording, typing in the journal entries, and printing the collages, I looked for unique themes. If the data was presented in narrative form, I examined whether or not a concrete story from beginning to end. This data did not initially present this way. Instead, themes or meaning units emerged. These themes presented themselves by 1) the number of times a topic was mentioned, 2) affective response (i.e., if the participant was emoting, crying, yelling more during a particular sharing than during other times), and 3) confirmation by my co-researchers and my affective response. The themes that materialized were used as the primarily learnings and were confirmed by all three of these criteria.
After the reoccurring themes emerged, a narrative started to form. The condensed themes clearly had a beginning, climax, and conclusion.
The next layer explored was with the co-researchers. This deepened our understanding of how we were affected by the identified key moments. As we explored our affective responses, we discussed how our key moments differ or parallel each other. For the most part we all picked up on the same key moments. Brody had additional key moments, such as monetary worth and father issues. Even though those these were interesting topics, I did not include them in the learning chapter. I concluded that these were not relevant to the research problem, and when I presented the father topic to the participants, they did not delve into it as they did in their discussion about their relationship with their mother.
The final set of interpretations came from the participants. This occurred after the participants shared what they wanted to from the second collage journaling exercise. I presented the hypothesis and preliminary learnings and solicited their reactions to both of these. The
102 preliminary learnings that I presented were about the loss of the maternal line, anger towards the father figure, and shame-induced low confidence. In addition, I asked them for their key moments from the previous session or two weeks.
Integration
After evoking shame and exploring aspects of low confidence as a mom, it was important to help integrate and close the experience. At the end of the first meeting, the last series of questions were designed to help bring closure for the mothers. These questions were: 1) What do you think your baby really needs and wants? 2) When you state what you think your baby really needs and wants, how does that make you feel? 3) What do you as the mother really need and want? 4) When you state what you, mom, really need and want, how does that make you feel? 5) Is there anything or anyone in your support system (either internal or external) that can help you? The purpose of these questions was to have the mothers begin the process of looking at their situation objectively and begin to disidentify from the critical self-talk. To close the group, I had everyone share one or two words that summarized their day. In the second meeting,
I concluded by sharing our preliminary findings and opening up the forum to allow for reactions to these findings.
I closed the research by reading Berkerly Breathed children's book Mars Needs Moms.
Then I had the participants stand in a circle and offer a somatic gesture that symbolized or captured their learning from the entire research project. After their gesture, they shared one or two words that best expressed what they learned. Finally the participants were asked to provide addresses if they were interested in receiving a summary of learnings.
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CHAPTER 4
LEARNINGS
Introduction and Overview
This chapter reviews the learnings resulting from research undertaken during the course of this study. These learnings are presented in four sections. In developing these learnings, the primary research question was as follows: In what ways does the shame that Western, postmodern parenting ideologies can evoke in mothers impact the development of the maternal identity. The hypothesis was as follows: The shame that some mothers feel as a result of following popular parenting ideologies can impact the development of maternal identity by diminishing her confidence, instilling feelings of ambivalence towards her child[ren], negating her own needs, and limiting her ability to improvise solutions to perceived problems on the spot.
The overall summary of the narrative states: Mothers who have turned away from their own mothers for a variety of reasons and instead turned towards culture for mothering guidance can experience shame when the prescribed methods do not work or when they feel as if they are being judged for not thoroughly following the correct ideology. The diminished self-confidence that can accompany these shame-based moments can create parenting strategies or beliefs that can have a debilitating effect on the mother.
Cumulative Learning: And the wolf said, “You know, my dear, it isn’t safe for you to walk in these woods alone.” In conducting this research, numerous fascinating learnings emerged. These learnings are best summarized by the statement: Mothers who have turned away from their own mothers and, instead, turned towards the Internet, media, books, and professionals for mothering
104 guidance, can experience shame when the prescribed methods do not work or when they feel as if they are judged (by internally assessing self or external sources) for not thoroughly following the “correct” ideology. Paradoxically, even though these sources of information are trying to help, the shame that these mothers feel by not successfully following the standards diminishes their confidence in their ability to tend to their children. Their feelings of inadequacy can manifest in unfit behaviors and taxing emotional states.
From the research conducted, the first learning that emerged describes how mothers begin to consider the Internet, media, books, and professionals as authoritative sources for information on mothering. Intriguingly, although many mothers crave knowledge about how to care for their children, none of the mothers in this study actively sought or appeared to trust information from their own mothers, a factor that may indicate broader implications for a cultural pattern. In fact, the data shows that the majority of these mothers did not feel comfortable going to their own mothers for information for a variety of reasons. This left mothers feeling that there was a void in information.
The second learning that came from this research addresses this void that the mothers felt. They knew they needed some kind of information, so, instead of turning to their own mothers, they turned to Internet, media, books, and professionals. Their disclosures reveal that, with the loss of the maternal line, the Internet, media, blogs, and barrage of professional advice can become a mother’s surrogate Mother.
As they progress on their journeys, the mothers discover what emerged as the third learning. This learning concerns the images and “how to’s” that the culture prescribes, which can seem infallible. As much as they tried to live up to these cultural images and directives, the mothers found it hard to do so. As such, as mothers interact with external sources of
105 information, instead of gaining confidence in their ability to care for their children, they may paradoxically experience a fundamental decrease in their confidence.
There can be significant consequences to this series of events. When mothers do experience a decrease in their confidence to meaningfully care for their children, they modify their behaviors in ways that can lead to more stressful situations or create undesired outcomes.
Physically, they may attempt to try harder to adhere to certain advice, leading to a paucity of self-care. On an emotional level, mothers might experience fatigue and emotional dissatisfaction, feel confined to the role of “mother”, and feel such a level of ambivalence towards their children as to have sensations of not wanting to be a mother at all.
These learnings were supported by several different considerations. Participant expression was the most influential argument. To a lesser degree, their journal entries substantiated their verbal expressions. As previously discussed, an important source of validity in Imaginal Inquiry is that of running each potential learning through the sieve of the researcher’s and co-researcher’s experience. My own parallel process – my journey into motherhood — followed a similar path as the participants in my study. While the comparable journeys could have skewed my interpretation of participant experiences, through my own reflective process, I was able to view their experience with greater detail. An additional validity point was that of my co-researcher, Brody, whose affective experience mirrored mine and added greater credence to the learnings.
For the sake of confidentiality, all participant names have received pseudonyms.
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LEARNING ONE: LOSS OF THE MATERNAL LINE
The primary claim for this section is: Although so many mothers crave knowledge about how to care for their children, none of the mothers in this study actively sought or appeared to trust information from their own mothers, a factor that may indicate broader implications for a cultural pattern. In order to be screened for acceptance into this research, mothers needed to indicate that their primary sources for parenting information were external sources such as the
Internet, media, books, and professionals. All of the participating mothers in the study met this criterion. This is important to note because, in the screening process, I selected mothers who were specifically turning away from the maternal line. Seven of the 11 mothers actually made specific comments about actively turning away from their own mothers as they reared their own children. The remaining four neither actively mentioned turning away from their mothers nor listed their mothers as sources of information at any point. The presented data illustrates this point as well as their desire and need to obtain information.
What Happened: “Sandy” (pseudonym) expressed at several points that she really valued the information that comes from books and other external sources. She also expressed being disconnected from her parents as a source of information. In a small group, when she was asked how she was being affected by the forum discussion thus far, she stated, “I am really grateful to have all these resources (books, videos, blogs).” After the videos about attachment, she said, “I think the videos are helpful.” She reiterated this point after she watched the sleep videos by stating, “I can appreciate all the experts.”
Sandy is a participant who explicitly spoke of turning away from her parents in raising her child. She stated,
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Our culture is in flux, and like our parents’ parents, they mostly parented differently, and then there was all of the negative outcomes. We are not going, “We are not going to parent like them. Your parenting methods are not valid mom and dad.” But trying to find the value in your own parents’ parenting even though you might need to make some different decisions in terms of nutrition, sleep discipline.
Periodically, throughout both group meetings, “Rosie” (pseudonym) made reference to needing and craving information. Even during the screening process, when asked where she got her parenting information from, she stated, “I have a lot of stuff in my news feed in my
Facebook. They are articles about being a parent. I read Dr. Sears Baby Book, The Wonder
Weeks, I also have a book called Brain Rules for Babies: How to Bring a Smart Child, and
Bringing up BeBe.” At the end of the list, she mentioned her mother-in-law and her friends who have had children before her. She describes her sources of information when she was in her designated small group. She stated, “I want to give a shout out to Facebook. There are so many mothers craving (information). Not sure if you know about this secret group — it is just women, five to 10 postings a day, sharing and asking for help. And then 18 women comment, sharing, giving suggestions. It is a really awesome resource.”
After I disclosed some of the preliminary learnings from our first meeting, she closed the second group meeting by making a pointed comment about why she does not ask her mother for help. She said, “I think that so much has changed over the generations. We can’t maintain this maternal line that you are talking about. I can’t ask my Mom, ‘Hey Mom, when did you give me my first cell phone?’ There are so many things like that. You really can’t. Information has changed… things are toxic now that weren’t toxic before. I think that really kills the maternal line.”
“Sasha” (pseudonym) summarized this learning well. At the end of the attachment videos she asked, “What happened that we need these people telling us how to parent? When did
108 we not know how to parent?” Someone interjected, “My mom does not know how to parent.”
Sasha continued:
My mom [n]either, but she was having all these experts telling her to leave my brother and I to cry or we are manipulating her… Just like watching all these experts back to back, I have heard all of these things, and they have impacted me as a parent. It makes me feel kind of sad that I need all these experts that I don’t even know. I don’t know their motivations, [but] they are the ones who have shaped my parenthood. And it is not my family, my own mother, aunts — it is not a loving circle guiding me and showing me. People I don’t even know… I wonder what role they are playing in breaking up the generations. But I realize I have a craving for it [all the information from the professionals].”
When “Paloma” (pseudonym) was asked where she got her parenting information from, she replied, “Instinctually of not wanting to parent like my mom.” When reflecting on the Free
Range video, she responded, “I am realizing that everything I think is okay is because I read it and someone said it was okay.” In the small group she disclosed that, “When are you are hungry
[for information] and need help, this [the Internet] is a really good tool.”
In the screening process “Mary” (pseudonym) noted, “I don’t have any role models. My parents did have an influence on me. They were very comforting. I came from a family who didn’t argue, so when my child started being so extreme and we started having so much conflict, the experience is very far field, and my parents can’t help.” She goes on to state that she started turning more towards books: “[When my child was] 18 months I really started [my own course of] reading, because my child did normal toddler things but more extreme.”
“Massie” (pseudonym) had lots to say about the loss of the maternal line. An especially poignant comment of hers was:
… there used to be a lot of daily ritual in life and traditions … [that] were taught to you through the family you grew up with … You wake up and … this is how you make breakfast … this is how you work during the day … this is how you eat. Those rituals were very fortifying … But my mom doesn’t know how to cook. So there [was] no food ritual in my life — the daily routines were very chaotic. So the … loss, [is] not just of the maternal line, but the loss of … information about how to do really basic things like raise
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a child, and how to create rhythm for a baby — a daily rhythm or a weekly rhythm. So for myself, they are not innate in me. I don’t have anything to really build on.
Throughout her sharing, she was crying.
“Liz” (pseudonym) started the screening process by stating how little she knew about how to care for babies. Because of this lack of exposure, she stated in a small group that “I was one of those people who read about everything because I did not know what I was doing.” Her mother was not a source of guidance for her. This point is illustrated by the comment she made during the screening process. She stated, “When I ask my mom [for guidance about how to care for the baby], she does not remember [what she did to raise me].” She added to this point when asked about her reactions to the sleep videos. She stated, “I think I got angry at my family for not being aware [of] how much we were struggling or needing help. Either they didn’t know or
[they] couldn't remember.”
Three participants, “Sarah,” “Eleanor,” and “Linda,” (all pseudonyms) did not make any reference to their mothers (as either a source of support or someone they turned away from).
Sarah stated, “When you read a lot of the [William and Martha] Sears books … a lot of it is good, solid advice; it is nice to have a book to pick up at 3 am when you are, ‘like, what the hell.’” Eleanor mentioned that besides reading parenting books, she was also a part of an intergenerational spiritual community, saying that this group was helpful to her in finding her way through this process. Like the other two, Linda’s list of resources included books, blogs, and Facebook, with no reference to her mother. She did, however, tell a story of family hardship, in which she asked her mother about the past:
[She asked her mother], “Looking back, could you see something? Could you have done something different?” Her mother responded, “I just move forward. This is life, this is the way it is,” and she did. A part of me at the time was like, “What! How can you not look at that and pick it all apart? …. I am not like that.”
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How I was affected: I felt empathy for these women. I resonated with the comments about how dramatically our culture has changed and how it can feel that their mothers do not fit into that. I also felt a strong understanding towards the reasoning that relationships with their own mothers were not healthy, making it prohibitive to seek help from them. I would find myself agreeing with them a lot when they said that they could not, or would not, ask their mothers for help.
I also felt sadness for these women’s mothers — their children’s grandmothers — who wanted to help. I was also reminded of the reason why I chose my career. I needed information about what to do with my baby and remember that my mother could not remember what she did or that the information she gave did not fit the situation. This led me to read a lot about how to care for children and about the process of becoming a mother.
Listening to these mothers, I had the impulse to jump in and help sort out whatever confusion they were experiencing. I empathized with their real need for information, as becoming and being a mother is often confusing. At one point, one participating mother asked me, as a therapist, when a specific behavior of their child’s was going to end in terms of the stages of child development. Here I made a mistake (albeit a small one) replying that I would now step out of my researcher’s role. I then answered her question, simply because I could not hold back any longer — the longing for information resonated so much with me!
Interpretations of What Happened: The primary claim for this section was that, although so many mothers craved knowledge on how to care for their children, none of the mothers in this study actively sought or appeared to trust information from their own mothers, a factor that may indicate broader implications for a cultural pattern. The data did show that most of these mothers were not turning towards their mothers for information about how to parent. The participants
111 provided several reasons why they felt that they could not approach their mother for help. The primary reasons given were: childhood wounding or trauma; dramatic shifts in choices as a result of advances in technology; and grandmothers not remembering what they did as parents. All of the mothers did indicate that they did need/crave information about what to do.
Not all of the mothers said that they were actively turning away from their mothers as a source of information. Although seven of the mothers did specifically state that they would not go to their mothers for information, three never mentioned their mothers as a source of information, and one said that she was not like her mother but honored her style.
Each of the mothers stated in some form or another that they needed information. Seven of the mothers mentioned that they really needed or heavily utilized the information. The remaining four mothers said that they had read the books, but they did not emphasize reliance on them as heavily.
Another point to include into the interpretation was my co-researcher’s response to the mothers’ disclosures. Brody became weepy upon hearing all the “uncertainty” that the mothers were sharing and how much “turmoil in the confusion” came with their journeys. He shared further about how struck he was by the loneliness of motherhood, and “in that loneliness, they grasp for advice.” He saw that the loneliness came from not having community and extended family around them. That loneliness leaves a significant void.
Imaginal Structures: The structure evoked for me is what I call “I got it.” Throughout my life, starting in childhood, I had to figure out most things for myself with little family support. My mother was the director of a foundation. That was her maternal preoccupation. She spent her days and nights nurturing that business to make a very successful foundation. Knowing that her
112 business was her main passion, this created the structure that led me to develop a very independent way of being, which included my not having a natural impulse to turn towards her for help, information, or support.
This structure was strongly evoked with the birth of my first child where, like my childhood and adolescence, I again experienced the sensation of not wanting much help from my mother. When I did ask about her knowledge in a specific area, she could not remember and would say, “Let’s look it up in the book.” Layered on top of that, I knew that I did not want to raise my children the way that I was raised. As a mother, I wanted to be much more involved and present in my children’s lives. I knew that I had to figure out a different way.
In the absence of this intergenerational transmission of knowledge, I felt lost and confused. I knew I needed some information, so, like the participants I would meet in my study some years later, I turned to books, classes, and pediatricians for guidance. I would read books almost every night, and I found that none of these books were easing my concerns. The information scared me because nothing I did seemed to work. The more the methods did not work, the more my anxiety rose over the fact that I could be potentially harming my child. I also felt anger towards my mother for not remembering what to do and leaving me, again, to figure it out by myself.
Through my experience of listening to mothers, I do understand that there is an increased felt need to obtain all the “right” information in order to raise children correctly. With all the standards that are presented by these sources, it seems impossible for mothers to do everything the books are saying and remain sane. My own experience of becoming a mother mirrors this experience as well. After being trained in psychology, I understood all the ways I could damage my children. I felt the significance of the mother principle and all the reasons why I needed to
113 hold my children close to my heart. This knowledge combined with my childhood experience with my mother, I knew that I wanted to raise my children differently. To add another layer of complexity, I had never been with a newborn before. This experience left me with a gap in knowledge combined with a real craving for the “right” information.
Theories: One theory that greatly supports this learning is the theory of intergenerational attachment. The research conducted by Peter Fonagy, Mary Target, Miriam Steele and others focused specifically on how the dynamic between a mother’s attachments to her own mother affects how she attaches to her own children. Numerous investigators have confirmed that a mother’s capacity to regulate and organize her own thoughts and feelings about relationships with her mother is directly linked to her capacity to regulate, organize, and sensitively respond to needs of her child. 1 They stress the importance of the mother to develop an understanding of how her relationship with her own mother can directly impact how she raises her child. These studies can begin to add some understanding to the point that some mother are uncomfortable going to their own mother for information, that the mothers in this study are actively trying to parent differently than how they were raised.
Culturally, there has also been a push to move away from the intergenerational sharing of knowledge toward having professionals tell us what to do. Hugh Jolly’s Book of Child Care:
The Complete Guide for Today’s Parents presents a sadly, quite common view on the role of the grandmother:
The modern mother takes for granted that she will have the advice of experts and will not have to rely on the advice of her mother. The previous generation of mothers may not necessarily be the best advisors of the present generation. This is not to belittle the enormous support which grandmothers can give…But the modern mother is less convinced than her predecessors that her mother knows best. 2
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Naomi Lowinsky talks about the loss of what she calls the Mother Line. She states,
“Women lament the lack of narratives of women’s lives, yet women’s stories are all around us.
We don’t hear them because our perception is shaped by a culture that trivializes ‘women’s talk’ and devalues the passing down of female lore and wisdom.” 3 This comment supports that notion that our post-modern, Western culture does not support the intergenerational transmission of knowledge, where turning towards one’s actual mother is not actively seen as the obvious and natural thing to do.
Finally, there is tremendous cultural pressure to raise a successful child, which drives a greater need for information. As part of the definition of Judy Warner’s term the Mommy
Mystique, she maintains:
The Mommy Mystique says that we [mothers] have the knowledge and know-how to make ‘informed decisions’ that will guarantee the successful course of our children’s lives. It [The Mommy Mystique] tells us that if we choose badly our children will fall prey to countless dangers, from insecure attachment to drugs to kidnapping to a third-rate college. And if this happens, if our children stray from the path toward happiness and success, we will have no one but ourselves to blame. 4
This statement highlights the pressure that mothers can feel to make sure that they are raising their child in the best and most researched way possible. It also brings in the idea that really we should not have any issue with correctly raising our child because we have all the necessary resources right at our fingertips. Finally this statement incorporates the concept of mother blame that was discussed in the literature review, that mothers are the only ones to blame if the child is not happy or successful.
Validity Considerations: In looking through this data, there was some discrepancy in ascertaining whether these mothers actively turned away from their mothers or just forgot to mention them. Although most of the mothers — seven out of the 11 — did directly state that
115 they did not go to their mothers for information, the remaining four did not. This indicates, possibly, that those mothers do still rely on their own mothers as sources of information, and including them in this grouping might have been an assumption.
With the theories that I used, there is not direct research that talks about the relationship between the loss of the maternal line and craving/needing information. The current research that
I used in order to validate the learnings is focused on intergenerational attachment and the pressure of needing to be a good mother. As such, I did make further connections through my own, “interpretive lenses” which could certainly be challenged by others.
LEARNING TWO: ARE YOU MY MOTHER?
The primary claim of this learning is as follows: With the loss of the maternal line, media, books, blogs, and a barrage of professional advice can become many mothers’ surrogate
Mothers. As demonstrated in the previous section, the Loss of the Maternal Line, mothers are craving/needing information about how to take care of their children, and, for various reasons, they are not turning to their own mothers for this information. With the absence of their own mother, a void of information is created by the lack of passing on of knowledge. In this emptiness, mothers are turning to the Internet, media, books, and professionals for guidance.
These sources have become their surrogate mothers and have influenced how they define themselves.
This section highlights the data that describes the phenomena of mothers turning toward media for guidance and confirmation that decisions they make are valid, nurturing, and fulfills their child’s needs. The narrative that these mothers explained emphasizes the point that this type information creates an idealized version of motherhood that is hard to obtain. This learning is
116 supported by two sources of data collection. The first is the actual images chosen in creating their collages. Assessing the finalized collages showed how influential the mothering culture is on how mothers’ build their sense of who they are supposed to be as mothers. Additionally, their verbal sharing and journal writing added further confirmation of their reliance on this culturally driven ideal.
What Happened: The images I selected for the collage work came from a variety of locations.
I had a total of 501 images in the collection. Of those images, 332 were pulled directly from parenting magazines, books, and websites. I used search terms such as motherhood, working mothers, mother and daughter, tired mother, hero mom, mother and baby, celebrity mom, large group of mothers/moms, jogging/exercising moms, stroller moms, and mothers from around the world. The magazines were Parents, Family Fun, Family Circle, Real Simple, Time, Us, People, and various other magazines that I found in pediatricians’ waiting rooms. The books I used were
Dr. Sears’ Attachment Parenting Book and Debra Jackson’s Three in a Bed. I refer to these images as conventional motherhood resources.
The remaining 169 images were pulled from a larger image box that contained images of space, nature, women in history, athletes, everyday objects, etc. These supplemental images did not directly relate to motherhood but could symbolically represent what it is like to be a mother.
I refer to these images as unconventional motherhood resources.
The ratio between the two categories was roughly for every one unconventional motherhood resource there were eleven conventional motherhood images. The participants were instructed to design a collage using ten to 15 images that “best represent what it is to be a good mother.” They chose a disproportionately higher number of conventional mothering images over the unconventional images.
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Their verbal expressions and/or what they wrote in their journals added validity to this learning. There were numerous direct references to how their selected images influenced the choices they made. The journaling questions “Why did you choose these images?” and “What do these images mean/represent to you?” provided clear insight into their rationale in why they chose their images. Their responses, after watching various parenting videos, confirmed their writings.
Sandy selected eight images, and four were directly from conventional motherhood resources. When asked how she was affected by such resources, she revealed, “I am really grateful to have all these resources.” When asked where she got her information about being a parent, she stated, “I get my information from books about attachment parenting, nutrition, and the culture at large informs me.”
Sasha selected 10 total images, nine of which came from conventional motherhood resources. During the screening process, she stated that she received her information about how to parent from “books, blogs ,…. and the Internet …. I usually read books that have been recommended to me from parents whose parenting style I like.” Later in the discussion, she directly communicated that the professionals have influenced her. Her response to the attachment video series was “Watching all these experts back to back, I have heard all of these things, and they have impacted me as a parent.”
Rosie selected seven images; three were directly from conventional motherhood resources. She shared to her small group her reactions to the media stimuli, and she acknowledged, “I connected with a lot of it …. because that [the images in the videos] is the mom I want to be.”
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Paloma selected nine images. Of the nine images, six were from conventional motherhood resources. She described her main motivation for obtaining conventional parenting information as being, “Fear based. I don’t want to f…ck up, so I read a lot of blogs about [how] indigenous people [raise their children].” Upon watching the Free Range parenting video, she explained, “I mean all of it [my parenting] is reading. I am realizing that everything I think is OK is because I read it and that someone [in a book] said that it was OK.” After seeing the video about attachment and attachment parenting, she disclosed, “Attachment Parenting became a possession over my life.”
Massie selected five images, and three were from conventional motherhood resources.
When asked where she got her parenting information, she responded, “Internet, books, and I
Google everything.” When, in a small group, she was asked how all of the videos affected her, she disclosed that, “I go to these experts when I am desperate …. I read all of those books … I have read Dr. Sears very carefully about how satisfied the mom is, I mean I do love it …. I was desperate for help. I am thankful because I am sure I got some help out of this (hands pointing to the video screen).”
Mary selected seven images. Six were from conventional parenting resources. After the attachment video, she responded that she had “invested so much time in reading that stupid f…ing book, I stayed up all night worrying how the process was going to work. You [the author of the book] told me to try this thing, and I did …”
Sarah selected 10 images, and nine were from conventional motherhood resources. When she was asked in a small group about how she was affected up to that point, she said, “When I watched the videos, a part of me was embarrassed. I read all those books. I have tried all that stuff. I can remember so many arguments with my husband saying, ‘Well, according to this
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[book] … these are the steps we should have taken.’ ” After seeing the Attachment video series, she stated, “When you read a lot of the Sears’ books, and a lot of it is good solid advice, it is nice to have a book to pick up at 3:00 am when you are like what the hell, and being a parent seems scary.”
Linda selected 11 images, and eight images were from conventional motherhood resources. In the screening process, she communicated that she seeks most of her information form a variety of sources. She stated, “I Google a ton …. I read blogs a lot.” Beyond this comment, Linda did not reference these sources of information as her guiding light.
Liz selected 11 images, and nine were from conventional parenting resources. After watching the sleep video, she explained how the professionals helped. She stated, “I had a lot of sleep problems, and that guy (Harvey Karp), I took his advice. It actually helped, so I like him.”
In the small group, when asked how she has been affected so far, she stated, “I was one of those people who read about everything because I did not know what I was doing.”
Unlike the other mothers, Eleanor did not make any direct comments about going to the books in times of trouble or as direct sources of information. However, as she described her collage of what she felt it meant to be a good mother, she used direct quotations from the Dr.
Sears’ Attachment Parenting book. She quoted, “Belief in babies cries …. Beware of baby trainers … Breast feeding and Baby wearing, you know all the attachment (AP) things.” Later, in a small group, when asked how she was affected thus far by listening to the professionals talk, she stated, “I think I connected with a lot of it .… I connected with a lot of it because that is the mom I want to be.”
Hannah selected 10 images, and eight images were from conventional parenting resources. She described her sources of information as “Facebook, I am a member of two
120 groups. The Internet some …. Some books.” Later, she continued sharing about how influential books are as a source of knowledge. She stated, “I am constantly in the library researching the ways to creatively stimulate him.”
How I Was Affected: For me, the comment that rapidly drew my attention was when one mom noted, “When did it become so bad that we needed someone to tell us what to do?” In that one statement I heard the loss of the maternal line combined with the fact that we have had to turn to these professionals for guidance. Her statement continued to describe her sadness that her intimate circle of family does not guide her. I cried as she described this. I felt my sadness and my anxiety that accompanied those moments of aloneness. The moments when I was truly overwhelmed and my mom couldn’t help.
After that point, I questioned, “How did we lose our confidence to the point that we allowed these gray-haired men to advised us how to raise our children — that our own mothers were completely wrong?” Sometimes I find myself lost in the question, “Who do we turn to when our mothers cannot be there? Are they really misinformed? How is it that they cannot remember what to do?” With these questions, I feel the confusion and anger that some mothers can feel. I particularly had a lot of empathy for these participants. Of course we will turn to these sources for help when we are alone and confused.
Brody’s affect is important to add to this section. His reaction added another level to this.
He stated that, “They Google everything because they are obsessed with doing it right.” One of his key moments came from the plethora of comments about these mothers not turning towards their own mother and how much these mothers relied on external sources for information about what to do.
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My Interpretations of What Happened: The propositional statement for this learning is this:
With the loss of the maternal line, media, books, blogs, and a barrage of professional advice can become many mothers’ surrogate Mother. The strongest data that supports this learning comes from two moments of participant expression. The first data set comes from an observation I made while looking at their collages. The second data set was pulled from the transcripts of their verbal expressions and journal writing.
The collages consistently showed the mothers choosing the majority of their images from the conventional motherhood resources category. There were enough unconventional motherhood images that could have allowed each of them to make a complete collage, but they chose the conventional images. One meaning that I make from this is that the culture does influence these mothers as they gather information about how to be a good mother. It is not their mothers who define this process. Rather than the intergenerational passing down of information helping these mother form their identity, it is the idealized image of motherhood that is portrayed through the media that has most influence on how they define themselves as a mother.
The other piece of data that deepens this learning was their frequent comments about going to these external sources when they needed guidance. Not one single mother mentioned going to her own mother for help or guidance as her primary source of information. Instead, the majority of these mothers made numerous references of going to the conventional sources of information for guidance on how to care for their child.
Imaginal Structures in Use: The imaginal structure that informs this learning I call “You
Better Get It Right.” This structure was built and maintained by my own confused journey into motherhood and the loss of my maternal line. As a new mother, I struggled with a very fussy baby, sleep issues, and general freak-out due to being clueless about how to care for a baby.
