The Not-Mother Puzzle
| Author | Alice Belcher |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390000900404 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
THE NOT-MOTHER PUZZLE
ALICE BELCHER
University of Dundee, UK
ABSTRACT
Feminist debate has moved away from an emphasis on how women differ from men
and towards acknowledgement of differences among women. This article explores a
division of growing importance for the new millennium: the division between women
who choose to remain childless and those who choose to become mothers. The article
demonstrates that more women are choosing to remain childless in the UK and the
USA. It claims that the increase in childlessness is a demographic trend that is affect-
ing the whole of the western, developed world. The main point of the article is to
suggest that the way sex discrimination law is currently structured means that the
demographic change identified will work to the disadvantage of both mothers and
not-mothers.
INTRODUCTION
THE TENSIONin feminist thinking between the plea for equality and
the assertion of sexual difference is well established. The shift in femin-
ist debate away from the emphasis on how women differ from men
and toward acknowledgement of differences among women is also not new.
Ann Phillips writing in 1987 pointed out that:
while the first phase of the contemporary women’s movement involved excited
rediscovery of what women had in common, in recent years it is difference that
has dominated debate. Contemporary statistics on the distribution of income
reveal gross inequality between the sexes, but still women themselves vary in
their incomes and power. And while as mothers, wives and daughters women
may face similar patterns of oppression, it would be naive to pretend that all
the problems are the same. A feminism that focuses too exclusively on what
seem to be similarities between women can pass over in silence the divisions.
(Phillips, 1987: 9)
The divisions that Phillips goes on to mention are race and class. The unity
she cites is, in part, a unity as mothers. This article explores another division
of growing importance for the new millennium: the division between women
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (200012) 9:4 Copyright © 2000
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 9(4), 539–556; 014955
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who choose to remain childless and those who choose to become mothers.
The key question behind the discussion offered here is: ‘how can we affirm
the significance of motherhood while still trying to free women from the
obligation to mother?’ This question was formulated by J. D. Schwartz in
The Mother Puzzle (1993). In this article it is only addressed in the context
of one particular legal framework, that is the operation in the UK of the Sex
Discrimination Act 1975. This means that the setting for the consideration of
mothers and not-mothers in this article is usually the working environment.
Also the article’s focus is the mother/not-mother divide. Thus, it is a woman’s
decision to become a mother or to remain a not-mother that is the main
concern. However, other mothering issues are not unimportant. Schwartz’s
question embraces the problems of freeing those who are biological mothers
from the obligations of child rearing and freeing women from the obligation
to be social mothers, that is to ‘mother’ in the sense of ‘care for’, for instance,
the elderly, as well as freeing women from the ‘obligation’ to become bio-
logical mothers.
The main point I wish to make is that the way in which sex discrimination
law is structured means that the demographic change identified in this article
(seen in the increasing number of not-mothers as compared to mothers) will
work to the disadvantage of both groups of women. In some workplaces
mothers and not-mothers already take different stances and experience differ-
ent oppressions. This is a difference that can produce strong feelings and con-
flict between women. Women who are mothers can resent career progress by
not-mothers: ‘I recently went for a promotion but a woman who had no chil-
dren got it. I think my having children may have had an effect as none of the
senior women here have them’ (Philippa, married, two children, aged one and
two years). This is taken from the BBC Education ‘Having it all’ Internet site
which is based on interviews with 43 working mothers (http://www.
bbc.co.uk/education“havingitall”). Not-mothers, on the other hand, resent
being ‘dumped on’ at work because they do not have children and the com-
mitments that go with mothering.