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Since my mother could not remember and I wanted to parent differently, I read numerous books about baby nutrition, how to get my child to sleep at night, Conscious Discipline, Positive
Parenting, Parenting From the Inside Out, and many more. These cultural sources became my authority.
For a trained psychologist, this imaginal structure is reinforced through books such as
The Basic Fault or The Primal Wound. These books create a keen awareness of the fact that my role as a mother does have significant bearing on my children’s well-being. Winnicott’s concept of maternal preoccupation, Bowlby’s attachment theories, Greenspan’s Building a Healthy Mind, and Erikson’s building of identity, all painted a picture in my mind about how I was supposed to be with my children.
This structure extends to my professional life as well. I have become one of those professionals who gives advice as to what is “normal” and what to do. I am a professional who has taken the place of the maternal line. This affects me in two ways. In one way, how I raise my children comes under a certain scrutiny when I am asked about how my children are doing, whether they are well attached or not, whether or not they sleep through the night, whether they test limits or comply easily with directives, and whether or not they play well with other children. My clients want to know if the methods that I am using can damage children. In a different way, my profession keeps me very engaged in current parenting practices so I know what mothers are talking about when they ask me questions. I am also very engaged in all the peer-reviewed literature so I can educate from a place of real information. This pressure enforces that structure that I really better get it right.
Theoretical Concepts: As noted in the literature review, Susan Douglas, Meredith Michaels,
Harriette Marshall, Lara Descrates, and Conrad Kottak all found that mothers do obtain
123 information about how to care for their child by seeking information from conventional sources.
The primary sources of the information came from social media, books, and the Internet. Most mothers do naturally test whether the information works or not, and that is how their identities are built. 5 It is important to note that these researchers did not discuss the reasons why mothers seek this information and do not discuss what happens to the mothers when the information they obtain does not work.
Stephen Larsen’s theories that he lays out in his book The Mythic Imagination: The Quest for Meaning Through Personal Mythology help build the case that these images and information that mothers are exposed to do have a profound effect on how mothers build their identity. He states, “Lacking the formal context of traditional mythologies, our psyche still is responsive to mythogems, the ‘bricks’ of which mythologies are built. These elements, being the stuff of psyche, are far from inert building material, they structure the living processes in which they participate.” 6 In its context, I interpret this principle as follows: in the absence of the maternal line, mothers are craving and responsive to information. When they see it, read it, or hear the missing information, their psyche quickly builds a structure around that “mythogem.” The process of obtaining information has mythological weight.
Validity Considerations: I look to my imaginal structures first as a source of validity. Through my own process of becoming a mother, I developed trigger words. When I hear them, my story comes back to life. These trigger words would be things such as “pushing an agenda,” “beware of baby trainer,” “craving information.” These phrases could have engaged enough of my history that it was hard for me to listen to participants’ stories in an unbiased way. However, I find my parallel journey more as an empathic connection. I heard their stories, saw their tears, and felt as if there were a shared history. Many of the mothers talked about having that
124 desperate moment of not knowing where to turn to for information, and, in those moments, they did find comfort from the books. This narrative mirrored my own.
LEARNING THREE: I AM NOT THE MARTHA STEWART OF MOTHERHOOD
The primary claim for this learning is this: As mothers interact with external sources of information, instead of gaining confidence in their abilities to care for their children, they may paradoxically experience a fundamental decrease in their confidence. The basic premise of many parenting books is that they will help the reader easily develop the skills to confidently care for her child. Some of the parenting books, websites, and media sources do state significant consequences for the child if their philosophy and/or method are not adhered to. Some mothers do come to these resources with fundamental questions about how to parent and care for their child. They are looking for strategies to help build their confidence.
It is known, and was again confirmed in this research, that these books and other external sources of information can create an idealized image of motherhood that new mothers can internalize. It is also known that when these mothers do not live up to this idealized image, they can experience shame. Shame can also come from the fear of being judged or actually being judged.
The mothers in this research did mirror this well-studied event as well. This learning branches into new landscape as it deepens our understanding of the effects of shame on mothers.
It illuminates the actuality that books, though well intentioned, can lead to shame-based feelings that actually decrease a mother’s confidence in her ability to care for her child. Fundamentally as well, this learning also builds on the previous learnings. As mothers, who have lost their maternal line turn to books for guidance to help build their confidence, they experience shame
125 when they cannot successfully perform the required tasks and, thus, feel a significant drop in their confidence.
What Happened: Sandy expressed how shame led to a diminished belief in her abilities when she realized a significant discrepancy between reality and the imaginal. She used numerous self- critical statements. The statements she shared with the large group after her collage work began to unfold the picture of diminished confidence. She stated, “I am really grateful to have all of these resources. Then I start following the formula and it doesn’t work. It can be really hard. I feel like a failure.” Confusion and low confidence were expressed further when she talked about her child sleeping. She stated that she had read most of the sleep books, but acknowledged, “I am so topsy turvy and conflicted about sleep … We don’t know what else to do.”
Sasha indicated low confidence when she talked about her collage, suggesting, “I am not living up to the image of a loving relationship with my own family, or the image of Maggie
Gyllenhaal, who portrays an image of a mother who is very confident and self-secure which seems to spill over onto her children.” She went on to say, “I feel devalued and defensive as a stay-at-home mom (SAHM). I have been guilted into AP.” This flowed into her greatest expression of shame as it related to feeling that she is being judged: “It is a lot of blaming the victim … But I just feel blamed for all the stuff that is not our fault.” She concluded by saying,
“It just feels like, the world is saying, ‘you are such a stupid f…cking mom. You are stupid to do this or not letting your kid do this.’”
Paloma had numerous expressions of shame driving her confidence lower. After watching the Olympic Video she stated, “If my kid is not all those things [referring to the commercial] then I am a failure.” After the AP video she said, “It [AP] became a possession over my life, and my baby cried a lot. I feel like a failure when I can’t get her to stop.” As the
126 other mothers talked about the importance of a happy mother, she admitted, “I feel like a failure because I am not happy. I am just not … I think happiness is really, really important. I am just not there yet.” In our final conversation together, she aptly summarized how the shame diminished her confidence, saying, “This work was really more about self-esteem and growing self-esteem. From the first time we met, a lot of my self-esteem was based on this unobtainable image of some ideal. I kept feeling horrible, like a failure that I could never do the things in those images. This has left me feeling sad and exhausted every day. It really compounded the negative self-esteem.”
After watching the sleep video, Liz voiced, “I know with a lot of these videos, I just feel bad. This is what works, and when you try it, and it doesn’t work, then I ask myself, ‘What is wrong with me?’ ” When asked about how she was affected by hearing the other moms talk in her small group, she replied, “All those pictures are like life is great! My baby is good and beautiful. And I am, like, my baby is horrible! Am I a bad person for that?” Finally she disclosed, “They [the professionals] all said that you will learn your baby’s cries, but to me all his cries sound exactly the same. I am, like, OMG should I know this? Am I not in tune with him? How come I cannot tell the difference when they all sound exactly the same? I wish I had more information when I feel like I have tried everything. I feel bad about myself.”
Hannah struggled with what she felt like she needed to do as a mother. This statement best captures her frustrations: “I have convinced myself that every moment with him, I have to engaged him in some amazing activity that stimulates every aspect of his being and if I do not do this, he is not going to be intelligent … I do feel like I have ended up in a place where I am not successful.” After seeing the video of the Still Face Experiment, Hannah responded, “I was totally feeling guilt that I let my child cry in the crib yesterday. I was thinking, ‘Oh, I am a bad
127 mom.’ That video reinforced the notion that I need to engage with my child every minute.”
Later, in a small group, Hannah told a story about being judged when she posted a question on a private parenting Facebook group. She shared, “This woman was telling me how bad it is to put my child in a jumper thing. She was saying it can cause head injuries…. I say, ‘F..K YOU!’
(finger gesture). It was just awful. I felt infuriated and hurt.” Finally, after reading the hypothesis, she expressed deep resonance with it. She exclaimed, “That was exactly my experience. I just want the feeling that I am doing a good job…I mean just hearing the experts and what they are doing to me…it is making me so f..cking hard on myself.”
Eleanor’s presentation of shame and how it manifested into having periods of lessening maternal confidence was not as apparent as the other participants’. She displayed aspects of the
“Super Mom” as she worked hard to balance work, motherhood, being a wife, and tending to herself. Her comments did not come until the end of the first group session, and the themes only truly developed in her home journaling. She wrote, “The day after your preliminary research ….
I felt a lot of grief, anger, injustice, and confusion about ideal mom vs. reality.” She continued,
“I was really angry with how much I felt like I couldn't give enough to myself, my husband, my daughter, and my work.” Infused in these statements, there are expressions of low confidence.
She acknowledged in her journal, “I’ve felt, for a while, that I may be experiencing a low level of depression …. Because I have a hard time putting into words what I’m going through, it often comes out as anger. Particularly anger towards my partner.” In her next journal entry, she offered, “I haven't gotten the sleep I need for the past 3 to 4 days …. I could easily break down into tears and exhaustion … No! My needs are not met because I am rushing to get everything done. It makes me crazy.” After the second group was over she sent me a follow-up email, writing, “I thought about the first few months of mothering and how I questioned if what I was
128 doing was right or wrong. I was anxious to make everything better for my daughter and overwhelmed/confused by the volume of opposing ideas .… Our society propagates fear, leaving us less confident.”
Unlike Eleanor, Massie expressed shame and low confidence several times throughout the group sessions. She told stories of feeling judged by her mother and her extended family.
After I read the hypothesis during the second group meeting, she spoke directly about her experience of shame and low confidence:
Last night I was…reflecting on a pattern I have noticed in my behavior…I unconsciously absorb the insecurities of the person I am talking with. It feels awful, and I can’t find my footing in myself when I am doing that…There is some sort of self-shame about who I am or about my experience as not being appropriate or OK…In retrospect, I become aware that the pressure or that judgment had an influence on me. It is so quick (she started crying). It taps into some of the isolation that I am experiencing as a mom….I can’t function the way I used to be able to. I can’t have conversations, and do things, not naturally anyway.”
Massie also made the comment that, “I feel like a bad mom because when I look at my family all their children are sleeping and mine is not. So it is my fault.”
After watching the Free Range video, Mary had her greatest expression of shame and how it affects her perception of how she is doing as a mother. She stated, “I have had the police bring my child (four years old) home and talk to CPS. I felt so betrayed by the police officer ….
Do you really think I would abandon my child? .…So what the f..k is wrong with me.” She went on to say that “I live in fear that I cannot let my son be a kid and go out and have those experiences away from me because someone is going to call the police. Not because he is going to get run over, but because I have been betrayed by our system of protection.” Additionally, she exhibited low confidence in the following statement: “I often feel like I am hurting my son … I am not a good role model of self-control. If I can’t do it, how can he be expected to behave?”
After the sleep videos, Mary expressed, “We have been through every parenting book with my
129 son, and we finally started therapy. Now it will be someone else’s failure when it doesn’t work
… No matter what I am doing, I am doing it wrong.”
Rosie exhibited shame when I asked the small group the question, “How did it feel to ask for what you needed?” She stated, “I feel guilty when I ask for what I want.” I asked, “Do you feel guilty like you broke a rule or guilty that you are a bad person?” She replied, “No, it is like what do I have to complain about … and here I am all woe is me. It is not lawbreaking, I just feel bad.” She shared in the big group that “I am writing down the things I forgot [to add to the collage] and that you are reminding me of. Clearly I wasn’t focusing on them, like a good mom is a happy mom [She started crying].” When she was asked in the second group meeting to share any insights from the past two weeks, she revealed, “I noticed I really judge how I am doing as a mom based on my baby’s behavior … Anytime she was acting up, or she was fussy and I didn’t know how to soothe her, I felt like I was doing a bad job.” In a small group, she shared, “I want a magic bullet for every problem my baby has. I am the mom, and I am supposed to have that power, and I don’t.”
Sarah did not share many stories about shame and perpetual low maternal confidence. It is important to note that she did inform the group that she has been in therapy for postpartum depression for four years. She did express anger towards the professionals, but I could not confirm that this anger was generated by shame. She confessed, “When I hear a man give me advice, I am like ‘f..k you! What do you know?’ I think you know what it looks like on paper, but it makes me angry.” Later in the conversation, she continued, “and that other guy, tossing his kid up in his million-dollar living room, saying ‘I know what it is like.’ Do you? Because your house is really clean, dude, like it is spotless. I can’t take it seriously, or else it is too much.” She talked about the work that she has done to move through the low confidence at the
130 end of the first group meeting. She stated, “I don’t know what shifted [in my perception]. Wait, I do know what shifted, I actually did some work. I put some time into it. And now I can say with confidence that I do have some days where I feel like my ducks are in a row, and that feels really good.”
Linda’s expression of shame-driven low confidence manifested in a couple of ways. She wrote in her journal after the collage work, “In my irrational, alone times I fear them [my children] being fat (like me), being angry (at me), them not having healthy relationships (being alone), and my children being destructive to themselves somehow (drugs, alcohol, unhealthy sex, anorexia, etc.) … as adults.” She expressed additional shame-driven low confidence after the
AP videos, admitting, “It brings up fear for me to hear that stuff. I start fearing what I am doing is wrong .… All that talk, it does affect me when I start hearing it.” Linda expressed low confidence during the screening process when I asked her if she has all the skills to be a good mother; she replied, “No, I guess I could say that the capability is in there, but I do not feel like currently I am a good mother.”
How I Was Affected: I felt a range of emotions throughout this process including happiness for the confirmation of my own process as well as the weight of my own shame and sadness. My experience of going to the books time and time again and failing time and time again was a blow to my confidence. When I heard their stories, I felt validated.
I felt shame at some points as the moms talked about what they felt was important, such as being a happy mom. I read a book that described the importance of having a happy mom. If a mom is unhappy, then effects of sadness will ripple out to her children. Sometimes, I am not happy a mother. I can feel the angst of the periodic desire of wanting to be with my children and feeling scared that they might know this. It creates those moments of low maternal confidence.
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The point of difference came while I listened to their reactions to the attachment videos and the video of the Still Face Experiment. Although some of the attachment videos were about
Attachment Parenting, the movement, there were some videos that just addressed the importance of attachment in general. I was surprised that they were not more positive about those videos. I felt sad that the messages from Bowlby, Ainsworth, and Tronick could be viewed as having a negative impact. It reignited the resentment I have towards Dr. Sears. His writings, I feel, have significantly misconstrued the original attachment research, and, despite significant information contradicting segments of his work, his viewpoint can create lower confidence in mothers.
Admittedly, during the second meeting, I was nervous when I presented the hypothesis to these mothers. The potentially cyclical nature of shame, feeling shame about feeling shame, made me acutely aware of not wanting to contribute to that pattern. I did not want to be just another parenting expert telling mothers that they have got it all wrong.
When I was listening to Eleanor, I had moments of amazement and confusion. She had harrowing stories of being in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), not having enough milk then having too much milk, her child not sleeping well, and balancing work on top of all of that.
She told stories of how she puts her happiness first and lets it radiate out. I felt really insufficient and inadequate because, technically, I had an easier time than she did and still struggled. As grounded as I was in my daily practices at that time, I was not happy. Did that mean that I had some deficiency? After reading her home journaling, I felt some relief to hear a different side to her journey.
My Interpretations of What Happened: Shame was a real felt experience when these mothers were face to face with culturally based parenting ideologies. Their response to the various culturally generated stimuli (collage work, journaling, and videos of professionals talking) did
132 indicate shame. As the quotes from the mothers demonstrated, shame was expressed in predictable ways based on the research presented in the theories section. Their statements of shame went hand in hand with statements of low confidence. Eight out of the 11 moms’ expressions directly linked shame and self-criticism. The most common comment that they expressed was that they felt like a failure when a ideology or direction from professionals did not work. They made direct comments such as, “I feel like a failure.”
Two of the three remaining mothers did not make these statements, though one of them did indicate her struggle between her ideal balance in life and her reality. She did name the emotions that surrounded this. Her disclosure of depressive symptoms, emotional volatility, and hiding information are each indicators of shame and low confidence.
Imaginal Structures in Use: After having numerous experiences of being ill advised and/or scolded by professionals, I have developed a vibrant imaginal structure that pushes hard against people and books advising me on how to raise my children. This structure reinforces my belief that I will learn best through trial and error versus being prescribed to. The cement for this structure is the shame I have experienced when I have encountered professionals telling me that everything I was doing was wrong — that I am damaging my children and others. There is additional reinforcement to this structure that comes from reading all the conflicting parenting information that exists. It was a horrifying feeling that I could be significantly harming my child. It was debilitating and paralyzing.
A manifestation of this structure suggests that women do have the innate ability to make good parenting decisions. I see this structure affecting my interpretation of the data because mothers do, from time to time, need information. Sometimes, mothering is not innate. These
133 points of low confidence can be an indicator that they do need additional information, not that they are feeling shame for failing.
An additional perspective that needs to be considered was my co-researcher. In Brody’s reporting, he was struck by the comments that he summarized as, “I do it because a book told me to, and I don’t do something because the book said it was bad.” He went on to state that he saw that “Their source of confirmation came solely from the books because they were so obsessed with doing it right.” Brody stated that he had the experience of feeling weepy after hearing all the stories of uncertainty. He was struck by the strong impression that they were being criticized by others and taken aback by all the “shoulds” they have to follow.
He also commented on what he observed as moms finding their self-worth only if their children succeed. If a mother’s child is acting differently from the “norm,” then she has failed.
He noticed that their perceived failure had nothing to do with the idea that the books might be wrong. Instead, “If she failed, it was because she wasn’t following the directions well enough.”
Theoretical Concepts Upon Which Interpretations Are Based: In this section, I presented the research data that supported the idea that the shame these mothers felt from the pressures of our culture for not following the right methods prescribed by an ideology drives maternal confidence lower. As discussed in the literature review, Lina Badr defines “Maternal Self-Confidence” as
“the perception mothers have of their ability to care for and understand their infants.” 7 Mothers build their self-confidence, as Reva Rubin’s research shows, by first adhering to the existing models. Through trial and error, exploration, and getting to know their children, they dedifferentiate from the models, and their identity is achieved. 8 Perceiving that they are meeting their children’s needs in a variety of different parenting situations is an important step in dedifferentiation from the models and developing their own maternal identity. Motherhood
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Identity is established when the mother has “intimate knowledge of her infant such that she feels competency and confident in her mothering activities and feels love for her infant.” 9
In fleshing out this learning, it is important to understand the ways shame can diminish maternal confidence. Gilbert and Proctor’s research showed that shame can come from two sources, internal and external. They defined external shame as being marked by personal thoughts and feelings that others view them negatively with feelings of anger or contempt. They are seen as having characteristics that make one unattractive and thus rejectable or vulnerable to attacks from others. 10 Alternately, internal shame “emerges with the development of self- awareness and how one exists for others. The focus of attention is on the self, with self-directed attention, feelings and evaluations of self as inadequate, flawed or bad. A key component of internal shame is thus self-devaluation and self-criticism.” 11 Their study deepens as they demonstrate that “external and internal shame can be fused together. The consequence is that in an episode of shame, the person experiences the outside world turning against him or her, and his or her own self-evaluations and sense of self (internal world) also become critical, hostile, and persecuting.” 12
Liss’s research brings the exploration of shame into motherhood. Her research shows how the discrepancy between the mother’s idealized image of motherhood and her reality elicits shame. The research also finds that the fear mothers feel if they perceive judgment by others evokes shame. This judgment can be imagined or real. 13 Furthermore, Jean-Anne Sutherland defines some of the ramifications of the culture provoking shame in mothers. She finds that when mothers feel shame they “make decision that contradict the self, make conclusions on issues to which little to no evidence exists, and provide a road map that contradicts the self.” 14
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There have been numerous studies indicating a correlation between shame and self- criticism. There is a shame-based relationship between the role of self-blame and sense of personal responsibility for failure. 15 Nathanson describes this relationship between low self- esteem and shame when he discusses self-attack, the script involved when we say to ourselves that we are “weak, incompetent, stupid.” 16 Gershen states that “shame is central to conscience, indignity, identity, and disturbance in self-functioning. This affect [shame] is the source of low self-esteem, poor self concept or body image, self-doubt and insecurity, and diminished self- confidence.” 17 This is the first study to bring these concepts directly into play with motherhood, and shows that mothers can feel shame and a diminished self-confidence when the prescribed methods or ideologies do not work.
Eight of the 11 mothers did make such comments about themselves. They used words such as failure, feeling bad about self, and fake when the prescribed methods did not work.
These self-defining statements are both self-critical and shame-based.
Validity Considerations: Throughout this process, I consciously allowed myself to be affected by the videos and then the stories that the mothers were sharing. This decision allowed me to track my imaginal structures and how they could be triggered. This process provided additional supporting data to the participants’ experience. All the sadness and anger they felt, I felt as well.
The structure “Who the f..k are you to be telling me what to do?” that was discussed in the previous section might have led me to make unconscious assumptions in how I interpreted their stories. I see this with Eleanor’s story especially. The feeling I had of being insufficient and inadequate in contrast to her stories of doing well could have fueled my search to find shame driven low confidence in her story when it really was not there.
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Hannah and Sasha used the word guilt, and I lumped their feelings in with shame. I made this leap because they followed these remarks with statements of feeling like bad mothers, not statements of doing something bad, but this could have been misconstrued.
LEARNING FOUR: WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS
The primary claim of this learning is as follows: When mothers do experience a decrease in their confidence to meaningfully care for their children, they adapt their behaviors in ways that can lead to potentially negative outcomes. In the broadest sense, these mothers lost their ability to take care of themselves emotionally and physically. They found themselves at a loss as to how to creatively improvise solutions to problems and parent naturally. They may have attempted to try harder, which lead to a paucity of self-care. On an emotional level, mothers might experience fatigue and emotional dissatisfaction, feel confined to just being a mother, and feel such a level of ambivalence towards their children that they have the (fleeting) sensation of not wanting to be mothers anymore at all.
This learning continues to build on the last learning, where the data indicated that shame, stemming from interactions with culture, created feelings of low confidence in the participating mothers. In this section, the data shows the ramifications of self-critical thoughts as they relate specifically to mothers. This section shows the range of negative feelings and actions such as mild depression, negating self-care, feeling stuck in her mothering role, and diminished quality of life these mothers can have. These feelings left them craving any source of positive confirmation that they could find. In the presented statements, there is a distinct undertone of low confidence.
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One of the prevailing feelings that was expressed by the mothers was the feeling of being stuck in their role as a mother. Mother is the only role they could play. Three mothers expressed this through various stories. In the screening process, Sandy stated her dissatisfaction with
“going out and about with my child and people interact with me only as a mother, treating me as if mothering is my whole entire identity.” After the Proctor and Gamble “Thank You, Mom” video, she admits, “So I was angry, I want to be that supportive mom, but I also want to pursue my other life.” After this, she talked about her idealized image of motherhood, which represented being connected, “connected with baby, connected with friends, community and partner.” She concluded by saying, “I don’t live up to [the idealized image] very much,” remarking on her “feeling that there are other pleasures that I want to do and work on, and not having the time to do them [because I have to attend to my child all the time].”
Sasha discussed how her drive to maintain her idealized image compromised her ability to find her own creative outlets that were necessary to regenerate herself. She reasoned, “I want to feel more engaged …. I feel like sometimes I am in a prison. I want to be a mother. I want to be engaged, but not just with him all the time. I want to do something that is also engaging to me.”
Paloma similarly expressed this feeling of entrapment in a particular parenting role when she stated, “When did I lose our whole entire identity? My kids are learning nothing about the type of music I like because we are not listening to it anymore … That makes me anxious … I want my kids to see me driving the car with the windows down feeling alive and singing from that deep part of me. I want them to remember me that way.”
A different ramification of the low confidence was maternal ambivalence. This is described as feeling such a level of ambivalence towards their children that they have the
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(fleeting) sensation of not wanting to be mothers anymore at all. Sandy was the first to speak about this as she admitted, “I am struggling right now to have all of this [pointing to her collage]…. Sometimes, it would be so much easier if I didn’t have a baby.” After she spoke, there was a long silence. She started crying. Three other moms began to cry, too. Eleanor followed up by saying, “I appreciate that you said that sometimes it would be easier not to have a baby because, I don’t think that is a feeling I have all the time, I have definitely had it.”
Paloma also expressed a different aspect of maternal ambivalence by suggesting, “We are trying to fix everything all the time. It is giving me the impression that is broken. And s...t, the possibility that I broke it is exhausting and scary and makes me want to hire a babysitter sometimes because they know what to do, and I don’t.”
Sandy, spoke of feeling that she was out of options when dealing with a certain issue with her child. She had read all the sleep books and nothing was helping. After the sleep video,
Sandy talked about being very confused about how to get her child to sleep at night. Having tried everything the books advised, she was feeling that there were no more creative solutions.
She admitted, “We don’t know what else to do.”
Some mothers expressed feelings of not being about to parent the way they would naturally. In Rosie’s collage work, she expressed that she felt that in order to be a good mom, she has to impart knowledge, wisdom, creativity, the importance of friends and family, curiosity, and foster the development of imagination in all interactions. This idealized image, which was creating confidence issues, was pushing away from what she felt she would do naturally. She summarized the ramifications of these actions as “All the information we get and we share, it makes me want to stop everything, stop reading things, and to trust our own instinct for what the moment calls for.” In the second meeting, she went so far as to say, “I think if our society didn’t
139 get in our way, we would feel empowered to parent the way we want to parent. I do all those things [pointing to her collage] only because I want my child to pass the SAT.”
The low confidence that these mothers felt diminished their self-care. For some other mothers, they did not feel confident to ask for help. Massie talked about this when she asserted,
“I keep saying that I should take care of myself. But I can’t.” In her communications she expressed struggles in asking for help because of the shame she felt. When I asked her what it felt like to ask for what she needed, she said, “Like a bitch, demanding, pushy…My mom thinks
I am type A, not going with the flow enough. So if I say I needed something, I feel judged because she didn’t need anything.” At a later point, she shared, “I couldn’t ask for help. I wouldn’t know what to ask for anyway because no one else could do the Attachment Parenting.
I was really lost for myself, and I definitely had some crazy points. I knew I was on really shaky ground.”
During the screening call, Liz told two stories about how she compromised her self-care in order not to be judged. I do not have direct quotes from this since I was writing our phone conversation by hand. Here I do paraphrase what she shared on the phone. Her baby had significant colic and cried all the time. She decided to stop breastfeeding and try formula as a possible solution. This switch seemed to help. The consequence of this switch was that she found that when she went out of the house, she felt judged as a bad mom for not breastfeeding.
To stop the judgment, he stayed home a lot. Also, because her baby was colicky, she did not want to have other people hear her baby crying, so this, too, made her choose to stay home.
Numerous mothers expressed emotional dissatisfaction with their life at that moment.
After the first round of collage, Rosie shared with the large group, “I am writing down the things
I forgot [to add to her idealized image]. Things that you are saying and the things that I should
140 focus on, but clearly I wasn’t focusing on, like a good mom is a happy mom and [she started crying].” Eleanor’s struggle to maintain the well-balanced Super Mom image affected her emotional well-being. She expressed feelings of depression, anger, and emotional volatility. In her journal, she reported, “I felt a lot of grief, anger, injustice, and confusion about ideal versus reality.” In a different journal entry, she wrote, “I’ve felt for a while that I may be experiencing a low level of depression …. Because I have a hard time putting into words what I’m going through, it often comes out as anger.” When things do not go according to how she envisions them, she admits, “My mood and feelings quickly turned negative.”
Mary’s most moving statement that illustrates the consequences of her having lack of confidence was, “I live in fear.” She fears that, “He will grow up into a violent person. He will be explosive as I can be …” She confessed, “I worry he’ll be a bully and have trouble making friends. I worry we’ll always spend so much time arguing. I worry the baby will be hurt by hearing constant fighting instead of enjoying a peaceful babyhood. I worry it is already too late to repair my relationship with my son.”
One mom expressed that when she tries something new, she then feels pushed back into the ideological norm. In Hannah’s statements, one can see that the stimulus from the media produced shame, and that pushed her back into a prescribed way of being. From that experience, she felt that she had to work harder to obtain that idealized image. After watching the Still Face
Experiment video, she confirmed, “I was totally having that guilt thing that I let my child cry in the crib yesterday. I was thinking, ‘Oh, I am a bad mom.’ And it reinforced that notion that I need to be engaged with my child every minute.”
Three mothers expressed a strong craving to hear that they were doing a good job. This section is directly related to feeling low confidence about mothering ability. Hannah talked
141 about her desire to know that she is doing a good job by saying, “I just want the feeling that I am doing a good job. Doing a good job means knowing all the right answers, having enough sleep, and having a good relationship with my partner … My son is having a medical procedure, and the assistant to the anesthesiologist was asking all these questions. She said, ‘I can tell you are doing a good job,’ and I was, like, ‘Thanks! I don’t know you, but I will take it’.”
Sasha echoed this desire for validation by saying, “I really need encouragement. I didn’t realize how starved I was, and I swear some homeless person could say you are doing great, and
I would be on cloud nine. Any little drop.” Linda also commented on this when she expressed how crucial it was to hear that she was doing a good job. She stated, “I remember a moment when my daughter was about three months old, and my sister said to me, ‘You are doing a really good job.’ She said it so casually to me that I still remember that moment! I hold on to that in hard times …. That was two years ago … It was very important.” She was crying as she said this.
Sarah’s experiences indicate a counterpoint to this learning. With her, I did not hear a lot of fallout from the shame. As stated in the previous learning, she had been in therapy for four years for PPD. When she did express moments of low confidence, she was able to counter them with a different perspective. She discloses, “But I don’t know what shifted [in my perception].
Wait, I do know what shifted, I actually did some work and I put some time into it. And now I can say with confidence that I do have some days where I feel like my ducks are in a row and that feels really good.” She goes on to say, “Those days, even if they happen every six months, are literally enough to sustain me. For me, that is my journey into motherhood.”
How I was affected by this: As I listened to the mothers talk about their collages, their idealized image of motherhood, and how they failed to live up to that image, one of my clearest thoughts
142 was, “How many Ph.D.’s do you have to have to confidently raise your child?” At what point is it okay for a mother to say, “I can’t do that anymore.” Would it not be great if the culture would respond by saying, “That’s great you are figuring out what works for you!”? With this group, I saw that the prescriptions the Internet, media, books, and professionals provide make mothers feel as though they need jump through numerous hoops in order to raise a happy child. Naturally mothers are not going to be able to maintain their stamina to jump through these hoops for extended periods of time. Of course they are going to fall short in some aspect or another. They cannot do it all.
I had moments of deep empathic resonance when the mothers told stories about not wanting to have their child, about having a four-year-old brought back by the police, about not knowing happiness as a mother. I cried with them. Their sadness was palpable. Watching the videos with them, I found myself taking deep breaths — almost as if I was trying to breathe life into the room.
Overall, it saddens me that there is such an emotional and physical toll on women who have children. The pressure that accompanies these mothers as they try to get parenting right, the blame that happens when they fall short, and the emotional and physical fallout that comes from the self-critical thoughts needs to change. It saddens and angers me that the scripts in our culture tell us that motherhood is the best and most important thing in the world and yet the “how to” can undermine our confidence and diminish our joy.
My Interpretation of What Happened: The primary claim of this learning is as follows: when mothers do experience a decrease in their confidence to meaningfully care for their children, they adapt their behaviors in ways that can lead to unnecessary outcomes. They may attempt to try harder, leading to a paucity of self-care. On an emotional level, mothers might experience fatigue
143 and emotional dissatisfaction, feel confined to just being a mother, feel stuck and out of options, feel that they cannot parent the way they would naturally, and feel such a level of ambivalence towards their children that they have the (fleeting) sensation of not wanting to be mothers anymore. This claim is supported by the responses these mothers provided in response to the stimulus.
Ten out of the 11 mothers expressed some form of negative outcome from having shame- generated, self-critical thoughts. Two mothers expressed emotional dissatisfaction by stating mild depressive symptoms and greater volatility in their emotional states. Three mothers expressed maternal ambivalence of either wishing they had never had children, or wanting to hire someone else to tend to their children. Two mothers talked about diminished self-care in several statements. These stories ranged from being scared to leave the house out of fear of being scolded to feeling like they could not ask for help. Three mothers expressed that they craved hearing acknowledgment that they are doing okay as moms. One mother expressed that she felt like she was out of options, that she had lost the ability to find a creative solution to her child's sleep problem. Two moms expressed that they felt as though the only thing there were allowed to do was be a mother, and one mother stated that she tried something different, saw the video, and went right back to her old ways of doing things.
Brody had strong insights into this section. At the end of the first group, he saw “the turmoil and confusion while trying to hold to values/cultural ideals.” As evidence of this, he listed the phrases that impacted him. These were “stuck”, “not sure where to go to for information”, “depression”, “doubt”, “lack of self-care”, and “no creativity.” He was also struck by one mother’s declaration that all she wanted to do was to “stop listening to everyone and start trusting your [her] own instinct.”
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Imaginal Structures in Use: This structure hits upon, deepens, and expands on what I wrote in the last learning. My structure that resists external advice, of not wanting to be prescribed to, deepens here as my anger and sadness builds. Becoming a mother is one of the last rites of passage in our culture, and in my work, I see that, for a lot of mothers, it goes largely unsupported. I feel the effects of lack of meaningful support combined with a culture of mother blame driving us to do things that we would not normally do. My inner feminist comes out and says, “It is not the mother alone who raises this child! There are other players in this equation, such as dad, schools, and community.” Why then do we, the moms, feel the burden of ensuring the success of the child, feel blamed when the child does not succeed, and feel that we have to sacrifice so many of our other dreams for this one? My structure reinforces my desire to protect and defend the mothers of the world.
Theoretical Concepts Upon Which Interpretations Are Based: As a reminder, maternal self- confidence is defined by Mercer as “the perception mothers have of their ability to care for and understand their infants…She has expanded herself to incorporate a new identity and assume responsibility for her infant and her infant’s future.” 18 Low maternal self-confidence is the mother’s perception that she lacks the ability to care for her child in some way. This learning illuminates the ways in which shame-driven low confidence compels maladaptive behaviors and beliefs. This learning also shows how culturally-induced shame can leave a mother unable to incorporate her new role identity into her larger self-identity. I see this leading to maternal ambivalence.
The two research articles presented here illustrate the outcomes of mothers not feeling like they are in a supportive environment. The researchers presenting these articles do not
145 comment on shame, but they do indicate how not being in a supportive environment leads to maladaptive feelings and behaviors. Natasha Mauther’s research article talks about one way postpartum depression occurs: it can happen “when women are unable to experience, express, and validate their feelings and needs within supportive, accepting and nonjudgmental interpersonal relationships and cultural contexts.” 19 To add to this, Choi, et al., find that when mothers had feelings of inadequacy, instead of turning away from their idealized version, they just tried harder to be the super everything. 20
Gilbert and Proctor discuss general outcomes of feeling shame. They state that external shame might leave a person feeling that her mind is “blank or confused.” 21 The pair also researched the way in which shame “influences vulnerability to mental health problems but also affects expression of symptoms, inabilities to reveal painful information, various forms of avoidance, and problems in help seeking.” 22 If a mother’s ability to self-evaluate is compromised by shame, either internally or externally driven, then her ability to accurately assess her care-taking skills, her acceptance of her baby, and her expected relationship with her baby will not be accurate. This experience can drive maladaptive behaviors.
Peggy Thoits’ study on the well-being of people when they have multiple identities found that having multiple role identities has been shown to lessen psychological distress because the person can manage in a variety of different social situations. Conversely, losing an identity due to an important event [such as becoming a mother] does have psychological consequences. 23
Furthermore, Omer stated that, “The soul crave craves experience. The soul wants to be responsive and impressionable in the midst of an experience.” Here, the stories told by some of the participants showed that when they were in a given situation, and they felt that they could only be in their maternal identity, they experienced feelings of not wanting to be a mother
146 anymore. They felt that they were not given the opportunity to be responsive in a particular moment.
Validity Considerations: At some points, I felt like I was leaping to some conclusions. I see this particularly with Eleanor. Her mild depression may not have stemmed from low confidence.
It might have been there before or be related to something else. Sasha’s story of feeling like a caged animal and not wanting to play with her child also might not be related to low self- confidence. When I hear these stories, and they resonate with my internal structure, it could be a moment of deep empathy, or my anger influenced how I heard their story.
CONCLUSION
This research is framed by the following Research Problem: In what ways does the shame that Western, postmodern parenting ideologies can evoke in mothers impact the development of the maternal identity? This lead to the following research hypothesis: The shame that some mothers feel, as a result of current popular parenting ideologies combined with a disconnect from the maternal line, can impact the development of their maternal identity by diminishing her confidence in her ability 1) to improvise on the spot, 2) to care for herself emotionally and physically, and 3) to allow her other identities to exist along side her mothering identity. The learnings tell a story that responds well to this question. This group of mothers’ narrative starts by actively (or perhaps unconsciously) turning away from their own mothers for guidance as to how to tend to their children. These mothers felt a great need for information but, instead of looking towards their own mothers, they turned towards the Internet, professionals, books, and magazines for advice.
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As the story continued, a major learning of the study emerged. The shame these mothers felt when they assessed themselves as incapable of fulfilling their images of motherhood
(idealized as these images might be) decreased their confidence in their abilities to lovingly tend to their children. In this state of low confidence, these mothers began to try harder and developed coping mechanisms that limited their ability for self-care. On an emotional level, mothers experienced dissatisfaction, and they felt confined to the mother role only, stuck and out of options, that they could not parent the way they would naturally parent, and/or they had a level of such ambivalence towards their children that they had the (fleeting) sensation of not wanting to be a mother anymore.
The study’s hypothesis was as follows: The shame that some mothers feel as a result of following popular parenting ideologies can impact the development of maternal identity by diminishing their confidence, instilling feelings of ambivalence towards their child[ren], negating their own needs, and limiting their ability to improvise solutions to perceived problems on the spot. The overarching narrative did support the hypothesis. Mothers’ responses to the questions and activities throughout the two research meetings clearly showed that the shame-induced low confidence inhibited their ability to improvise, and to care for themselves emotionally and physically, and caused them to feel constricted in their role as mother
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CHAPTER 5
REFLECTIONS
Significance of the Learnings
The original research problem for this study was as follows: In what ways does the shame that Western, postmodern parenting ideologies can evoke in mothers impact the development of the maternal identity? This is a significant topic to study because how a mother builds her identity and how she incorporates her mothering identity into her greater self can create a parenting experience that is flexible and responsive to the numerous unique situations that children put them in while allowing her to remain responsive in domains of life outside of parenthood. If the transition into motherhood is not supported well, then she can be unnecessarily burdened or compromised in how she responds to her child, herself, and her community.
A gap in the literature starts to emerge at the confluence of the culturally prescribed ways of being a parent, identity development, and shame. This leads to the creation of my hypothesis:
The shame that some mothers feel, as a result of current popular parenting ideologies combined with a disconnect from the maternal line, can impact the development of their maternal identity by diminishing her confidence in her ability 1) to improvise on the spot, 2) to care for herself emotionally and physically, and 3) to allow her other identities to exist along side her mothering identity.
The overarching themes that became salient by the end of the research phase create a narrative that strongly supports the hypothesis. It illustrates the far-reaching consequences that some of the modern parenting ideologies have on mothers. The narrative begins with the learnin
149 that these mothers did not go to their own mother for help/guidance. This can be for a variety of reasons. Out of need for guidance and support, these mothers desperately turned to the Internet, media, books, and professionals for help. The story continues as these mothers discussed the ways that by interacting with these sources of information they actually lost confidence in their capabilities to care for their child. This diminished self-confidence created parenting strategies or beliefs that had a debilitating effect on these mothers. The stories that these mothers shared reflected and reinforced the concept that shame, whether coming directly from external sources or the internal perception that they failed to obtain the prescribed goal, kept these mothers in fixed and potentially debilitating ways of thinking. Each detail of the narrative fits and supports the next. The whole narrative combines well to support the hypothesis.
The Loss of the Maternal Line is a significant concept that is a strong cornerstone for the rest of the narrative to build upon. Lowinsky was one of the first theorists to discuss the maternal line in modern times. In her discussions, one idea really relates well to this study. She calls it the “Source of Our Stories.” To begin with, she defines the mother line as a part of an
“oral tradition of lore about conception, pregnancy, birth, and child-rearing.” 1 Women, in the past, freely talked about developing breast and pubic hair, bleeding, being sexual, giving birth, suckling, menopause, and growing old, and still even though the venues have changed from quilting bees to support groups and cafes, women come together and share their experience. 2
She discusses how the mysteries of motherhood are contained within the stories we share that within the stories we share. Drawing from this original work, I define the Maternal Line as the intergenerational sharing of stories that pertain to the struggles and joys of motherhood, how to care for one’s child, and the offerings of support to one another.
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This research shows that there is a loss of this intergenerational line of sharing, caring, and supporting. Each of the mothers in this study showed evidence of turning away from their own mother. Seven mothers directly stated that they would not turn towards their own mother for help, and the remaining mothers indirectly stated this by never mentioning their mother as a source of information, even while other mothers were discussing this. These mothers mentioned several reasons for not turning towards their own mothers: 1) their own mothers did not remember what to do, 2) they do not want to parent like their own mothers, 3) their own parents had invalid parenting methods, and 4) that the current pressure that mothers feel have evolved past what their parents had to manage. I see these reasons being captured by two main concepts
— mother blame and issues stemming from intergenerational attachment.
The History of Motherhood section of the literature review, illustrates that American culture has had a long tradition of telling mothers that they are not mothering correctly it right and that science has a better, more scientifically valid approach to parenting. Stern makes the argument that our culture has gone through great lengths to highlight the potential pitfalls of raising a child such as SIDS, video games, abduction, drug addiction, etc. Simultaneously, that culture has introduced/magnified concern about parental adequacies. 3 The cultural blaming of mothers, over the past 100-plus years, has systematically removed the mother line.
Within American culture is the mother who is blamed when the child is not raised correctly. As Warner wrote,”[culture] tells us that if we [mothers] choose badly, our children will fall prey to countless dangers, from insecure attachment to drugs to kidnapping to a third- rate college. And if this happens, if our children stray from the path toward happiness and success, we will have no one but ourselves to blame.” 4
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This point is supported by the summary of data that Diane Eyer presents. She writes,
“Her [the mother’s] blamers come from every quarter. They are child psychologists and pediatricians whose professional advice she seeks; they are women’s magazines. They are other parents, who see her falling short of their ideals of mothers; they are politicians who use her as a scapegoat; they are the social reformers who want to restore the 1950s family.” 5
Paula Caplan brings the concept to a more personal level. She talks about daughters blaming mothers. This is because the daughter feels that the mother did not live up to the daughter’s idealized version of motherhood. Mothers blame their mothers for being horrible, not for being human. 6 Caplan furthers this point as she lists the descriptive words therapist have shared with her in regards to their client’s mothers: “Engulfing, controlling, intrusive, enmeshed, seductive, overprotective, narcissistic, unavailable, ineffective, and depriving.” 7
Another dimension to the picture of mothers turning away from their own mother comes from the work that Alan Fonagy et al. concludes from his work on intergenerational attachment.
He states that the dynamic between a mother’s attachments to her own mother affects how she attaches to her own children. Numerous investigators have confirmed that a mother’s capacity to regulate and organize her own thoughts and feelings about relationships with her own mother is directly linked to her capacity to regulate, organize, and sensitively respond to needs of her child.8
Daniel Siegel goes on to discuss this concept further. He states in laymen’s terms, “If your mother often left the house without saying good-bye because she didn’t want to hear you cry, your sense of trust would be broken …. after you became a parent yourself, separation experiences might evoke a range of emotional responses.” 9 This intergenerational attachment piece can be a reason why some of these mothers, who did not like the way they were raised,
152 would not go to their own mother for advice. Turning back towards that past relationship might elicit emotions that are too strong. This point is carried further by the research from Susan
Crockenberg and Esther Leerkes. They find that mothers, whose parents failed to let them know that they were loved and valued as children, report sadness and hopelessness throughout the transition to parenthood. 10
All of these reasons — the cultural pressure to be the perfect mom, mother blame, intergenerational attachment — can all lead to the loss of the maternal line, and the majority of the participants named these influences as a reason why they did not turn towards their mother for help. To date, this is the first research that shows the multiple variables that come together to show that there is a fundamental turning away from the maternal linage as a source of knowledge.
This turning away from the maternal line, combined with overtones of intergenerational mother blame, is advised in countless parenting books. Hugh Jolly’s Book of Child Care: The
Complete Guide for Today’s Parents presents a sadly, quite common view on the role of the grandmother:
The modern mother takes for granted that she will have the advice of experts and will not have to rely on the advice of her mother. The previous generation of mothers may not necessarily be the best advisors of the present generation. This is not to belittle the enormous support which grandmothers can give … But the modern mother is less convinced than her predecessors that her mother knows best.11
Dr. Sears, the leading author of the AP ideology and currently the number one bestselling author of parenting books, writes his response to a mother’s question about grandparents on his website:
Now, about leaving the infant with the grandparents: Most of their [grandparents] child- raising experience came at a time when moms were encouraged to separate from their babies at a very early age …. Grandma says, “He doesn’t need to eat yet,” or “Oh, don’t worry, crying is healthy for him.” It’s amazing that some people still think that babies
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need to cry to help their lungs develop …. Then grandma starts asking to keep the baby for an entire weekend! Mom could never allow the baby to stay with someone that doesn’t understand his needs.12
These are just two examples of many, and, even if the books did not directly steer mothers away from their own mothers, they did not recommend this form of sharing information.
As a consequence of the loss of the maternal line, the participants in this study expressed a strong need for information. My co-researcher Brody summarizes this well as he shares how struck he was by how lonely motherhood can be and how these mothers can grasp for information in that loneliness. This brings the narrative to the learning that the Internet, media, books, and professionals can become the mother’s surrogate mother. In this study, every mother stated that they leaned heavily on the Internet, media, books, and professionals as their primary source of information. From the collages they made, one could see how these sources influenced how she built her image of a good mother. These mothers are not alone in this phenomenon.
In a quantitative study conducted in 2009, researchers surveyed 1,018 parents about where they garnered their parenting information. They found that 94 percent of the respondents learned about how to parent from books and magazines followed by 80 percent of the parents getting their information from family and friends. Many parents also received parenting information from school staff (70 percent), friends (68 percent), television (60 percent), and the
Internet (76 percent). 13
Among women, there is a natural tendency to come together and share information. One theory that brings an interesting concept to this phenomenon is Shelly Taylor’s concept of Tend and Befriend. She finds that when women become stressed or feel threatened, they edge more towards tending to the children and befriending their community. This is different from men, who lean more towards the flight or fight mode. Taylor states, “Women’s responses to stress are
154 characterized by patterns that involve caring for offspring under stressful circumstances, joining social groups to reduce vulnerability, and contributing to the development of social groupings, especially those involving female networks, for the exchange of resources and responsibilities.”14
She goes on to say that the Tend and Befriend pattern of responses to stress may be “maintained not only by sex-linked neuroendocrine responses to stress but by social and cultural roles as well.” 15 This relates well to this body of research. Becoming a mother is a stressful endeavor and that process innately drives a desire to reach out and create community and share information. If her own maternal lineage is not intact, then a woman will seek out information from other sources. Unfortunately, these sources might not know or understand the mother’s unique needs and situation.
Another concept that can enhance this learning is the concept of the initiatory experience.
Initiatory experiences, those powerful life-changing moments such as becoming a mother, ask us to develop a new self. In order to go through this process, there needs to be a guide, an initiator.
Omer discusses this dynamic in a lecture on the Mother Principle. One topic that he discusses is the idea of choosing information over initiation, and, if we chose initiation, that brings us to the question “Who is going to initiate us?” In the absence of the maternal line, the initiator is gone.
In the absence of this initiatory experience, mothers turn to information. Omer offers a beautiful metaphor about the difference between being informed and being transformed. He states that it is the difference between “Knowing how to make a sword verses being a person trustworthy enough to carry the sword.” 16
The evolution of our culture has moved from the Industrial Age to the Age of
Information. Mothers can now get numerous answers to their questions within seconds, so where does this leave women who are developing their identity as mothers? Ava Neyer did an
155 excellent job highlighting all the conflicting information that is given to parents just in the area of sleep. She went to Amazon and bought all the sleep books then posted a summary of all the strategies in her Huffington Post blog. She writes:
You shouldn't sleep train at all, before a year, before 6 months, or before 4 months, but if you wait too late, your baby will never be able to sleep without you. College-aged children never need to be nursed, rocked, helped to sleep, so don't worry about any bad habits. Nursing, rocking, singing, swaddling, etc. to sleep are all bad habits and should be stopped immediately …. Naps should only be taken in the bed, never in a swing, carseat, stroller, or when worn …. If your baby has trouble falling asleep in the bed, put them in a swing, carseat, stroller, or wear them …. Co-sleeping is the best way to get sleep, except that it can kill your baby, so never ever do it. 17
This brief snapshot shows the volume of conflicting information, the level of detail that that these ideologies can make, and, when one reads further into these points of view, one would find that each ideological position presents a strong and sometimes frightening data set to support their claims. This learning shows that all of this has a negative effect on mothers. It creates an idealized image of what a good mother should be and provides a detailed description of what she should do.
The turning away from the maternal line towards the use of cultural sources leads to one of the more pertinent learnings from this research. The next section in the narrative examines how influential these ideologies are on mothers as they built their maternal identity. These mothers, who have turned to the Internet, media, books, and professionals, were craving information, and the information they received strongly influenced the mother’s strategies in dealing with their children. In this case, these philosophical points of view and strategies did decrease her confidence in her mothering abilities. Each of the mothers in this study wrestled with the mechanics of tending to her child in the prescribed way. Each of these mothers experienced failure, and here the perceived failure stemmed from feeling like she was not
156 following the directions well enough or felt that she was being judged for not thoroughly following the chosen or right ideology.
It is well known that a person builds identity out of successes and failures. As a person navigates their way through the identity building process, they can structure their identity in ways that manage or mitigate the sometimes painful and overwhelming feelings of inadequacy, being inept, insufficient, incapable, etc. 18 Mothers build their motherhood identity the same way, and, as a way to circumvent these feelings, they look for strategies that allow them to feel successful with her child.
This learning expands and deepens as it gets incorporated into the Becoming a Mother literature. Lina Badr defines “Maternal Self Confidence” as “the perception mothers have of their ability to care for and understand their infants.” 19 Mothers build their self-confidence, as
Reva Rubin’s research shows, by first adhering to the existing models. Through trial and error and exploration, combined with getting to know their child, they dedifferentiate from the models, and their identity is achieved. 20 Perceiving that they are meeting their children’s needs in a variety of different parenting situations is an important step in dedifferentiation from the models and developing their own maternal identity. She goes on to state that the motherhood identity has been established when the mother has “intimate knowledge of her infant such that she feels competency and confident in her mothering activities and feels love for her infant.” 21 If a mother does not feel comfortable going through the trial and error process because she fears the errors that could occur, then she is stuck with the models.
These mothers showed the shame that accompanied those moments of perceived failure and diminished her confidence. Comments such as, “ …. I was thinking, ‘Oh, I am a bad mom.’
That video reinforced the notion [the ideologically driven notion] that I need to engage with my
157 child every minute.” “I can’t have conversations, and do things, not naturally anyway [because I have to parent in a certain way].” “What the f..k is wrong with me [when the outcome differs from what the books said].” “AP became a possession over me [there was no other way to parent.].”, and “No matter what I am doing, I am doing it wrong” edify this learning.
What I see as a bigger issue is that the books create a one-dimensional view of how to parent, and this can lead to failure. James Hillman writes about monotheistic vs. pluralistic beliefs. He states, “That is also the reason why our time has become so utterly godless and profane: we lack all knowledge of the unconscious psyche and pursue the cult of consciousness to the exclusion of all else. Our true religion is a monotheism of consciousness, a possession by it, coupled with a fanatical denial of the existence of fragmentary autonomous systems.” 22
Omer deepens this description when he talks about cultural gatekeepers, the voices from the culture that restrict experience. 23 I see this applying to mothers as they are pushed into a one- dimensional approach to parenting while denying or being denied all the other approaches that do exist, even the wisdom that the grandmothers hold. Michael Meade states, “When culture forgets to assist its members through necessary changes [and instead shames them], the passage happens with less awareness, usually with less consciousness and eventually with a loss of continuity throughout society.” 24
The hypothesis posed the idea that as mothers experience the shaming effects of culture, their confidence is decreased and their ability to incorporate their mothering identity into their greater self is compromised. As this narrative culminates, this research illustrates the ramifications for these mothers as they struggle to gain their confidence. Their individual stories showed them unnecessarily trying harder, sometimes at the expense of their own well-being, fatigued, at a loss for finding creative solutions to their perceived problems, unable to have
158 experiences outside of the mothering role which could have lead to their fleeting sensations of not wanting to be a mother any more (maternal ambivalence).
These learnings are essential to this whole story because they point to the tangible ramifications of mothers who are shamed into low confidence or pigeon holed into a fixed identity. It highlights the need for mothers to develop their own parenting voice because there are real consequences. I look to Omer’s discussions about identity development to expand this learning more, he states that we all pass through experiences or domains of life. These domains can place us in a multitude of situations that could be dangerous, involve loss, or have some element of unpredictability. A person passing through these domains works hard not to have feelings of being inadequate, incapable, etc. That person develops an adaptive identity that has developed powerful coping strategies that mitigate these feelings. He goes on to say that
Cultural Gatekeepers are one influence that can restrict or prohibit a person’s experience as they pass through certain domains of life. 25
In this case, the experience or domain is becoming a mother, and these mothers are affected by the Cultural Gatekeepers that come through the Internet, media, books, and professionals. As these mothers interact with the multitude of situations that a child can place her in, the mothers, in this study, turned to the media for guidance. The shaming effect that these mothers experienced as a result of their interaction with the media generated feelings of inadequacy, ineptness, incompetence, insufficiencies, etc. 26 These Cultural Gatekeepers hindered the initiatory process that these mothers needed to go through, and they were starting to create adaptive identities.
These mothers managed their shame-riddled experiences by beginning to form an identity that attempted to mitigate painful [being judged as a bad mother], potentially dangerous [fearing
159 that you are harming your child], or unpredictable [the reality of parenting not matching the ideology] experiences. Identities that have this one-dimensional aspect will exhibit symptoms because one’s soul, the part of ourselves that has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart, and personal substance, wants to be responsive and impressionable in the midst of an experience. 27
These adaptive identities limit one’s ability to respond to the multitude of situations that exist in life, thus eliciting reactions. In these reactive states, mothers’ do not have choices. 28
Clarissa Estes discusses some of the outcomes that women feel when they are severed from their soul or limited in the ways they can respond. In her words, they have lost the archetypal Wild Woman. She states that women can feel “powerless, chronically doubtful, confused, gagged, without inspiration, chronically fuming, compressed, fatigue, frail, depressed, muzzled, etc.” 29 Although Estes was referring to women in general, these feeling states were strongly represented in the mothers’ responses in this research. These mothers stated, “I feel like
I am out of options, I am depressed, I am angry, confused, feel limited in my role, not able to be anything but a mother, trying harder,” and ended with expressing moments of not wanting to be a mother any more.
As discussed in the literature review, the research that Mauther and Choi conducted show this type of outcome as well. Choi sees that women would rather work harder at the same task when they had feelings of inadequacy, and Mauther finds that PPD occurs when “women are unable to experience, express, and validate their feelings and needs within supportive, accepting and nonjudgmental interpersonal relationships and cultural contexts.” 30 Neither one of these studies mentions shame as the driving affective cause, but I would guess that culturally-induced shame was a part of those mothers’ experiences.
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In the Becoming a Mother theory, the mother’s process of expanding herself to incorporate this new identity is a critical step. The feelings that several mothers shared about being constricted, not knowing what else to be except being a mother, or only being seen as a mother points to the process of trying to integrate the motherhood identity into her whole being.
It brings to light that within us there are multiple identities. Peggy Thoits’ study finds that having multiple identities supports a person’s well-being. She find that having multiple role- identities has been shown to lessen psychological distress because the person can manage in a variety of different social situations. Conversely, losing an identity due to an important event
[becoming a mother] does have psychological consequences. 31
Furthermore, Omer states that “The soul craves experience. The soul wants to be responsive and impressionable in the midst of an experience.” Here, the stories told by some of the participants show that when they were in a given situation, they felt that they could only be in their maternal identity. They could not give voice to their career dreams or find creative outlets that did not involve the child. I see this experience leading to maternal ambivalence, the feeling of not wanting to be a mother any more.
Mythic and Archetypal Reflections
Finding a myth that encompasses this aspect of motherhood is a circuitous process.
Joseph Campbell summarizes this process well as he writes, “many of the difficulties that women face today follow from the fact that they are moving into a field of action in the world that was formerly reserved for the male and for which there are no female mythological models.”32 Motherhood is not one of those fields that used to be reserved for men, but mothers are working mothers and are expected to perform tasks as well as men while maintaining the
161 perfect mother image. In addition to this, more men are now the authority on how to best raise one’s child. This list includes Bandura, Winnicott, Dr. Spock, Stanley Greenspan, Harvey Karp,
Dr. Sears, J.J McKenna, Dr. Jay Gordon, and the list goes on. These are the men who are currently shaping the parenting conversation.
The combination of that type of male lineage guiding women through motherhood and the Loss of the Maternal Line, leads one to the myth of Athena to give historical context for this soul-worthy experience. Athena did not know she had a mother. She was born from her father’s forehead. This is where the parallel experience ends. Athena was a virgin therefore, we cannot see if there were any mythical implications of having such a beginning.