It is clear that Schwartz’s puzzle (‘How can we affirm the significance of
motherhood while still trying to free women from the obligation to mother?’)
puzzles some women in a very practical way. However, it is not only a practi-
cal puzzle, it is also a problem for feminist theory. In 1970 Firestone stated:
At the present time, for a woman to come out openly against motherhood on
principle is physically dangerous. She can get away with it only if she adds that
she is neurotic, abnormal, childhating and therefore ‘unfit’. (‘Perhaps later . . .
when I’m better prepared’) This is hardly a free atmosphere of inquiry. Until
the taboo is lifted, until the decision not to have children or not to have them
‘naturally’ is at least as legitimate as traditional childbearing, women are being
forced into their female roles. (Firestone, 1970: 227–8)
In 1978 Chodorow argued that women’s oppression results from the fact
that mothering is ‘reproduced’ in women. It is women who are the ones that
‘mother’ in the sense of nurturing, childrearing and caring. Her suggestion
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was that both parents could ‘mother’ their children. However, an emphasis
on ‘parenting’ brings its own dangers. Rich (1980) says: ‘. . . motherhood [is]
a profoundly female experience, with particular oppressions, meanings, and
potentialities . . . the term ‘parenting’ serves to conceal the particular and sig-
nificant reality of being a parent who is actually a mother’.
For feminist theorists motherhood has been seen as the source of women’s
oppression or a place for women to celebrate. Rich includes both negative
and positive in her description. In 1989 Chodorow recognized a pro-mother-
hood shift in feminist writing. She stated:
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, feminists raised initial questions and devel-
oped a consensus of sorts about mothering. . . . These consensual positions
among feminists all centred on the argument that women’s lives should not be
totally constrained by child-care or childbearing. . . . In contrast, recent femin-
ist writing on motherhood focuses more on the experience of mothering: if a
woman wants to be a mother, what is or should be her experience? Feminist
writing now recognizes that many women, including many feminists, want to
have children and experience mothering as a rich and complex endeavour.
(Chodorow, 1989: 79)
Feminist writers have been increasingly rejecting the cultural negativity of
women through positive maternal images. Rowland (in the context of repro-
ductive technology) argues that women should view the power to reproduce
as an affirming power that women exert in bringing new life into the world.
This she distinguishes from the kind of negating power men exert in con-
trolling through technology (Rowland, 1984: 294). Cixous the French femin-
ist critic, novelist, dramatist and teacher (in the context of ‘feminine writing’)
says: ‘At times, woman and mother go together. In my case, I tend to think
that way. I tend to maternalize woman. To feel that a woman is all the more
woman as she is mother’ (Cixous, 1998: 43).
However, Cixous has herself been criticized for taking an approach that
essentializes the maternal function: particularly so in the case of her inflated
celebrations of plenitude, richness and fecundity of the female body. Cixous’
feminism is dangerous because it defines feminine difference in terms of
maternal function so ‘. . . many actual, empirical, women are going to find
themselves cast out from femininity insofar as they are not mothers nor
intending to become so’ (Soper, 1990). An essentialist feminist theory that
affirms the significance of motherhood by obliging women (who are prop-
erly women) to be mothers must be rejected. To theorize Schwartz’s puzzle,
Rich’s (1980) description of motherhood can be extended: I suggest that
‘. . . motherhood [is] a profoundly female experience, with particular oppres-
sions, meanings, and potentialities’ and to be a not-mother (a woman who
chooses childlessness) is also a profoundly female experience, with its par-
ticular oppressions, meanings and potentialities. In the context of a growing
number of not-mothers, feminists need to engage in practice and in theory
with the ‘not-mother puzzle’.
A note on terminology may be appropriate at this stage. Morell (1994) has
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SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 9(4)
pointed out that in discussing women who choose not to become mothers
terminology is a problem. The word ‘childless’ has associations with infertil-
ity and wanting, but not being able to bear, children. The term ‘child-free’
seems to indicate that children are to be viewed only as troublesome. Morell
chooses in her book to use the term ‘not-mothers’. I have followed her lead
in choosing the title of this article. However, having explained that I am refer-
ring to women who choose to be childless, I go ahead and use the term ‘child-
less’ throughout the article.
The remainder of the article...
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