While rereading Estes’ book Women Who Run With the Wolves, I stumbled across the myth of the ugly duckling. I almost overlooked this myth because I remembered it as a story of an ugly baby who grows up to be beautiful. That is the common take from this story. A lesser theme that I did not remember is that the duckling was with the wrong mother, and that is where it gets interesting.
Hans Christian Andersen’s original story begins with a mother duck sitting on her eggs, and, within her clutch of eggs, lays a larger one. All of the normal-sized eggs hatch, and while the mother wonders why the larger one did not hatch, an old duck comes by. That duck says that the mother should not waste her time on that egg. That is not a proper egg at all. Nevertheless, the mother decides to continue to sit on it. After the larger egg hatches and the ugly duckling emerges, the mother sees some beauty in the odd little bird. She says, “Yes, he’s one of my own, even though he’s very peculiar in appearance. But actually, in the right light … he is almost handsome.” Here we can see that she has some affection towards the baby and is willing to raise him.
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When the mother duck presents her babies to the barn animals, the other animals immediately attack the ugly duckling by biting his neck, hissing, and screeching at him. At first his mother defends him, but, in the end, she pushes him away. The duck proceeds to have a series of adventures on his own until he grows into the beautiful swan and finds his tribe.
Estes does an excellent job highlighting the kinds of mothers the duck mother represents in this myth. She describes the ambivalent mother, the collapsed mother, and the child mother or the unmothered mother.
Estes describes the duck while sitting on her eggs as the unmothered mother or child mother. This mother duck is new to the experience and needs to be nurtured by another mother into her role. Because of her fragile state, she allows her baby duck to become battered and beaten. The naive and fragile new mother is like a child, and she needs guidance and support from the grandmothers. It can be in the form of physically helping or the intuitive touch that lets the new mother know she is not alone. Estes states:
A woman with a child-mother within takes on the aura of a child pretending to be a mother. Women in this state often have an undifferentiated “long live everything” attitude, a “do everything, be everything to everyone” brand of hyper-momism. They are not able to guide and support their child…the child-mother leaves the child battered and bedraggled …. She also has a weakened instinctual ability to imagine what will happen one hour, one week, one month, one year, five year from now. 33
This insight into this myth fits well for this research. The idea of the unmothered mother is the foundation which all other research learnings sprang from. It is interesting that Estes takes this awareness into the ideology of hyper-momism, one of the primary issues that the mothers in this study were struggling with. The idea that the child-mother gives destructive attention is powerful and will be discussed in the implications section when I talk about child abuse.
The next insight that Estes reveals is the concept of the collapsed mother. She describes it beautifully when the mother duck becomes increasingly pressured to get rid of the ugly duck,
163 and she collapses under the weight if that pressure. She can no longer tolerate the pressure from the community and gets rid of the child she helped bring into the world. She goes on to talk about the symptoms of this fallout. She states that “When a woman has a collapsing mother construct within her psyche and/or her culture, she is wobbly about her worth. She may feel that choices between fulfilling outer demands and the demands of soul are life-and-death issues.” 34
Again, this fits the learnings from this research very accurately. The stories that these mothers told can denote the maternal collapse that happened under the weight of cultural pressure, i.e., shame. These mothers’ did talk about their self-worth as they discussed their low confidence in being a good mother. They all expressed the pressure they felt to meet the outer demands while trying to do what they felt was right.
The last insight that Estes shares in her book is the idea of the Ambivalent Mother. She characterizes this type of mother with having conflicting feelings. In this story, the duck is conflicted about whether or not to keep the duckling. If she keeps it, she is at risk of being harmed by the community. If she gets rid of it, she is safe, but she loses one of her babies. She is experiencing the pull of self-preservation, the pull of wanting to belong, and the pull of
“responding to the fear that she and her child will be punished, persecuted, or killed by the village.” 35 Estes states, “When a woman has this ambivalent mother construct in her own psyche, she may find herself giving in too easily; she may find herself afraid to take a stand, to demand respect, to assert her right to do it, learn it, live it in her own way.” 36
This description does have some parallels to the research and it differs some from
Parker’s definition of maternal ambivalence. However, between the two definitions, the takeaway is shared. In comparing these two definitions in relation to the data, the feelings of the mothers who did not want to be a mother anymore stemmed from her inability to take a stand for
164 what she truly wanted to do. She was not allowed to have any other identity except being a mother. In one case, a mother wanted to develop her own career and felt that she could not do so because she felt that she had to be a mother only. This brings together the idea that she was afraid to take a stand because she did not want to be pushed out of the mothering community, thus leading to the fleeting feelings of not wanting her child any more.
Implications of the Study
The other night I was at a dinner party sitting with some mothers. I decided to share the learning about the Loss of the Maternal Line with them to solicit their impressions. One of the mothers shared that her mother had passed away four years ago and that she longed to ask her mother questions. What she said struck me. She said, “I never really followed the advice my mother gave me, but I miss the relationship. So I would call her for a recipe just to talk to her. I never used the recipe. I just liked making that connection.”
I struggled with the learning about the Loss of the Maternal Line. I did not want to go to my mother for help when I was a new mother. I did not want to be told what to do, and I felt like the information she held was not relevant to my current parenting situation. In addition to that, I wanted to raise my children differently.
In my line of work, I hear repeated stories of the grandmothers giving wrong advice and causing more issues than they are solving or that there was too much unresolved emotional issues for the new mom to turn towards her own mother for guidance. And yet, here is a narrative that points to the importance of the maternal line. It brings up conflicting feelings. Am
I supposed to turn to my own mother, or do I continue the way I have been?
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A part of me longs to sit with the grandmothers and hear their stories and glean insights from their experiences. There is also a part of me that feels I cannot handle that. My rational mind discredits their words because, it is true, some of it is not relevant to modern times. We do not put our babies on their stomachs to sleep. Letting them cry in their own room does not always work. Letting the kids run free throughout the neighborhoods is not always applicable.
Technology does have a strong foothold in the house and has to be managed. And the grandmothers probably had struggles too — not the same ones, but they struggled to make the right decisions the same way we do. Lowinsky brings in a bigger, more comforting idea about the Motherline. She states, “When we listen to stories from the Motherline, we hear of no perfection. We don’t even hear ‘good-enough’ stories. What is good enough about postpartum depression, the death of mothers and grandmothers in childbirth, the loss of young children to childhood diseases? Whose Motherline does not contain such tragedy?” 37 As we listen to these stories, there is the perennial struggle that we all feel and experience.
My struggle deepens because I fully believe that the majority of the parenting books that exist out there are having a negative impact on mothers. If a mother is not comfortable going to her mother for guidance or emotional support and she is being harmed by the parenting books, where does this leave her? I just want to yell, “F..ck it! I am going to live on a 100-acre farm with no one else but my family.”
The pivotal point in my journey comes from hearing my friend’s story, reflecting on my relationships with other mothers, and reading Estes’ point of the grandmothers giving the intuitive hug just when we need it. I realize that I do not need to be told what to do. I do not need to be told that I am a good mother because that means there is the potential to feel the shame of being a bad mother. What I need is to be able to simply share my story, and I love
166 hearing other people’s stories — no interpreting, fixing, healing, or converting, just being together and sharing stories. This is the sacred circle that I crave, and mothers create that naturally whenever we are together. Through this insight, I am loving listening to my own mother’s stories. I do not feel like I have to do anything or change anything, just listen and sometimes laugh. Through this listening, I hear the wisdom she has to offer.
These lessons do have implications for the work I do. Currently, I am a Pediatric Sleep
Consultant and Parent Coach. Families come to me confused, overwhelmed, exhausted, anxious, depressed, and frustrated because they have read all of the books and nothing has helped. I find that there are times when I can easily drop into “fix it” mode and move on to the next client, but their presenting story needs so much more attention. It is about allowing those stories to unfold and to keep asking questions that allow their story to deepen. I empathize with them in a way that lets them know they are not alone in their struggles and that we will learn about their child together. I have found that this helps them build confidence in their parenting abilities so they can move forward without me. It is not about me coming in patching them back together. It is about the process of learning together so they can be confident in parenting their child.
These learnings bring me to an even bigger picture, the Soul of Motherhood. This is a multifaceted concept that can be flushed out in numerous ways. I see this as having the greatest impact on the professionals who interact with mothers: the lactation consultants, the pediatricians, the support group leaders, the sleep consultants, the how-to book writers, the bloggers, etc. Within this idea of the Soul of Motherhood there are several facets that need to be addressed: 1) the initiatory experience for mothers, 2) the truth that sometimes motherhood is not joyful even though everyone says that it should be, 3) the necessity of bringing the grandmothers
167 back into the conversation, 4) the recognition of the multiplicity of experiences, and 5) the development of Maternal Self-Compassion.
Reclaiming the initiatory experience for mothers is necessary. In a presentation Michael
Meade states “Initiation does not make people successful; it makes them deep and knowledgable.” 38 Becoming a mother is one of the last fully embodied initiatory experiences left in American culture. Davis-Floyd’s book states that birth rituals, which used to take place in natural setting, are just as elaborate now, only we use the medically endorsed ritual in a hospital.
This type of ritual, the “routine obstetrical procedures such as intravenous feeding, electronic monitory, and episiotomy are felt by those who perform them to transform the unpredictable and uncontrolled natural process of birth into a relatively predictable and controllable technological phenomenon that reinforces American society’s most fundamental beliefs about the superiority of technology over nature.” 39
This type of indoctrination into the superiority of technology I see as a beginnings of the mother’s quest for mastery over parenting as opposed to being in the mystery of parenting. This brings me to the concept of Mastery vs. Mystery. Lowinsky called it Mastery vs. Mystique, but I see it differently. In the age of technology, The Information Age, mothers can get answers to questions they never knew they had. It can take one out of the moment of standing in the mystery with the child, and instead asking the simple questions of “What does my child need?
What do I need?” I am not sure that one can ever be a master parent. This implies a level of perfection that I am not sure can exist in the parenting world. Mothers can feel good about what they are doing, but there comes a time when one does second-guess one’s parenting choices.
The initiatory process is not just the birth; birth is just the beginning. As Mercer explains in her theory of Becoming a Mother, a mother can get a sense of ease in her role, but
168 she is constantly having to redefine and reconstruct herself as the child moves through each developmental stage. 40 It is important for mothers to create an identity that is flexible and adaptable as they move with the child through all of the developmental phases. Omer provides a metaphor for this when he describes the “‘I’ being carried by the river of imagination. If we are thrown to the banks, we become stuck and fundamentalism arises. Inherent in fundamentalism is the loss of the imagination. When we are carried by the river we can develop the capacity to hold the mystery.” He concludes by saying that “The imagination is the core of our intelligence.” 41
The quest for mastery can give rise to fundamental structures that limit a mother’s ability to imagine into the future, to imagine new ways to be with her child, and to develop the empathic imagination that helps support her and her child’s emotional well-being.
One way to support the initiatory experience is to bring the grandmothers back into the conversation. They might not hold all the information that would make us master parents. What they do hold is the soul’s information about the struggle, the initiatory experience of becoming a mother. Within the storytelling that can happen between women, there is a tending to the soul.
Thomas Moore states that by sharing the stories, “it helps us see the themes that circle in our lives, the deep themes that tell the myths we live.” 42
There is a pull to join with the mothers as they express the hurt, anger, and sadness that they feel towards their own mothers. I do not want to dishonor their experience because there is validity in that, but, as Jung describes in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul, it is not an either/or, black-and-white position. We cannot exclude one for the sake of the other. It needs to be an inclusive process, and it is not an easy task. 43 By bringing the grandmothers back to the table, culture can evolve. Mead states that, “Culture is remade by the vision of the youth and the wisdom of the elders.” 44
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The next two concepts that arise from the Soul of Motherhood couple with each other nicely. Allowing for the multiplicity of experiences while letting go of the perfect mother myth, in which mothers have to be happy all of the time, mothers can create identities that are flexible and adaptable. As the data indicates, there is a range of experiences within motherhood. There are times when mothers do not want to be mothers anymore. There are times when they feel deep rage towards the child. There are also times of great joy and serenity that can only happen with children. Moore discusses this when he describes the soul. He states, “A soulful personality is complicated, multifaceted, and shaped by both pain and pleasure, success and failures. Life lived soulfully is not without its moments of darkness and periods of foolishness.
Dropping the salvation fantasy frees us up to the possibility of self-knowledge and self- acceptance, which are the very foundations of soul.” 45 There is information to be gleaned when mothers allow these darker feelings in a safe and contained place.
Finally, in order to grow from these experiences and not collapse from the pressure and difficulties of parenting, the development of Maternal Self-Compassion can help support this process. This highlights the importance in understanding and turning towards the shameful moments mother can have and reflecting on them. It is challenging work because, as Helen
Lewis writes in her groundbreaking book, “Part of the difficulty in admitting shame to oneself arises from reluctance to recognize that one has built [themselves] on false assumptions about what the world one lives in and about the way others will respond to oneself.” 46 The understanding that comes from turning towards shame is, as Omer states, that “if we turn towards shame with reflective awareness, it is transmuted into dignity, autonomy, and humility.”
47
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Omer then discusses that with this turning towards shame, there comes the necessity to develop the voice of the “Friend.” Omer defines this as, “those deep potentials of the soul which let us proceed with passionate objectivity and encourages us to align with the creative will of the cosmos.” 48 He goes on to say, “The Friend can be the constant support, a touchstone of reality, while undergoing identity transformation.” 49
Kristin Neff offers another concept that can utilize aspects of the Friend. This concept is called, “Self-Compassion.” Neff describes self-compassion as “being touched by and open to one’s own suffering, not avoiding or disconnecting from it, and generating the desire to alleviate one’s suffering and to heal oneself with kindness. Self-compassion also involves offering nonjudgmental understanding [the Friend] to one’s pain, inadequacies and failures, so that one’s experience is seen as part of the larger human experience.” 50
I define Maternal Self-Compassion as the process that mothers undertake in order to expand their capacities. It is the gentle turning towards one’s reactions, in any given parenting moment, to nonjudgmentally and objectively explore one’s perceived failures and inadequacies in order to gain expanded points of view.
Mothers who are supported through their initiatory journey and have a strong connection with the source of their stories have the potential to develop a strong sense of who they are as a parent — a strong yet flexible maternal identity. With this strong sense of self, there can potentially be a lessening of Perinatal Mood Disorders, greater flexibility as the child matures or hits developmental stumbling blocks, and potentially less child abuse.
There are studies that show that PPD affects how mothers obtain her role. 51 I propose that when mothers struggle to gain confidence and, therefore, their identity, there is a greater propensity towards PPD. This idea is touched on in Mauthner’s research. She finds that one
171 way PPD occurs is when “Women are unable to experience, express, and validate their feeling and needs within a supportive, accepting and nonjudgmental interpersonal relationship and cultural contexts.” 52 This means a relationship free of shame that they can express in. This in turn will help support their burgeoning identity.
Estes touches on the idea of the mother who has collapsed under the weight of the cultural pressure, or who has not been mothered into being a mother, who can “tortures her offspring with various forms of destructive attention and in some cases a lack of useful attention.” 53 Here again is addition encouragement that points to the necessity of supporting mothers while they develop their maternal identity. A strong sense of self affords a person multiple capacities that helps them favorably respond to adverse challenges.
I see several studies that could help augment this study. The first one is to test the idea of
Maternal Self-Compassion (MSC). This is definitely a new idea and it would be wonderful to explore all the ways a mother can build this within her. It is important to distinguish MSC from self-compassion. Maternal Self-Compassion is developed in direct relationship with the child, and it helps mothers counter the shameful moments that she can have around raising her child. It can help develop reflective awareness and mindfulness that can allow her to be accountable for her actions as well as practicing dignity, autonomy, and pride in what she does do well.
I would also be interested in expanding this work into the grandmother population to better learn of their experience. My guess is that they were influenced by cultural shame as well, and I am curious if this shame is passed to the daughters in that the grandmothers encourage the daughters to go to the media for help.
In addition to this study, I am curious if helping the grandmothers understand their role in the maternal line would affect the maternal line. Would it start to reestablish it? Would it give
172 the grandmothers the reflective awareness that could start to heal the divide between the grandmothers and mothers? It does seem like one would have to work both ends of the relationship to start to bring it back together again.
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ETHICS APPLICATION
Participant Population: a) Describe the population and how you will obtain them; b) Discuss your inclusion and exclusion criteria; c) Provide the total number of participants to be studied.
The population I am conducting research on is first time mothers, with babies four to 12 months old, who have low maternal self-confidence and primarily utilize external sources as a guide in their parenting decisions. I will screen out mothers who gather information primarily from family, spouses, and close friends. There is no age or ethnicity requirement. I will be recruiting them through doctor offices, new mother groups, flyers, and other professionals who come into contact with new mothers. The flyers will read as follows: This research study’s focus is on understanding the ways that new mothers build their confidence in their ability to take care of the baby physically and emotionally. Then it lists the two criteria: 1) Must have baby 4-12 months, 2) Experiencing confusion about the best mothering practices.
The participants in this research will have babies ages four to 12 months. There are several studies that show that the first three months are naturally periods of low maternal confidence. After time and experience, most mothers’ confidence in their ability to care for their child increases. 54 This study focuses on the population whose confidence is not progressing.
Maternal Confidence will be screened through the use of the The Maternal Confidence questionnaire (MCQ). This was developed by Parker and Zahr in 1985. It includes 14 questions that specially ask mothers how confident they are in enacting specific mothering tasks such as “I know when my baby wants me to play with him/her,” and “I can tell when my baby is tired and needs to sleep.” Participants who will be included into the research pool respond to the questionnaire by checking the “sometimes” or lower on two or more questions on the MCQ.
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In addition to the MCQ, I will be asking three other questions during the interview process: 1) Please describe where you get your information on how to best take care of your baby, 2) Do you have a particular philosophy/parenting style that you follow? and 3) Have you been diagnosed with PPA or PPD? If so, are you currently in treatment or have you been in treatment? These questions are geared toward understand the sources of their parenting information and how strictly they adhere to these philosophies. To be included into the research project, they need to indicate that there primary source of information comes from meso- and macro contexts, meaning media, internet, books, magazines, blogs, new mother parenting support groups, and professionals in the mother with baby profession.
The question asking about PPD and PPA is to gain an understanding of a mental health before starting the research project. Due to the nature of the research, mothers who display symptoms of PPD and PPA need to have special consideration. They need to either be in therapy or have the symptoms under control before starting the research project.
The final screening will come with the Mother/Baby Management Questionnaire. This questionnaire screens mothers on their willingness and ability to separate from their baby for five hours. The questions are 1) How difficult is it for you to separate from your baby for the better half of a day? 2) Are you comfortable leaving your child in the care of some one else? 3) Are you able to manage your milk supply for five hours? 6) Is your baby able to be soothed or feed without the breast? To ensure the mother’s ability to stay for the whole research process and that the baby will not be in psychological distress, the successful candidate will need to be able to separate from their baby for five hours, be comfortable with someone else taking care of their baby, and be confident that the baby’s only source of comfort is not the breast.
Based on these criteria I will be selecting 10 mothers.
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Describe all procedures which will involve the research participants. Include all aspects of how you will ask for their involvement:
There will be several times throughout this study the participants will be asked to participate. These occasions fall into three areas of participation: screening, evoking, and expressing their experience. Screening will involve a 10-minute phone conversation going through the questionnaires. During the evoking phase they will be asked to watch a five-minute video about motherhood and witness a group of professionals discuss “The best practices for raising an emotionally and physically healthy child.” During the expressing phase, there will be numerous points of participation: 1) collage work, 2) sharing of journaling, 3) sharing how they are affected by hearing the professionals talk, and 4) sharing in small group.
Participants will respond to the flyers either by phone or email. At that point we will schedule a time for the screening to occur. I will either call or email them stating, “Thank you for responding to the flyer. Our next step is to complete the screening process. The screening process involves me asking you a series of questions. The aim of the questions is to ensure that your experience as a new mother fits the criteria of this study. This process takes roughly 10- to
15-minutes is there a good time for us to do that?”
Once the time has been schedule for the screening process, then I will call them to go through the MCQ and my list of questions. I will start by writing their name on the top of the forms then commence to reading the questions. These questions are listed in Appendix A:
Screening Questionnaire and Mother/Baby Management Questionnaire. In concluding the call, I will state, “Thank you for your time. I will let you know within one week’s time if what you shared matches the profile of the population that I want to study. Is it better to notify you by phone or email? Again, thank you for your time with this.”
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Letting them know if they were rejected from the participant pool will involve either a phone call or email, depending on their expressed preference of notification. The communication will state, “Thank you for your time interviewing for this research project. Due to the specific nature of this research, some of the information that you provided about your experience did not fit into the participant profile needed for this research project. Please let me know if you have any questions about this. Warmly, Meggan.”
Participants who have been selected for this research will be notified either by phone or email. I will tell them, “I am letting you know that you have been selected for this research study. The first meeting will be held on a Saturday. Once I have made the finalized all the participants for the study, I will notify you of the specific date. Are there any times you know will not work due to family vacation or such? Will you be needing childcare? So as soon as I know the date, I will notify you immediately. Do you have any questions?”
The introduction will include introducing myself, my co-researchers, information about practicalities, brief introduction to the research, signing the consent form, description of the activities, and participants introducing themselves. Introducing myself will start with my saying,
“Hi everyone. I am really happy that you all could make it today. We have lots of logistical items to go over before we actually begin the research, so I am going start. I will start by introducing myself and my co-researchers. My name is Meggan Hartman. I have my masters in psychology, and this research is for my Ph.D. I specialize in working with families with babies zero to four years old. These are my two co-researchers, Rebecca Winthrow and Brody
Hartman. They have been selected as my co-researchers because they have a specialty in working with children, mothers, and research. They are here to help me with logistics and to gather information about the key moments we have together.”
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Information about the practicalities: “A general lay out of the space that we are in. If you need to use the bathroom, the bathrooms are located ______. If you need to place something in the fridge like breast milk, then the fridge is ______. If your babies are here today, they will be ______. Are there any questions about those sorts of things?”
Brief introduction to the research: “The aim of this study is to gain a greater understanding of the ways in which our culture, through the use of media, books, professionals, internet, and mom support groups affects new mothers.” If there are questions that come from this introduction, I will state, “I need to be careful in answering these questions because I do not want to bias or unconsciously influence your experience. Sometimes, something as simple as one word can change the trajectory of thought, so in order to keep your experience uniquely yours, I am going to refrain from answering that question for now.”
Signing of the informed consent: “Next we will be reviewing the informed consent. This form covers confidentiality information, potential benefits to the participants, potential risks of the study, freedom to withdraw, that participation is voluntary, and where to direct any questions or concerns about this research project. I will start by reading the form, then seeing if there are any questions, then end with you signing the form if you chose to participate. Any questions?
Okay here are the pens to sign, and you will be receiving a copy of this form as well.”
Overview of the day and intro to research methods: “Giving you an overview of the flow of the day. We will be starting the research at 9:45am and that will start with you all introducing yourself. I will be asking you to share your name and your baby’s name and age. And I would like you to share the reasons you were drawn to this research. At that point we will be moving into the formal research phase. There will be several components to this. In the beginning I will be asking you to watch a series of images and listen to some people talk. During these sessions,
178 all I want you to do is to track how your reactions to what you are hearing and saying. Also during this beginning phase I will be asking you to do some collage work. At that point I will be asking you to have a discussion about the topics I present. I will close the day by reviewing some light homework that I would like you to do over the next couple of weeks. There will be a
30-minute break at 12-noon. This is a good time to breastfeed your baby, pump, eat lunch, and rest. In an effort to maintain the spirit of the research, I request that this break be taken in silence. We will be ending at 2:15 today.
I will be asking you to participate in a couple of different ways today. I want to take a moment to go over these now so you have an idea of what to expect. I will also review the procedures right before we actually do the activity. The first activity I will be asking you to create a collage. I will be laying out the images and asking you to select five to 10 images. You can arrange them however it makes sense to you. After that I will be handing you a journal. The questions that I would like you to write about are written in the journal.
The next thing that we will be watching is something we call a fishbowl. I will be bringing in a group of professionals who work with mothers. They will be coming to the center of the group, and you will be sitting on the outside. All you have to do is listen to them talk. I do request that you do not interject into their conversation or ask them any questions while they are talking. This will be just a time for them to talk and for you to listen and tract how you are affected.
There will be a group sharing sessions where you will be invited into the center to talk.
The only folks who will be there for these will be all of us in the room. The professionals will not be there. I will be asking you a series of questions, and I ask that you to share your feelings/reactions about those questions. When someone is sharing in the group, it is important
179 not to interject into their sharing, so, please do not ask any questions, share any comments, or share any overt physical gestures. Be mindful about laughing while someone is sharing. I love laughter; it is one of my favorite things, but it is important to try to hold back from that while someone else is sharing. The primary reason is that what might strike you as funny might not be funny to the person who is sharing. I ask that in between people’s sharing to let the group sit in quiet for a minute. This guarantees that the participant is finished as well as allowing that person’s words to linger in the group. That is the basics of what we will be doing with our time together. Are you ready to start? Are there any questions?”
During the evoking phase, there will not be a lot of interaction. Their involvement will simply be to observe and track how they are affected by seeing the images and hearing the professionals talk. For the video, I will instruct them to, “Sit here and watch this five minute video. I want you to notice if there is a particular images that strikes you. I want you to notice how you are affected by the images.”
Setting up the actual activity of listening to the professionals talking, I will advise the participants to “Take a seat in a large circle. There will be a group of professionals entering into the center. They will be discussing, ‘what are the best parenting practices that a new mother can do in order to establish an emotionally and physically healthy child. And why are these practices so important?’ I want you to notice if there is a particular philosophy, point made, or particular professional that caught your attention. I also want you to notice how you are affected by them talking.”
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Expressing Their Experience
For the collage work, I have a box of over 250 precut and laminated images. I will add to this box numerous images of motherhood. After the video, the participant will be instructed to
“Select the five to 10 images that you feel best represents what it is to be a good mother, and arrange them in a way that makes the most sense to you.” Then they will be asked to complete the questions in their journal. This journal will be pre-made. The questions are as follows: What do these images represent? What is the relationship between these images? What influenced you when you were selecting these images? In what ways are you not living up to these images?
After the closing of the professional group, I will have the participants enter into a forum.
I will arrange the chairs in a circle, then place a chair into the middle of the group. I will advise the participants that “Now that the pros are gone, I am placing this chair here as a representation of the professionals. You can say anything you like to the professionals.”
Based on the participant’s responses in the larger group, they will be broken into smaller groups. In these smaller groups, I will have the participants talk about how they are affected by seeing the images in the video and hearing the professionals talk. They will be asked to respond to the following questions designed to elicit their subjective experience: “What is the feeling in your body? In what ways do you feel like you are excelling as a mother? In what ways are you feeling like you are failing as a mother? When you heard the professionals talk, what did you disagree with and what resonated with you? Is there anything you are scared to discuss? If so, what?”
The next series of questions are designed to have the participants express the voice of the gatekeeper. “What do you feel like you should be doing as a parent. What would it take for you
181 to become your idealized picture of motherhood? If you never obtained that missing piece, what would be the consequences?”
Closing focal space with developing the voice of the friend, I will advise them to “Take a moment to think about the reality of your unique situation and please describe. What is your current support systems — how do they support and/or how do they hinder? Describe your babies temperament, and, based on your assessment of your baby’s temperament, explain what you think they need and want. Describe any physical limitation you might have that impacts your ability to parent the way you have idealized.” This will close the group participation for the first meeting.
The second time we meet, there will be opportunities for participation. This participation will come primarily through sharing in group. There will be one collage session. The same images will be laid out for selection for the second collage section. The participants will be asked to “Select the five to 10 images that you feel best represents what it is to be a good mother, and arrange them in a way that makes the most sense to you.” Then they will be asked to journal answering these questions: “What do these images represent? What is the relationship between these images? What influenced you when you were selecting these images? In what ways are you not living up to these images? In what ways, if any, has this image change from the first image you did last week?”
In forum, have participants share what they feel like from their take home journals. Were there any key moments from the last two weeks, and what did you learn, if anything, from those moments?
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As the last data collecting moment, I will have the participants share their reaction to the preliminary findings. I will ask them, “If you are willing to, can you share your reaction to the findings?”
In closing the whole research process, there will be a closing ritual that will require participant participations. I will ask them, “Move your body and get into a position that best represents your learnings over the last couple of weeks. Take a moment and if you can, without moving your position, see if you can see anyone else’s gesture. State one word that best represents your greatest learning throughout this experience.”
Describe the consent process and its documentation
At the very beginning of meeting one, I will be reviewing the consent form. I will read the consent, see if there are any questions, and then request that they sign the form. Once I have collected and verified that they have signed it, I will begin the research. At the beginning of meeting two, I will remind the participants of the consent form and the confidentiality agreement. This is to bring it back to the forefront of their minds.
Risks: Describe any potential risks or discomforts to your research participants both during and/or after their participation in the study.
I will first cover the risks then discuss the discomforts. The risk that I can foresee comes with the nature of this topic, dealing with whether or not you feel like you are a good mother.
This is one of the fundamental questions that mothers are asking themselves, and there is tremendous pressure on them to be a perfect mother. Spotlighting this issue could cause greater distress.
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With the discomforts, I can foresee the first time they share as being a place of discomfort. Anytime a new group form, and members are asked to share deeply personal information, they can feel uncomfortable. The breaking up into small groups could cause discomfort as well. This could raise questions about why they were selected for a particular group and not the other one. The remaining times when they share as a group could be uncomfortable, especially for the introvert who is very uncomfortable emoting in front of other people.
Finally, I see a place of discomfort stemming from working with shame. One of the effects of shame is to withdrawal and not talk. If the only thing they want to do is hide and shut down, this could be uncomfortable for a participant to share.
Safeguards: Discuss procedures for preventing or minimizing the study’s potential risks.
I will let the participants know of the potential risks of the research when I review the consent form. They will be advised that there could be some moments that they might experience some emotional discomfort and feel uncomfortable sharing in group.
Safeguarding the biggest risk will come through the screening and checking in with mothers who express sustained emotions of sadness, as assessed by continual crying or withdrawal, throughout meeting one and/or two. In the screening process, I will be asking mothers if they have been diagnosed with PPD and/or PPA. If they have, I will ask them about their treatment plans. If a mother who has been diagnosed with PPD or PPA and is not in treatment or has received treatment, then they will be flagged as potentially being selected out of the research process.
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Another safeguard I see is that once the participants are able to express to the symbolic chair how they are affected by listening to the professionals talk, they might experience a sense of relief. It could take the potential pressure off themselves as being a bad parent and allow them to see that their experience could be because there is pressure from outside sources to practice their way of parenting, i.e., it is not just me, these outside sources do have a shaming affect.
In creating a safe environment, there are several things I will be doing. I will also ask my co-researchers to help as well. The most important thing I can do is to create a safe container.
This will be accomplished by clearly and as accurately as possible laying out the flow of the day, being clear about the potential risks and benefits, being present for each of them. Knowing ahead of time the activities and could increase the participants vulnerability will help as well. At these points, bringing in my presence more will be important.
Being clear with the participants about confidentiality and what that specifically means will help create a safe container as well. This information will be provided as I go through the confidentiality section. The points that will be made are: “It is OK to share YOUR experience with your partner when you go home. The important thing to remember is that you are only sharing your experience. If someone shares something that deeply moves you, then it is OK to share what you learned about yourself in that moment. This means saying, ‘I learned something interesting about my self today’. Not meaning, ‘so and so shared X, and it made me reflect on what this meant for me.’ Just skip to the punch line. Does that make sense?”
When the group is requested to share their experience, I will provide guidelines that the participants should follow. This information will be provided when I review the activities during the introduction. “When someone is sharing in the group, it is important not to interject into
185 their sharing. This means, please do not ask any questions, share any comments, share any overt somatic gestures. Be mindful if you feel like laughing while someone is sharing. I love laughter.
It is one of my favorite things. However, for this process it is important to try to hold back from that while someone else is sharing. The primary reason is that what might strike you as funny, might not be funny to the person who is sharing. I ask that in between people sharing to let the group sit in quiet for a minute. This guarantees that the participant is finished as well as allowing that persons words to linger in the group.”
In order to track my own experience, I will be keeping a journal through out both group meeting. I will be jotting down phrases, emotions, reactions as they come up. I will ask my co- researchers to do the same. At the end of each group session, we will spend 30 minutes or so capturing our reactions from the day.
Closing each meeting will be simple. I will first go over any logistics that need to be reviewed. For the first meeting this will include the meeting time, date and location for meeting number two, therapist referral list, and reminder about journaling. Then we will have a closing circle. The instructions will be, “If I could get everyone to stand in a circle. (Wait for everyone to get into the circle. First, I want to thank everyone for sharing. It takes courage to share deeply in front of strangers. In the next week or so, please do take extra care of your self. Please be gentle. Now I would like to close the group by having everyone state one or two words that best represents your greatest learning from today.”
In closing the second meeting I will review the information about the Summary of
Learnings. Then we will have the final closing circle: “Move your body and get into a position that best represents your learnings over the last couple of weeks. Take a moment and if you can,
186 without moving your position, see if you can see anyone else’s gesture. State one word that best represents your greatest learning through out this experience.”
Benefits: Describe the study’s potential benefits to participants, as well as possible general benefits and contributions this research will make:
Due to the limited time and scope of this study, the likelihood of participants experiencing any significant increase in their maternal confidence is low. One potential outcome can be that participants experiencing a subtle shift in their confidence. This would come from an increase awareness of shame and the ways that shame is influencing they way they mother their baby. This could also come from the group effect, meaning that they see they are not alone in this process.
The broader implications of this research can be quiet significant. With this research, there will be a deepening into our understanding of the ways that shame can impact mothers. It is known that it does have an effect, and it is known that shame can come from these external sources. What is not known is the ramifications on a mother’s experience when she encounters shameful experiences. As we begin to understand this further, I foresee this as heightening our understanding of attachment, maternal well-being, family well-being and baby’s well-being. I see this body of information as being important for therapists when they work with mothers as these shameful experiences can influence the decisions that she makes in caring for newborns.
The decisions and information that the professionals provide, could lead to increase PPD/PPA symptomatology.
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After the Study: Describe what and how you will communicate to participants after the study is complete.
At the end of the second meeting, I will inform the participants, “There is a form over on the side table. Please fill out your name and mailing address. There is also a box that asks if you are interested in receiving a summary of learnings in the mail. The Summary of Learnings is three- to five-pages long. It will describe the participant pool (names and/or any identifying features will be kept out), the methodology, and the learnings that came from the research. If you are interested in receiving the Summary of Learnings, then please check the box on the form. This will not be sent out until after I successfully defend my dissertation.”
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CONCEPTUAL OUTLINE
Evoking Experience
Meeting One
• Watch a five-minute video that contains beautiful images of the idealized mother.
• Have mother’s listen to videos of professionals talking about the best practices for raising emotionally and physically healthy kids
Expressing Experience
Meeting One
• Right after the initial videos, have the participants complete an image collage of her own idealized version of the perfect mother.
• Images are already cut out and laminated
• Pick the five to 10 images that “You feel best represents what it is to be a good mother, and organize them in a way that makes the most sense to you.
• Journal
• Why did you chose thee images?
• What do these images mean to you?
• In what ways do you feel like you are not living up to these images?
• If you do not live up to these images, what do you imagine could happen to your baby?
• After the each video segment of professionals talking - have the participants enter into a forum
• Place a chair into the middle of the group.
• The chair represents the professionals.
• Instruct the participants to share, “If that professional was here, I want you to tell them how their advice has affected you mother your child.”
• Break the big group up into smaller groups.
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• In small groups have the participants talk about how they are affected by seeing the images in the video and hearing the professionals talk.
• Please describe your overall emotions when you heard the professionals talk.
• Please describe your overall emotions when you heard the other moms express.
• Is there anything that you want to express now that you might have felt uncomfortable sharing in the larger group?
• Each participant explores their relationship with their idealized version of motherhood.
• Each participant takes a turn to share in their small group.
• What do you feel like you should be doing as a parent?
• What would it take for you to become your idealized picture of motherhood?
• If you never obtained that missing piece, what would be the consequences?
• Closing discussion
• Take a moment to think about the reality of your unique situation and please describe:
• What are your current support systems? How do they support and/or how do they hinder you?
• What do you think your child really needs and wants? How does that make you feel?
• What do you as the Mother really need and want?
• When you state what you, Mom, really needs and wants, how does that make you feel?
• Take home journal for the two weeks:
• Please describe how you felt you did as a mother today.
• Do you feel you adequately responded to your child’s needs today? Please explain.
• If you draw an image - please describe the image.
Meeting Two
• Collage
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• Have participants complete an image collage of her own idealized version of the perfect mother.
• Images are already cut out and laminated.
• Pick five to 10 images that, “You feel best represents what it is to be a good mother, and organize them in a way that makes the most sense to you.
• Journal
• What do these images mean to you?
• What is the relationship between these images and you?
• In what ways are you not living up to these images?
• In what ways, if any, has this collage change from the first collage you did last week?
• In forum, the participants share what they feel like from their journals by asking, “Were there any key moments from the last two weeks, and what did you learn, if anything, from those moments?”
• Share preliminary learnings from first day.
• Have participants share their reaction from the findings.
Interpreting Experience
• Video tape both meetings — review video tape to look at physical gestures of shame
• Photos will be taken of the collages.
• Review of journals for narratives themes.
• Transcribe the video, and look for key words and phrases.
• With co-researchers have a discussion:
• Where there moments that just leapt out at you?
• Where there key metaphorical phrases or turning points in their stories?
• Did you notice any recurring themes or ideas?
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• Come to an understanding about how we were affected by the identified key moments. This discussion will be video taped in order to capture any somatic gestures that were part of the expression. As we explore our affective responses, we will also discuss how our key moments differ or parallel each other. We will discuss what we believe creates these similarities and differences.
Integrating the Experience
Meeting One
• Everyone stand in a circle.
• Everyone go around and share one work that captures your experience of the day.
Meeting Two
• Share the Preliminary Findings and Research Hypothesis.
• Solicit reactions to the Preliminary Findings and Research Hypothesis.
• After dissertation is complete send, Summary of Learnings to the participants who requested this.
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CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE
Meeting One (9:00 - 2:00)
I. Orientation and Informed Consent (9:00 - 9:30)
A. Greet each participant and show them to their seat B. General overview of the day 1. Introduction 2. Introduction to the research 3. Some guidelines about how the groups will run so that everyone feels safe C. General information about practicalities (5 minutes) 1. The bathroom 2. The refrigerator 3. Where the child care providers will be D. Introduction to myself and co-researchers 9:05-9:15 E. Informed Consent form (10 minutes) 1. Once the group is gathered, review guidelines on participation and confidentiality: a) Participation is voluntary at all times. b) Researchers will keep all identities confidential, and participants are asked to do the same. 2. Respond to any questions participants might have about the informed consent F. Overview of the research and methods 9:20-9:30 1. This research is focusing on “looking at the ways new mother’s develop their definition of who they are as a mother.” 2.To explore that topic I will be asking you to participate in several different activities a) We will be watching short video segments of professionals talking about the best practices to being a good mother. b) Collage work c) Journaling d) Participation in group forum - we will start as a big group and then small group. 3. Guidelines for containing the experience a) In the group I will be asking you to share your feeling and reactions to various video clips and questions that the researchers pose. b) There are no right or wrong answers, it is simply your experience and reactions — all are welcome. c) Feel free to use whatever language that helps you best express your experience — even if it feels a little taboo to say certain words. d) When someone is sharing I ask the group to hold space and witness the person sharing. i. Track how their words affect you. ii. I ask that you hold your reactions and try to refrain from jumping in and giving some one advise or sooth their feelings.
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iii. If something strikes you as funny, try to refrain from laughing — it may not be funny to them. iv. We do have a lot to accomplish today, and we, the facilitators, will have to keep the pace moving. There might be a moment that I have to step into a conversation to move to the next topic. So go ahead and say the first thing that comes to you; don’t worry about making it sound polished or perfect. II. Participant Introduction 9:30-10:15
A. Each participant takes three minutes and shares 1. Your name and the name/age of your child[ren] 2. What drew you to this research? III. Evoking-Expressing Sequence 10:15-2:15
A. Video containing popular images of the “good mother” (5 minutes) B. Have participants complete a image collage of her own idealized version of the perfect mother. (10 minutes) 1. Images have been pre-selected, cut out, and laminated. 2. Pick the five to 10 images that “You feel best represents what it is to be a good mother,” and organize them in the way that makes the most sense to you. 3. Journal (15 minutes) a) Why did you chose these images? b) What do these images mean to you? c) In what ways do you feel like you are not living up to these images? d) If you don’t live you to these images, what do you imagine could happen to your child? 4. When they have finished journaling, they will find their name paper clipped inside their welcome journal. They were asked to write their name and place it at the top of their collage. This allowed the researchers to identify whose collages belonged to whom from the picture they took IV. Professional’s Video 10:45-11:45 A. Framing: “The videos that you are about to watch are well known professionals in the parenting world discussing the best parenting practices that mothers can do to establish an emotionally and physically healthy child. They will also touch in why their practices are important. This section is fast moving so once the video is paused, go ahead and share your first reaction.” B. Each video clip will be three to five minutes long. There are four segments. C. I will place a chair in the center of the group and after each video clip, the participants can express their reaction to the video clip. They will be instructed: 1. I am placing this chair here as a representation of the professional. 2. I want you to tell them how their advice has affected how you mother your child. 3.You can say or gesture anything you want to these professionals. D. Pause after Breastfeeding video E. Pause after Attachment video F. Pause after Still Face video
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G. Pause after Baby-sleep video H. Pause after Free Range video I. Now we are going to be stopping for lunch 11:45 to 12:45
V. In small groups have the participants talk about how they are affected by seeing the images in the video and hearing the professionals talk 12:45 to 1:30
A. Small groups will be formed based on their reactions in the large group 1. Please describe what your overall emotions were when you heard the professionals talk. 2. Please describe what your overall emotions were when you heard the other moms express. 3. Is there anything that you want to express now that you did not feel comfortable expressing in the larger group? B. Second round of questions 1. What do you feel like you should be doing as a parent? 2. What would it take for you to become your idealized picture of motherhood? 3. If you never obtained that missing piece, what would be the consequences? C. Third round of questions 1. What is your current support system — how do they support and/or how do they hinder? 2. What do you think your child really needs and wants? 3. When you state what you think your child needs and wants, how does that make you feel? 4. What do you as the Mother really need and want? 5. When you state what you, Mom, really need and want, how does that make you feel? D. Explaining homework (15 minutes) 1. Please complete a minimum of four maximum 14 entries 2. Journal a) Please describe how you felt you did as a mother today. b) Do you feel you adequately responded to your child’s needs today — please explain c) How do you feel you did in responding to your needs today? d) If you draw an image, please describe the image E. Closing circle (10 minutes) 1. Everyone stand in a circle. 2. Everyone go around and share one word that captures your experience of the day.
Meeting Two 9:00 to 11:00
I. Introduction (10 minutes) A. Reminder where the bathroom is B. Quick overview of how we are spending time together C. Reminder of confidentiality
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II. Collage (10 minutes)
A. Have participants complete an image collage of her own idealized version of the perfect mother. (10 minutes) 3. Images are already cut out, and laminated. 4. Pick the images that jump out and organize them in the way that makes the most sense to you. 5. Journal (10 minutes) a) What do these images represent? b) What is the relationship between these images? c) In what ways are you not living up to these images? d) In what ways, if any, has this image change from the first image you did last week?
III. Have participants share what they feel like from their journals. (30 minutes)
A. Have participants share in group what their week was like. B. Where there any key moments from the last two weeks, and what did you learn from those moments?
IV. Share preliminary learnings from first day.(20 minutes)
V. Have participants share their reaction from the findings. (30 minutes)
VI. Closing ritual (15 minutes) A. Move your body and get into a position that best represents your learnings over the last couple of weeks.. B. Take a moment, and, if you can, without moving your position, see if you can see anyone else’s gesture. C. State one word that best represents your greatest learning through out this experience.
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INFORMED CONSENT FORM
To the Participant in this Research:
You are invited to participate in a study on the Development of the Maternal Identity. The study’s purpose is to better understand the effects culture has on a new mother as she develops her role and identity as a mother.
Participation will involve watching a video, watching a professional group talk, collage work, and group discussion. This will take place ______and will involve two meetings. The first meeting will last five hours and the second meeting will last two hours. Each meeting will be video taped, and I will be transcribing these videos. Meeting dates will be ______.
For the protection of your privacy, all tapes and transcripts will be kept confidential and you identity will be protected. This will be ensured in several different ways. The videos will be contained in a lock box stored in my private office. The transcripts will stay on my pass protected computer. If the transcripts are printed, then I will store them in the lock box. In the reporting of information in published material, any information that might identify you will be altered to ensure your anonymity.
This study is of a research nature and may offer no direct benefit to you The published findings and any subsequent publications, however, may be useful to the parenting community and may benefit the understanding of how the American culture can influence the development of the maternal identity. This study is designed to minimize potential risks to you. However, some of the procedures such as group discussion, watching the professional, and collage work, may touch sensitive areas for some people. It may cause increase anxiety, depression, maternal overwhelm, and/or confusion. If at any time you develop any concerns or questions, I will make every effort to discuss these with you. I, the researcher, cannot provide psychotherapy, but at your request or using my professional judgement, will facilitate referrals to an appropriate mental health professional, if such a need should arise.
If you decide to participate in this research, you may withdraw your consent and discontinue at any time and for any reason. Please note as well that I, the researcher, may need to terminate your participation from the study at any point and for any reason.
If you have any questions or concerns, you may call me at 828-230-3290 M-F 9-3. or you may contact the Dissertation Director at Meridian University, 47 Sixth Street, Petaluma, Ca 94952, telephone: (707) 765- 1836. Meridian University assumes no responsibility for any psychological or physical injury resulting from this research.
I ______, consent to participate in the study of the development of the Maternal Identity. I have had this study explained to me by Meggan Hartman. Any questions of mine about this research have been answered, and I have received a copy of this consent form. My participation in this study is entirely voluntary.
______Participant’s Signature Date
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APPENDIX A
PARTICIPANT SCREEN
Name: Age: Child’s age: Child’s gender: Where do you live?
If you wish to disclose, ethnicity:
What makes you happy as a mother?
Where do you get information about parenting?
Blogs Websites Other parents Your parents Magazines Parenting groups Books
What do you think of all the parenting information?
Do you ask for help?
What is it like when you get “help/advice” when you don’t ask for it?
How was it for you the first time you gave your baby a bath?
What has it been like learning how to feed your baby?
What has it been like teaching your baby how to sleep?
Tell me about what it is like when your baby gets sick? What was the first illness like? How did you feel?
Are you stay-at-home mom or do you work?
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APPENDIX A continued
If you are a stay-at-home mom, how is it being with your baby all day? Are there moments of dissatisfaction?
If you go to work, what is it like leaving your baby? Is this what you want to do? Why did you go back to work?
What is it like for you when your baby starts to cry?
If another mother asked you for advice, would you feel confident in providing helpful information?
Tell me what your baby’s temperament is like? Does your baby get grumpy or fussy? What do you do when this happens? Can you tell what causes this?
What frustrates you about being a mom?
Do you feel like you have all the skills needed to be a good parent? Please elaborate.
MOTHER/BABY MANAGEMENT QUESTIONNAIRE
1) How difficult is it for you to separate from your baby/child for five hours?
2) Are you comfortable leaving your child in the care of someone else?
3) Are you able to manage your milk supply for five hours?
4) Is your baby able to be soothed or feed without the breast?
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Motherhood Identity
JOURNALResearch AFTER FIRST Study COLLAGE
Why did you chose theseFor images? Doctoral Dissertation Come join the conversation about how mothers build their confidence in their ability to care for their little one
Participant Criteria:
• Mothers have a baby between 4 Whatmonths do these and images 4yrs mean to you?
• Experiencing some confusion about the best mothering practices • Mothers are able to attend two group
meetings First meeting will be 5 hr, Second meeting will be 2hrs.
Benefits to the Participants: In what ways do you feel like you are not living up to •these Participants images? who complete the research process will receive $100 gift card.
• Mother’s will gain access to research findings
• Help develop the knowledge base regarding Motherhood
• Potentially gain insight into your own developing maternal identity
If Interested please contact: APPENDIX C Meggan Hartman APPENDIX C (415) 425-4550 [email protected]
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APPENDIX C
JOURNAL AFTER FIRST COLLAGE
Why did you choose these images?
What do these images mean to you?
In what ways do you feel like you are not living up to these images?
If you do not live up to these images, what do you imagine could happen to your child?
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APPENDIX C CONTINUED
JOURNAL AFTER SECOND COLLAGE
What do these images mean to you?
What is the relationship between these images and you?
In what ways are you not living up to these images?
In what ways, if any, has this image changed from the first image you did two weeks ago?
In what ways, if any, has this image changed from the first image you did last week?
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APPENDIX C CONTINUED
HOMEWORK JOURNAL
PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ON THE FOLLOWING PAGES: Please describe how you felt you did as a mother today. Do you feel you adequately responded to your child’s needs today? Please explain. How do you feel you did in responding to your needs today? If you draw an image, please describe the image.
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Summary of Data
Linda: I’ll start [Sharing the significance of my collage] …. In my dream world, are the three [ideals] on the top. Exercise, calm soothing classes with my kids, the healthy food all the time, and then the perfect sleeping arrangement. Down below, is kind of more like my actual story. The reality of what I try to make my actual priorities. It is all a mix of struggle, so I started out a mom of a dog. That was my first kid, and then my relationship with my husband — trying to keep that hot and good is priority. My husband is African, and we lived in Africa. My two oldest kids are African. We lived there from the beginning of our family, our relationship and our marriage. Our family is all over there. It is keeping perspective that no matter what you have you can be a good mom and remembering that perspective is important to me. Tackling my kids hair, particularly my two year old. She is mixed, so her hair is just crazy. And my 14 year old empowering her with her hair is really important culturally and practically. This one with putting the headphones on and the baby is crying . . . . is important, but it throws me off big time. I will do whatever, even blocking it out, easier said than done, but I will do whatever it takes to get her to sleep, or to just ignore it. Encouraging my kids interests with activities, especially the older ones, is priority for us. And trying to keep it all together. And this one, what it means to me, I really do take a hands off as far as letting them be independent and play by themselves . . . . I am actively that way. So what came up to me was the whole mix of what I try to do and what reality looks like. It is very real. When I am in my dark place, I focus on those things, of what I am not achieving. When I am in a good place, I am like look at all these things are we are attempting to do. Oh and the [image of] falling into life: I really just fell into motherhood because I met my husband and he had older kids, so my motherhood started with them at 11 years old. Then we got married, so that was my first 2.5 years of motherhood before I had a baby.
Paloma: Well, I really like the [Olympic] video but not in the beginning when the mom was waking up the kid. That is not right. That makes me feel bad about the fact that I try to wake them up gently, but then it ends up like “GET UP” (yelling) . . . . Then I have to find matching socks, and I am throwing a Pop Tart at them, and I am so ashamed that he ate a Pop Tart for breakfast. Because I want to be like mother bear, and I want to make porridge. But you know, I buy Steel Cut Oats and they take 30 minutes, and then he doesn’t eat them. And I am like you know, I want to throw them at him because he didn’t eat the good nutritious breakfast. [Group Laughter] I felt like that video is like this is what a good mom does - A good mom’s kid goes to the Olympics. [Group Laughter] They get up and eat the squashed up banana . . . . The whole thing is a lie. For me, That is what came up for. The mom was constantly holding a space for her kid to achieve, and her kid has a mom who is always there . . . . You think if my kid is not all those things, then I failed at some point . . . . And the second video with Angelina Jolie (love her) was glamorous. There were no hard moments. There wasn’t the mom at the end of the day just depleted. When you feel like a nub of a person. There is nothing left. That wasn’t on there. But it did make me cry, and I miss my older kids. It made me miss holding him as a baby. I was definitely homesick by the end.
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Sandy: I definitely had an emotional response for me, and I am angry because of that. It shows such a one-diminutional picture of what a mom is supposed to look like. It is supposed to be like some sort of ultimate servitude to get your kid to go to the Olympics. There was no aspect of the mom’s having any other life other than getting them (the kids) up, making them a good breakfast and sending them out and watching them play these sports, and then all of a sudden they are in the Olympics saying Thanks Mom. I can give you a smile and the mom is like, “Oh! This is such a cathartic release for me, twenty years.” So I was angry, I want to be that supportive mom, but I also want to pursue my other life. I don’t want that one dimensionality. I don’t think it is healthy necessarily. So when I was choosing my images, I was thinking about what I wanted, and that is, like, connection, connection, connection. Connection with my baby, connection with my friends, community, especially my poor neglected partner because we don’t spend enough time connecting and supporting our relationship right now. And then all of my other images, aspects of wanting to find joy in my life. So if I am joyful in my life, then that will come through in my relationship with others especially my baby. And this one, the population is telling, because I am a person who values choice. Choice to have babies, or not to have babies, and get irritated about the world making judgments on who is choosing to be mothers and not to be mothers. There weren’t images of mom’s working and being moms unless they were images of super mom. And there weren’t images of connecting with your partner, at least I did not see any ideal images, so there are invisible images in my collage. And then I feel like this is my ideal and I don’t very much live up to it. I am struggling right now to have all of this. To have all the things that I want. And sometimes I am like it would be so much easier if I didn’t have a baby. [Long silence. Sandy was crying. Three other moms started crying.]
Liz: With mine, I just feel like all the picture were kind of the same. I think what is really important is the amount of time you spend with your baby. I think that is really important vs. thinking what am I going to be. I just think the time you spend with them so they feel the family bond and love and you get that trust with them. Before I had a baby, I didn’t have a lot of experience with babies, and like you know everyone says when you are pregnant, “Oh this is so wonderful. This is so great.” Just all positive things. When I see pictures, they are all lovely and great and then I had my baby. He is a very difficult baby, I just thought I would be like that (pointing to her collage). And there are so many times where I feel like that I am, “Oh My God!” I get so frustrated. I had no idea that it was going to be like this. I want my life so bad to be like that. I try to be like that, but then there are times when I don’t feel like that….It is really hard, and I had no idea.
Hannah: I knew that I put a lot of pressure on myself to be super creative with my son. I don’t know where that comes from, but it was interesting when I was picking pictures, I realized what a huge role that is playing in my life. I have convince myself that every moment with him, I have to be engaged in some amazing activity that is stimulating every aspect of his being. Like he is not going to be intelligent or creative or independent or optimistic or anything like that. And I have to do it spontaneously. I have to be relaxed about it. I have to meditate like Geselle, She meditates with her baby all the time. (lots of laughter) I do feel like that is where I have ended up. I do feel like I have ended up in a place where I am not successful….We are good over there [on that side of the collage]. But the rest of it we are in therapy about.
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Mary: I feel very blessed that my babies have been easy, but then they grow up. And then they suck a little bit. So the idea of everyone walking down the street, everyone holding hands and like they are together, Whew — my kid has been brought back by the police and he is four — twice. So you know, I feel like success and then just letting your kid actually have a good time is hard because you are so exhausted with the craziness — that seems like that would be great. [tears]
Eleanor: First of all I just want to thank you [Sandy]. I appreciate that you said that sometimes it would be easier not to have a baby because, I don’t think that is a feeling I have all the time, I have definitely had it. So thank you for saying that. It is really hard. Quick reflection of the video, these moms are forcing these kids out of bed really early, I don’t want to force my kid out of bed . . . . It felt like a lot of push for success and that success means something great and I feel like success can be a quiet and happy life . . . . That felt very one sided. All the moms in the music section were beautiful, and the light was shining on them and I was like — were is the poverty and the moms sitting on the porch who don’t have a lot . . . . It felt like a lot of economic success behind those images because they were beautiful and had beautiful clothes. With the images — mine go in one direction with this pyramid of balance and boundaries at the top because I feel like a successful mom has that first for herself. And belief in baby’s cry, beware of baby trainers, and letting your child be who they are, breastfeeding, baby wearing — you know all the attachment (AP) things, and that this happy mom, and the working mom and the dad with baby is my second most important . . . . That I need to make sure that it comes from here [pointing to heart] and comes out to my child. and then work for me is really important. It brings me joy to be away from my child and to have something that I know I am success at. Not long ago on maternity leave, I was crying to my husband, “You know how to be an engineer. I have no clue how to be a mom. I am a teacher — I know how to be a teacher, and I like knowing how to do something. And I am learning how to know what to do with my daughter . . . And an image of a dad and a child. Trying to let go of the feeling that mother always knows best. And then baby wearing is important . . . . And I realize after doing this — I looked around at others, and I have no images of a mother and a child. I was like Wow — I don’t know why - I guess I was feeling mom centered and taking care of me first and radiating out . . . . Even though I totally love my child and connected to her, I could have included an image.
Rosie - Something that came from the video seeing all the images from around the world — that this is not an unusual thing. We have been having children for how long, and there are mothers everywhere, and is it just Americans who are so — I want to call it overly analytical — on how we are as moms? [Mothering] is just a natural thing. They [mothers from other cultures] are just doing it. They are a mom. They don’t criticize their self or other people . . . . And I wanted to say quickly that this has already such a positive experience for me. I am writing down the things I forgot and the things that you are saying and the things that I should focus on, but clearly I wasn’t focusing on. Like a good mom is a happy mom and (tears) I don’t know why that just brought tears, It’s crazy…
Paloma: When I hear you say that, I feel like a failure because I am not very happy — I am just not. I don’t like the Olympics, I don’t like living in America, and I don’t like baseball. My kid wants to be a major league baseball player and says, “Why don’t you come to my baseball games?” I am like,” I don’t want to.” I feel so guilty. I want to be a happy person so bad. That
206 goes back to my images — the clean kitchen — what is it about that — I am success if the kitchen is clean. Because I did the dishes and I wiped the counters, that means I think I will be okay. If it is dirty and someone comes over to my house, I am so ashamed. I feel like such a failure. Yea — I think being happy is really really important. I am just not there yet.
Attachment Videos:
Sasha: What happened that we need these people telling us how to parent? When did we not know how to parent?
Massie: Well, my mom does not know how to parent.
Sasha: My mom either, but she was having all these experts telling her to leave my brother and I to cry or we are manipulating her. But now we totally manipulate her.
Hannah: I think it is just one possible philosophy — there are a lot of good ones out there you just have to fine the one that fits . . .They are not prescribing it. Well, maybe they are, but we don’t have to accept it as a prescription. It is just one possibility.
Linda: Everyone has to do what works for their family and their life and their situation and mix it all together.
Meggan: And what emotions come for you when you hear it?
Mary: I am really offended by the attachment parenting, secure attachment language there. Even though I am sure that I almost completely agree with what they are saying, but I feel a lot of guilt. I see how a lot of people would feel really guilty by not doing enough and for me this was kind of the natural base line anyway. I didn't know about AP until someone said, “Oh, you are attachment parenting.” And I saw a lot of other people having so much guilt about it, “Did I do enough of each of these parts to make this happen.” So I feel really offended by someone telling me that I am not doing it right — with any of the ways.
Sandy: . . . . The videos are helpful, and they are not saying you are supposed to be doing everything and that is important to remember. That is how I perceive it.
Linda: It brings up fear for me to hear that stuff. I start fearing [about] what am I doing wrong and what is going to happen in the future. Honestly my whole pregnancy was in Africa and sometimes I wish I was still there because you don’t hear any of that. I miss that freedom. Being in your head and fearing all that speak [professionals talking], it does affect me when I start hearing that. They put that on you.
Meggan: If those professionals were sitting in this chair, what would you say to them?
Sandy: Reference everything with this is your opinion and use your experience as your best research and stop saying it dictatorially.
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Paloma: What about a maternal instinct? Have you ever studied that?
Linda: I would like to know your personal experience as a parent, and what you actually did vs. what you put as your ideal.
Sarah: Can you really be a parenting expert? I don’t understand the concept of it. I really resonate with the whole attachment parenting thing. I like to wear my baby. I think it is a good way to be. But I don’t care if you don’t do it. It makes my life easier, but if you don’t want to do it, then I don’t care. When you read a lot of the Sears books, we got a lot as gifts, and a lot of it is good solid advice, and it is nice to have a book to pick up at 3am when you are, like, what the hell, and it all seems a bit scary. At the same time, I really don’t know how you can be a parenting expert. I think you are an expert to your own kids, and that is as far as it goes.
Massie: I think there is a difference between social policy and individual experience. There are experts who are trying to lay the framework for the culture. And then there is the expert who is trying to tell me what to do. It is really different. I think I get lost in between, and it is confusing to me.
Eleanor: I think something that is implied in AP is to know your baby, in teaching we call it being a kid watcher. Study your baby, and your child will tell you what they need vs. someone else telling you what you need.
Paloma: In terms of attachment parroting, my baby cried a lot, and I feel like a failure when I can’t get her to stop. What cue did I miss? AP backfires sometimes. It became a possession over my life.
Massie: That is the piece that I feel like does not get talked about. They say, “The mother has to take care of herself,” but after my kid was born, I was in complete shock. I really had no frame for what I needed for myself. I couldn’t ask for help. I wouldn’t know what to ask for anyway because no one else could do the attachment parenting. I was really lost for myself, and I definitely had some crazy points. I knew I was on really shaky ground. It would be helpful to have more discussion about how to be healthy mom. More resources about that.
Sandy: It is portrayed as formulaic. If you follow these steps, you get a healthy well-adjusted baby. But what happens if your baby does not like being worn? What happens then? I have had a different experience. The first three months were great! Everyone was sleeping and eating, then things started to change. I feel like “what is going on?!” My ideals are here, and my experience is here. [hands gesturing far apart] So it is troubling to see a formula presented that is not working.
Paloma: I would also like to say to the expert, “What does the mother need?” A lot of that is directed that your baby needs this. Breastfeeding is wonderful for the baby, but what about what the mother needs?
Massie: There isn’t a lot of talk about the psychology of the mother, the identity change . . . . So one of my pictures is with the monkey with the baby. It is such a natural hanging on, and my
208 reality was that this is really hurting my body, and my kid would not let me put her down. I had to make some really big changes. Now I like having her cling to me.
Sasha: Watching all these experts back to back — I have heard all of these things, and they have impacted me as a parent. It makes me feel sad that I need all these experts that I don’t even know. I don’t know their motivations. And they are the ones who have shaped my parenthood. And it is not my family, my own mother, aunts. It is not a loving circle guiding me and showing me. People I don’t even know. They all have grey hair. I am sure they are awesome and great. I wonder what role they are playing in breaking up the generations. I realize I have a craving for it.
Paloma: Also something I want to explore is when you see this man — all my father issues come up. I don’t have a dad and if I did, I would love for him to be proud of what kind of parent I am. I would love for him to say I am doing a great job. I crave that in my life. And I put that on that guy. Am I making him [the professionals in the videos] proud. But there is no feedback from the clinical guy. I yelled at a guy in the park, “You really let me down!” You know he was a stranger. It comes out in a lot of interesting ways.
Sarah: It is hard to take advice from a man, I have a husband who is a wonderful father, very much walks beside me. We agree on most things, but he doesn’t know what it was like for me to be pregnant, breastfeeding and giving birth. But when I hear a man give me advice I am, like, “F..k you! What do you know? I think you know what it looks like on paper, but it makes me angry and ignites that first year women’s study feminist 101 class. Yes, you have read all the papers and watched all the videos, but you have not walked in my shoes.” And that is where attachment parenting, and we are talking about it because it is the vogue thing right now, but Dr Sears has all these kids and they are so great, but he is a guy! He is a guy, and he is telling me about breastfeeding, baby wearing, and sleeping with my kid, and it doesn't seem like I can relate to it. But every time I meet another mother, no matter how different we are, different economic status, race, different religions, we have that and we meet there, there is that commonality and there is something I can gain from that.
Sasha: They are going through all their discoveries, and they are so stupid. They are like, “Oh, a baby needs it mother.” No s..t! How much time and effort did you spend figuring that out? And look at that guys face, he is, like, ?WOW - this is so amazing.” All the obvious stuff.
Sarah: And that other guy, tossing his kid up in this million dollar living room, saying, “I know what it is like!” Do you? Because your house is really clean — like it is spotless. I can’t take it seriously, or else it is too much.
Sandy: One thing that resonated with me is the cultural piece. Our culture is in flux. Our parents parent, mostly parented differently. Then there was all of the negative outcomes. We are not saying, “We are not going to parent like them. Your parenting methods are not valid Mom and Dad.” I am obviously well-adjusted enough to make good decisions. So f..k you! But trying to find the value in your own parents’ parenting, even though we need to make some different decisions.
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Ed Tronick Still Face Experiment
Rosie: That doesn’t seem necessary. What was the point of that experiment? I think it goes against any mother’s instinct . . . . Do we really need that experiment to show us what would happen to a baby if we did that for two minutes? What was the point?
Linda: I would view these experiments as the science of it. These experts, like when you are in the hospital and they show you that purple baby video, and there are people who need this. I think it is a cultural thing. There are people who abuse babies. There are people who ignore babies. There are people, like Haiti for example, there is a culture there where formula, because it comes from a rich country, is what the people feed their kids. If they can’t afford formula, they make their own with sugar and water. It is a cultural thing against breastfeeding. So I guess when I see things like this, there are people who respond only to experts. I like to balance it in my own mind, to feel like we are preventing extremes, but nitpicking over ever detail of what I am doing.
Mary: I think that one of the problems for us culturally is that we see so much of this stuff when we don’t need it. Then we start to over analyze what we are doing, when it is actually not pertinent to us . . . . If you take all of the advise personally to your situation, then that is when you start to fall down and question your self. And to build yourself up from these failures which don’t exist, and then we start judging other people out of your experience for something that isn’t even related to your experience.
Sandy: Obviously, that mom was school in this, but my own upbringing, my natural reaction to stress is to disconnect from the world. Whenever I get stressed out, I have to consciously overcome that. I am not always successful and not all the time successful with my baby. I am like I need you to be over here playing with someone or something else, because I need a moment. And that started a world of confusion about how to warmly set boundaries and also being a disengaged person. He [Troncik] is doing this study, but he does not show what to do.
Rosie: I think this video is so that when you watch it you won’t be unnecessarily hard on yourself because you are not staring at your baby, blank face a foot away from them. It is an unfair experiment in that sense. I don’t know what parent would be like that. He is going through the extremes to make a point, but don’t be unfair to yourself. We all can’t be engaged and happy doing what the mother is doing when she is not doing the still face. Obviously we cannot do that. We can’t be hard on ourselves when we see a reaction like that.
Hannah: I was totally having that guilt thing that I let my child cry in the crib yesterday. I was thinking. “Oh! I am a bad mom.” And it reinforced that notion that I need to engage with my child every minute. But maybe that is not my reality.
Liz: It just feels exhausting.
Sleep Video
Hannah: [Turn it] Off - [hand waving] It is too confusing! There again, contradiction.
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Massie: I actually like the second guy [Harvey Karp] I can’t help it. Not so much in this video, but in other places he was helpful.
Liz: That other professional I am, like, “Oh Brother!” But that guy [Harvey Karp], I had a lot of sleep problems, and I took his advice and it actually helped. So I like him.
Massie: I think Sasha gave me really good advice. Just wait two weeks, and everything will be different. But I go to these experts when I am desperate. I am not so much right now. But last year, I read all of those books. And co-sleeping is totally exhausting. I have read Dr Sears very carefully about how satisfied the mom is. I mean I do love it, and I hate it.
Paloma: It makes me feel like how, in this culture, we are consistently trying to fix everything. We are trying to change everything. I think what it must feel like in Africa, just to let a baby be a baby. We are trying to fix everything all the time. It is giving me the impression that it is broken. And s..t, the possibility that I broke it, is exhausting and scary. It makes me want to hire a babysitter sometimes because they know what to do.
Sasha: That is what my mother-in-law did. She hired someone to watch her kid.
Paloma: My brother-in-law can put my daughter to sleep in five minutes, and it takes me an hour. But that is what I heard is that your baby is broken and this is how you can fix it. Whatever just happened to just put your baby to sleep.
Liz: I know with a lot of these video, I just feel bad. This is what works, and when you try it, and it doesn’t work, then what is wrong with me? Nothing is wrong. It’s just that every baby is so different. I know we tried co-sleeping, and my baby wasn’t having it, and some people were like, “You don’t do that?” It made me feel bad. But who says what is right and what is wrong? It’s just what works for you.
Mary: We have been through every parenting book with my son, and we finally started therapy, so now it will be someone else's failure when it doesn’t work. I invested so much time in reading that stupid f..king book; I stayed up all night worrying how this was going to work. You told me to try this thing, I will try it, when it doesn’t work, then it is your fault. I think it is really obnoxious all of the experts. They say eggs are good, then eggs are bad, then eggs are good. Co-sleeping is good then co-sleeping is bad. No matter what you do, you are doing it wrong.
Massie: At the same time, I was really desperate for help.
Mary: I am, too.
Massie: But I am thankful because I am sure I got some help out of this. And I think I got angry at my family for not being aware how much we were struggling or helping. Either they didn’t know or couldn't remember.
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Sandy: I am so topsy turvy and conflicted about sleep. We were co-sleeping, then he was waking all the time. Now he sleeps by himself and cries before bed with the ritual. It used to be easy with long stretches, and now he wakes every three hours. So I nurse him because he is underweight. He needs the extra feeds now. We don’t know what else to do. I want to co-sleep but he wakes all the time. Now we can’t sleep without co-sleeping, and we are waking up all the time. I can appreciate all the experts. It seems like . . . Harvey Karp just wants to help parents. He has real practical advice that can be helpful. I appreciate both of those experts.
Paloma: I have one last thing, it just came up for me about the maternal identity. When he [Harvy Karp] said that I have a CD for a car, it kind of made me feel so anxious. I was riding with my girlfriend, and she said I don’t understand why I don’t listen to Grateful Dead any more in my car. I just watch Curious George on the video, or we are listening to baby sleep stuff. When did we lose our whole entire identity? My kids are not learning anything about the type of music I like because we are not listening to it any more. We just want them to shut the f..k up and go to sleep in the car. That makes me anxious. I want my kids to see me driving the car with the windows down feeling alive and singing from that deep part of me. I want them to remember me that way. I don’t want them catatonic, eating chicken nuggets, watching Clifford the Big Red Dog. I don’t know how to get from here to there because a lot of times in the car I just want them to be quiet. That is why we get into the car. How do we get from pacifying and fixing the children to being our free selves and putting on our favorite CD?
Free Range Parenting Video Mary: I have a lot with this one because I have had the police bring my child home and have talked to CPS. And to go through that and feel so betrayed by the police officer. I thought you were there to help me. Do you really think I would abandon my child? Really? Was that the thing you thought? Thank goodness for having a better experience when the CPS guy got there. He met my son and after three minutes, he said, “I see what is going on, and I think things are okay.” Being so thankful that somebody said that. After this awful day [tears] because my natural style I think is Free Range. Shouldn’t we allow our kids to play? I mean, I grew up in Haiti, and that place is not safe. It is not dangerous here. It has blown my mind in the last year and a half. But my son will totally wander away. He is not afraid. He has no fear of anything. He could use some because who knows? Streets, cars, those things are dangerous. Don’t walk in the street. So what the f..k is wrong with me? I have a lot of feelings about that video.
Liz: I agree that there is some natural safety things — like don’t run off that cliff or run into the road. But I think with the media with all these stories, they make it so “ba-ba-ba.” It makes you really paranoid thinking the worse case scenario. My Facebook profile picture is me holding my baby. My boss was like, “You need to take that down. You need to change that picture.” I am, like, “why?” He said, “Well, somebody will see that profile and know you have a baby, and they will come and want to take your baby.” I am, like, “Really? Do you really think that is going to happen?” It is just like the way people think now.
Paloma: I love it. I think Free Range Parenting is really important. I have read all of it is. I am realizing that everything I think is okay is because I read it and someone said that it was okay. But, you know, let your kid climb a tree as high as they feel comfortable so they can learn limits.
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I agree. How to balance that because you don’t want someone to think you are a bad mom. I am afraid of the judgement. And it is important to let your kids go.
Mary: I live in fear that I cannot let my son be a kid and go out and have those experiences away from me because someone is going to call the police — not because he is going to get run over but because I have been betrayed by our system of protection. That’s awkward.
Sandy: We are supposed to be knowing our neighbors. Everyone is supposed to be keeping an eye out for the kid running down the street, but instead they are saying it is not my kid.
Breaking out into small groups - Rebecca’s group. Please describe your overall emotions:
Mary: Even with the ones [professionals] that I agree with I feel very worried. Not so much for me, but for others I have seen. That people are taking that as dharma, the law, and that they are beating themselves up over something that is not really an issue for them.
Linda: I find myself rolling my eyes a lot. Taking everything with a grain of salt. Not discounting what they say. I like the science. I really liked the study with the baby, not what they did to the baby, but it is really interesting. I went back and forth, but, overall, I was, like, “Here we go again.” There is always a dual side to everything. I don’t see clear, to me there is no black and white clear way to be. I feel like UGGGG — I hope we don’t have to over-analyze this. I get annoyed.
Sarah: My husband, who is an engineer, he thinks of things linearly. Parenting books really helped him walk in the shoes of a parent. He was never a camp counselor or Y worker. Kids have always been on the peripheral of his life. When I watched the videos, a part of me was embarrassed. We read all those books. We have tried all that stuff. I can remember so many arguments with my husband saying, “well, according to this, these are the steps we should have taken.” Now I am doing variations, and he is still following the steps. So on one hand I am really grateful that there are these resources especially for him to read. It is also very frustrating. There is the dichotomy. If we are going to agree that this is a book we are going to follow and I do something else, then I failed because I did not do this. I didn’t follow the rules or the recipe. I distinctly remember the Happiest Baby on the Block, and Harvey Karp talks about the five S’s — I don’t know how he knows about this, The shushing, the swaddling, the swinging, I can’t remember then all. I remember my husband rocked those five things. He could get her to calm down easily. I remember thinking, “Thank God for this book.” Then the other part of me was, like, “women have been doing this for 1000’s of years, maybe we had better solutions.” I just have to find the balance and not beat myself up. When I found something that worked for my kid, I felt like a genius.
Eleanor: Wow — 30 minutes feels so long ago to me. What did I feel? There were certain images and the video of the Olympic Moms and that attachment parenting is sort of the ideal. I think I connected with a lot of it, but also laughed at a lot of it. I connected with a lot of it because that is the mom I want to be. But we all laughed about the sleep because we all knew
213 how silly it is. I feel like it wasn’t telling the other side of the story. The snotty kid, that the mom is just as beet red from crying as the baby.
How were you affected when you heard the other moms express? Eleanor: that was more evoking because it was real and rich to hear other people talk about their experiences. There were so many times where I felt like I could nod my head or laugh. I felt like I was going to cry, too. I think the videos show one side of the picture, and we show a truer side of the picture.
Linda: During the collage part, it was really interesting to see what was important to other people. Obviously other people don’t see the same things that are important to me. I am sure there are some core things, but it was really interesting to see what the first identifying thing that people talked about. That was really cool. It was a good way to start to say, “Oh right, we really are all different.” And it was really great because it was away from all the vocabulary words like attachment and breastfeeding — all those polarizing words. It was a creative fluid thing that people could do whatever they wanted to with.
Rebecca: How did that affect you personally?
Linda: I think it was encouraging. Being able to relate to — not just say that there are no right answers — but to see the different ways that people are doing it is encouraging. There are different ways. There is no right or wrong, black or white thing to follow. That is important for me to realize because I cannot live up to any of those, not a single one. So it sounded encouraging.
Mary: Yes, that part felt more honest and whole as opposed to the prescription, just how much more helpful it is to hear from other mothers what is actually helping. Even when it is, like, that part won’t work for me, at least I know that someone else is having success with these things. I feel excited when I hear others moms share their success. It is really wonderful hearing everyone being really honest and able to say the hard things because I see the hard things a lot. I am angry a lot. We have a lot of conflict, and I never grew up with that. I don’t know how to process this, so I talk about it a lot. I see both reactions [from other mothers]. I see thank you so much for sharing. I also see [physical gesture of turning away in shock]. I don’t feel it here because I feel safe here. Or that everyone here has faced a similar struggle, so I don’t get that, “that is just you b..ch feeling.” It feels great to know that I am not failing by myself. And that this is a normal part of this reality. The perfectionism, and I am not a perfectionist, but I would just like things to go nicely sometimes. And when I know that other people are feeling some of that, I feel less like a failure.
Sarah: Listening to other people reactions this morning, I feel like I have been there at one point or another. And sitting in my chair today, I am remembering I had terrible PPD with my first daughter, and I found a great therapist. I have been doing great work with her over the last four years now, and I realize how far I have come from that time. I do get angry sometimes. I have been the judgey mom sometimes, and I have been the tears in the grocery store mom . . . . I have been in all those places and it makes me realize how much work I have done for myself, to get to know myself as a mom, to sit and hold everyone else's emotions, to try them on and remember
214 the time I felt like that. This has been very cathartic. It allows you to come full circle, and to not feel so alone. Because motherhood, as much as they (children) are on you, eating from you, coming out of your vagina, it is so lonely. So just hearing everyone else, it holds a lot of truth in my heart, and helps me breath a little easier. And to allow myself to pat myself on the back, saying, “Hey, you have been doing some really good work and look at this, you can actually hold this and be okay with this.”
Paloma: It was very comforting for me, too. I am at a point in my life where I am trying really hard not to judge my parenting and how I am as a mother based on external successes. I want to feel like I showed up enough for myself and my kids today. That is all that I really want that at the end of it that I showed up . . . . It is beautiful what you said is that they are on you and you feel so alone. I am constantly, like, “I don't want to be left alone.” And then I am left alone, and I don’t know what to do with myself . . . . It is really comforting to come here and to know that other people are struggling with it. I think it is also important to know that what we say to each other really matters to us. We are going to take those things with us . . . . I hated the Olympic Video. I don't like it. No one tells you at the baby shower that it is hard. Even if they do, you can’t ever know it. You can’t know it until you live it. You don’t know what you don’t know until you are there. I remember when I was pregnant just about to give birth and I look horrible, so swollen. And one woman just came to me and said, “You look bad.” I will never forget that. It was really special. She saw me.
Eleanor: We have been talking about the judgment of self from others and what we place on our self. We have been talking about the really raw things, but we have not talked about the joy. It is totally there, and we all have it with our children. And I am wondering if we measured mom’s emotions over a given time, how much of it would be positive and how much would be on the negative side. And then measured how much is portrayed and talked about in society how much is on the positive side and how much is on the negative side. Because I feel like all those images were about the beautiful side but there is so much realness about the other side too. It would be really interesting to see. I guess this is what this is all about culturally - what are we being shown vs. what it really feels like. Then when we connect with each other, what is really coming up. I think when we really connect, we share, “Wow, this is really hard.” It is interesting to see what is really there vs. what is shown. I feel really connected, and can this study go on in other places. My heart is full of empathy. It is instant connection because we can all connect with our feelings. I know that there are times when I am alone doing dishes and I do feel honored to be a mom. I feel sad to be alone doing dishes but so deeply honored. I am so tired and exhausted but so deeply honored. And I love it, and I am proud to be here.
What should you be doing as a parent? Paloma: I hate that question. I don’t like that question because I feel like it implies that I am not doing something right. And I think those shoulds are coming from the culture. The fake culture that makes me all paranoid. I feel like I should say “yes” more. I should believe that I am enough.
Sarah: One thing that I am working on, not sure if it is a should or something that I want to be, that there is this dichotomy that parenting is always good and parenting is always shitty. I feel like there should be this middle ground. We take one day in your life, and there are so many
215 moments in that day. I can wake, and my one year old is so joyous and happy, and my heart is so full. Then two seconds later my four year old has peed on the floor. I am going from my heart is bursting to what the f..k just happened? I am just shaking my head. How can I hold this all together and it be okay to have this all happening? It doesn’t have to be all bad or all good. My husband asks me how my day was, and how do I respond? There were so many things. It is too much, so I stick to the generals, “One kid went to the park. The other kid went to preschool. Nobody napped.” We should as a mom be able to hold it all in and be OK. That is like the ideal that I am striving for. Trying to start to take better care of myself, exercise, eat right, blaa, blaa, blaa. But I am realizing that I only have one kick at this. Not meaning not to be a good mom, but after this I don’t know what is next. And I really want to be the best version of my self. So I feel like I should be able to hold all of this: sadness, happiness, anger. Anger — this deep anger that being a mom can evoke for you and then moments of deep joy — how do you hold all of that. I don’t know how you teach that or parent like that. If parenting experts could figure that out, that would be awesome.
Meggan’s Group Please describe your overall emotions:
Massie: I get tense. I don’t know if I am right or I am wrong. Tense and on guard. I go into my head and my body is tense.
Rosie: All the information we get and we share, it makes me want to stop everything, stop reading things, and to trust our own instinct what we should be doing at the time.
Liz: Yeah, I was one of those people who would read about everything because I don’t know what I am doing. My husband says just do what come naturally. I get so, “Am I doing this right, or what does this say?” I get tense. When I see someone doing things the opposite as I am, I wonder if I am doing things wrong. I really should try to listen to what is natural for me.
Hannah: That is where I go naturally. I get all tense [body language], and I feel criticized. But the information is out there, and it is going to come to us — the grocery store, Facebook, where ever. So I feel like my job overall is to build up a protective wall. I can’t stop them, I can chose not to read it, or I can build myself up and learn how to hear it without feeling like I am being criticized.
Sandy: I am really grateful to have all these resources, and then when I starting following the formula and it doesn’t work, I can be really hard. I feel like I failed. And I think there is a need for it. I liked the back and forth from the group. I almost didn’t feel any emotional response from the baby crying [in the Still Face video], but did being here because this is real life!
How were you affected by hearing the other mom’s talk? Liz: It is really good because, all those pictures are like, “Life is great! My baby is good and beautiful.” And I am like, “My baby is horrible!” Am I am bad person for that? I never hear other mom’s say stuff like that. And when I hear other mom’s say stuff like that (having difficulty) I feel like, “Oh! I am not alone!” It just feels good. I was talking to someone about this and they were saying that, “Mom’s don’t really talk about this stuff.” I really wish they
216 would because everyone told me it is so easy, but it is so hard. Hearing other moms talk about a reality makes me look at it more objectively.
Rosie: It is like what you said. We hear it from all these experts. And I want to give a shout out to Facebook. There are so many mother craving — Not sure if you know about this “secret group” it is just women — five to 10 postings a day — sharing and asking for help. And then 18 women comment — sharing giving suggestions. It is a really awesome resource.
Hannah: I think what we are all saying is that the reality is not getting talked about. And when it is, it is much more helpful than these [pointing to video screen] idealistic professionals. I will send out a warning though. That Facebook page — I have been scolded there [another mom said, “Me too.”] [surprise from Rosie] Meggan asked, “How were you affected when you were scolded?” Hannah: I was infuriated and hurt. She was telling me how bad it is to put my child in a jumperoo thing. She was saying it can cause head injuries . . . She framed it as “I know we are all trying out best…” And I say, “F..k YOU!” Finger gesture. It was just awful.
Sasha: I know she prefaced her comment this with, “I have been debating to say something for days.” What?! You have been holding on to this for days?! If it has taken you this long to say something, then you should probably not say something. When you get that many moms together you are bound to get a bad apple.
What do you as mother really need and want: Rosie: I want to know what my baby needs and wants. I want to know why she is crying when I try everything and it doesn’t work. I want a magic bullet for every problem. I am the mom. I am supposed to have that power, and I don’t.
Liz: I feel the same way. They all said that you will learn your babies cries, but to me all his cries sound exactly the same. I am, like, OMG should I know this? Am I not in tune with him? How come I cannot tell the difference when they all sound exactly the same? I wish I knew more when I feel like I have tried everything. And I wish I had more sleep.
Rosie: This is where I feel like AP fails. I feel like I am doing everything they say, and I am wearing my baby and my baby is squirming out of this wrap. She is in our bed, she is fed, and she is still crying. What else could be wrong.
Sasha: I want to feel more engaged. Like when he is playing I feel like there is nothing I can do. But when I try to draw a picture, then he will come and want to draw a picture too. I feel like sometimes I am in a prison. I want to be a mother. I want to be engaged but not just with him. I want to do something that is also engaging to me. I tried knitting, but it was not great. I don’t get that whole mothering thing.
Sandy: I need to let go of what I think is perfect. I need more connection with him and more connection with myself.
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Hannah: I just want the feeling that I am doing a good job. That comes from knowing all the right answers and having enough sleep. Having a good relationship with your partner. Some days I do and some days I don’t
Sasha: I really need encouragement. I didn’t realize how starved I was and I swear some homeless person could say, “You are doing great,” and I would be on cloud nine. Any little drop.
Hannah: I know. My son is having a procedure, and the assistant to the anesthesiologist was asking all these questions and she said, “I can tell you are doing a good job.” I was, like, “Thanks! I don’t know you, but I will take it!”
When you state what you, mom, really need and want, how does that make you feel? Massie: Like a bitch — demanding, pushy. I love my mom — I do, and it is pins and needles a little bit. She thinks I am type A, not go with the flow enough. So if I say I needed something, well, she didn’t need anything.
Rosie: I feel like it is a first world problem [for mom’s to have needs]. I need encouragement, I need to feel good about what I am doing, I feel a little snobby. I only have one child, and I am not working full time.
Sasha: I feel good when I say what I need. I feel justified asking and saying it is not for me but for this cute little guy. I feel good because I have a good driving force.
Liz: I feel guilty asking sometimes, like with sleep. I know he is not going to sleep, so why am I even asking for this? Why complain about something when that is just how it is? I must be crazy or making problems.
Sandy: I don’t know how I feel about saying what I want. I should be careful for asking for what I want, because if I get it, then hopefully he will be happy with it, and what if he isn’t? The pieces will never be in place, so it can lead to more wanting.
Rosie: I feel guilty when I ask for what I want. I am one of these people who shouldn’t complain. We don’t have money problems. I have a nanny, I have a housekeeper who comes once a month. I feel guilty asking, but I have issues, and I need things. [Meggan, “Do you feel guilty like you are breaking some rules or that you feel guilty that you are a bad person?”] No, it is, like. “What do I have to complain about?” There are women who have it much worse than me. And here I am all, “Woe is me.” It is not law breaking feeling, just bad.
Hannah: That was exactly my experience. I just want the feeling that I am doing a good job . . . I mean just hearing the experts and what they are doing to me . . . it is making me so f..cking hard on myself.
SECOND GROUP MEETING
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Massie: What is most notable comes from the question, “What has changed between the first round of collage and this round” In the first round I was a lot more focused on what my child needed, and this one I am just more aware of what or more just about me. This collage is more about what I need from my own mother . . . and not so much about what she needs from me.
Sasha: My first collage was a lot more outwardly focused and what I wanted society to view motherhood as and what I felt that it should be viewed as. Now it is much more about my own personal experience. [Meggan - please elaborate more about what you mean more of your personal experience.] What I personally like to be as a mother. What I feel like would be good for me to be his mom. Like more than just the day to day. Last week it was more about the generations and all that stuff, and this is more about me.
Hannah: I think last week I was focused on all the things that I wasn’t doing. A lot of my pictures were about how I was not creative enough. Last time held up a mirror, and I feel like a lot of people were struggling with confidence. I have had a lot of thoughts like, “Why do we do that to ourselves?” I am considering not doing that to myself anymore. Or at least trying not to do that. So this week is about some of the stuff about what I am not doing, and then there is stuff that I am doing.
Linda: I agree with everything everyone is saying. I chose instead of my ideal, I had a mixture of ideals from last time and what should be. This time I chose my own personal priorities, as well as who I feel like I am being or trying to be. The last two weeks, it was almost like editing a little bit, kind of letting go of the stuff that is not important. Trying to remember the things that are important for our family and for me. I think it was kind of mirrored answering the [research] questions and thinking, “It is not as bad as I think it is in my head as far as how I am acting, or how I am angry all the time, or how bad things are.” We had some low moments these two weeks, but every time I journaled I was like, “OHHH. It’s not that bad.” So it was just like letting go of some stuff and grabbing on to other stuff.
Liz: For me, before I took the class, [referring to last research group], basically I am usually really happy and calm with my baby, but then when he starts having a hard time for whatever reason, I would get overwhelmed and stressed. Someone said in the class, “Oh it is important for you to be happy for your baby. I thought about it, and, you know, that’s true. Even when he is having a hard time and stressed, I need to not to get so “Oh My God I am stressed and panicky.” I need to keep my same mood I was in and keep calm for him because he can probably sense that. That opened my eyes a little bit the last couple of weeks. I got to practice that. When I got to that point where I was so overwhelmed that I am going to lose it, and I would just try to focus on that (referring to her happier state of being) and that really helped me. I feel like it was a huge difference for me the last couple of weeks, just applying that.
Sandy: One of the things for me is that my central image is something that I already do, which is pretty cool. Maybe everything else is pretty ideal and goals that I want to life up to, but at the center, I already do that. It is just an image of a mother nursing in public, and I do that all over the place and all the time. I think the other images there is this image of a baby crying, which, I guess, is sort of a reminder that babies are going to cry and there are going to be hard times, so it is important to stay present as much as possible
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Eleanor: In my first collage a couple of weeks ago, I was really focused on me as a person, and I didn’t have any pictures of me as a mom or a mom and a baby. That totally blew my mind when I realized that. And I still think that that is really important to me. I was recently listening to a friend talk about how happy children have happy parents who take care of themselves and then their relationship and then the kids, you know, and in that order. So I have been thinking about all my roles. In this collage, I have my independent role, my family role, and, like, my mothering role. I think a lot of things have stayed the same, but I am seeing all my different roles. The journaling made me see that I am getting a little bit of all of it, but it is not all of it. My house is not perfectly clean, my job is not perfectly complete, and I am not being everything of mother and wife, but it is all there. Enough to keep going. I feel pretty good with it. I mean, perfection is an ideal not a reality. Or imperfection is beautiful . . . . When I was journalling, I was like, “Oh yeah — everything is pretty much in place.” There was one last journal where I did it 10 minutes before I had to be at work, and I am literally pumping and journaling at the same time, and that was my quiet time — the pumping time is my quiet time. Pumping at the table and journaling and I was like lesson planning and emailing all at the same time. Then I lost my keys, so I was like writing, “Yes, everything is okay.” Then in big words, “NO — nothing is okay. I am late for work, the baby is crying, and I don’t know where my keys are!!!” I was like happy, happy, not happy. Then I was, like, “Let me give you some explanation for my moment here.” My life is crazy. And, interestingly I really loved being in the group the last time, but the next day I experienced so much grief and anger — all the opposite. It was my lowest day of the whole two weeks, and I think a lot of it had to do with I was really avoiding working, writing lesson plans, The lesson plans can be overwhelming on the weekends, managing it all, but I couldn’t be a good mom at all. And like grief and anger about why does this have to be, and then I bounced back, I don’t know but it was interesting just to see the highs and lows back to back.
Rosie: One thing I noticed is that I am a terrible journaler. I think I was really short, and I did it at the end of the night. I would not give myself enough time, and I was tired, but what I noticed when I was writing was that I really judge how I am doing as a mom based on how my baby’s behavior is. If she is upset, then I think I am doing something wrong. If she is antsy, then it is all on me. Every time. I was writing in my journal, answering the question “How did you do today?” and I was, like, “terrible.” Why? “Because she was acting up, or she was fussy and I didn’t know how to sooth her. It felt like me doing a bad job. It seems important to look at that and get more confidence in myself, and to realize I am doing a fine job. She might need to poop or get some sleep.
Presenting the Preliminary Learnings and Reading the Hypothesis:
Hannah: That was exactly my experience. I feel, just hearing the experts and what they are doing to us. The mirror — it helped me feel more gentle which I think this allowed it. It helped me realize how hard I was being on myself.
Massie: I see this as beautiful synchronicity — last night I was journalling a little and reflecting on a pattern I have noticed in my behavior. It has probably been true, I don’t know, all year,… but I have the experience of really, unconsciously, absorbing the insecurities of the person I am talking with, and it feels awful. I can’t find my footing in myself when I am doing that. So
220 sitting with this - asking myself why is that happen more often? Something I think that is a strategy to manage is the feeling of not being resourced enough and disconnected with myself when I start to see that. Shame was the felt sense that I could find in there when I was reflecting for the journaling. There is some sort of self shame about who I am or about my experience as not being appropriate or okay. You know. But I think that is the complicated answer. And it is very sneaky, very subtle, smokey. I think I am fine and then only in retrospect can I be aware of that pressure or that judgement had an influence on me. It is so quick [crying]. It taps into some of the isolation that I am experiencing as a mom. I have looked at my experience of getting pregnant as Persephone a little bit. I was dropping into the underground, living in the depths, losing access to my brain, and really just being in my body for the delivery. Now there is a very slow movement back out. I feel like a year later, maybe I am back on the surface, except I can’t function the way I used to be able to. I can’t have conversations, and do things, not naturally anyway. I don’t have the energy for that either to get back to that outward movement. And then I am angry so much that I move away from shame. Angry at different parts, the anger about the change, and I get angry about the lack of support moms have — the systems, everything.
Sandy: Well, after I left after the last group, I felt 3000x’s lighter. I was in the greatest mood. It was really wonderful. I really needed to talk to people. I really mean talk in a deeper way because this relates more to the hypothesis: My friend had a potluck last night and I went there. I didn’t really know anyone there. And the people that I did know weren’t parents. I had a super hard time connecting or finding anything to talk about because I felt like I didn’t have any social resources any more other than to talk about my baby, and I don’t want to talk about that to these random people. They are not going to understand; they don’t have babies. They might have siblings who have babies but whatever. I don’t really want to ask them what they do for work. That feels so social getting to know you, but probably I am not going to see them again. So I felt like it is such a big contrast of what we were doing in this group. Even though I didn’t know you prior and going into that situation where I didn’t have any connection with those people. And I only got randomly invited because my friend saw me on the street, she said, “I thought about texting you, but I didn’t know if it was going to be too late.” I am so socially cut off from all my friends who don’t have children, who expect that I would go out right after the baby is asleep, or that I just get a baby sitter. It feels more complicated than that. I felt like there is a lot of social pressure in that group because a lot of them basically act as if I don’t have any kids.
Massie: And when we do go out we are like, [sarcastic tone] “Yeah — we are out!!! Let’s go party!! Because we pump and dump!” Or no, “I pumped before I came so I am good to go all night!”
Linda: Listening to what you said about moms’ groups, It really depends on the moms’ group. I am in one, and there have been great times, and there have been really annoying times. Don’t tell them I said that. It really depends on the group, and I actually thought, when I was guessing at your hypthosis was: I wondered it had to do with stages or processes — like how far you were along in your parenting, was there a point when you tried to do the ideal and and then you just give up and say, let’s get real, you let go? And I still wonder that — because what I found so valuable about this group is that there was this mix of ages. My mom’s group — we all have children are within a month of each other. They are all basically the same age. Sometimes it is really great, but a lot of times it is really not great because you are not getting the perspective of
221 someone who is a few years down the road or being with someone who is way behind where you are. That is what I was most encouraged by here was the mix of all those different stages. The reminders of where you have been and the looking forward to where you are headed. and the encouragement that all those different people at different stages in the process can bring to each other. So that is why I say, the mom’s group served a great purpose, and we still get together because we can play for the kids. But there is a lot of comparison that happens because the kids all the same age. There is a lot of, “Is your kid doing this yet? What about yours?” And it can be really uncomfortable and then someone sends an email out about what do you think about . . . . And then one person gets on their soap box and it is like those purposed are not helpful to what you are talking about. It actually makes it worse. Those are real people saying real things to other real people vs. the talking heads that you can just shut out by saying, “You don’t know me.” So if I was creating a program of mom’s groups, I would two: one for the kids to play and one that was mixed up. There were old ladies there — I mean really old ladies who volunteer their time in with teenage moms, elementary moms, and baby moms have them all mixed in.
Meggan: Presented preliminary learning about the loss of the maternal line.
Tara: I am really lucky to have a mom who boggles my mind. She carries no guilt. Okay, I am going to get more vulnerable about it. When I was 27, my dad came out to be gay. I am thankful that he waited until then. But when I am asking my mom, “Looking back, could you see something? Could you have done something different? All those things that come up the first few years.” She was like, “I just move forward. This is life, this is the way it is. I am not looking back, I am not going to analyze this. I have to keep going,” and she did. A part of me, at the time was, like, “WHAT?! How can you not look at that and pick it all apart?” So when I think about that, I am very grateful that she is like that. Even though I am not like that, it is a good example. My sister is like that. So that is what I say, those generational things and those mix of personalities and experience is really valuable. My experience in Uganda with these women, they are not women who are self aware, They don’t look at themselves, they don’t consider themselves an individual, they are a group/community type culture. But here everything is about us. If you ask her, [the Ugandan woman] “How do you feel about blah, blah, blah?” It is really hard for her to answer that. They are like good, fine, and that has taught me a lot too. They don’t pick themselves apart. They just get the job done. They move on. They just kind of do their thing. I think that is really valuable. There is criticism of that too. But perspective is really valuable for mothers to look at the whole picture and not just where we are right now.
Massie: I had an interesting conversation with someone last week. And the sum of it was there used to be a lot of daily ritual in life and traditions in ways that you survived and they were taught to you through the family you grew up with. You wake up and you do this, and this is how you make breakfast. This is how you work during the day, and this is how you eat. Those rituals were very fortifying and then there is some larger perspective here about why they disappear. But my mom doesn’t know how to cook. Every time she comes to my house she says, “Oh! I want you to show me how to make that,” but she never has time to learn how to make it. So there is no food ritual in my life. The daily routines were very chaotic. So the end of the conversation, it was about the loss, not just of the maternal line, but the loss of the information about how to do really basic things, like raise a child. And how to create rhythm for a baby - a
222 daily rhythm or a weekly rhythm. For myself they are not innate in me. The work involved in the decision making and incorporating my values, how do I really do this? What is important to me is all really new. I don’t have any thing to really build on. That is somewhat of an exaggeration cause I am not in that dire straights, but it is hard, and it is hard in a way that evokes a lot more self doubt. And my mom, I have to add this, on my personal process. She says to my sister, “Oh! You are such a natural mom. She is not a new mom. Your sister-in-law is a new mom.” I know that I am a new mom in my mother’s eyes. She is really mean. So I will own it and say, “Yes, I am a new mom.” So she doesn’t have to say it to me. She will get quiet. It is hurtful. [Tears]
Linda: I remember a moment when my daughter was about three months old. My sister said to me, “You are doing a really good job.” She said it so casually to me that I still remember that moment! I hold on to that in the hard times. That was two years ago, and that was huge. You need that, if not from your mom, but from someone. It is very important. [Tears]
Amber: I think that so much has changed over the generations. We can’t maintain this maternal line that you are talking about. I can’t ask my mom, “Hey Mom, when did you give me my first cell phone.” There are so many things like that. You really can’t. The information has changed. Things are toxic now that weren’t toxic before. I think that really kills the maternal line. Back in the day, I don’t think things changed as fast. But things are changing quite rapidly over the last 50 years as opposed to the last 150 years.
Meggan: Redirecting conversation back to shame.
Sasha: I think the hypothesis, there is a part in it that really pulled on my heart. I think it was the part about recognizing [tears] that we are influenced by the outside and that does decrease our experiences as mothers. For me it was good to hear that put into words. So specifically putting into words what is going on in motherhood . . . . The other moms I know live that everyday. Just being pushed and pulled from the outside. Umm, it is always good to have that recognized. My experience corresponds with your hypothesis and it is really good to hear, and yeah — the sisterhood of motherhood. I like that, and I think there needs to be a parenthesis, “It’s a man’s world.” because everything we are talking about I feel like . . . our society that we live in is shaped by the men, and we are just struggling to fit into that. I really like that the study is addressing that head on. It is just like comments every day from everywhere. There is this guy I work with, I don’t respect his opinion at all. He is foolish person, I think. But he is always making these comments. I guess this is how a lot of people just feel and he is just saying it. Like I said something about having a hard time with like balancing work and he said, “Well, you should just have a community to help you with all your stuff.” It is a lot of blaming the victim, and I don’t want to feel like a victim. But I just feel blamed for all the stuff that is not our fault. It is not set up for us to succeed in a lot of ways as parents. Not just as mothers but as parents. Somebody that I am friends with who is single, who is hard to find common ground with, just went on this rant on Facebook about a “stupid f..king mom on the train” that let her kid like jump up and watch her I Pad. The mom was watching some gory movie, and she just went off on this mom. I was putting myself in everyone’s shoes. My friend, yeah, I would have been annoyed too. You have to have boundaries with your kid. Then I was thinking about the mom and living in Japan. That could have been the only day with the four year old where the four year old left
223 here alone. It just feels like the world and people are saying, “You are such a stupid f..king mom. You are stupid to do this or not letting your kid do this.” I would love to see more media shift to more maternal self compassion and compassion for other people too. So thank you for this research. It is really hard to stay focused talking too, I have so many things to say!
Eleanor: My experience, I mean if I am in the study then I fit the criteria somehow — but so much about how I am feeling is the same as what I was feeling before I became a mom. I wanted a baby for so many reasons. The main reason was that I wanted my heart to grow with love and not to have all my energies put into work and my personal life. I am not sure I am experiencing that [the hypothesis] because I still have to do everything in equal great measure. At least I want to do. One thing that is really true to my experience is that I have a really incredible opportunity to sit with people in a Native American circle every week. It is men and women and generations. It is really about finding our own path and supporting each other in that. So I feel like, “I have it.” I have so much support. And sometimes it is hard with a shy kid that came six weeks early, in the NICU, took three months to breastfeed, and crazy other s..t, I don’t know where I am going with this, other than I feel so well loved and supported by my community. Even as I am walking it, and I don’t know what I am doing and trying to do my best, I know am doing my best. I am getting really good support and trying to be the best person I can be and the best mother that I can be. Even though I don’t know what I am doing with sleep or breastfeeding, it is always a different horizon with your kid as your kid keeps developing. It is alway something new. I got to do a lot of good work for myself to prepare to be a mom — to really love myself and know who I am before I started that journey…. All that good work, keeps me grounded even though I have to be reminded to be grounded. Recently I was in my circle and the feed back I got about my crying daughter, who can’t be happy in anyone’s arms but mine and that is really trying on me and my husband, is that I have to keep grounding myself for her. I say this I have done this great work, but I guess it is not over. And I am still working on all that good stuff. It is in similar ways about what we are experiencing here — the unconditional love and support.
Rosie: I want to add something — I think if our society didn’t get into our way, then we would feel so empowered to parent the way we want to parent. I want to do all these things for my child because I need to make sure she does really good job on the SAT’s, or she has to be a creative person. I do all these things so she doesn't become involved with drugs and be with the wrong people. There are predators out there, and I just feel like there are all these things that are scary and terrible. If we lived in a better society, then we could relax more and parent the way we want to parent and not worry about all these terrible things that we have to worry about.
Eleanor: The day after when I had the bad day, I think I was really angry with how much I felt like I couldn't give enough to myself and couldn’t give enough to my husband and couldn't give enough to my daughter and my work . I think someone said that our society doesn’t value mothering the way it values business. You know, we are basically run by our policies and they are set based on what makes money because we are a capitalistic society. If we value the long term and parenting what is best for the children, we would be a society that is very productive. But we are not putting it out there because it doesn’t make money. Today I was listening to NPR
224 about Finland, about their early childhood stuff, I just felt very angry to be put into this society where I am having to deal with this. It doesn’t have to be that way.
225
NOTES
Chapter 1
1. Maurice J. Elias, Steven E. Tobias, and Brian S. Friedlander, Emotionally Intelligent Parenting: How to Raise a Self-Disciplined, Responsible, Socially Skilled Child (Easton, PA: Harmony, 2011), 2.
2. Donald Woods Winnicott, Playing and Reality (Kent, UK: Burns & Oates, 1971), 10.
3. Janice L. Doane and Devon L. Hodges, From Klein to Kristeva: Psychoanalytic Femi- nism and the Search for the “Good Enough” Mother (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 31.
4. Ibid., 29.
5. Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety (New York. NY: Riverhead Trade), 2006. 2-33.
6. Aftab Omer, Integrative Seminar Course Notes (Petaluma, CA: Institute of Imaginal Studies, December 6, 2003).
7. Virginia Nemetz, Stone Child's Mother: A Jungian Narrative Reflection on the Mother Archetype (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2012), 16.
8. Ramona T. Mercer, “Becoming a Mother Versus Maternal Role Attainment,” Journal of Nursing Scholarship 36, no. 3 (2004): 226-232. (231).
9. Elizabeth Noela Emmanuel, Maternal Role Development: The Influence of Maternal Distress Following Childbirth (Ph.D. diss., Griffith University, 2005).
10. Lorraine O. Walker, Helen Crain, and Earl Thompson, “Maternal Role Attainment and Identity in the Postpartum Period: Stability and Change,” Nursing Research 35, no. 2 (1986): 68- 71. (69).
11. Lina Kurdahi Badr, “Further Psychometric Testing and Use of the Maternal Confi- dence Questionnaire,” Comprehensive Pediatric Nursing 28 (2005): 163-174. (164).
12. Chien Chi Liu, Yueh Chih Chen, Yen Po Yeh, and Yeu Sheng Hsieh, “Effects of Ma- ternal Confidence and Competence on Maternal Parenting Stress in Newborn Care,” Journal of Advanced Nursing 68, no. 4 (2012): 908-918. (909).
226
13. Summary of Reva Rubin, Maternal Identity and the Maternal Experience (New York: Springer Publishing Co., 1984), 51.
14. Summary of Reva Rubin, “Attainment of the Maternal Role: Part I, Processes,” Nurs- ing Research 16, no. 3 (1967): 237-245; see also Daniel Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern, The Birth of a Mother: How the Motherhood Experience Changes You Forever (New York: Basic Books, 1998).
15. Ben Halpern, “‘Myth’ and ‘Ideology’ in Modern Usage,” History and Theory 1, no. 2 (1961): 129-149. (2).
16. Diane Ruble, “The Acquisition of Self-Knowledge: A Self-Socialization Perspective,” Contemporary Topics in Developmental Psychology, ed. Nancy Eisenberg (New York: Wiley Interscience Publication, 1987), 244.
17. Helen Merrell Lynd, On Shame and the Search for Identity (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958), 23-24.
18. Summary of Gershen Kaufman, Shame, The Power of Caring (Rochester, VT: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1985); Helen Merrell Lynd, On Shame and the Search for Identity (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958); Thomas J. Scheff, “Shame and Con- formity: The Deference-Emotion System,” American Sociological Review (1988): 395-406; and Donald L. Nathanson, Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self (New York: WW Norton & Company, 1994).
19. Shari Thurer, The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), i.
20. Jean-Anne Sutherland. “Mothering, Guilt and Shame,” Sociology Compass 4, no. 5 (2010): 310-321. (311).
21. Brene Brown, I thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t): Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame (New York: NY Penguin Group, 2007).
22. Emily Bartlett, “Why We Ditched Attachment Parenting,” Holistic Squid Blog, June 12, 2013 (7:19 p.m.), http://holisticsquid.com/why-we-ditched-attachment-parenting/ - ixzz2YrB1TunG.
23. Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety (New York: Riverhead Trade Paperbacks, 2006), 50.
24. Mercer, “Becoming a Mother Versus Maternal Role Attainment,” 231.
227
25. Summary of Gweneth A. Hartrick, “Women Who are Mothers: The Experience of De- fining Self,” Health Care for Women International 18, no. 3 (1997): 263-277.
26. Mercer, “Becoming a Mother Versus Maternal Role Attainment,” 231.
27 Imaginal Inquiry was developed by Aftab Omer at Meridian University.
28 Melissa Schwartz. Meridian University Dissertation Manual 5th Edition (Petaluma, CA: Meridian University, 2013), 92.
29. Lina Kurdahi Badr, “Further Psychometric Testing and Use of the Maternal Confi- dence Questionnaire,” Comprehensive Pediatric Nursing 28 (2005):163-174.
30. http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheUglyDuckling_e.html
31. Ibid., 69.
32. Summarized from two sources: Michael Krasny, “Are Women Becoming Unhappier,” 9 a.m., KQED: Radio Program Forum, September 24, 2009; and Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” Economic Policy 4 no. 2 (2009): 190– 225.
33. Helen Merrell Lynd, On Shame and the Search for Identity (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958), 20.
34. Aftab Omer, Integrative Seminar: Identity, Consciousness, Experience (Petaluma, CA: Meridian University, December 6, 2003).
35. Thomas Moore and Peter Thomas, Care of the Soul (Recorded Books, Incorporated, 1994); Kindle book location 54 of 4759.
Chapter 2
1. Thurer. The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother. xv.
2. Oxford Dictionaries, “Mother,” http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/mother
3. Andrea O’Reilly, ed., Encyclopedia of Motherhood, Vol. 2 (Los Angeles: Sage Press, 2010), 571.
228
4. Donna Bassin, Margaret Honey, and Meryle Mahrer Kaplan, Representations of Moth- erhood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 2.
5. Anne Phoenix, Anne Woollett, and Eva Lloyd, eds., Motherhood: Meanings, Practices and Ideologies (London: Sage Publications, 1991), 6.
6. Mercer, “Becoming a Mother Versus Maternal Role Attainment,” 231.
7. Arthur Colman and Libby Colman, “Pregnancy as an Altered State of Consciousness,” Birth 1, no. 1 (1973): 7-11. (7).
8. Summarized from Daniel Stern and Nadia Bruschweiler-Stern, The Birth of a Mother: How the Motherhood Experience Changes You Forever (New York: Basic Books, 1998.)
9. Paul V. Trad, “On Becoming a Mother: In the Throes of Developmental Transfor- mation,” Psycholanalytic Psychology 7, no. 3 (1990): 341-361. (341).
10. Reva Rubin, Maternal Identity and the Maternal Experience (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1984), 38.
11. F.M. Deutsch, D.N. Ruble, J. Brokks-Gunn, A. Fleming, and C. Stangor, “Information Seeking and Maternal Self-Definition During the Transition to Motherhood,” Journal of Per- sonality and Social Psychology 55, no. 3 (1988): 420-431.
12. Myra Leifer, Psychological Effects of Motherhood: A Study of First Pregnancy (New York: Praeger, 1980).
13. Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern, The Birth of a Mother: How the Motherhood Experi- ence Changes You Forever, 262.
14. Summarized from Myra Leifer, Psychological Effects of Motherhood: A Study of First Pregnancy (New York: Praeger, 1980), 175, 23.
15. Benjamin H. Gottlieb and S. Mark Pancer, “Social Networks and the Transition to Parenthood,” The Transition to Parenthood: Current Theory and Research, ed. Gerald Y. Michaels and Wendy A. Goldberg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 235.
16. Jonathan A. Smith, “Towards a Relational Self: Social Engagement During Pregnancy and Psychological Preparation for Motherhood,” British Journal of Social Psychology 38, no. 4 (1999): 409-426. (413).
17. Rachel Thomson, Mary Jane Kehily, Lucy Hadfield, and Sue Sharpe, Making Modern Mothers (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2011); Kindle location 1968 of 4964.
229
18. Omer Aftab, “Choosing to Respond” Lecture (Petaluma, CA: Institute of Imaginal Studies, July 6, 2004).
19. Mercer, Becoming a Mother: Research on Maternal Identity from Rubin to the Pre- sent, 98.
20. Carolyn Cowan and Philip Cowan, When Parents Become Parents: The Big Life Changes for Couples (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 97.
21. Summarized from K. A. Rabuzzi, Motherself: A Mythic Analysis of Motherhood (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1988).
22. Andrea Buchanan, Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2003), 67.
23. Summary of Mercer, “Becoming a Mother Versus Maternal Role Attainment,” 226- 232.
24. Victor Turner and Roger Abraham, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1966), 36.
25. Aftab Omer, Integrative Seminar course notes (Petaluma, CA: Institute of Imaginal Studies, Dec 6, 2003).
26. Lisa Herman, “Researching the Images of Evil Events: An Arts-based Methodology in Liminal Space,” Qualitative Inquiry XX (2004): 4.
27. Summarized from Omer Aftab, “Weakness and Vulnerabilty” Lecture (Petaluma, CA: Institute of Imaginal Studies, July 1, 2006).
28. Susan Maushart, The Mask of Motherhood: How Becoming a Mother Changes Every- thing and Why We Pretend it Doesn’t (New York: The New Press, 1999), xix.
29. Robbie E. Davis-Floyd, Birth as an American Rite of Passage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 23.
30. Nemetz, Stone Child's Mother: A Jungian Narrative Reflection on the Mother Arche- type, 16.
31. Gweneth A. Hartrick, “Women Who Are Mothers: The Experience of Defining Self,” Health Care for Women International 18, no. 3 (1997): 263-277. (276).
32. Mercer, “Becoming a Mother Versus Maternal Role Attainment,” 231.
230
33. Arnold Van Gennep, “The Rites of Passage,” trans. M.B. Vizedom and G.L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 43.
34. BabyCenter Medical Advisory Board, “The Baby Blues,” http://www.babycenter.com/0_the-baby-blues_11704.bc. 35. Summarized from L. J. Miller and M. Rukstalis, “Beyond the ‘Blues’: Hypothesis about Postpartum Reactivity,” in Postpartum Mood Disorders, ed. L. J. Miller (London: Ameri- can Psychiatric Press, 1999), 5.
36. Summarized from A. Dunnewold and D. Sanford, Postpartum Survival Guide (Oak- land, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc, 1994), 10.
37. Summarized from Miller and Rukstalis, “Beyond the ‘Blues’: Hypothesis about Post- partum Reactivity,” 16-18.
38. Ibid., 19-20.
39. American Psychological Association, “Postpartum Depression,” http://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/depression/postpartum.aspx?item=2
40. Summary of Katherine L. Wisner, Dorothy KY Sit, Mary C. McShea, David M. Rizzo, Rebecca A. Zoretich, Carolyn L. Hughes, Heather F. Eng et al, “Onset Timing, Thoughts of Self- Harm, and Diagnoses in Postpartum Women with Screen-Positive Depression Findings.” JAMA Psychiatry 70, no. 5 (2013): 490-498.
41. H. D. Gartland Woolhouse, F. Mensah, and S.J. Brown, “Maternal Depression from Early Pregnancy to 4 Years Postpartum in a Prospective Pregnancy Cohort Study: Implications for Primary Health Care,” British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (May 22, 2014).
42. Summary of Amy Wenzel, Erin N. Haugen, Lydia C. Jackson, and Jennifer R. Bren- dle, “Anxiety Symptoms and Disorders at Eight Weeks Postpartum,” Journal of Anxiety Disor- ders 19, no. 3 (2005): 295-311.
43. Carmen Monzon, Teresa Lanza di Scalea, and Teri Pearlstein, “Postpartum Psychosis: Updates and Clinical Issues,” Psychiatric Times (January 15, 2014); http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/special-reports/postpartum-psychosis-updates-and-clinical- issues.
44. Dorothy Sit, Anthony J. Rothschild, and Katherine L. Wisner, “A Review of Postpar- tum Psychosis,” Journal of Women's Health 15, no. 4 (2006): 352-368. (352).
45. Natasha Mauthner, “‘Feeling Low and Feeling Really Bad About Feeling Low’: Women’s Experiences of Motherhood and Postpartum Depression,” Journal of Canadian Psy- chology 40, no. 2 (1999): 143.
231
46. Ibid.,143.
47. Karen Kleiman, Therapy and the Postpartum Woman: Notes on Healing Postpartum Depression for Clinicians and the Women Who Seek Their Help (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008), 8-10.
48. D.N. Ruble, “The Acquisition of Self-Knowledge: A Self-Socialization Perspective,” Contemporary Topics in Developmental Psychology, ed. N. Eisenberg (New York: Wiley, 1987), 243-270. (243).
49. Deutsch, Ruble, Brokks-Gunn, Fleming, and Stangor, “Information Seeking and Ma- ternal Self-Definition During the Transition to Motherhood,” 421.
50. Jean Anne Sutherland, “What Could I Do Different, What Could Be Better, What Could You Do More: Guilt Shame Mothering” (Ph.D. diss. University of Akron, 2006), 7-8.
51. Rubin, Maternal Identity and the Maternal Experience, 39.
52. Rubin, “Attainment of the Maternal Role: Part I, Processes,” 242.
53. Rubin, Maternal Identity and the Maternal Experience, 40.
54. Ruble, “The Acquisition of Self-Knowledge: A Self-Socialization Perspective,” 244.
55. Amy Rossiter, From Private to Public: A Feminist Exploration of Early Mothering (Toronto: The Women’s Press), 31.
56. Mercer, “Becoming a Mother Versus Maternal Role Attainment,” 231.
57. Summary of Gennep, “The Rites of Passage.”
58. Summary of Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, The Motherline (Carmel, CA: Fisher King Press, 2009).
59. Lynd, On Shame and the Search for Identity, 23-24.
60. Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t): Women Reclaiming Power and Cour- age in a Culture of Shame, 28-29.
61. Gerhart Piers and Milton B. Singer, Shame and Guilt: A Psychoanalytic and a Cultur- al Study (Oxford, England: W. W. Norton. & Company, 1971), 112.
62. Jack Katz, How Emotions Work (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 1999), 147.
232
63. Gabriele Taylor, Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment (New York: Clarendon Press, 1985), 54.
64. Gershen Kaufman. The Psychology of Shame: Theory and Treatment of Shame-Based Syndromes. (New York, NY: Springer Publishing Co, 1996), 46.
65. Ibid., 45.
66. Ibid., 46.
67. Scheff, Thomas. “When Shame Gets Out of Hand,” Sage Publications, http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/13294_Chapter_5_Web_Byte_Thomas_J_Scheff.pdf., 3.
68. Gershen Kaufman, Shame: The Power of Caring (New York: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1985), 32.
69. Thomas J. Scheff, “Shame and Conformity: The Deference-Emotion System,” Ameri- can Sociological Review (1988): 395-406. (405).
70. Daniel MT Fessler, “From Appeasement to Conformity,” The Self-Conscious Emo- tions: Theory and Research (2007): 174.
71. Trad, “On Becoming a Mother: In the Throes of Developmental Transformation,” 343.
72. Paul Gilbert, “The Evolution of Social Attractiveness and Its Tole in Shame, Humilia- tion, Guilt, and Therapy,” British Journal of Medical Psychology 70, no. 2 (1997): 113-147. (114).
73. Kaufman, The Psychology of Shame, 4-5.
74. Ibid., 5.
75. Erik H. Erikson, “Identity and the Life Cycle: Selected Papers,” Psychological Issues (1959): 70-71.
76. Ibid., 10.
77. Aftab Omer, Integrative Seminar: “I-Factor” Lecture (Petaluma, CA: Meridian Uni- versity, December 5, 2007).
78. Kaufman, The Psychology of Shame,16.
79. Ibid., 6.
233
80. Paul Gilbert and Sue Proctor, “Compassionate Mind Training for People with High Shame and Self-Criticism: Overview and Pilot Study of a Group Therapy Approach,” Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy 13 (2006): 353-379. (354).
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid.
83. Kim M. Baldwin, John R. Baldwin, and Thomas Ewald, “The Relationship Among Shame, Guilt, and Self-Efficacy,” American Journal of Psychotherapy 60, no. 1 (2006): 1-21. (16).
84. June Tangney and Ronda Dearing, eds., Shame and Guilt (Emotions and Social Be- havior) (New York: The Guilford Press, 2002), 59.
85. Ronda Dearing, “Shame and Self-Esteem,” in Tangney and Dearing, Shame and Guilt, 59.
86. Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t): Women Reclaiming Power and Cour- age in a Culture of Shame, 9.
87. Sutherland, “What Could I Do Different, What Could Be Better, What Could You Do More: Guilt Shame Mothering.” 105-106.
88. Ibid., 106.
89. Ibid., 182.
90. Glenda Wall, “Mothers' Experiences with Intensive Parenting and Brain Development Discourse.” Women's Studies International Forum, 33, no. 3 (2010): 253-263. (262).
91. Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Cul- ture of Shame, 96.
92. Nathanson, Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self, 317.
93. Brene Brown, “Listening to Shame,” (Ted Talk), March 2012, Ted.com, http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame: 13:57.
94. Summary of two sources: Brene Brown “Listening to Shame” (Ted Talk), March 2012, Ted.com, http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame: 13:57; and Omer Aftab, Integrative Seminar: “I-factor” Lecture (Petaluma, CA: Meridian University, December 5, 2007).
234
95. Anna Rotkirch and Kristiina Janhunen, “Maternal Guilt,” Evolutionary Psychology 8, no. 1 (2010): 90-106. (91).
96. Miriam Liss, Holly H. Schiffrin, and Kathryn M. Rizzo, “Maternal Guilt and Shame: The Role of Self-Discrepancy and Fear of Negative Evaluation,” Journal of Child and Family Studies 22, no. 8 (2013): 1112-1119 (1113).
97. Jean Anne Sutherland, “Mothering, Guilt and Shame,” Sociology Compass 4, no. 5 (2010): 310-321. (311).
98. Taylor, Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment, 54.
99. Barbara Almond, The Monster Within: The Hidden Side of Motherhood (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010).
100. Stella Chess, “The ‘Blame the Mother’ Ideology,” International Journal of Mental Health (1982): 95-107. (95).
101. Chris Bobel, “When Good Enough Isn’t: Mother Blame in the Continuum Concept.” Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement 6, no. 2 (2004): 68, 72.
102. Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, Stories from the Motherline: Reclaiming the Mother- Daughter Bond, Finding Our Feminine Souls (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1992), xiv.
103. Paula Caplan, The New Don't Blame Mother: Mending the Mother-Daughter Rela- tionship (New York: Routledge, 2000), 37.
104. Sutherland, “Mothering, Guilt and Shame,” 318.
105. Ibid., ix.
106. William Sears and Martha Sears, The Attachment Parenting Book: A Commonsense Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Baby (New York: Little Brown and Company, 2001), 11-24.
107. William Sears, Nighttime Parenting: How to Get Your Baby and Child to Sleep (Franklin Park, Ill, 1990), 6.
108. Bartlett, “Why We Ditched Attachment Parenting,” Holistic Squid Blog.
109. Gary Ezzo and Anne Marie Ezzo, On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep (Parent-Wise Solutions, 2009), Kindle location 950 of 2403.
235
110. Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (New York: NY Pantheon Books, 1973), 392.
111. Carl Gustav Jung, Collected Works: Symbols of Transformation (New York: Panthe- on Books, 1953), 102.
112. Anthony Stevens, On Jung (London: Routledge, 1990), 39.
113. Ibid., 46.
114. Carl Gustav Jung, Aspects of the Feminine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 110.
115. Erich Neumann, “The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype,” trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Princeton Press, 1955), 45.
116. Ibid., 18.
117. Ibid., 83.
118. Ibid., 84.
119. Lowinsky, The Motherline, 13.
120. Oxford University Press. http://www.oup.com/us/companion.websites/0195153448/studentresources/chapters/ch01/
121. Sibylle Birkhauser-Oeri, The Mother: Archetypal Image in Fairy Tales, trans. Mi- chael Mitchell (Ontario, Canada: Inner City Books, 1988), 10.
122. Summarized in Birkhauser-Oeri, The Mother: Archetypal Image in Fairy Tales.
123. Ibid., 20.
124. David M. Minar, “Ideology and Political Behavior,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 5, no. 4 (1961): 317-331. (322).
125. Halpern, “‘Myth’ and ‘Ideology’ in Modern Usage,” 35.
126. Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology, Vol. 4, The Masks of God (New York: Pen- guin, 1991), 4.
127. Stephen Larsen, The Mythic Imagination (New York: Bantam, 1990); Kindle Loca- tion 782 of 6623.
236
128. Thurer, The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother, xx.
129. Laurel Parker West, “Soccer Moms, Welfare Queens, Waitress Moms, and Super Moms: Myths of Motherhood in State Media Coverage of Child Care,” MARIAL Centre, Emory University, Working Paper 16 (2002): 10.
130. Sue Lanci Villani and Jane E. Ryan, Motherhood at the Crossroads: Meeting the Challenge of a Changing Role (Oklahoma City, OK: Insight Books, 1997), 30.
131. Summarized from Susan J. Carroll, “The Disempowerment of the Gender Gap: Soc- cer Moms and the 1996 Elections,” PS: Political Science and Politics 32, no. 1 (1999): 7-11.
132. West, “Soccer Moms, Welfare Queens, Waitress Moms, and Super Moms: Myths of Motherhood in State Media Coverage of Child Care,” 9.
133. Summary of West, “Soccer Moms, Welfare Queens, Waitress Moms, and Super Moms: Myths of Motherhood in State Media Coverage of Child Care,” 10.
134. Diane Eyer, Motherguilt: How Our Culture Blames Mothers for What’s Wrong with Society (New York: Random House, 1996), 25.
135. Summary of David Zucchino, Myth of the Welfare Queen: A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist's Portrait of Women on the Line (New York: Scribner, 1997).
136. Thomson, Kehily, Hadfield, and Sharpe, Making Modern Mothers; Kindle location: 2255 of 4964.
137. Ibid., Kindle location: 2256 of 4964.
138. Chris Bobel, The Paradox of Natural Mothering (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 61.
139. Jane Swigart, The Myth of the Perfect Mother: Parenting Without Guilt (Raleigh, NC: Contemporary Books, 1998), 6.
140. Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. 61.
141. Summary of Sohail Agha, “The Determinants of Infant Mortality in Pakistan,” Social Science & Medicine 51, no. 2 (2000): 199-208.
142. Summary of Marissa Diener, “Gift from the Gods: A Balinese Guide to Early Child Rearing,” A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies, ed. Alma Gottlieb (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
237
143. Ed Tronick, The Neurobehavioral and Social-Emotional Development of Infants and Children (New York: WW Norton & Co., 2007), 166.
144. Ibid., 20-21.
145. Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Moth- erhood and How It Has Undermined All Women (New York: Free Press, 2005), 20, 25.
146. Harriette Marshall, “The Social Construction of Motherhood: An Analysis of Child- care and Parenting Manuals,” Motherhood: Social Construction, Politics and Psychology, ed. Ann Phoenix and Anne Woollett (New York: Sage Publications, 1991), 83.
147. Lara J. Descartes and Conrad Kottak, Media and Middle Class Moms: Images and Realities of Work and Family (New York: Routledge, 2008).
148. Aftab Omer, Integrative Seminar “Imaginal Processes” (Petaluma, CA: Meridian University, February 17, 2007).
149. Aftab Omer, Research Design: “Transmuting Affect” (Petaluma, CA: Meridian Uni- versity, January 19, 2007).
150. Lowinsky, Stories from the Motherline: Reclaiming the Mother-Daughter Bond, Finding Our Feminine Souls, xvi.
151. Jean-Anne Sutherland, “The Foundation for Guilt and Shame: African-American and White Mother’s Experience, http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/8/2/3/5/p182352_index.htm l.
152. Thurer, The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother, 225- 226.
153. http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/clash/introduction/intro.html.
154. Peter Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 21.
155. “First National Congress of Mothers,” Old and Sold: Turn-of-the-Century Wisdom for Today, http://www.oldandsold.com/articles26/mothers-1.shtml.
156. Wikipedia, “Margaret Sanger,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger.
157. Summarized by Thurer in The Myths of Motherhood and “What is the History of Abortion,” All About…, http://www.allaboutpopularissues.org/history-of-abortion-faq.htm.
238
158. Summary of Benjamin Grant Jefferis and James Lawrence Nichols, Search Lights on Health: Light on Dark Corners; A Complete Sexual Science and A Guide to Purity and Physical Manhood (Toronto, Ontario: JL Nichols & Company, 1904).
159. Troy L. Kickler, North Carolina History Project http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/commentary/315/entry, 2011.
160. Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America, 20.
161. Morton Hunt, The Story of Psychology (New York: Double Day, 1993), 254.
162. Ibid., 254.
163. J.B. Watson, Psychological Care of Infant and Child (New York: WW Norton & Co., 1928), 5.
164. Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America, 22.
165. Mercer, Becoming a Mother: Research on Maternal Identity From Rubin to the Pre- sent, 2.
166. Louis B. Silverstein, “Transforming the Debate About Child Care and Maternal Em- ployment,” American Psychologist 46, no. 10 (1991): 1026.
167. Thurer, The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother, 248.
168. Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, 33.
169. Summary of René Arpad Spitz and W. Godfrey Cobliner, The First Year of Life (Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 1965).
170. Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, 35.
171, Fitzhugh Dodson. How to Parent. Signet Book, (Los Angeles: Signet Book. 1971). 21.
172. Benjamin Spock, Baby and Childcare (Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 1962). 34.
173. George Guilder, “Women in the Work Force,” The Atlantic, September 1986. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1986/09/women-in-the-work-force/304924/.
174. Rachel Hare-Mustin and Patricia Broderick, “The Myth of Motherhood: A Study of Attitudes Towards Motherhood,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 4, no. 1 (1979) 115.
239
175. Louis B. Silverstein, “Transforming the Debate About Child Care and Maternal Em- ployment,” American Psychologist 46, no. 10 (1991): 1025.
176. Martha McMahon, Engendering Motherhood: Identity and Self-Transformation in Women’s Lives (New York: Guildford Press, 1995), 1.
177. Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America, 23.
178. Summary of Peter Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America.
179. Ibid.
180. Summary of Gretchen Livingston and D’Vera Cohn, “The New Demography of American Motherhood,” Pew Social Trends, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/05/06/the- new-demography-of-american-motherhood/, May 6th, 2010.
181. “Global Baby Care Products Market to be Worth US $66.8 Billion by 2017,” Trans- parency Market Research, http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/baby-care- products-market.html, September 10, 2014.
182. Daniel N. Stern, The First Relationship: Infant and Mother (Cambridge, MA: Har- vard University Press, 2009), 147.
183. Walker, Crain, and Thompson, “Maternal Role Attainment and Identity in the Post- partum Period: Stability and Change,” 68.
182. Mercer, Becoming a Mother: Research on Maternal Identity From Rubin to the Pre- sent (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1995), 74.
185. Lina Kurdahi Badr, “Further Psychometric Testing and Use of The Maternal Confi- dence Questionnaire,” Comprehensive Pediatric Nursing 28 (2005): 163-174. (164).
186. Mercer, Becoming a Mother: Research on Maternal Identity from Rubin to the Pre- sent (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1995), 159.
187. Susan McClennan Reece, “The Parent Expectations Survey: A Measure of Perceived Self-Efficacy,” Clinical Nursing Research 1, no. 4 (1992): 336-346. (336).
188. Lui, Chen, Yeh, and Hsieh, “Effects of Maternal Confidence and Competence on Ma- ternal Parenting Stress in Newborn Care,” Journal of Advance Nursing (June 2011): 909.
189. Walker, Crain, and Thompson, “Maternal Role Attainment and Identity in the Post- partum Period: Stability and Change,” 69.
240
190. Tannis Macbeth Williams, Lesley A. Joy, Lisa Travis, Andrew Gotowiec, Miriam Blum Steele, Leona S. Aiken, Susan Lee Painter, and Sheena M. Davidson, “Transition to Moth- erhood: A Longitudinal Study,” Infant Mental Health Journal 8, no. 3 (1987): 251-265. (264).
191. Walker, Crain, and Thompson, “Maternal Role Attainment and Identity in the Post- partum Period: Stability and Change,” 69.
192. Deutsch, F. M., D.N. Ruble, Brokks-Gunn, J., Fleming, A., Stangor, C., “Information Seeking and Maternal Self-Definition During the Transition to Motherhood,” 421.
193. Summary of Richard E. Nisbett and Lee Ross, Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980).
194. Mercer, Becoming a Mother: Research on Maternal Identity from Rubin to the Pre- sent, 171.
195. Mauthner, “‘Feeling Low and Feeling Really Bad about Feeling Low’: Women's Ex- periences of Motherhood and Postpartum Depression,” 155.
196. Ibid., 143.
197. Lesley Barclay, Louise Everitt, Frances Rogan, Virginia Schmied, and Aileen Wyllie, “Becoming a Mother—An Analysis of Women's Experience of Early Motherhood,” Journal of Advanced Nursing 25, no. 4 (1997): 719-728. (726).
198. Precilla Choi, Carole Henshaw, Sarah Baker, and Joanne Tree, “Supermum, Super- wife, Supereverything: Performing Femininity in the Transition to Motherhood,” Journal of Re- productive and Infant Psychology 23, no. 2 (2005): 167-180. (177).
199. Ibid.
200. Mercer, “Becoming a mother versus maternal role attainment,” 231.
201. George Herbert Meade, Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Be- haviorist,” ed. Charles W. Morris (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1934), 135.
202. Sheldon Stryker and Peter J. Burke, “The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity Theory,” Social Psychology Quarterly (2000): 284-297. (284).
203. Summary of Peggy A. Thoits, “Multiple Identities and Psychological Well-Being: A Reformulation and Test of the Social Isolation Hypothesis,” American Sociological Review (1983): 174-187.
241
204. Rozsika Parker, Mother Love/Mother Hate: The Power of Maternal Ambivalence, (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
205. Sutherland, “Mothering, Guilt and Shame,” 311.
Chapter 3
1. Melissa Schwartz, Dissertation Handbook (Petaluma, CA: Institute of Imaginal Stud- ies, 2006), 63.
2. Ibid., 69.
3. Kurt W. Fischer, Self Conscious Emotions, ed. June P. Tangney (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), 27.
4. “2012 Summer Olympics P&G - Thank You Mom TV Commercial”. YouTube.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sw-f_OjC_4.
5. Martha Sears. “Why Breastfeeding is the Best Feeding”. YouTube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5d1dFa23eo.
6. Martha Sears. “The 7 B's of Attachment Parenting”. YouTube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0syLK6Uj3s.
7. “The Role of Attachment in Infancy on Later Mental and Physical Health, YouTube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bul1meciGE.
8. Interview by Anderson Cooper on CNN. “Psychiatrist Responds to Attachment Parent- ing,” YouTube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jQzS5bu4cM.
9. “Ed Tronick Still Face Experiment,” Web Search, Google, https://www.google.com/search?q=ed+tronick+still+face+experiment&ie=utf-8&oe=utf- 8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb.
10. “Co-Sleeping with Infants: Science, Public Policy, and Parents Civil Rights, with James McKenna, Ph.D,” YouTube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCZzzqFkyiU.
11. “Dr. Harvey Karp Introduces the Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep,” YouTube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNbRvWZG0iM.
12. “Helicopter Parents vs. Free Range Kids: Q&A with ‘America's Worst Mom’ Lenore Skenazy.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ln_tYVoDpM.
242
13. Schwartz, Dissertation Handbook, 67.
Chapter 4
1. Arietta Slade, John Grienenberger, Elizabeth Bernbach, Dahlia Levy, and Alison Lock- er, “Maternal Reflective Functioning, Attachment, and the Transmission Gap: A Preliminary Study,” Attachment and Human Development 7, no. 3 (2005): 283.
2. Hugh Jolly, Book of Child Care: The Complete Guide for Today's Parent (London: Sphere, 1981), 1.
3. Lowinsky, Stories from the Motherline: Reclaiming the Mother-Daughter Bond, Find- ing our Feminine Souls, 2.
4. Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, 32-33.
5. Summarized from Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels, The Mommy Myth: The Ide- alization of Motherhood and How it has Undermined All Aomen (New York: Free Press, 2005), 20; 25. Information is also included from the following sources: Harriette Marshall, “The Social Construction of Motherhood: An Analysis of Childcare and Parenting Manuals,” in Motherhood: Social Construction, Politics and Psychology, eds. Ann Phoenix, Anne Woollett, and Eva Lloyd (New York: Sage Publications, 1991), 83; Lara J. Descartes and Conrad Kottak, Media and Mid- dle Class Moms: Images and Realities of Work and Family (New York: Routledge, 2008), 53; and Francine Deutsch, Diane Ruble, J. Brooks-Gunn, Alison Fleming, and Charles Stangor, “In- formation Seeking and Maternal Self-Definition During the Transition to Motherhood,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 55. No. 3 (1988): 420.
6. Stephen Larsen, Mythic Imagination: Your Quest for Meaning through Personal My- thology (New York: Bantam Books, 1990).
7. Lina Kurdahi Badr (Zahr), “Further Psychometric Testing and Use of The Maternal Confidence Questionnaire,” 64.
8. Rubin, Maternal Identity and the Maternal Experience, 39.
9. Mercer, “Becoming a Mother Versus Maternal Role Attainment,” 231.
10. Gilbert and Proctor, “Compassionate Mind Training for People with High Shame and Self-Criticism: Overview and Pilot Study of a Group Therapy Approach,” 354.
11. Ibid. 354.
243
12. Ibid. 354.
13. Liss, Schiffrin, and Rizzo, “Maternal Guilt and Shame: The Role of Self-discrepancy and Fear of Negative Evaluation,” 1112-1119.
14. Sutherland, “What Can I Do Different, What Could Be Better, What Could You Do More?: Guilt, Shame, and Mothering,” 106.
15. Summary of Paul Gilbert and Jeremy NV Miles, “Sensitivity to Social Put-Down: It's Relationship to Perceptions of Social Rank, Shame, Social Anxiety, Depression, Anger and Self- Other Blame,” Personality and Individual Differences 29, no. 4 (2000): 757-774. Additional summary of June Price Tangney, “Shame and Guilt in Interpersonal Relationships,” Self- Conscious Emotions: The Psychology of Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment, and Pride, ed. June Price Tagney and Kurt W. Fischer, (New York: Guilford, 1995).
16. Nathanson, Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self, 317.
17. Kaufman, The Psychology of Shame, 5.
18. Badr (Zahr), “Further Psychometric Testing and Use of The Maternal Confidence Questionnaire,” 164.
19. Mauthner, “‘Feeling Low and Feeling Really Bad About Feeling Low’: Women's Ex- periences of Motherhood and Postpartum Depression,” 143.
20. Choi, Henshaw, Baker, and Tree, “Supermum, Superwife, Supereverything: Perform- ing Femininity in the Transition to Motherhood,” 167-180.
21. Gilbert and Proctor, “Compassionate Mind Training for People with High Shame and Self-Criticism: Overview and Pilot Study of a Group Therapy Approach,” 354.
22. Ibid., 353.
23. Summary of Peggy A. Thoits, “Multiple Identities and Psychological Well-Being: A Reformulation and Test of the Social Isolation Hypothesis.” American Sociological Review (1983): 174-187.
Chapter 5
1. Lowinsky, Stories from the Motherline, 54.
2. Summarized from Lowinsky, Stories from the Motherline.
244
3. Summary of Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America.
4. Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, 32-33.
5. Eyer, Motherguilt: How Our Culture Blames Mothers for What’s Wrong with Society, 3.
6. Summary of Paula Caplan, The New Don't Blame Mother: Mending the Mother- Daughter Relationship, 36.
7. Ibid.,; Kindle location 135 of 7050.
8. Arietta Slade, John Grienenberger, Elizabeth Bernbach, Dahlia Levy, and Alison Lock- er, “Maternal Reflective Functioning, Attachment, and the Transmission Gap: A Preliminary Study,” Attachment and Human Development 7, no. 3 (2005): 283.
9. Daniel J. Siegel and Mary Hartzell, Parenting from the Inside Out (New York: Pen- guin, 2003), 14.
10. Summary of Susan C. Crockenberg and Esther M. Leerkes, “Parental Acceptance, Postpartum Depression, and Maternal Sensitivity: Mediating and Moderating Processes,” Jour- nal of Family Psychology 17, no. 1 (2003): 80.
11. Hugh Jolly, Book of Child Care: The Complete Guide for Today's Parent, 1.
12. “I Don’t Understand Attachment Parenting,” http://www.askdrsears.com/news/sears- family-blog/i-dont-understand-attachment-parenting. April 17, 15.
13. M. Radey and K.A. Randolph, “Parenting Sources: How Do Parents Differ in Their Efforts to Learn About Parenting?” Family Relations 58 (2009): 536-48. (537).
14. Shelley E Taylor, Laura Cousino Klein, Brian P. Lewis, Tara L. Gruenewald, Regan AR Gurung, and John A. Updegraff, “Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and- Befriend, Not Fight-or-Flight,” Psychological Review 107, no. 3 (2000): 421 - 422. (422).
15. Ibid., 422.
16. Omer Aftab, Integrative Seminar, “The Mother Principle” (Petaluma, CA: Meridian University, 2006).
17. Ava Neyer, “I Read All the Baby Sleep Books,” Huffington Post, April 23, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ava-neyer/i-read-all-the-baby-sleep-advice- books_b_3143253.html.
245
18. Omer Aftab, Integrative Seminar: “I-Factor” (Petaluma, CA: Meridian University, May 19, 2007).
19. Badr (Zahr), “Further Psychometric Testing and Use of The Maternal Confidence Questionnaire,” 64.
20. Rubin, Maternal Identity and the Maternal Experience, 39.
21. Mercer, “Becoming a Mother Versus Maternal Role Attainment,” 231.
22. James Hillman, The Essential James Hillman: A Blue Fire (New York: Routledge, 2013), 43.
23. Omer Aftab, Email communications to Meggan Hartman from Andrea Lambert (Peta- luma, CA: Meridian University, November 28, 2005).
24. Michael Meade, The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul (Housatonic, MA: Greenfire Press, 2006), 15.
25. Summary of Omer Aftab, “I-Factor” Lecture Course Notes (Petaluma, CA: Meridian University, May 19, 2007).
26. Aftab, Integrative Seminar: “I-Factor” Lecture.
27. Omar Aftab, “Choosing to Respond” Lecture Course Notes (Petaluma, CA: Institute of Imaginal Studies, July 6, 2004).
28. Summary of Aftab Omar, “Choosing to Respond” Lecture Course Notes and Thomas Moore and Peter Thomas, Care of the Soul (Recorded Books, Incorporated, 1994).
29. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves (London: Rider, 1992), 9.
30. Summary of Choi, Henshaw, Baker, and Tree, “Supermum, Superwife, Superevery- thing and Mauthner, “‘Feeling Low and Feeling Really Bad About Feeling Low”: Women's Ex- periences of Motherhood and Postpartum Depression,” 143.
31. Summary of Peggy Thoits,“Multiple Identities and Psychological Well-Being: A Re- formulation and Test of the Social Isolation Hypothesis,” American Sociological Review (1983): 174-187.
32. Joseph Campbell, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine (New World Library: Novato CA, 2013), xiii.
33. Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves, 178.
246
34. Ibid., 175.
35. Ibid., 173.
36. Ibid., 174.
37. Lowinsky, The Motherline, 67.
38. Meade, The Water of Life lecture notes.
39. Robbie E. Davis-Floyd, Birth as an American Rite of Passage: With a New Preface. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), 1.
40. Summary of Mercer, “Becoming a Mother Versus Maternal Role Attainment,” 226- 232.
41. Omer Aftab, Integrative Seminar Course Notes (Petaluma, CA: Meridian University, Dec. 5, 2003).
42. Moore and Thomas, Care of the Soul, 13.
43. Summary of Carl Gustav Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (New York: Psychol- ogy Press, 2001).
44. Meade, The Water of Life lecture notes.
45. Thomas Moore. Care of the Soul; Kindle location 123 of 4759.
46. Lynd, On Shame and the Search for Identity, 43.
47. Omer Aftab, Integrative Seminar: “Identity, Consciousness, Experience” (Petaluma, CA: Meridian University, December 6, 2003).
48. Omer Aftab, “Introduction to New Students” Course Notes (Petaluma, CA: Meridian University, September 9, 2003).
49. Ibid.
50. Kristin Neff, “Self-Compassion: An Alternative Conceptualization of a Healthy Atti- tude Toward Oneself,” Self and Identity 2, no. 2 (2003): 85-101. (87).
51. Summary of Mikyung Kwon, Hyewon Kim, Namsun Kim, and Jungae Jang. “Postpar- tum Depression and Maternal Role Confidence, Parenting Stress, and Infant Temperament in Mothers of Young Infants,” Journal of Korean Academy of Child Health Nursing 12, no. 3 (2006): 314-321.
247
52. Mauthner. “‘Feeling Low and Feeling Really Bad About Feeling Low’: Women's Ex- periences of Motherhood and Postpartum Depression,” 143.
53. Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves, 178.
54. Summary of Ramona Thieme Mercer, Becoming a mother: Research on maternal identity from Rubin to the present (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1995), 203.
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